Theatre 2016: Review Thirteen

The Tempest, Sam Wanamaker Theatre, Shakespeare's Globe, London. March 2016.

After seeing such a good production of this in the main Globe a couple of years ago I wasn't certain that I wanted to see this but a friend asked me to go with him and who am I to turn down a trip to the theatre?  Sadly on the day he was poorly and I persuaded Mr Norfolkbookworm to join me.

The play was brilliant, the comedic characters stole the show but at the same time were reined in so that they never overstayed their welcome. For me the highlight was Ariel, she managed to be present on stage and act her role perfectly - she was a mix of petulant, put upon, rebellious and dutiful - the cast interacting with her also deserve praise as they managed to act as if she really was invisible even when she was touching them. Her relationship with Prospero was interesting too as again you weren't sure if she loved or loathed him.

Since studying Shakespeare, and this play in particular, I've learnt so much about the 'behind-the-scenes' stories of the play. The Tempest is apparently all about colonisation and this wasn't something that I had noticed in previous productions, but here it certainly came through for me. Caliban was just a native of the island and certainly was not a monster and he was certainly a victim of a European colonisation.

This production was also interesting as Ferdinand was certainly a stronger character than usual where as Miranda was weaker than others I've seen.  She was however very much the 15/16 year old the play describes but possibly just a touch too modern.

I'm heartbroken that my friend missed this as it is the best Tempest I've seen.  Mr Norfolkbookworm enjoyed the show too but is absolutely convinced that the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is just a form of torture and however tempting the production he'll just cross his fingers that it is released on DVD!

Holiday reading

Spring Break!

Mr Norfolkbookworm and I are just back from a week away in the sun. We both needed a break and the intention was to sit around doing very little whilst soaking up some vitamin D. I was doubly able to relax as the first draft of my dissertation was completed just before we went and so I could indulge in reading for pleasure guilt free!

I certainly made the most of the huge balcony and comfy sunbeds as I read 13 books in the week we were away! All that was distracting me was this view from my lounger:

The books I read (in no particular order)

Persuasion - Jane Austen.  I'm not sure why I've not read this before but my friend the Upstart Wren challenged me to read this on our break.  I wasn't sure at first but pretty soon found myself sucked in and I loved this by the end.

Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell.  This book came up as a suggestion on Goodreads and while I am pleased that I read it, I can't say that I enjoyed it. Orwell himself made me cross, especially once he got back to England but his insights into the underclass were interesting.

A Country Road, A Tree - Jo Baker.  I loved Longbourn by this author a couple of years ago and was excited to see this title on Netgalley.  I think my mistake with this one was leaping on the author and not reading more about the book as I found it stilted and the characters unlikable however once I got to the end and read the afterword it all made more sense and in retrospect I like it more. A warning to myself with this one! 

The Summer Before the War - Helen Simonson.  This was a pure delight to read, set in the summer of 1913.  War looms, and comes to pass, as the book unfolds but the book is not about the trenches - it is about how the war affected everyone.  This book isn't literary but is a delight and I was transported to the era perfectly.  This is a book I am going to champion for a long time. 

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society - Mary Ann Schaffer.  After The Summer Before the War this book was the only thing I wanted to re-read as I wanted another book which balanced serious issues and whimsy. GLPPS is one of my 'desert island books' and I loved meeting my book friends again. 

Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabther Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World - Matthew Goodson. I love the original novel by Verne (and the cartoon from my childhood) so I was intrigued by this book.  Bly was an investagative (and undercover) journalist in 1899 who decided that it would be possible to go around the world faster than Verne's Fogg.  She sets out eastwards... Bisland was also a journalist and when her editor heard of Bly's journey sent Bisland off in the opposite direction to both beat Fogg and her rival.  The book is part travelogue, part history and part biography and was all compelling! 

The Trouble with Goats and Sheep - Joanna Canon. This is a much talked about novel set in the long hot summer of 1979, all the action takes place in just one street as two girls investigate a mysterious disappearance.  I'm not certain that I loved this as much as others but it was a good holiday read. 

Consumed - Abbie Rushton.  Abbie is a friend and I've been looking forward to reading her second novel since it was announced.  I really enjoyed this, it had a Norfolk setting and covered 'issues' in an interesting and new way.  It was a little more predictable than Unspeakable and possibly the issues were overcome a little too simply but this is a book for young adults and hopeful endings are always good. 

The Infinite Air - Fiona Kidman.  The early pioneers of flight lived in exciting times and I've long been fascinated with the female pilots such as Amy Johnson and Amelia Earhart.  This follows the story of New Zealand's pioneering aviator - Jean Batten.  I'd not heard of her but found this fictionalised biography utterly compelling and a brilliant read. 

Eliza Rose - Lucy Worsley.  This is a young adult read set in Tudor times and Worsley creates a fictional foil to the ill-fated Katherine Howard. This book annoyed me intensely, it was simultaneously too adult and too childish and at no point did I warm to the Eliza or feel that the Tudor court was real. 

German Rocketeers in the Heart of Dixie - Monique Laney.  After WW2 many German scientist and rocket engineers were brought to the US.  With the start of the space race many of these scientists were relocated to Huntsville in Alabama right in the heart of the segregated Deep South.  This book is comprised of oral histories from all of the Huntsville community and attempts to be rounded but personally I'd have liked more of the histories and less focus on the Rudolph case.  More probing of the idea of possible Nazis (or Nazi sympathisers) being relocated to a deeply racist area would have been nice too as ultimately I am left with more questions at the end than I had at the start! 

Somewhere Inside of Happy - Anna McPartlin.  This was another book I requested through Netgalley because I'd loved the author's previous book.  At first I thought I was going to be disappointed, it seemed like a typical Irish-set, chick-lit read but the twist towards the end blew me away and while not quite such a tear-jerker as The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes this was still brilliant. 

Freya - Anthony Quinn.  A bit of a cheat here as I didn't quite finish this one on the plane home, but I was more than half way through before we landed.  Another real surprise of a book which follows one woman, her friends and family from VE Day through to the mid-sixties. It is full of unappealing characters but their voices and the plot is so good that I found it hard to put the book down, and I didn't want it to end - always a good sign.

Phew - what a lot of books in a short time!  Now it is back to the grindstone as I have to finish and submit my dissertation in the next three weeks, I bet I wish I was back here very quickly

Theatre 2016: Review Twelve

King Charles III, Theatre Royal Norwich, Norwich. March 2016.

A busy ten days of plays finished with another trip to my local theatre to catch another production on tour from London.  Although this had had two runs in the capital I'd not made it to either, I had however won a copy of the script from Twitter and so was keen to see the play when it was announced close to home.

The premise of the play is clear from the title, the Queen is dead, long live King Charles III.  However after waiting for such a long time Charles has ideas of his own as to how the monarchy should act and his first decision is not to sign a parliamentary bill.  This causes chaos and the slow burn of the first act ends with Charles dissolving Parliament in an attempt to get his way.  The secon act is clever in resolving this.

While pure fantasy this play is also alarmingly close to the mark in many ways and very thought provoking - like all convincing political issues all sides seem to make perfect sense, until you hear the next speaker.

In addition to the astute politics this play is a modern Shakespeare, many of the lines are in verse and as per many great Shakespeare plays all of the characters have their own defined way of speaking to highlight their differences further.  The staging is also very Shakespearean - all that was missing was the jig at the end.  King Charles III manages to also be like Shakespeare in that the blend of tragedy, comedy and history is all balanced perfectly to leave the audience off balance. I've seen reviews likening it to the great tragedies of Macbeth and Hamlet but personally I found there to be a lot of resonances with both Richard II and Henry IV pt 1.

This is a long play, and personally I think the pacing is better in the second half. I don't know what could be be trimmed but I did feel that the first act was a little too long.  I'm really pleased to have seen this and as the theatre was full on the night I went I hope it proves that there is an appetite for new, complex plays and that they should tour.

Theatre 2016: Review Eleven

The Winter's Tale, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakesepeare's Globe, London. March 2016.

After last autumn's less than brilliant trip to see the Brannagh version of this play I approached this trip with trepidation.  Brannagh and Dench are such respected actors and they were performing Shakespeare - perhaps I didn't like the play rather than the production, perhaps it wasn't as bad a we recalled it being...

Nope - The Winter's Take is a fascinating play and I am glad that I gave it another chance.

I know that having seats this time that allowed me to see nearly everything (no seat at the Globe has 100% visibility due to the architecture) was always going to improve the experience but this production was cohesive from start to finish, the actions of all the characters hung together properly. It is still a preposterous, confused plot but acted and directed well you can at least follow the story and see how daft it is.

The house style at the Globe made the jump from court to pastoral more natural and the costumes and setting were consistent, what was tedious at the Garrick became interactive here and also elements from this start to the second half continued all the way through to the denouement making for a much more balanced and consistent production. As ever at the Globe the comedy was played up but this helped The Winter's Tale and added to production far more than playing it straight had done (well for  me anyhow).

The use of the candle light was clever here too, and it made the infamous "exit pursued by a bear" part truly creepy, the Playhouse is very dark when all of the candles are extinguished.

The play wasn't without flaws, the first half was at times a little 'shouty' and on more than one  occasion actors fell over their lines audibly but on the whole this was a great afternoon at the theatre and proved to Rebecca and I that currently no one does Shakespeare better than the Globe.  I'm glad that I have two more productions still to see from this Winter Season.

Theatre 2016: Review Ten

Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty, Theatre Royal, Norwich. March 2016.

Talking about this production is hard, it isn't that I didn't totally enjoy it but at the same time I there was a lot about this production that left me cold - and I know these views are going to put me in a minority.

In fact I've been feeling so conflicted over this show that I've been talking about it loads with the other people I went with and each time I 'see' something new and simultaneously like it more and less.

From the subtitle "A Gothic Romance" you know that you are going to get something different from a classical ballet and I was fine with that - after all this is the third Matthew Bourne adaptation I've seen and none of them have been in anyway traditional. I didn't mind that the fairies were vampires and looked more like extras from a Tim Burton film, that was fine.

My worries started with their first arrival however where there was the beautiful music and the beautiful dancing but the two just didn't seem to correspond at all, I felt that there was no actual interpretation of the music.

We then met 21 year old Aurora and in her first scene she lays on her back, on her bed shows off her bloomers and rolls down her stockings - this is going to be quite a sexual performance rather than a sensual one...

The garden party scene was nice, and then at the end of the first act came the part I truly loved when Aurora and the gardener's boy dance together - they moved together beautifully and as well as being sensual there was character growth as Aurora threw off her sophisticated, sexualised, behaviour and became child like in true love.  The final scene with the enchantment was also very clever.

After the interval 100 years had passed so to highlight this we had a group of selfie-taking teenagers outside the overgrown, enchanted house, quite amusing in a way but when coupled with the huge projection of the narration to show time passing it all felt just a little much to me. This whole production made me think of other cultural references (Twilight, Tim Burton and Baz Luhrman's Romeo+Juliet) and I think this perceived lack of originality is what has really coloured my thoughts.

I liked Act Two but again it was very sexual, not sensual, and sometimes I had absolutely no idea what the dancers were trying to tell with their set pieces.  All of it was beautifully choreographed and danced but I lost the story, and again the only totally convincing scenes were when Aurora and her true love - the gardener's boy - danced together. The skill to dance that well and yet appear asleep/enchanted is incredible and at its peak reminded me, favourably, of Romeo and Juliet which is the pinnacle of all the ballets I've seen.

This sounds terribly damning, and I was very tired the night I saw this, but I am pleased I saw it - you can't love everything you see and I didn't (despite this review) dislike this ballet, it just wasn't as good as others I've seen and this made me sad.  I can't wait to see both more ballet in general and more Matthew Bourne ballets.

Theatre 2016: Review Nine

The Lion King, Lyceum Theatre, London. March 2016.

Many years ago my sister and I saw this but at the time all we could manage were seats right up in the Gods and our fellow audience members had no idea how to behave in a theatre. We still shudder at the memory! Fast forward a few years and Mr Norfolkbookworm sees some of the cast from this perform on Blue Peter and decides he'd like to see the show, all we had to do then was wait for our nephew to be old enough to sit through a full length musical.

That day came and off we all went to London for our joint Christmas presents!

This time we were sat on the end of a row very near the front of the stalls and for my sister and I it was like seeing a completely different show. Those who hadn't seen it were also spellbound! The plot is similar to that of the Disney cartoon but there are just enough asides and modern quips to make the spectacle feel fresh, funny and up-to-date. The cast were uniformly superb and being so close to the stage and aisle just mean that we could see the artistry in puppets and the puppeteers whilst also believing totally that they were 'real'.

The magic of the production worked on all of our party, the sad bits were sad, the funny bits funny and the comeuppance of the bad characters well received, not a weak link at all. A week on and I am still humming the songs!

I'm also pleased to report that the people sitting near us were much better behaved this time!

Theatre 2016: Review Eight (cinema broadcast)

Hangmen, from the Wyndhams Theatre, National Theatre Live at Cinema City.

This was a play that had been on my radar for a while but one that I wasn't quite interested enough in to scramble for tickets and fight with the trains to see, thus when a live cinema broadcast was announced I was very happy.

I didn't know anything about this play before going in and to be honest the opening scene was a bit of a shock, but really effective.  It set the scene between the darkness of the topic and the way in which it was going to be presented wonderfully and from the outset you weren't sure if it was actually okay to laugh.

Once the action moved to the pub it became even more claustrophobic and the worry as to whether or not you should laugh became even more pronounced. There were definitely comic characters but at the same time putting people to death is not a joke.

The not knowing what to think continued right through the first half, especially once we meet the creepy, sorry menacing, Mooney - even thinking about his actions nearly a week on sends shivers up my spine, that's powerful writing and acting!

I was thoroughly unsettled at the interval and this continued through the second act with the sense of dooming growing with every scene. I'm not going to go further here because I found the end to be very clever but at the same time asked as many questions as it answered.  I might not think of a family box of Weetabix in the same light again and run very fast if anyone asks you to "smell my hair!"

I'm pleased that I had the chance to see this on the screen and hope that more theatres join in the Live Broadcast schedule over time.

The 'Right Stuff'

Buzz Aldrin in Conversation with Brian Cox, The Science Museum, London. February 2016.

We didn't think we were going to get to this event as the day the tickets went on sale the Science Museum's website crashed and by the time I gained access all of the tickets were gone.  Talking with the museum's social media team on Twitter lead me to registering our continued interest on a waiting list and then two days before the event patience paid off and I got a call offering me the four tickets I wanted.

The drama continued as on the day of the event Mr Norfolkbookworm was poorly and this necessitated a huge change of plans, a mad dash to the train station and then an awkward cross country journey to London.  It was all worth it when I made it to St Pancras and met my brother-in-law and nephew. A very sad husband however as he is the original space-nut in the family.

On arriving at the museum we collected our tickets and then went to explore the space gallery, it wasn't too crowded at this point and we spent a lot of time looking at the exhibits and explaining to N about the Apollo program. We also spent some time watching the floating globe waving at Nanny and Grandad who are currently in Australia!

From here we went into the big gallery and looked at the trains, planes, cars and of course the Apollo 10 capsule.  After a short break for lunch we made our way to the IMAX gallery and waited until it was time to take our seats for the talk.  Buzz's children's book about Mars kept us occupied during this wait and the museum's free Wi-Fi helped us look things up to add more details to what we were reading.

Once we were in our seats we got comfortable and then out came Brian Cox and Buzz Aldrin:

The event was then a conversation between the two men and started with the first selfie in space aboard Gemini 12, then talked about the Apollo program and the moon landing then went on to Buzz's plans for colonisation and 'universal' space cooperation.

If I am being honest this wasn't the best astronaut event I have attended, Cox tried his hardest to moderate and to keep the talk suitable for the audience (about half children under 10 - which was brilliant!) but Aldrin was a little vague and rambling. I was very impressed with the behaviour of the children in the audience however - my nephew included - as everyone was very quiet and respectful. After the moderated session the audience got to ask questions and although N and I had one we sadly weren't picked to ask it.

After this came the book signing and it was run brilliantly, I think that the Science Museum have been taking lessons from Space Lectures, and very quickly we were in line to meet Buzz and we were allowed to ask him our question in person "how did the moon smell?" It was very noisy and we think the answer was 'terrible' but Buzz made really good eye contact with N and they seemed to really connect.

We all enjoyed the event and meeting the 2nd man to walk on the moon is something we will all remember, I had heard him speak before but hadn't got to meet him.  

Before we went to the talk however N posed in front of the Apollo 10 capsule in a real astronaut pose alongside his class mascot Jelly the Giraffe:

We'd also talked about space travel and N had decided he didn't want to go to Mars right now as the journey is 8 months long and he'd miss his birthday, however he did want to go and visit Tim Peake on the ISS. I tweeted this on the way home and incredibly Tim Peake noticed the tweet and liked it which just made an already magical day even more special.

Birth of the Space Age

Cosmonauts Birth of the Space Age, Science Museum, London. February 2016.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am pretty interested in the history of manned space flight and that I'll travel all over the place to see new things and meet new people.  Apart from the one trip last year to see Alexei Leonov I've not had the chance to see or learn much about the Russian Space Programme, mainly thanks to the secrecy surrounding it.

Mr Norfolkbookworm (and my dad) did make a trip to Russia a few years ago and got to see Star City as well as some other space sights and museums but the chance to see many items all curated together wasn't to be missed and so we found ourselves at the Science Museum shortly after the museum opened ready to explore this exhibition thoroughly.

I found it to be utterly fascinating, from the early ideas and drawings of those who had no idea of what space would be like (but who were unnervingly accurate with their predictions) right through to Soyuz capsule identical to the one that Tim Peake will return to earth in later this year the exhibition was well laid out and fascinating.

From trips to Florida I knew how primitive the early space program had been but this was a whole new level, the imperative to be first just caused so much innovation and bravery as well as luck...

Highlights for me included seeing the capsule that carried the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova, into space and also the proposed lunar lander.  Thanks to a very knowledgeable guide the utter bravery (or lunacy) of the proposed Soviet moon landing really came to life, and her advice to go into the main space gallery after the exhibition and to compare this lander with the American one was brilliant.

Seeing items that are familiar from watching more recent missions to MIR and ISS was also interesting and I particularly loved the dining table, complete with hot plate that was used on MIR.  I can't tell which space program had the better food however.

Coming out of the exhibition the last item on display was a mannequin that Soviets sent around the moon to see what the effects of space travel would have on the human body, it was life sized with areas for human tissue equivalents to be included which were then studied on return to Earth.  This mannequin was launched shortly after the death of Gagarin and in tribute to him the face was a detailed model of his own. This gave the 'phantom mannequin' a really spooky presence and really reminded me of the body casts from Pompeii.

We spent a long time in the exhibition reading and studying everything closely and at no point felt like we were being encouraged to move on.  After meeting Leonov it was really nice to see his own art work especially the image of sunrise in space that he drew while on orbit but the thing that stays with me the most is that if perhaps the two space programs had been more open then some of the disasters and deaths that have occurred really could have been avoided.

After leaving the exhibition - via the gift shop naturally - we went into the main part of the museum to see the model of the US lunar lander and also the Apollo 10 capsule.  This was doubly poignant as in April we will be (all being well) meeting Gene Cernan who flew to the moon in "Charlie Brown" and also because a couple of days before our visit Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon, sadly died - 45 years minus one day since he landed on the moon.

Theatre 2016: Review Seven

Red Velvet, The Garrick Theatre, London. February 2016.

After the disastrous visit to the Garrick to see The Winter's Tale last November I was feeling rather anxious about having booked Mr Norfolkbookworm and I seats to see Red Velvet in the same venue.  I'd picked different seats and held by breath that it would all be okay on the night - luckily it was and we got to see a wonderful play.

I saw this for the first time just under two years ago with Rebecca and raved about it then, it was in fact my second best play of 2014, and I was so enthusiastic about it that as soon as a West End rerun was announced Mr Norfolkbookworm instantly agreed to go and see what was so special about this play when I suggested it.

I was a little nervous, could such a powerful play have the same impact on second viewing? Was it really that goo? Would himself enjoy it as much as I'd intimated? Again the answer to all of these questions really was yes.

A little of the intimacy of the smaller venue is lost but the piece itself is just as powerful and again has as much to say to the audience of 2016 as it had in the 1800s.  All of the performances were spot on and the final scene is still a devastating reminder of the racism that still pervades our society.  The audience in our performance were particularly engaged with the play for at some of the most outrageous racist lines there were audible hisses throughout the theatre and no inappropriate laughter.

I did find the actor playing Charles Kean to be less terrifying this time around (I'm sorry I don't have his name to hand, £5 for a programme was a step too far for a re-watch), he certainly seemed to be playing up the comic aspect of his character but his casual, throwaway lines and disguised racism was still present.

I'm really happy we got to see this and if anyone reading this can grab a seat before it closed I recommend doing so - Row O had excellent sightlines!

Theatre 2016: Review Six

Ellen Terry with Eileen Atkins, The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at the Globe Theatre, London. February 2016.

In the first year of my MA one module I studied was all about the history of Shakespeare in performance and for my final essay I chose to write about Ellen Terry.  She was the one of the leading Shakespearean actresses of the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth and very influential both through her family and also her own talent. In addition to acting she also wrote essays about Shakespeare's women and really brought them to life, she was an early supporter of the woman's suffrage movement too and made public appearances to raise money for the cause.

In her own life time she performed these essays to audiences and after her death they were collected together and published. It is these essays that are brought back to life by Atkins in this 70 minute monologue and it is hard to believe that they are 100 years old for they sound as fresh and worthy of study now as they were then.

Atkins is playing Terry from the moment she walks on stage and the lectures are given so naturally and conversationally that I was held spellbound from the first word. The small biographical details that are also woven in to the lectures were a delight, as I'd studied Terry in some depth there were no new anecdotes but hearing 'her' give them was a delight and hearing the audience response to them was also a joy.

Atkins managed a virtuoso performance switching from Terry to numerous Shakespearean roles with just a twitch of the shoulders or a facial expression and some of here scenes were easier to follow than actual performances.

I'm so glad that this was revived in this Winter season at the Globe as I was very sorry to have missed it last time round, I do think that it is quite specialised - you do have to know the plays quite well to follow some of the trains of thought but Atkins has such a splendid voice that just sitting and listening to the words would also be a treat.

Having seen Simon Callow's one man Shakespeare a few years ago and thoroughly enjoying that I have to say that I think this was better. I'm not sure if it was because the subject, Shakespeare's women, chimed more with me or if it is because I now know the plays so much better but the scant 70 minutes left me wanting more and I hope that in this special anniversary year that this show has been recorded and that it will be broadcast so that many more people can see a wonderful performance.

 Smallhythe House and barn theatre, Kent - Ellen Terry's home

Ellen Terry's costume for Lady Macbeth - it is made from beetle wings to get the iridescent shine

Responding to an Upstart Wren

Thinking about the classics

A close friend has just started a new blog which can be found here, and is well worth a read. She is much more erudite than 'wot i is' but we often end up debating books and the arts world in general and so when she posted her take on reading what are deemed 'classic books' it made me think a lot and here is my partner post to the Wren's.

Reading the classics

Although attending the same school as the Wren I don’t have quite the same recollections regarding English lessons, the fruits of being in a different form and then following an arts track through the years perhaps?

I don’t think we had to keep a book journal, but I feel that if I had done so similar comments about reading age appropriate books would have come my way. The TARDIS may not have featured on my list (I confess I was scared by Doctor Who as a child and so would never have sought out books on the topic) but there were certainly books set in schools, space and an awful lot of teen books with a didactic environmental message. 

There weren’t any classics however. 

I don’t know why.  As a younger child I raced through books such as Black Beauty, Heidi, Little Women, Pollyanna, Wind in the Willows, The Railway Children, The Secret Garden etc., and then I repeatedly borrowed the more modern classics, by authors such as Arthur Ransome and Laura Ingalls Wilder, from the library. The language and style of these is as complicated as any contained in an adult classic novel so I don’t know why I didn’t naturally move on them.

When I did graduate on to books published for an adult market (not adult books, that’s another whole can of worms) I moved onto authors such as John Wyndham, and R F Delderfield before the more traditional teenage fare of Jilly Cooper and Virginia Andrews.  

I missed out the classics.

Like the Upstart Wren my GCSE English course didn’t introduce them to me, although my teacher did pick drama as our topic and I did meet Shakespeare (although I now realise that this was an abridged version and not the full play) and J B Priestley. 

Interestingly on asking my English teacher for book recommendations when stuck in a reading rut I don’t recall being pointed towards the classics at all – Gerald Durrell is the author who I know I discovered at this point. 

I didn’t continue with English past GCSE, focusing on languages – in which I enjoyed reading French and German classics, occasionally in the original language. 

Fast forward twenty years and I am now nearing completion of an MA in Shakespeare Studies. More interestingly I still haven’t read that many of what are considered classic novels. I always intend to but then get side tracked.  

So to many my reading does have a big hole in it. 

I love reading translations of classical Greek and Roman works, and also Elizabethan/Jacobean drama but then I skip forward about 300 years to my next love – rediscovered books from the early twentieth century. Publishers like Persephone Books and Virago are just made for me.  They  republish books, or authors, that were hugely popular in their day but have since slipped into obscurity. I don’t mean people like Nevil Shute (who I also like) but people like Elizabeth Bowen, R C Sherriff and then the well-known authors of children’s books like Richmal Crompton and Noel Streatfeild who also wrote for adults. 

I read an incredible amount of translated fiction, literary fiction and also narrative non-fiction. I  like reading historical books set in all eras so my avoidance of the classics seems even odder.  I’m not even that keen on TV adaptations of them, but the reasons for that is a post for another day! 

I do feel guilty for having this gaping hole in my literary life, I know I should read more of the classics and I don’t even have the excuse of ever being expected to read them and so rebelling against this edict.  But – and here is the big but READING SHOULD BE FUN, and although I do read a lot for improvement/education I do expect to enjoy what I read and so far that hasn’t been many of the classics. 

I will keep trying new ones but I feel my split personality when it comes to books will keep me either in antiquity or the near past, for some reason I seem to empathise with both settings far more than the period 1700-1900.

As my studies come to an end in the next few months I am hoping to have more time to respond to thought provoking blogs and statements from friends as well as statements in the press, but for now it will just be the Wren and the Bookworm replying to each other!

Theatre 2016: Review Five

Mr Foote's Other Leg, Theatre Royal Haymarket, London. January 2016.

The joy of a weekend in London means the chance to see more than just one show and after Guys and Dolls our second show was this oddball.

Once more we went in knowing nothing about it, other than the fact that Simon Russell Beale has been fantastic in everything we've seen him in and I don't think either Rebecca or I were expecting quite what we got.

The story is that of Samuel Foote who was a theatre actor, manager, director and cross dresser in the latter half of the 1700s.  He was a contemporary of Garrick and Benjamin Franklin and lived an incredibly varied life,  he also had only one leg and was at the heart of a sexual scandal big enough to rival anything in the tabloids today.

The play is also by Foote's biographer and having read the programme notes it is quite hard to separate fact from fiction and as soon as I have finished my dissertation and have time to read about the theatre in a manner not connected to my specialist topic I will be hunting the biography down.

The play is very funny, very rude and very funny and shies away from nothing when it comes to making jokes, and I can see why this play isn't for everybody* but I'm afraid that is really appealed to my (warped) sense of humour and once I realised that it was pushing buttons to make you laugh and then feel guilty for doing so I was fine.

I very much liked the way that it brought in lots of minor points about the history of theatre and Shakespeare in the eighteenth-century, it was like seeing some of the drier texts I've read over the last few years come to life in front of me, a little like happened when we saw Red Velvet.

Act One ends very dramatically with Mr Foote saying something along the lines of 'how do you top that in the second half' and I did find this to be fairly accurate. For me the story arc wasn't quite so clear after the interval, but it was interesting to see how an over the top character can all too easily tip over a line and go from funny to offensive in the blink of an eye.

Several times the play appeared to break the fourth wall and address the audience, but in fact this wasn't quite the case - the cast were addressing an audience but it was the audience of their time and not us. This made the call for a 'doctor in the house' very odd as just for a minute I wasn't sure which audience was being addressed. Later, when Foote dries on stage, it isn't the modern audience heckling him and causing him to respond but 'his' audience which gave the me a very other-worldly feel, and let me feel the history of the theatre and the 'ghosts' very clearly.

The nicest bit of the play was that it had transferred from Hampstead to the Theatre Royal Haymarket as this was in fact the theatre in which the play is set - a nice (probably intentional) circle of history. It was also fun to know that a theatre I now see as being a very 'proper' building once had such a turbulent past.

I'm glad that this transferred to the West End and that we managed a trip to London before it closed as I think this is a play I'd have been really sorry to have missed.

*I wish the couple sitting next to me had left at the interval like they talked about as their audible disapproval was most off putting!

Theatre 2016: Review Four

Guys and Dolls, Savoy Theatre, London. January 2016.

January and seeing a musical starring Jamie Parker is starting to become a tradition, last year it was Assassins and this year Guys and Dolls. Once more I went in 'blind' so to speak as apart from Sit Down Your Rocking the Boat I didn't know any of the songs and I certainly didn't know the plot. I'd heard that it was about a floating craps game but thought that this meant it had a riverboat setting and not that the gambling roamed around New York.

I think that this is the way to go sometimes as it is a good test for a musical's book - at no point in this show did I feel lost, or did I forget who was who.  The two love stories are very sweet and, despite being writ large for the stage, very believable and the plot as a whole pretty coherent. All of the cast were on top form the night we saw this and they had so much energy - impressive for the coldest night of the winter so far!

The cast were all British but speaking and singing with American accents and I don't think that I noticed once this falter, although I'm not sure they all came from New York!  I thought I was going to find Miss Adelaide annoying as her accent was so over the top but this was needed for the role and she quickly won me over and I was totally on her side, and ready to do battle with Nathan on her behalf.

I think that what impressed me about this was the parity in the roles, a musical about illegal gambling could so easily have been one sided and just had the female roles as an after thought but in this production Miss Sarah and Miss Adelaide were so strong that it was definitely a four-hander. That being said there wasn't a weak link in the cast, either those with speaking roles or the dancers.

The Savoy Theatre is a beautiful theatre and we had excellent seats in the Stalls and although I primarily went to see this because it is one of Rebecca's favourites (and yes because of the male lead) I am so glad that I did go, I came out with a big smile which hasn't gone yet.

The production is coming to Norwich on tour later in the year and I may go again then, although I think that it will have had a major cast change, but something that has left me this happy deserves a second viewing. I will also look out the stories by Damon Runyon that the show is based on.

Theatre 2016: Review Three

Pericles, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at the Globe Theatre, London. January 2016.

My new semi regular theatre companion and I made the trip to London - it was his first trip to the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse and my first Shakespeare in the venue.

This is a venue that has grown on me slowly, now I know which are the comfiest seats it is a place I look forward to going to but this has taken time, I was worried that my companion would find it too uncomfortable and also would struggle to hear.

I'm pleased to say that we both had a thoroughly good time at this.  It is one of the lesser know plays and deals with incest, prostitution, piracy and child murder but it came together admirably and was believable where it needed to be which is no mean feat with the story.  The play meanders around the Mediterranean as the titular Pericles is buffeted from pillar to post by fate and throughout the afternoon I didn't lose track of where we were once, impressive when you work out just how many roles some of the cast were playing!

James Garnon was playing Pericles and I've seen him a lot at the Globe in the past few years, usually he is playing a decidedly comic role and it was great to see him in a more serious lead role, at least in the first half.  In the second half both my companion and I found it played just a little too much for laughs than our own reading had allowed and 'mad' Pericles' wide eyed mania was just a little too over the top.  However the revelations at the end do pile on top of each other and the plot is ludicrous and so I can see why this directorial decision had been taken.  He wasn't alone in this interpretation as Gower, the sage/chorus figure also got broader with her interpretations of the lines and laughter at the denouement was with the cast and not in disbelief.

After two seasons it was a delight to see some Shakespeare in the venue and the way that the sea storms were portrayed and acted was incredible - a simple rope net, a sail and then body language had me as convinced as some the most expensive special effects on screen.

I am so glad that I have booked tickets for all four of the winter season's plays - it will be fascinating to see how the further storms and ludicrous plots manifest themselves in this theatre.

Theatre 2016: Review Two

Sleeping Beauty and the Daleks, The Blakeney Players, Blakeney. January 2016.

as ever this isn't an impartial review - after all I do know one of the cast!

It was a wet and wild day when we ventured up to the coast for this winter's treat from the Blakeney Players but as ever the drive was worth it.

The simple tale of Sleeping Beauty was here reworked so that Frozen and Doctor Who were integral parts. The Princess Jean was a thoroughly modern girl in a kingdom who'd stupidly forgotten the events of her Christening.  A young(!), brave, athletic prince was found to rescue her but only with the help of some rogue female Daleks longing to become good enough to grow legs and lose their traditional form.

As ever the script and plot (which were extremely funny) isn't entirely the point of this play - it is about the cast having a good time, many terrible puns, some wonderful dance routines and a final gag that is so diabolical that remaining in your seat as realisation dawns becomes hard.

I'd love to know how Princess Jean managed to keep so still and feign sleep while so much was going on around her (and what tricks the cast played on her during rehearsal) and I'd also love to know who has taught the cast how to fall on stage with such comic effect.

I already can't wait for the summer show!

Theatre 2016: Review One

I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue: The Live Tour, Norwich Theatre Royal, January 2016.

Hurrah! 2016 is going to be as theatre-filled as the last couple of years and what a way to start.

A couple of years ago, thanks to the kindness of a friend, Mr Norfolkbookworm and I got to go to a live recording of the Radio 4 'antidote to panel games' and came away thinking that we'd never laugh as much again.  On discovering that the team were coming back and that this time it wasn't going to taped for broadcast we queued early for tickets.

On arrival we discovered that Graeme Garden was unwell and that he would be replaced by Miles Jupp - not something that upset any of us as he is very, very funny in his own right.

The evening progressed much like a radio show, it was possibly a little ruder and a little more on the edge politically than usual but by the interval our sides really hurt.  After the break it got better with audience kazoo participation and possibly one of the best "You'll have had your tea" sketches I've ever heard.  Mornington Crescent with addition of the SatNav had me nearly falling off my seat.

This was just the ticket to start the New Year, and a real antidote to any incipient January blues.  I will confess that some of us are still trading jokes from the show each time we meet.

If you don't know the joy of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue I suggest looking through the Radio 4 and 4extra schedules to look for past episodes, or visit your library and borrow the best of compilations that they are sure to have...just be sure to do it in your pants..!

Box Office Top 10 (or 11)

My favourite theatre 2015.

In 2015 I made 39 trips to the theatre and saw 37 plays, and it seems that this year there were a lot more that I either didn’t enjoy or felt pretty flat about.  

Unlike most reviewers I think that the Cumberbatch Hamlet and the Branagh A Winter’s Tale were two of the biggest disappointments – although to be fair the big named starts (Dame Judi Dench and Benedict Cumberbatch) were both excellent in their roles, shame about the rest of the productions!

• Assassins – I’ve never been so freaked out (in a good way) by a production before!

• Edward Scissorhands (ballet) – this was pure frothy fun and a treat from start to finish.

• Farinelli and the King – Mark Rylance (and the Sam Wanamaker Theatre) made this slight play punch well above its station for me.

• Romeo and Juliet (ballet) – I studied and wrote about this ballet and the chance to see it at the Royal Opera House was the icing on the cake.

• Measure for Measure – a real problem play on reading and studying but this clever production at the Globe ironed them out for me and I really enjoyed this.

• Merchant of Venice – a hard play to pull off in a post-Shoah world but I think this production managed it wonderfully, the ending especially was very moving.

• The Bakkhai - I love Greek drama (2016 sees the return of the Cambridge Greek plays and seeing them in the original language!) and I thought this was a clever way to keep very true to the original while updating slightly.  I didn't have the problem with the Chorus that many did.

• Shakespeare in Love – I wasn’t sure, but Shakespearean adaptations formed a large part of my spring studies and as I prefer theatre to film I treated myself and don’t regret a penny!

• Book of Mormon – I knew nothing about this going in except that it was hugely hyped and quite hard to get seats. It might be short but it is very funny – if you can get over the blasphemy, rude language and scatological humour, which I can!

• Richard II – sneaking in at number 10 is my 3^rd Globe production (4^th if you count Farinelli). It wouldn’t have made it from the viewing early in the run, but it changed so much during the run that it was a different beast by the last night and a play I can’t wait to own on DVD.

An honourable mention has to also go to the Simon and Garfunkel Story which wasn't a play, a concert or a musical in the traditional sense but was a brilliant evening and also introduced me to new songs by the duo - something I was surprised by as I've been a fan for over 30 years.

Here's hoping that 2016 is a good theatrical year, I've already got 13 plays booked for the first 3 months of the year and this is before a lot of the Shakespeare productions get announced. 2016 will be big for the Bard as it marks 400 years since his death, and should also be big for me as I will finish my MA (and have more time for the theatre...!)

Top books 2015

Better late than never but I am always wary of posting this too early and then reading the best book of the year on 31st December (it has happened!)

2015 has been an odd reading year, my diary lists 194 completed books but this doesn’t take into account the dozens of journal articles and chapters I’ve read from academic books as part of my studies.

The balance between male and female authors remained pretty close to as 84 books were by men and 107 by women. However as I said earlier in the year the sex of the author doesn’t bother me as much as the content of the book!

It has felt like I’ve read far more non-fiction than fiction this year too, but again counting through my records this isn’t quite so with 106 works of fiction, 23 plays and 65 non-fiction books making up the balance.

So after all of this pointless number crunching what do I actually recommend…?

Top 10 Fiction books (in no particular order)

• The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain (translated by Jane Aitken) – second book by the author of The President’s Hat, not quite so good as the first but still wonderful, escapist whimsy.

• The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks – a retelling of the Biblical tale of David and his advisor Natan.

• King of Shadows by Susan Cooper – a time-slip story for children set in 1599 in and around the Globe theatre.

• Carrying Albert Home by Homer Hickman – another delightfully whimsical story all about a journey allegedly made by Hickman’s parents as they return an alligator to Florida.

• When Marnie Was There by Joan G Robinson – another children’s time-slip tale, this one set in North Norfolk so felt a really cosy read.

• God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson – I liked this one so much more than Life After Life even though it is very similar, hard to categorise but a really rewarding read.

• George’s Grand Tour by Caroline Vermalle (translated by Anna Aitken) – as this book made me cry in public I’m as surprised as anyone that this has ended up on my top 10! I’m a sucker for road trip story and the two main characters stole my heart totally.

• Hearts of Stone by Simon Scarrow – archaeology, a Greek Island I’ve visited and a World War Two story made this a hit for me.

• The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim – this one was recommended to me by two friends who were shocked they’d found a book I’d not read and they had.  They were right – I loved it but as a word of caution do read this book and not the ‘updated’ Enchanted August.

• The Last Pilot by Benjamin Johncock – I reviewed this book back in February and even after 10+ months it remains my book of the year.

• 

Non Fiction:

• Oregon Train by Rinker Buck – a real life Little House on the Prairie

• On the Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson – Bryson back on top form (if slightly potty mouthed) with his latest trip around the UK.

• Latest Reading by Clive James – James looks back at his reading life, sharing old favourites and new finds with his readers.  A poignant and expensive read as I added lots to my wish-lists!

• Blue Stockings by Jane Robinson – after seeing the play Bluestockings in 2013, and thinking a lot about feminism this year I found this book a fascinating insight into those women who broke the mould and went to uni early on to make it absolutely normal by the time I went.

• Fallen Glory – James Crawford – it is a close run thing as to whether this book or The Last Pilot is my best of the year.  I loved Crawford’s take on telling history through the rise and demise of buildings and have been recommending it to all and sundry since finishing it.

• 

It has been harder to pick out the best of 2015, I don’t know if I’ve become harder to please or if there was less good stuff out there…however as I have recently finished two excellent non-fiction books that are to be published in the middle of 2016 I think it may be shaping up to be a vintage year!

Finally a sequel-ly good read!

Return to the Secret Garden - Holly Webb.

Warning this blog post may contain spoilers - but as these are plot points from books published over 100 years ago I don't mind!

I don't have a great track record reading the modern sequels to books I adored as a child. The Return to Hundred Acre Wood is a book that I can't get out of my mind and I really didn't like another sequel to a Frances Hodgson Burnett book either.

Thus it was with trepidation I reserved Return to the Secret Garden from the library.  I'm so pleased that I did.  Webb has not continued the book from the immediate end but has moved the story on to a WW2 setting. Orphans housed at London orphanage are evacuated to Misstlethwaite Manor in September 1939 and have to learn to adapt to their new life.

At first I was worried that the book was just going to be a slightly modernised retelling of the original: a sad, lonely, and bad tempered orphan arrives in the new place and immediately finds a robin who leads her around the garden to a more secret place and she also hears crying in the night... So far so derivative.

Webb however is skilled enough to use these elements that are familiar from the original to weave a new tale but that lovingly references all of the original plot elements and characters. I was very happy to be surprised by the book, and I am not ashamed to say that it did bring a huge lump to my throat in more than one place.

Like so many of the modern adaptations it isn't as long or as complex as the original but as sequels go I loved it.

Which was a relief as earlier in the year I'd read Jacqueline Wilson's updated version of What Katy Did, called simply Katy.

In this, the first half really is a rewrite of the original just modernised and as someone very familiar with the original I was bored, it didn't work and I wondered why on earth anyone would read this and not the Coolidge one.

However after Katy's accident the book changed completely and I found it to be a convincing and realistic read of how this little girl would have reacted after a life changing accident.  Also an improvement on the original is the loss of the moralising, the idea of the saintly invalid and also the miraculous recovery!

This really was a book of two halves and I am glad I carried on to the end but for anyone familiar with the original I suggest skipping ahead to the middle, the start adds nothing.

So a mixed bag for sequels/rewrites of classic books this year. I am intrigued to read Kate Saunder's Five Children on the Western Front but this will be a different sort of read as I've never yet managed to finish the original!