World Book Night 2021: Book Nineteen

 

Much Ado About Nothing - William Shakespeare (Penguin)

Own book (and DVD)

This play is always going to hold a special place in my heart as it was the first play I saw at the Globe Theatre and the one that made me fall in love with Shakespeare - to the extent I ended up taking an MA!

I did reread the play again for this challenge rather than listening to the audio book and it still makes me smile lots. The squabbling couple are brilliant and like so many of Shakespeare's plays the plot is frankly bonkers at times.

Once I'd finished reading it I did watch my DVD of that important 2011 Globe production and despite all the restrictions in daily life I was back at the Globe, in the summer, utterly immersed in the show. I'm not sure I will be back in London or at the Globe for a while but without this challenge I'd have left it far too long before reading/watching this again.

End of a decade

What a decade!

In shamelessly using a popular music CD series I am cunningly going to talk about the past decade in books. This is of course in no way a distraction so I don't have to decide which were the best books of the past year you understand!

On looking back through my reading journals I have discovered that I have been keeping a pretty thorough record of my reading since 2009, however as this is an end of decade summing up I will only take the books I've read since January 2010. It is my blog after all and no matter the arguments put forward by Mr Norfolkbookworm as to when the decade actually runs I am going with Jan 1st 2010-December 31st 2019.

In that time I have recorded I've read 3103 books 😲 Or 310 books a year 😲😲

When you take into account that I don't think I've included all of the picture books I've read to my nephew in this list, or the day I spent at the Booktrust helping select books for the packs given to pre-school aged children this is staggering, even for me.
It also covers the 3 years I spent studying for an MA and the time since my brain haemorrhage which severely cut back on what I was able to read.

I do include all of my re-reads/comfort reads in my lists so this isn't actually 3103 unique books but regardless this is a vast number that has left me feeling a bit flabbergasted...

I will spend some more time looking at the lists and definitely produce my 'best of 2019' list in the next day or so, but I will also look through the entire list and try and pick my highlights of the decade too.

I think that my reading highlight of this year has been sharing books as a family, especially with Kentishbookboy. In early 2010, before he was even born, I took my sister on a book buying trip to start his library and now it has paid off as we get to share books properly now.

For this year his favourite book we've shared was Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (mine and his mum's was The Umbrella Mouse and Mr Norfolkbookworm can't decide between these two!)

As a book memory from the decade it has to be one that Kentishbookboy and I share and that is the wonderful Thud by Nick Butterworth as we've had years of fun acting that out between us.

Wishing all of my readers a very Happy (and book filled) New Year and here's to another decade of good books!

 

Shakespeare in Ten Acts

Shakespeare in Ten Acts, The British Library, London. July 2016.

In the year that I finished my MA and 400th anniversary of the Bard's death there have been lots of Shakespeare events and exhibition. Perversely I've not seen that many plays etc. this year - possibly because I was concentrating so hard on my dissertation but I  knew that I really wanted to see this exhibition.

I'm pleased that we got there, the concept was really good because it wasn't just about Shakespeare's time but his legacy and this is what a lot of my studying has been about.

Each zone took a different play as a theme and then used printed material, costumes, interviews and videos to put it all in context.

Highlights for me were the copies of the early books, folios and quartos - comparing the three versions of Hamlet was a delight and reading the details about the booksellers and exactly where you'd find their stalls shops really brought the era to life.
Other parts that I liked were the rooms on Othello and non white actors - possibly influenced by seeing Red Velvet and reading about theatre in the eighteenth century.  I also liked seeing the recreation of Peter Brook's iconic white box A Midsummer Night's Dream as I'd read so much about this production.

A great deal of my pleasure from this exhibition came from seeing the actual items that I'd learned about over the past few years - the actual pages of the play Sir Thomas More thought to have been written by Shakespeare for instance but also the layout was really good and as it wasn't too busy at all when we visited there was plenty of time to read everything and walk backwards and forwards to look at things more than once.

After the past few years of study I didn't expect to learn many new things from the exhibition, but there were some quirky details that I did discover and if the exhibition had been a little warmer and I didn't have another play to get to I think I'd have spent even longer poring over the exhibits.

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

Theatre 2015: Review Twelve

Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's Globe, London. April 2015.

My mum was my theatre companion for this trip with a long awaited Mother's Day present, and what a way to start the 2015 Justice and Mercy season.  In the last few months I've written two essays about this play but this was my first trip to see it on stage.

Called a stripped down version of the play on the website I worried that it was going to be very cut but what they meant was a minimal stage and only eight actors - but how hard these guys worked.  All except Romeo and Juliet played multiple parts and the costumes involved cloaks being pulled over beige trousers and white shirts.  It could have been a disaster...

...it wasn't. In fact it was spellbinding.  To avoid confusion with the doubled parts scenes would often play on top of each other - at the start I wasn't sure about this.  The initial brawl between the two houses with my favourite thumb biting lines played around the chorus' initial speech, then during the main body of the play half a scene with some characters - eg Juliet, her mother and the nurse - would freeze and half a scene with Romeo and his friends would happen.  It sounds terribly clumsy on the page like this but worked very well visually as it made it clear which role was being played at any one time.

This is a touring play that has a very short stay at the Globe and for that reason the interplay with the groundlings did seem less obvious than in Shakespeare plays that I've seen at the venue and more like the new plays performed there but while I noticed this it didn't detract or add anything in particular to the play.

I wasn't quite moved to tears by the end, I'm not sure that this venue is intimate enough for such emotions to happen or if I have just studied the text too much in the past few months. I was still transfixed throughout, as was most of the audience which contained some of the best behave school children I've ever seen at the Globe.

I do have one question about this production - what were the temporary tattoos for? The costumes were totally neutral with no date or place setting but the tattoos stuck out as incongruous, as there was so much doubling of parts they can't be explained as being to denote Capulet or Montague so I remain perplexed.

That being said this was a great day out and if the tour comes near you this year I really do recommend seeing it.  I'm considering going to Cambridge to see if an indoor venue is more intimate and emotion inducing.

Archived!

London and Stratford-upon-Avon

It is coming around to essay time again and this term we can't just rely on books so I've spent some time recently exploring the archives at the V&A in London and those at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

Both days have been really interesting, I work in a library that is connected to the local Record Office and that holds some rare books, images and ephemera but to visit some archives as a customer/student was really nice.

In both places the staff were incredibly helpful both before and during my visit and were endlessly patient with my queries about the catalogues as I tried to locate items relevant to my investigations and I think I have got some useful information.

The nice thing about both archives was the mix of people in them, there were some people doing very serious research, students and others who were almost there on a whim. It made the rooms feel very relaxed and open.

The only sad thing in some ways for me was that the theatre archive for the V&A is housed out at Olympia (in the building above) and not at the museum itself so I didn't get to study in the fabulous on site reading room:

I did spend an hour or so in the Theatre Galleries at the V&A before catching my train home and they were also wonderful - so varied. Everything from a poster advertising a Queen concert to a First Folio Shakespeare. The galleries are free and there is a daily tour which I shall endeavour to take at some point soon.

Theatre 2014: Review Five

King Lear, Olivier Theatre, National Theatre, London. February 2014.

This was very much a group outing with Mr Norfolkbookworm joining me and two of my theatre going friends. Despite the best efforts of the weather and the trains on all of our travel we made it in time, scaled lots of stairs to the circle of the Olivier and found our seats in plenty of time for 'curtain up.'

This Lear was set in modern dress but in a non specific time and for the most part this worked for me. The costumes and set implied we were in a repressive state run by a tyrant, although this didn't quite work for me as I can't think of any modern tyrant who will voluntarily resign power.  This production skirted the issue and I got the impression that this Lear thought that he could resign all of the nasty bits of power but keep the 'fun' bits and have plenty of time to hunt and hang out with the army.

I found the story to be clearly told, and fast paced - which was good as for the first time at the National I struggled to hear an awful lot of the lines, mainly when Lear and others got excited. The lines seems rushed and mumbled, too much emotion to keep the diction clear perhaps? This did not get any better when the sound effects for the storm came into the equation.

The scene with the Fool was particularly moving and it took me a couple of seconds to see exactly what had happened and then when Gloucester loses his eyes it was truly horrific - once more the sparing use of violence and gore worked to the advantage of the play, especially as the audience couldn't quite see the act being committed.

Act One was nearly two hours long and the action picked up even more after the interval but for me didn't manage to engage with me emotionally. I don't think that it helped that many of the deaths appeared to be played for laughs, not  Lear or Cordelia, but Edmund, Goneril and Regan's certainly.

In fact on talking this through with one of my companions afterwards we think that this lack of emotional connection was one of our biggest complaints, well that and the inaudibility.
I  don't know if I was expecting too much of this production after the wonderful Othello last year but I came away feeling a bit 'meh' and I don't think that any of the cast deserved the standing ovation that some in the audience gave.

In a way I don't think that the play was that bad, but like at a book group, it is far easier to discuss something that you don't like...

One of my recent uni tasks has been to think about reviewing productions, and taking notes on a production. I tried this at King Lear and they have certainly helped me recall details on the play but I think that talking to people who also saw the same production afterwards helps me more.

The notes I took in the dark are:

• Lear speaks too fast
• Long blackouts for elaborate scenery moving which don't seem so elaborate when the lights come up*
• All speak too fast  when excited emotional, can't hear them
• Storm  is rumbling around before the main scene as a portent
• No wind in the storm and only sound effect rain
• Images of lightning out of sync with the thunder +
• The revolve constantly turning in Poor Tom scene making me dizzy
• Lear's affection of clasping his buttocks makes me think he needs the loo - distracting ^
• Fool and Gloucester scenes brilliant
• Deaths towards end farcical not moving

* - in fact in Act Two it got stuck, I thought it had at the time but this has been confirmed by a friend and another review.
+ - surely not a good sign that all I can see is this and not one of the most important speeches of the play
^ - this started as hand behind back, became clasping and then scratching, I am guessing this is the 'tell' for madness but sadly it didn't stay consistent and was just distracting.

Nose to the grindstone

Versions on a theme.

2014 has started in a novel fashion for me - one that has involved no novels in fact.  I had two essays due in the middle of January and I have been holed up at home writing them.

Both were challenging in their own ways but I have been boring the pants off anyone who comes near me with the things I've been discovering.

There's more than one version of several Shakespeare plays. Some of these versions differ greatly to the one that we think we know today.  Hamlet for instance, in Quarto One, has half the number of lines, the story takes place in a different order and the "To be or not to be" speech doesn't appear. To be honest Hamlet is nowhere near my top 10 of Shakespeare's plays and I cheered to find a shorter version!

I've been looking into Henry V for the past month as the two versions of this text are both very different and quite similar.  The Quarto version makes for a very different play than the more familiar Folio and again an iconic speech is missing - this time "Once more unto the breach..."

Henry V is a deceptive play which ever version you read and I'm pleased  to report that even after studying it for a month, reading several versions, and many critical texts it remains one of my favourite plays.

Jamie Parker as Henry V, Globe 2012 (picture from Evening Standard)

Theatrical Interlude 27

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare's Globe, London. October 2013.

I was beginning to think that I was never going to see this play at its best as once more the weather forecast was dire for the day Rebecca and I headed to London.  Luckily the rain band seemed to sweep right round Southwark and we stayed mostly dry.

This was the first Shakespeare play I'd seen since starting my MA and it just so happened that the first unit was all about outdoor theatre and the staging of Tudor plays in their original environment.  I was very glad that I had seen this play earlier in the season as at least for the first half I was a little distracted by putting the things I'd read earlier in the week into context.

As ever with the Globe I couldn't stay distracted for long as the quality of the acting just had me spellbound and I really did feel that I was in the middle of a fairy inspired dream/nightmare.  My last minute seat was a restricted view (more so than some others at the theatre) and I couldn't actually see much of the mechanicals' scene. This reinforced to me something that keeps coming up in my reading - people went to hear a play in Shakespeare's time. I may not have been able to see the slap stick action but I didn't miss a second of it thanks to the writing!

The Globe 2013 Season of Plenty closed on 13th October, I'm already haunting the website for hints as to what is coming next year but also I can't wait for the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse to open in January so I can see how the Jacobean indoor theatre would have worked!

Say Cheese

Here we go again...another post full of excuses as to why I'm not reviewing a book!

Once more my reading has slowed down, however this time not because I have got a reader's block or even my regular problem of getting stuck on a reading group novel. 


I've just been too busy to read!


I am studying again and a lot of the books I've been reading and dipping into are books relevant to the course - a Diploma in Drama.  The current units are on Shakespeare and so I'm reading a few plays, critical studies of the man and history books about the age in which he lived and wrote.  The current programmes on the television have been very helpful as well.


In addition to this I went on a photography experience day a little while ago. 


This was a truly wonderful experience.  A whole day was spent with a professional photographer, Paul Sawer, at the Suffolk Owl Sanctuary, we got up close and personal to a wide range of birds of prey and saw two flying shows.  All through the day we were guided with our shots and camera use and I've been blown away by my results from the day.  I am generally best at landscape shots but I could easily see myself wanting to do some more wildlife shoots like this.

Cobweb the male barn owl in flight

I was very pleased with the how my equipment behaved, I was using a super-zoom lens on this day and while it is a great lens for me to take out and about it doesn't always get the best reviews.  However I found that all my pictures needed was a little cropping to get rid of the tiny bits of lens visible in the tightly zoomed shots. The auto-focus and image stabilising worked a treat. Of course I've come away wanting a new lens specially for this type of photography but realistically I know that I don't need one AND would have problems carrying it about if I did!

My favourite shots of the day can be found on my Flickr stream but I can't resist putting just a few more here!

 

Three week old eagle owl chicks

 

Swooping red kite

Bataleur eagle