Cosmonaut Antics

 An evening with Alexei Leonov, Science Museum, London. May 2015.

What should have been a simple 'pop to London, have supper, meet a cosmonaut and come home again' evening turned into a near disaster this week - although of course not on the same scale of disasters that Alexei Leonov spoke about!  Trains conspired against us and instead of a leisurely ride we had a fraught drive to London but despite everything it was worth it.

This time the event was organised by the Science Museum and Starmus and we had the opportunity to hear the first man to walk in space - Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov - talk about his missions.  The event wasn't as well organised as those we go to in Pontefract, the doors opened late, there was lots of unexplained queueing and then a scrum in the auditorium but all of that faded away when the talk proper started.

Leonov didn't use fancy technology for his talk, but rather sketched what he was describing onto a blackboard which was a lovely old school, interactive way to get across his message.  Like all of the best speakers on the space programme there was a perfect balance of science, anecdote, humour and tension in Leonov's talk.  Although it was clear that he had survived his missions the way he described the first ever space walk was heart in the mouth stuff and as nerve wracking fifty years later as it much have been at the time!

The human touches of the speech will always stick in my mind more than the technical aspects and I am left with the image of Alexei and his commander stuck in the wilds of Russia after landing stark naked in the middle of winter as they try to dry out their space suits a little!

The talk took a fine line between toeing the Soviet/Russian line of secrecy and positive spin and what seemed like Leonov's own desire to be open and honest but to be honest none of that mattered to me, I was just so pleased to have the chance to hear from another great from the early space programme.

Two things really struck me about the event - one was Leonov's wholehearted praise for British astronauts - Helen Sharman and Tim Peake, The other how hard the interpreters worked on the night.  Leonov spoke in Russian and this was turned into English by two very talented interpreters who kept up with his technical speech and humour wonderfully. I don't speak Russian but I could spot enough to be amused at their turning every 'Soviet' into 'Russian' regardless of what term would have been historically correct! I gather that there was also another team taking the English in to Russian for Leonov and the Russians in the audience.

After the hour long talk Leonov was created a Fellow of the Science Museum and then their was an opportunity to get an item signed by him.  This was by necessity short and sweet as Leonov, who is 81 next week, was obviously shattered after a long day of events, but I am very pleased to have been able to meet him and, in execrable Russian say Спасибо.

It turns out that some of the delay in the start of the event was because behind the scenes in the museum items on loan to London from Russia were being moved about ready for the Cosmonauts exhibition in the autumn - something else to look forward to!

Theatre 2015: Review Thirteen

The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare's Globe, London. May 2015.

Just three days after seeing Romeo and Juliet with mum I was back at the Globe with Mr Norfolkbookworm although at one point the trains again seemed to be working against us and I wasn't certain we'd get there in time.

I'm so glad that we did get there because this is a glorious production from start to finish.  It had a huge cast compared to earlier in the week and sumptuous costumes and I really felt I was living in Venice and not twenty-first century England.

This version of the play gave a lot of humanity to Shylock - he is treated abominably by the Venetians and his insistence on the pound of flesh becomes far more understandable; however his treatment of his daughter and his lament for his money not her balances this out. He has become a complex character and not a pantomime villain nor a martyr.

I found the Venetian men to be arrogant and far more villainous in this staging but even then they were reined in enough that I still felt sympathy with them, and the reading of Antonio and Bassanio was heartbreaking.

I found the female characters to be fully rounded and fun to watch.  Portia's scenes with  her suitors were suitably funny but not overblown and her turn as the disguised lawyer was very well done - she was well enough disguised that when Bassanio failed to recognise her in the courtroom scene I could believe this. Jessica's scenes with her father - especially those in Hebrew - were brilliant, her scenes with her lover/husband slightly less so.

The other 'comic' character in the play was also suitably restrained, and rather than being tedious the small amount of Groundling interaction really worked.  There was just enough levity in the play to relieve the tension of the main plot but it never got out of hand.

The last time I saw this play I was left feeling uncomfortable about the way the inherent anti-Semitic plot strand was handled but in this version I found it to be sympathetically staged whilst still being abhorrent.  There was a clear delineation between Jessica's conversion and that of Shylock which made a very moving finale to the play. The ending did mean no jig but this was the right decision.

I did wonder how Jonathan Pryce would find the open space of the Globe theatre but he had me in the palm of his hand I hope he'll become a regular actor there.  The nice touch of casting his real life daughter as Jessica worked wonderfully too, stunt/celebrity casting at its best.

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.

Return to Flight

Space Lectures event with Colonel Eileen Collins, Pontefract. April 2015.

Once more Mr Norfolkbookworm and I did battle with the road network linking Norfolk to Yorkshire for the chance to meet another astronaut.  Unlike previous events this one was with a much more recent space flier and indeed the first female Space Shuttle pilot, and later commander.

For me this was as exciting as meeting the Apollo era astronauts. I'm a child of the shuttle era and did see the launch of STS-123 in March 2008.  Sadly this wasn't Col. Collins' flight but the experience will stay with me forever.

We went to the dinner on the Friday night and this was a nice chance to catch up with the people we've met at other events and to help fund raise for more events in the future but the really exciting thing for me is the Saturday lecture.

We were spoiled this time as Col. Collins talked for well over an hour, mainly about her flight as the commander of the first space flight after the Columbia accident.  The talk, and I can't call it a lecture because despite an audience of 300+ it did just feel like a cosy chat, included photos, videos and anecdotes. It was pitched just right for the audience with it being neither too technical nor too basic.

After the talk there was a chance for audience questions and again I was impressed with the thoroughness and honesty of the answers given.  Space sickness is often dismissed by astronauts but Collins admitted to 'stomach awareness' on her first flight and that she took medication to avoid this on her subsequent one.

I was lucky enough to ask a questions and it was along the lines of will there ever be an all female crew, and if it would be a good idea.  The answer was that there certainly is no reason why there shouldn't be (and that the female astronauts did play 'fantasy crews' where they made them all female) but that personally Collins would not want to be part of it.  Her reasons were two fold - she wouldn't want the media pressure that such an event would generate and also the fact that if anything (however small) went wrong it would always be blamed on the sex of the crew.

This last point was illustrated with an story from Collins' first flight - on which she was the pilot - a booster returned to earth after being jettisoned from the External Tank and hit a wave wrong as it splashed down which damaged it.  Although this had nothing at all to do with anything that anyone on the Shuttle could have done it was still jokingly put down to having a woman driver.

Now I am sure that this was just lighthearted banter but for me it highlights just how far women still have to come in every field of work. Again I appreciated Collins' honest answer.

After the talk we waited to get Collin's autograph and now I have another cherished piece of space memorabilia as Eileen  Collins signed my own photo of a space shuttle launch.

(this is an edited photo of a photo hence the poor quality)

We'll be back in Pontefract in October as Jim Lovell of Apollo 8 and 13 fame will be the guest speaker, but before then we've also got tickets to meet Alexi Leonov - the first man to complete a space walk.  It is shaping up to be another out of this world year!

Catching up on some reading thoughts

Netgalley short reviews

While I have been studying hard this semester I have also taken some down time and read quite a few books thanks to Netgalley's proof system.  I read a lot of these a while ago and so they are simple reviews, nothing in depth but they should hopefully give a flavour of the book.

Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper
This was another book about an older person undertaking an epic journey, this time Etta is walking across Canada to see the sea.
I'm afraid that this one didn't make much of an impression on me, it just felt like more of the same. Nothing wrong with the book and the back story was interesting, just a bit 'meh.'

Station Eleven - Emily Mandel
A book set in Canada with a Shakespearean plot plus a world rebuilding after an devastating 'flu outbreak. This had a lot of elements that I really liked, and I can see why there is so much positive buzz surrounding it, however I spotted the 'twist' really early on which surprised me and disappointed me slightly.  I will try more of Mandel's books and this was an interesting read overall.

Hausfrau - Jill Alexander Essbaum
This was another book that had lots of buzz surrounding it and I really liked it.  It wasn't at all what I was expecting and it really was refreshing to read a book that was so different. Once more I spotted how it would end, just not how and I do recommend the book - be warned however as it is a little (!) bit racy at times.

The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes - Anna McPartlin
An unashamed weepy, chick lit novel and perfect for those who like Marian Keyes.  You will need tissues.

Laughter in Ancient Rome - Mary Beard
A fun read about what the Romans found funny, an accessible yet academic look and as to be expected from Beard stresses that what survives is from the elite, male class and we still don't know much about women and lower classes found funny.

Disclaimer - Renee Knight
This is a page turning thriller that like the best scary book has a very realistic setting.  At the front of a book there is usually a disclaimer that the characters and actions included are fiction...this time the book stresses that the story is real. The book also appears mysteriously on Catherine's bedside table. I'm not going to talk about the plot anymore as anything could be construed as a spoiler and I surprised myself by really enjoying the book as it really isn't my usual type of story at all.

The Truth According to Us - Annie Barrows
A few years ago the book Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society burst into the book world and quickly became one of my favourite books of all time.  The surviving author of that book has now written her first novel and happily I think it is just as good.  It is set in West Virginia during the Depression and is written so visually that I thought I was there in the oppressive summer heat. The plot revolves around the research undertaken for a new town history and slowly the truth unravels...brilliant reserve it from your local library now ready for when it is published in June.

The Little Paris Bookshop - Nina George (translated by Simon Pare)
I loved this book, another whimsical French novel.  Jean Purdue runs a bookshop on a barge in Paris but when he discovers that an incident in his past wasn't quite what he thought he pulls his moorings and, along with an author suffering from writer's block, sets sail for the South of France.  It is perhaps a bit far fetched at times but is wonderful escapism, and as Jean calls himself a book doctor I was instantly smitten - after all we run this service at the library!

The Oregon Trail - Rinker Buck
I'm only half way through this but I'm finding it hard to put down.  Rinker writes very much like Bill Bryson and on finding out a little about the Oregon Trail decides to recreate the epic waggon journeys of the 18th century.  Along with his brother he sets out in a covered waggon with three mules to travel 2000+ miles.  The book is a mixture of history, humour and autobiography and so far the balance is perfect. As a fan of the Little House on the Prairie series of books, and having visited some of the frontier towns in the USA,  finding out more about the journey behind the westward expansion is great.  I hope the second half is as good.

The French do it again...

Book Review:
George's Grand Tour - Caroline Vermalle (translator Anna Aitken)

I won this in a competition on Twitter but there was no obligation to review the book, however after finishing it I knew I just had t o share this book with everyone - in fact my sister already has the physical copy!

It starts like so many books currently, with an old man planning an adventure that will take him away from home and fussing family.  This time George and his friend Charles are going to follow the course of the Tour de France - not on bikes, they are over 70 after all - but by car.  They are going to take their time, seeing all of the sights that the commentators mention when the cyclists whizz by.

George's escape is almost thwarted when his estranged granddaughter gets in touch but thanks to the mobile phone all is not lost.

The account of the hit and miss nature of hotels when you are on the road really stuck a chord with me and the descriptions of food made me salivate and work out when we can have a trip to Normandy and Brittany.

This is another book from the Gallic Press and I think that they really have a talent for picking books that are beautiful, whimsical and with real heart. I haven't yet read one from them that I didn't like.

I'm not going to say any more about this book as I want everyone to discover it like I did, the twists weren't what I expected at all.  My one word of advice - possible don't read this on a crowded train...

Theatre 2015: Review Eleven

Shakespeare in Love, Noel Coward Theatre, London. April 2015.

Apologies for the radio silence - April has been an important study month with two essays to research and write.  I've broken the back of them now and so time to catch up on other areas!

Way back at the start of the month a friend and I went to London on a whim to see Shakespeare in Love. For me it was a recommended play/film for my Shakespeare's Legacy course and my friend is also studying Shakespeare currently.

This was a delightful way to spend the afternoon, the play followed the film throughout and now that I have spent a few years studying the Bard I found it a lot funnier than I recall. In fact at a couple of points my friend and I found ourselves laughing at lines that others in the audience didn't...

The set for this play was magnificent and very clever as it moved back and forth to show the different locations in which the action takes place.  Some of my favourite parts were very simple, for instance when Shakespeare is in the row boat cast members dip hands in and out of buckets of water to create the sound effects.  The use of the actors to move the scenery was very well done, and I liked the way that most of them appeared on stage throughout. It did remind me in someways of Elizabethan/Jacobean theatre as staged in the two theatres at the Globe but was still modern. It mixed the styles very well.

Sadly this play closed in the middle of April but I hear rumours that it will be going on tour and if it does then I do recommend trying to see it.  It is a fun romp that leaves you with a smile and sometimes that is just what you want from a play. This is the first film-to-play show that I've seen and I think that it worked very well, I do wonder if a lot of this is due to the fact that Tom Stoppard (renowned playwright) wrote the script to the film.

There is also an adorable dog in the play who steals the show entirely in the couple of scenes he appears in - although I'm not sure he deserved the biggest cheer at the end!

Theatre 2015: Review Ten

The Broken Heart, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare's Globe, London. March 2015.

**Preview Disclaimer**

After a relaxed morning book browsing our way around London we came to the last play of the weekend and The Broken Heart by John Ford having decided on the spur of the moment to see this after finding 'Tis Pity She's a Whore so good in December.

This time we were seated in the Pit (yes we have now tried every area except the musician's gallery) and sadly the discomfort of the seats here nearly outweighed the brilliance of the play.  You are certainly closest to the action here, and can see every area that the performers use but you really do pay for it in comfort.

Anyhow the play...another triumph for the Playhouse. What could so easily be an over the top nonsense of a play had real heart and charm with characters that you really believed in.  At the interval Rebecca and I were trying to predict what would come next and while we knew it was a tragedy and that lots of the characters would die we didn't guess the correct ones or the correct means of death which just shows how good it was.

The cast really did work together as a group in this play, and the spectacle and shock were well handled - this might also be the least gory play I've seen at the Globe (except Farinelli) in about a year and as there was still quite a lot of blood this is saying something!

When watching plays by writers who were contemporary with or came just after Shakespeare I really do notice the difference in language and I can see why so much of his work has survived and how he has become the national poet, however I do like the work by these other writers and am so glad that we can now see them in a venue very much like where they intended their plays to be seen.

This was again a performance of a production in preview, I think it was the third or fourth performance, but again as an audience member you really wouldn't have known. It all ran smoothly and there were no noticeable line/cue/prop stumbles.

This was my last trip to the Sam Wanamaker Theatre this winter season, in fact my Globe season starts in about 6 weeks, and after being unsure of the venue this time last year I know now that I will be awaiting the winter 15/16 season.  I will also only be going if I can get certain seats in the lower gallery! I do hope that next winter there is some late Shakespeare performed here - I'd love to see A Winter's Tale or Cymbeline here.

Theatre 2015: Review Nine

Rules for Living, The Dorfman Theatre, National Theatre, London. March 2015

**Preview Disclaimer**

After a break of a couple of hours we were back on the South Bank to see the second play of the day in the newly refurbished Dorfman Theatre.  As this is a 'black box' theatre that can be reconfigured for any play I'm afraid that I didn't notice any changes in the actually auditorium but the foyer, cafe, cloakroom and loos were all very nice!

This play couldn't have been more different from Man and Superman if it has tried and if we hadn't known this was only the second preview I don't think I would have guessed.

The set depicts the ground floor of a large house - living room, dining area and kitchen - all set up on a basket ball court complete with electronic score board at either end.  It is Christmas Day and the family are gathering for Christmas dinner.

It is like watching a car crash in slow motion.  There are secrets in the family which slowly become clear and all of the main players have created their own 'rules for living'. As these become relevant they are flashed up on the scoreboard, this means that as the audience we saw extra humour in the characters that wasn't in the script just by their actions. One character for instance can only lie if he is sitting down and eating something, and as he is with a girl friend he doesn't love and has another secret this becomes very funny very quickly.

The car crash element is because I'm pretty sure anyone who has every had a family Christmas can recognise some of the tensions/actions in the play and seeing your life experiences in glorious Technicolour is excruciating.  Because this is so heightened not every experience is personal so there is some relief and some bits are just funny but I imagine that every audience member finds these different.

Other early reviewers have complained that they found the whole rules for living tedious and overblown but I liked this part of the play - for me it was the end that 'missed' slightly. I think I would have liked it to end just one scene earlier, but as it is a play about cognitive behavioural therapy I can see why it continues, it just would have remained a total comedy for me without it.  However as I have continued to think about this play more than the other two that I saw this weekend it must be doing something right.

In some real theatre geekiness Rebecca and I were sitting near lots of people who were taking notes on this preview performance and in fact I was sitting next to the director, Marianne Elliot.  They were all writing copious amounts so I don't know how much will change between the previews and opening night.

This was uncomfortable fun for me and while I don't think it will make my top 10 at the end of the year it was fascinating to see a new play, in a new space by a relatively new (and female) playwright.

If you are sat in the lower gallery at the front look out for flying eggs...

Theatre 2015: Review Eight

Man and Superman, The Lyttleton Theatre at the National Theatre, London. March 2015.

There has been a little gap in my theatre jaunts, partly thanks to fear of bad weather and partly because the train line between Norwich and London has been so appalling this winter, however recently Rebecca and I had one of our mammoth theatre weekends in London.  Three plays in effectively 27 hours.

First up was Man and Superman which in its own right is a bit of a big-one coming in at over three and a half hours.  Mainly it has to be said due to the author, George Bernard Shaw, who seems never to use one word if fifty will do and then to say it all twice.

That being said this was still, thanks to the cast, an enjoyable experience.  Jack Tanner, Ralph Fiennes, has been appointed an unwilling co-guardian of his friend's daughter Anne.  He is what in the early 1900s was a new man and not keen on this burden and as a radical thinks himself unsuitable for the role and for romance in general. Anne thinks him ideal for the role and also a great romantic catch.

While the acting, costumes and set were all good I did find that some of the ideas that Bernard Shaw put forward as progressive in his time now felt dated and entirely sexist. Anne is not really an independent and intelligent woman but rather a scheming manipulative one who always gets her own way.  Jack and her mother both see through her but seem unable to stop or change her and as a result I never warmed to her character and really hoped that the play would have a different outcome.

The play is so long because stuck in the middle of the action is a dream sequence where Jack Tanner morphs in to Don Juan and ends up in hell debating philosophy with the devil.  This started well and was wonderfully different from the rest of the play but just went on for too long and in the end I did lose a little of the plot and was longing for Andy Hamilton's version of the devil from Old Harry's Game to appear and put an end to it.

Oh dear - again this sounds terribly negative and this isn't quite how I feel about the play. There was a lot of humour and visually it was a treat. It was also brave to stage the whole thing and without the excellent cast this would have fallen completely flat but I do think that a little editing wouldn't have gone amiss, and I was uncomfortable with the way woman in the character of Anne was portrayed.

Rebecca had an interesting idea - the play should be restaged but with the main characters' genders switched...

This play will be broadcast live to cinemas in May but once was enough for me on this occasion.

Advance reading

The Last Pilot by Benjamin Johncock

Reviewing a book by someone you know, and that you bump into on a frequent basis is actually quite nerve wracking.
Add in to the mix that their new book is on a topic that you love, and know quite a lot about.

To say I approached The Last Pilot with trepidation isn't entirely the truth however, since the author announced it had a publication date I'd been haunting Netgalley.com daily hoping that a reading copy would be available for request.

It duly appeared and I was approved for a download.  As soon as I'd finished my required reading for uni I did turn to it and then read pretty much non stop to the end.  I was very lucky that the following day was a day off!

The book took a little getting used to at first as there were no speech marks but this was good - it slowed me down (a little).

The publisher blurb tells more about the book than I ever could - and decides what counts as a spoiler:

FROM AN AWARD-WINNING WRITER, A GRIPPING DEBUT NOVEL OF THE SPACE RACE THAT EXPLORES THE INNER LIFE OF A NATIONAL HERO—AND ASKS WHAT IT MEANS TO BE COURAGEOUS IN THE FACE OF UNTHINKABLE LOSS
Jim Harrison is a test pilot in the United States Air Force, one of the exalted few. He spends his days in a precarious dance with death above the Mojave Desert and his nights at his friend Pancho's bar, often with his wife, Grace. Both are secretly desperate for a child—and are delighted when, against all odds, Grace learns that she is pregnant.But Sputnik has put the country in a panic, and NASA, newly formed, has been tasked with manning space before the Russians. Harrison turns down the chance to participate in Project Mercury and becomes a father to Florence, his baby girl. Yet his life, as a father and as a pilot, grinds to a halt when she becomes seriously ill and dies at the age of two. Devastated, Harrison loses himself in his work—and, sometimes, in distressing thoughts of Florence—and this time, when he gets a ticket to the moon, he takes it, but without consulting Grace.As Harrison trains to become an astronaut, the toll that his daughter's death has taken upon his marriage becomes more palpable, even as his ability to reckon with the reality of it diminishes. Set against the backdrop of one of the most emotionally charged periods in American history,The Last Pilot is a mesmerizing story of loss and finding courage in the face of it, from an extraordinary new talent.

What I loved about the book was how little like a novel it was, at the back Johncock lists books he consulted for the research (I'd read all but one of them!) and I really felt that his book stood alongside them as a biography of the time and age - just with an invented character which made it fiction.

The repressed emotion shown by Harrison was perfect when compared to the biographies and autobiographies of the early astronuats - you know that they had to have feelings but that they were repressed to the Nth degree to keep up the image of the macho astronaut.

However this (accurate) emotional distance did keep me a little distant from the book as a novel hence my constant forgetting that it was fiction.  This may be down to my own knowledge of the topic matter and I really look forward to talking about the book with people who don't know the source stories as well as me! The book has enough story that I think it will satisfy people who are 'space nuts' and those who like a good story set in the 1950s and 60s.

I've been to many of the physical places mentioned in the book, and met several of the real men featured and I am so pleased that this book adds to my experiences and, unlike some works on topics I like, send me either screaming back to the sources or ruin my interest entirely.

The book isn't published until July in either the US or the UK but add it to your wish lists now.

Please note that although I know the author the book was provided through Netgalley.com, the review is entirely independent and I have received no recompense for writing it.

Theatre 2015: Review Seven

Farinelli and the King, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare's Globe, London. February 2015.

Liking and admiring Mark Rylance as an actor has become hugely popular this year thanks to his role in Wolf Hall and as a result of this Rebecca and I were pleased to have booked tickets to Farinelli and the King way back last year.  We already knew he was great without waiting to see him on the small screen!

So much could have been wrong with Farinelli - it was a new piece of theatre (with music/opera), written by Rylance's wife for him and performed in a theatre that is not the most comfortable to sit in.  Luckily we found it to be a great afternoon.

It is based on a true story where the King of Spain is mad.  The play opens with the king (Rylance) lounging in bed fishing in a goldfish bowl and talking to the fish.  His state of health is ambiguous at this point as he mostly seems lucid.  His leading ministers are not happy with him and think that he should be replaced.  His situation worsens but with the help of his wife and doctor a new cure is tried - that of music and the leading castrati of the day, Farinelli, is invited to court and appears to cure the king.

There are a few nuances and added parts to the story but it remains very simple and very affecting, the king remains mostly well as long as Farinelli sings.  There is a very interesting device used for Farinelli however, and one that I didn't spot at first.

When Farinelli is singing the actor playing the role doesn't actually sing, someone else - when we saw it Iestyn Davies provided the amazing voice - appears on stage next to Farinelli and they mimic each others movements.  It sounds terrible written down but on stage worked amazingly, Farinelli the man wanted to be seen as different from the voice and so on stage he physically was.  Only in the very last scene did the two men actually interact and that added more poignancy to the piece than anything for me.

While the play was very good I have to say that I did find it a little jarring that despite the setting and costumes all being redolent of the 1700s the language used was entirely 21st century.  It made for some funny moments but did create a little barrier between me and the play.  Possibly a bad attempt at replicating actual speech from the time would have  been just as bad however!

This was a lavish production with not a weak member of cast and a full ensemble piece - something that I would imagine is hard to create when Rylance is the leading man.  His charisma and skill shone through and I am now desperate to see him on stage in a truly modern piece.  Farinelli and the King has a very short run at the SWP and while I'd love to see it transfer so more people could see it the setting was ideal and in a bigger venue the intimacy created here could not be replicated I feel.

Theatre 2015: Review Six

Edward Scissorhands (ballet), Theatre Royal, Norwich. February 2015.

It has been nearly two weeks since I saw this and yet I still find myself at a loss when trying to write about it.  For all the right reasons I hasten to add - it was a piece of perfect theatre.

I'm pretty sure I saw the movie back in the 1990s but again I went to see a Matthew Bourne ballet knowing very little of the plot intricacies and once more it didn't matter - the story just unfolded naturally in front of me.

Often theatre reviewers and critics say that if you notice things like the scenery and the lighting then there is something lacking in the event but in this case absolutely everything was perfect and worked together - you were supposed to notice the lights, the nets etc. At the end I was crying and yet hadn't realised that this was the case.

I came out of the performance gobsmacked that there were empty seats and it is only because I couldn't fit it in that I wasn't back at the Box Office buying tickets to see this again and again.  The one thing I feel bad about it telling my mum that she has to see this only to find that her local theatre isn't showing it.

Staying with the French theme

Book review: The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain

My top book of the year in 2013 was the wonderful President's Hat and for the past six months or so I have been periodically tweeting with the publishers (@gallicbooks) about if and when the next book by Laurain is due.

Persistence paid off last week when the very nice team at Gallic Books popped an advance copy of The Red Notebook into the post for me.  Luckily I am up to date with my studies as I'm afraid all work instantly stopped and I plunged straight into the book...and pretty much didn't surface until it was finished.

The light whimsical tone of the President's Hat remains but this time the book is more contemporary and features a wonderful protagonist, Laurent, who runs a bookshop in Paris.  One morning he discovers an abandoned handbag in the street and decides to set about finding who it belongs to.

The story is part mystery, part family story and part love story and all the strands work beautifully with each other - you can see the disasters looming but Laurain, and his translators, don't overplay anything and the story feels real as well as very much like a modern fairy tale.  

I loved it, the book is different to The President's Hat - possibly a little more mainstream and conventional - but it is still a fantastic read for anyone, and for those with a little French knowledge some of the wordplay is fantastic but the humour totally works without knowing this extra layer!

Many thanks to Gallic Books for sending me a copy so early - the book isn't published until 14th April - and for letting me talk about it in advance of publication.

Theatre 2015: Review Five

Boeing Boeing. Maddermarket Theatre, Norwich. January 2015.

Up until now a mixture of laziness and inability to work out what the day is has stopped me going to the Maddermarket Theatre here in Norwich but last week I finally got there.  Thanks to the weather and a hurried change in companion I nearly didn't make it but I am so glad that I did.

The theatre itself is very important in the field of Shakespeare Performance studies and I keep coming across mentions of the building in journals and reference books as I study - a brief explanation as to why is here.

My first visit wasn't to see Shakespeare however but to see a 1960s farce, translated from a French original.  I've discovered over the past few years that I quite like farce as a genre but that it has to be done very well to succeed. This was done as well, or if not better than the touring London companies that I have seen.

Bernard lives in Paris, he has a nice apartment, a long suffering (and scene stealing) house keeper and three fiancees.  The three fiancees aren't a problem however as they all work as air hostesses (this is set in the 1960s remember) for rival airlines and their schedules mean that they are never in Paris at the same time... until they are.

Luckily for Bernard his hapless but romantic friend from Wisconsin has just flown in and so everything will be just fine...

The tension and humour built brilliantly throughout this play, and coupled with some wonderful stage falls and expressions I was in stitches for much of the play and wonderfully for a farce the ending was perfect and not at all a let down.  My hat goes off to all the actors for keeping up such a pace without once losing momentum.

My companion on the evening was Mr Norfolkbookworm and he is more of a film person than a theatre goer so on the next night we watched the film version, produced just a couple of years after the original stage play.  It really wasn't very good at all, the humour was missing and the chemistry between any of the characters - we both agreed that if we'd seen the film first we'd never have gone to the theatre.

I'm now sitting here with my diary trying to work out just how many other things I can see by the Maddermarket company in among all the other things I already have booked.

Theatre 2015: Review Four

Assassins. The Chocolate Menier Theatre, London. January 2015.

After the previous uninspiring theatre trip and a week spent nursing an ear infection I can't say I was particularly looking forward to the trip to London for this.  Coupled with the fact that my last two plays directed by Jamie Lloyd (Richard III and Macbeth) have been among my worst experiences at the theatre it really wouldn't have taken much to see me call this visit off.

However the lure of the venue and the cast saw me negotiating the complicated rail timetables and heading to the theatre.  I am so pleased I did.

Apart from being about the people who have killed (or tried to kill) the Presidents of the United States I knew nothing about this show at all and got quite a shock as we entered the auditorium through a creepy, run down clown's mouth past a dodgem car into a really grungy old travelling funfair come circus set.

The musical was as creepy as the staging, and I mean that in the best way, I was on edge the whole time and totally unsure as to what was going to happen or how.  The assassins brandished guns with abandon and as the venue is so small to be looking down the barrel of a gun at that close distance coupled with the manic grin of a mad assassin meant that the hairs on the back of my neck didn't lay down for the whole 75 minutes of the show.

I hadn't read reviews or the programme so the small casting twist took me totally by surprise and worked wonderfully.  I didn't come out humming the songs but I know that it will take a long time to let the images of the show calm down in my mind.

Another (sell out) hit from the Menier - now let me go and look at their schedule for the rest of the year...

Theatre 2015: Review Three

Taken at Midnight. Theatre Royal Haymarket, London. January 2015.

It has been a little while since I saw this, the review is late because I saw a preview of the show and also because I was unwell the week after seeing it.

There is also another reason - the old adage if you can't say something nice,don't say anything at all rings horribly true with my feelings on the play.

We had good seats, the actors spoke well and the scenery and use of stage was good. The original story - that of lawyer Hans Litton -  is incredible.  This is a man who put Hitler on trial before he came to power and was then, inevitably, imprisoned once Hitler was legitimately elected to power.

So what went wrong?  For me there was just too much narration and not enough acting, I think in fact that the cast spent more time carrying props on and off the stage than they did interacting with them, or each other. There were two stand out performances that of John Light as Dr Konrad the SS Officer and Martin Hutson as Hans.  The role of Hans' mother, played by Penelope Wilton, should have been a tour de force but sadly was one note and flat throughout.

In the final two scenes I finally became emotionally involved, and the final scene before the interval was shocking but on the whole this made a great radio play but not very inspiring theatre.

Theatre 2015: Review Two

Rapunzel...a hairy tale! The Blakeney Players, Blakeney. January 2015.

I'm not one for panto as a rule but as ever will make an exception for anything that the Blakeney Players stage thanks to knowing at least one of the cast!

This year's offering started with an incredible rendition of Circle of Life from a well known cartoon and stage show, complete with presentation of the baby to the audience, and really didn't look back from there.

It was full of timely gags about buying local and eating well and in the best tradition of panto had the leading boy played by a girl and the comedy dame played by a boy - both of whom seemed to relish their roles.

There were puns galore and some great song and dance routines and the evil hench-women were fabulously evil* (and inspired by Edward Scissorhands). The costumes were great and the wigs an integral part of the plot but it was the special effects that stole the show - I don't think I've seen anything finer on the professional stage. And who knew you could do that with a string of sausages?!

To try and explain the plot would ruin the whole thing, it really is a case of 'you had to be there' but I really didn't know that there were that many lettuce based gags out there!

Hats off to the whole cast and crew - can't wait for the summer show!

* full disclaimer - I've known one of the hench-women since she was two so may be (but really am not) biased in my review of this role, she's the one in black with the frightful wig in the photo above!

Theatre 2015: Review One

Miss Saigon, Prince Edward's Theatre, London. January 2015.

Start as you mean to go on I say, and did as my first trip to the theatre in 2015 took place just three days in and involved my husband, mum and dad!

Our Christmas present to each other this past Christmas was tickets to see the revival of Miss Saigon, I'd seen it on tour a few years back. mum and dad had seen the original (with the original cast) and Mr Norfolkbookworm hadn't seen it but was convinced enough by the rest of us that he'd enjoy it.

The story is a reworking of the Puccini opera Madame Butterfly, set during and after the Vietnam War and is a full throttle musical spectacle from curtain up.  It is not for the faint hearted or prudish as some of each act is set in a brothel but it is breath taking and overwhelming in just the right way.

Thanks to my studies into the theatre there were very clever bits of staging and use of lighting that I noticed but that obviously worked as none of my family mentioned them for good or bad afterwards, but I do think that I have been conditioned a little by so many plays at the Globe.  This is a sad story and ends abruptly in someways and I did expect the cast to get up and either dance a jig or sing a final chorus which didn't happen!

A great way to start the New Year of theatre going off and I am pleased that we managed to get good, reasonable seats for this, Mr Norfolkbookworm and I won't be planning another trip to the show but we certainly did enjoy it and came out of the theatre with a real ear-worm which is just what you want from a piece of musical theatre!

Picture of Kim and Chris taken from the Telegraph Review.

We were lucky that we'd decided to see this and not Les Miserables as our treat for on the day we saw the show there was a small fire at Les Mis and the performance was stopped after just 20 minutes!

Theatre 2014: Review Forty-One

The Snowman (ballet). The Peacock Theatre, London. December 2014.

Due to the pressures of Christmas, work and uni deadlines I didn't manage to get a review for this in before the end of the year, and indeed before I'd seen my first piece of theatre for 2015!

The magic of this show was so great in 2013 that my sister and I decided that a return was needed with my nephew and mum - who should have seen it the first time around but was too poorly.

We're pleased to say that the magic doesn't go away, every moment is just as good on a second viewing and as ever it was the response of both my mum and nephew that made it just that bit more special. It will take mum a long time to live down the audible sob that she gave as the Snowman and Boy first fly to the sounds of We're walking in the air.  What was also interesting was listening to my nephew talk about the show - last year he was a little bored/scared of the fighting scene between Jack Frost and the snowmen but this time it was his favourite bit.

Me? I loved it all and already can't decide if a viewing in December 2015 will spoil or increase the magic.