Theatre 2015: Review Twenty-Five

Tiddler, Leicester Square Theatre, London. August 2015.

After the somewhat disappointmenting Hamlet I was looking forward to my next play - after all a weekend in London when you only see one thing is a waste!

After abandoning Rebecca for a couple of hours I met my sister and nephew in Leicester Square for our trip  to see Tiddler and other tales.  The outing didn't start that well as the toilets were out of order at the theatre and at a show full of under 7s the last thing you want is long queues for the one cubicle that was available.  Credit to the staff as they did get people sorted and the play started almost on time.

It was a wonderful hour of theatre.  Three talented actors with unlimited energy told the stories of Monkey Puzzle, A Squash and A Squeeze, The Smartest Giant in Town and the eponymous Tiddler. The tales blended seamlessly into each other and there was just the right amount of imagination needed to fill out the stories, who in their past hasn't turned cushions into animals to help act out a story?

The source material from Julia Donaldson obviously helps but with the aid of puppets, shadows and songs I, along with pretty much the whole audience, was captivated throughout.  Although clearly for children there were just a few jokes - visual and spoken - just for the grown ups in the theatre and these really made the outing for me.

I love good children's theatre, and going with my nephew is a real treat as he is always spellbound by what he sees on stage.  Extra special congratulations to the cast member who completed the whole thing with her arm in a plaster cast.

Huge thanks to my sister who treated me to my ticket - and next time dad, you really should see if there are any spare seats because you missed a real treat!

Theatre 2015: Review Twenty-Four

Hamlet, The Barbican, London. August 2015.

I have to add the disclaimer to this review stating that the production was still in preview when we saw this performance, although at the time of booking we weren't aware of this.

As well as being the most eagerly awaited theatrical event of the year this Hamlet has also proved the most controversial. A quick Google search will bring up pages of controversy surrounding the production and with that much hype it was always going to be be hard to live up to.

When Rebecca and I saw this the production had moved the 'To Be...' speech back into a more traditional location and I was a little sad at that - if you are going to be daring with a play then be really daring! Instead the play opened with Hamlet (Cumberbatch) sat on the stage listening to Nature Boy looking through his childhood possessions.  The speeches usually given to by the guards on duty then were spoken by Hamlet. It didn't feel odd or out of place at all and I can see that with this melancholy start how the To be... lines would have worked.

Following this the stage opens right out into an opulent stately home and as the Barbican's stage is so big I did really feel like I was looking at a National Trust property.  The play then continued in a servicable fashion, the text had been reworked so that narratives were easy to follow but there were no standout brilliant parts for me.  In fact I started getting incredibly frustrated by the direction which had the lighting change and the rest of the cast move in slow motion each time Hamlet gives a soliloquy. I can see how the criticisms of a dumbed-down production have arisen.

Many of the reviews that have been published since press night praise Cumberbatch but are less kind to the play as a whole and I think that I agree with that.  He was a good Hamlet, he managed to make a character I have never liked tolerable, The set was the other star!  We had seats in the gallery for this performance and only once did we notice an actor playing to the whole audience - something that is very noticeable after frequenting the Globe and seeing how they encompass everyone.  Our seats were also not listed as restricted view and they certainly were! To add insult to injury the programme - no more than a collection of images freely available on line - costs £8.50, the same as a glass of champagne from the bar.

This feels like a very grumpy review and I am glad that I will see the play again in September, from better seats, as I can then make an informed decision about what I really feel about the production.

Books, Glorious Books

After my holiday I discovered I'd read myself to a standstill again and it has only been in the last week or so that I have rediscovered my reading mojo.  You'd think I'd learn as I do this every holiday!

However thanks to Net Galley advance copies and my library card I have broken this drought and have read several books I want to tell everyone about!

Noonday - Pat Barker.  This one disappointed me, although billed as "by the author of..." I didn't expect that you'd have to have such good recall of books that are 7 or so years old.  It follows characters first met in Life Class & Toby's Room but has a WW2 setting.  I didn't find it anywhere near as good as the former books, and I felt that Barker doesn't write as well about WW2 as she does WW1.

The Secret Chord - Geraldine Brooks.  This was fantastic. I am a great fan of taking a well known person or event and then telling their story from a new viewpoint.  This is the full story around King David, using the relevant information from the Bible, Brooks has added detail and colour to the well known stories and created a book I found hard to stop reading.  I have a love/hate relationship with this author (I loved her book about the plague in Eyam and loathed her retelling of Little Women) but this was great and I shall be recommending it to all and sundry, especially if you liked The Red Tent by Diamant.

The Millionaire and the Bard - Andrea Mays. This is all about Henry Folger, an American who created the biggest collection of Shakespeare's works early in the 20th Century and then created a library in Washington for the items.  His name comes up regularly in my studies and I dream of visiting the Folger Library so it was nice to read more about the books and the man.

Ana of California - Andi Teran.  This was the first of two retellings of classical children's books and I liked it a lot.  It is loosely based on Anne of Green Gables but with enough variation that it felt totally fresh and it was a game of spot the reference.  The ending was a little rushed but I enjoyed it a lot.

Katy - Jacqueline Wilson. The second retelling, this time of What Katy Did.  The first half drove me mad, it was so close to the original (and the parts that had been updated 150 years were awful) that I wondered why I was bothering.  It was after Katy's accident however that the book came into its own.  Unlike in the original it felt believable and Katy did not become a saint!  The struggles with coming to terms with the results of the accident were a little quick but this is a book aimed at the under 13s and so within these parameters was very good - if you can get past the first 100+ pages.  Of course if you've never read What Katy Did you won't know what my gripe is!

Now I am back to two super-secret reading projects again which have to be completed before uni restarts in late September.  I can see that for the next month or so I will be either at work, at the theatre or reading - happily trips to London involve four hours on a train and so that it extra reading time!

Theatre 2015: Review Twenty-Three

Mack and Mabel, Chichester Festival Theatre, Chichester. August 2015.

Regular blog readers will remember that a couple of years ago we went to see Barnum in the temporary tent theatre at Chichester with Mr Norfolkbookworm's aunt.  The renovations to the main theatre have now been finished and Mack and Mabel caught the same aunt's eye and so we made a return trip.

Way back in the early spring when I booked this trip I had mixed experiences with the staff at the theatre.  We needed seats that had little or no steps to gain access to them and the staff couldn't have been more helpful in recommending where to sit.  However when booking opened it became a nightmare trying to book on-line, on behalf of someone else and I ended up sitting on hold for a very long time before getting the seats we needed.  It was thus with mixed feelings we went to see this show.

Once more I knew nothing about the show, and the reviews I'd read were not entirely positive but again I trusted our companion's choice.

On the whole I really enjoyed the show, I thought the mixing of acting and footage from the actual films was done brilliantly, and the choreography was fantastic.  I enjoyed all of the actors and thought that their singing, especially the main draw - Michael Ball, was top notch.  Mabel didn't convince me quite as much but then as part of the plot line is that she is only a comic actress and not that great at anything else I chose to see this as a casting/directing decision.

The first act whizzed by and was highly enjoyable, custard pies and all. The second act felt a little padded to me. There was a great tap number but I'm not convinced that it was needed. The ending was a little like a punch in the stomach and very well done, what could have been horribly sentimental wasn't and did leave me with a slight lump in the throat. I do wonder if this would have been better as an edited, shorter, one act musical?

I didn't come out humming any of the tunes, and after the ending not particularly uplifted but I do have the urge to find and watch movies from the 1920s and before such as the Keystone Cops as the use of them on stage was great.

After my mixed experiences with the staff before our trip I'm pleased to report that they were all fantastic during our visit, helpful, friendly and knowledgeable.

I was left feeling a little perturbed by some of the audience/Michael Ball fans however.  There is so much in the press currently about the 'bad behaviour' of Cumberbatch fans at Hamlet (which seems to all be rumour and nothing concrete) yet there were some in the CFT who could have been accused of the same behaviour and yet we hear nothing of that in the press. Oh well I shall report back as my next trip is to see the afore mentioned Hamlet...

Theatre 2015: Review Twenty-Two

Richard II, Shakespeare's Globe, London. August 2015.

This was a surprise addition to my theatre going calendar as I was lucky enough to win tickets to this on Twitter. Well I actually won tickets to any Globe production this season but as it is my friend's favourite Shakespeare play (probably) we decided that this was the one we'd see.

It was also my friend's first visit to the Globe after listening to me rave about it for the past few years so I was a little nervous how she'd take to the space - it isn't for everyone after all,  To add to the pressure she'd also accompanied me to see Richard II in 2013 when we saw the RSC version.

I found this production much clearer in terms of plot narrative, starting the play with the coronation of a child  (which segued into an adult very well) showed that this version of Richard was all about a king who hadn't known any other way of life, hence why he was so spoilt and petulant.  The action unfolded naturally after this and there was a lot of humour in the staging, this childishness was also very movingly reprised at the end in a scene that did bring a lump to my throat.

This Bolingbroke was a charismatic and alluring figure, more so than the king, and thus it was easy to see why people did follow him so swiftly.  He also managed to foreshadow his future as shown in Henry IV (parts one and two) which was a nice touch. In this version Aumerle was more of a sycophant to Richard than anything else and his treachery treated very well.

This isn't a play that allows a lot of interaction with the Groundlings and what there was came naturally and wasn't over played, as with the rest of the season however I did find that the space was used a little too much for entrances and exits.

The comic scenes were typical Globe moments and worked wonderfully within the play, they kept the plot moving and were not at all comic asides or pauses in the action. The love between Richard and his Queen was another beautiful thing to watch.

My main criticism with this play remains the same as before - unless you listen very, very closely to the words - you are left not entirely sure why the king is as 'bad' as he is and why he has to abdicate. There is no flowing hair or homosexual undertone in this version and I came away feeling that poor Richard really got the thin edge of the wedge. My friend and I were debating this after the show, and both agreed that occasionally we found his lines to be rushed and wondered if this was a directorial choice and a way of showing his instability and unsuitability...

I am revisiting this play on the very last day of the season and I am pleased to have a second chance to see this play as it is deceptively complicated and there are a lot of little details I want to see again.

Theatre 2015: Review Twenty-One

Bakkhai, Almeida Theatre, London. August 2015.

The trouble with booking theatre in advance to ensure you get a ticket is that things like Tube strikes can crop up.  Luckily there are two train routes to London and one of these put the theatre in easy, if up hill, walking distance and so Rebecca and I weren't troubled by the strike at all.

I confess that I like Greek drama, to the extent of going to see it (and mostly enjoy it) even when it is performed in Ancient Greek and I was looking forward to this, even with it being a reworking of the script - but then what translation of a play that is 2000+ years old isn't?!

The story is a tragedy. The God Dionysus has been denied his status by the city in which he was born, and his mother branded a liar for claiming to have been Zeus's mistress. The young God has returned to Thebes in order to make the city accept him. He has turned his aunts mad and created a cult of women living in the hills above. His cousin, Pentheus, now king of Thebes really refuses to acknowledge Dionysus and so the two come face to face and the God systematically destroys his family and city. Cheerful stuff!

The staging was both wonderfully traditional, just three actors and a chorus, and cleverly modern (the chorus were all female) and from the start I was hooked.  There has been a lot of comment about the role of the chorus in reviews, and a lot of it has been negative. I however found them to be fascinating. A group of 10 women spoke and moved in absolute unison as well as singing many of their lines in a truly hypnotic fashion. The comments have called these interludes overlong and confusing yet when you go back and read a translation of the original play this is just how they come across. The Chorus speeches are the longest in the play and they do transform between Dionysus' supporters and the women of Thebes and to be honest even in the original text you are wishing they'd get on with it. In this version their singing did help me overcome this problem and I was swept away by the sound.

The three lead actors, male, played all the rest of the roles and while Ben Wishaw is getting all the credit for this play (and somewhat deservedly - he is totally compelling on stage) I found the stand out to be Bertie Carvel, who played Pentheus and his mother. Watching his downfall at the hands of a vengeful God was stunning and then to see him transform into his mother, also driven mad by Dionysus, was brilliant.

Much has also been said about Wishaw's costume in the play:

but again this androgynous look is a stage direction from the original and isn't there as a 'shock' tactic. Wishaw carries the look very well and there is a moment in the play when he fixes Pentheus' hair which was one of the most erotic pieces of theatre I've seen this year - and again this is in the original and is not a modern reading.

All in all I enjoyed this play, I wasn't sure about the Chorus arriving in modern dress with suitcases at the very start but it won me over and I find myself unable to stop thinking about the play which is a good sign. It may yet end up in my top 10 of the year.

The one downside for me is that however accurate and good Wishaw is in his costume he did remind me of both Conchita Wurst and the guy who play Jesus in the 1970s film version of Jesus Christ: Superstar!

Theatre 2015: Review Twenty

Measure for Measure, Shakespeare's Globe, London. August 2015.

I confess that I approached this play with some trepidation,  the play was a set text earlier this year and I wasn't at all sure what to make of it.  Luckily in the hands of the Globe I needn't have worried and this outing has rocketed high into my top ten performances of the year so far.

Measure for Measure is one of the 'problem plays,' both through content and disputed authorship! But as in Taming of the Shrew a few years ago a fine line was steered and the play clarified before my eyes.

Put very simply the Duke of Vienna is tired of his role, his city is out of control and so he decides to appoint a deputy and leave town.  His deputy, Angelo, starts off with good intentions but then proves himself as corrupt as the rest of Vienna. However in this play you can see that Angelo's actions are having an effect and that he is improving the city - before the official start the Yard was full of action, bawdy houses were wheeled on and drunks, prostitutes, corrupt law men and religious pamphleteers filled the area with a show.  These characters continued to pop up on the stage between scenes throughout the first act, but by the end we rarely saw them and the city was a better place... In his personal decisions Angelo may be corrupt and hypocritical but his ideas for the city as a whole weren't all detrimental.

The ending of this play is morally dubious. After preventing Isabella from being violated by Angelo the Duke all but forces her into giving up the religious life for which she was training and into marrying him.  The staging of this version did allude to this slightly - the Duke appeared to realise that his actions towards Isabella were little better than Angelo's, and in the end, it is clearly Isabella who makes the choice for her future.  For me I find the Duke's actions as reprehensible as the court in Merchant of Venice when it forces Shylock to convert to Christianity and I was surprised at the laugh this scene raised in the theatre when I was expecting a hiss...

The comedy was very much to the fore in this production and I liked this, the comic scenes felt very much integral to the story and not at all as light relief scenes between the drama. Once more my slight criticism could be that there was too much action off stage in the Yard but this was rarely actual speech, just added colour and so I'll just recommend this play to anyone who can get to London!

Theatre 2015: Review Nineteen

Mummy Mia, The Blakeney Players,Blakeney. July 2015.

As ever this review comes with the disclaimer that I know one of the cast and that I'm never going to be anything other than positive about the Blakeney Player.

This is a show that is totally impossible to review without you all thinking I've been indulging in illegal substances.

We opened with the music from the film Lawrence of Arabia and a sheikh staring into the desert distance as a pantomime camel appears on stage.

The next to appear on stage was explorer Gertrude Bell, the hieroglyphics expert Rosetta Stone and their colleagues Ray and a reluctant explorer, Livingstone.

Thanks to the magic of a cursed tomb we then slipped back in time to the reign of King Tut Tut and the invention of the pyramid. We visited the royal palace, a bazaar in Cairo and a camel race before ending up with the King from Memphis. There was also a dancing camel and an on-stage sand dance in the style of Wilson, Keppel and Betty.

You really had to be there but I can say that this is the most fun I have from curtain up to curtain down since the last Players' show!

The highlight of the show was the illusion dance (here's one I found on line but the Players' version was much better!) but from the dreadful puns to the grand finale this was a show that left us all with aching sides, big grins and a sense of wonder.  I don't want to wish time away but I'm already looking forward to the Christmas show.

I'm not the only one to really enjoy the show - the EDP reviewed it very favourably too!

Theatre 2015: Review Eighteen

As You Like It, Shakespeare's Globe, London. July 2015.

Unusually for Mr Norfolkbookworm and I we were at an evening performance for this and the first thing we noticed was the huge queue of people waiting for returns.  We're used to seeing long lines for those wanting to be a Groundling but never for seats.  I wonder if this production is more popular than others we've seen or if this is normal for evening performances.

For a play that has no real plot, that is just a sequence of events loosely tied together, I enjoyed this a lot.  The characters that were written humorously in the original (Touchstone, Audrey and Jaques) were not overblown and the Rosalind/Ganymede and Celia/Aliena beefed up their roles to match the humour which I found balanced the play very well. The male love interests in contrast did seem a little insipid and interchangeable - this was certainly an adaptation played to a comic and feminist slant.
I wonder if the director of the play also realised just how slight it is plot wise as the deus ex machina towards the end was certainly played up to be utterly ridiculous, which worked with the other staging decisions of the play.

The more Shakespeare plays I see the more I realise that the 'comedies' are not my favourite. There was nothing wrong with this one in terms of acting etc. but the slight plot made me long for some intrigue and seriousness.

After studying Shakespeare in depth I was also more bothered by the staging and extensive use of the Groundling area.  This would just not have happened at the time of the original Globe - the costumes were just too expensive to risk off of the stage, and although giving great opportunities for entrances and exits too much of the action is invisible from the Upper Gallery. A minor criticism as all of the actors projected well and I didn't miss a line of dialogue. I remain unsure about the bicycle and  the shopping trolley however.

A big shout out has to go to the Steward who was working the Upper Gallery, Mr Norfolkbookworm asked him an idle question about an instrument being played on the stage in the interval and although he didn't know the answer the steward (no name badge so I can't be more specific) went and found out for us and slipped the name to us during the second act.

Theatre 2015: Review Seventeen

Jersey Boys, Theatre Royal. Norwich. July 2015

Oh What a Night!

I've wanted to see this musical for a long time as I love the music and often have the soundtrack playing as I am walking/studying/avoiding the house work and it seemed as if the whole of Norfolk had the same idea - this booked out ages ago and the group of 5 of us were dotted around the circle rather than next to each other.  This doesn't really matter however as you shouldn't talk to the person next to you during the show anyhow!

Apart from the music I didn't know much about the story at all and I found the style in which the show was told to be both very interesting and at times slightly frustrating. Frustrating in that often only excerpts of songs I love were played and not the whole thing! The story itself hung together very well, was full of humour and sadness and at all times was really clear leaving you in no doubt who everyone was.  I also loved the way that the narrator changed throughout the show so we did get a rounded picture of the story, it really was about the Jersey Boys and not one person.

The cast were incredible and their voices so like the originals that I'd have thought they were miming if I'd seen a clip on TV.  It was an incredibly hot and humid night when we went yet they put their all into it and the singing and choreography was perfect throughout. My one possible quibble is that perhaps the writers didn't quite know how to finish the show as it did just abruptly stop, however as this gave the cast a chance to sing again it wasn't all bad. Seeing the live band throughout the show was a bonus and they deserved every cheer.

If the point of a hit musical like this is to leave you with a smile and humming the songs I'd say this was a real hit, and I think that if I got the chance I'd go and see it again in a flash.

Reading binge

Mr Norfolkbookworm and I have just spent two weeks on the Greek island of Mykonos. It was an interesting time to be in Greece with all of their financial troubles and the referendum but at no point were we ever greeted with anything other than smiles. We certainly added to the economy by eating and drinking lots of wonderful items - although we'll gloss over the sea urchins...

While we did do lots of exploring the main purpose of the trip was to unwind and spend lots of time reading.  I certainly managed this as in 2 weeks I read 23 books as well as plenty of relaxing.

• Boston Girl by Anita Diamant - a great read all about first generation immigrants to Boston in the 1900s. 

• Sagan 1954 by Anne Berest (tr. Heather Lloyd) - an imagined biography about the year in which teenager Sagan wrote and published Bonjour Tristesse.

• The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend* by Katarina Bivald (tr. Alice Menzies) - a young Swedish girl visits her pen pal in the States to find she has died. Books were the link between the two and might just save the Iowan town of Broken Wheel.

• Early One Morning* by Virginia Bailey - set in Rome during the German occupation an impulsive decision to save a Jewish boy from being deported has repercussions for decades.

• Grey by E L James  - no words to explain why I read this.  It is dire.

• Hearts of Stone* by Simon Scarrow - before WW2 a German boy makes friends with two Greek teenagers on Lefkas during an archaeological dig. He is posted back to the island during the war...

• The Umbrian Thursday Night Supper Club* by Marlena de Blasi - I thought this was going to be fiction but was in fact the story of five women and their family who meet to have supper. The stories were interesting and the recipes had me drooling.

• Let Me Explain You* by Annie Liontas - a dysfunctional Greek family are contacted by their father to say he is dying and spend the time trying to unravel their relationships with him and each other.

• One* by Sarah Crossan - a young adult novel about a pair of conjoined twins. A bit predictable but still moving.

• The Summer of Good Intentions* by Wendy Frances - three sisters and their families return to their beach summer home but the summer doesn't work out as planned. A good holiday read.

• In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume - in the 1950s three planes crashed on one small New Jersey town and the novel imagines the effects this had on some of the inhabitants.

• Anything to Declare by Jon Frost - a former Custom and Excise officer talks about some of his jobs.

• A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson - I wasn't blown away by Life After Life but this companion novel enthralled me from the start and I liked that Teddy was a pilot in Bomber Command and not a fighter pilot.

• The Reader on the 6.27 by Jean Paul Didierlaurent - a very odd book that I don't think I 'got'. I am still not sure if it is a dystopian novel, a love story or a fable that I missed the point of.

• My Cousin Rachel by Daphne DuMaurier - A gripping psychological thriller, glad that a friend recommended it to me.

• Adeline* by Norah Vincent - a novel about Virginia Woolf that probably would probably have been lot more enjoyable if I'd known more about the relationships within the Bloomsbury Group.

• A Spy Among Friends by Ben Macintyre - another great read about the British spying world, this time with Kim Philby as the focus.

• The Martian* by Andy Weir - a gripping space thriller about a man left alone on  Mars after an accident.

• Finding Audrey* by Sophie Kinsella - a young adult novel which starts quite well but by the end seems to be too simplistically dealing with mental illness.

• Motherland* by Jo McMillan - the mother and daughter protagonists of this novel set in the 1970s and 80s are fervent communists and given the chance to visit the DDR, will they be disillusioned?

• The Bees by Laline Paull - a fascinating tale told from a bee's point of view. Hard to explain the charm of this but I always knew I didn't like wasps!

• The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins - a thriller like Gone Girl or Before I Go to Sleep.  I spotted the twist in this one but it did still give me nightmares.

• The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay by Andrea Gillies - Nina is involved in a serious accident while on a Greek island but we only learn why she is there as she talks to her doctor, but is he who he seems? A bit self indulgent and also the constant Americanisms really jarred for a book that is set in Scotland as well as Greece.

Not a bad collection of books, none that I gave up on this time.  Now I have to go to the library and pick up all the books I've reserved and are now ready to read...I'll need another holiday to get through them all!

All of these books except Sagan 1954 were read as eBooks and those marked  * were proofs provided by Netgalley.com

Theatre 2015: Review 16

Shrek the Musical, Theatre Royal, Norwich. June 2015.

I was vaguely interested in this when it had a London run, just not enough to plan a trip to the capital to see it, so finding out that Norwich was on the tour schedule came as a nice surprise.

I am really not at all sure what to make of the show however.

Visually it was stunning, the scenery and set were inventive, fun and worked in harmony with the rest of the show,  The costumes were also good - it did look a lot like the animation had come to life.  The cast were okay too with a couple of real standouts.  Just sadly the parts just didn't all come together to make this a 'wow' event for me.

I think that on the whole I blame the score and the sound for my feelings.  The songs were all original to the show - this is not a 'jukebox' musical like Mamma Mia or We Will Rock You, and yet unlike other original shows (Phantom, Miss Saigon etc) the songs were not catchy and for a lot of the time I found them to be incomprehensible and was wishing for subtitles! Duets and ensemble numbers seemed badly balanced and again often inaudible.

Bits of this show had me in absolute stitches - the drop in gags about other musicals were very funny, and Lord Farquaad stole the show every time he appeared on the stage.  The dragon was brilliant too - again puppetry proving that you don't need expensive animatronics to create effects. The scene with the Pied Piper and the rats was very well done too.  I just expected a little bit more.

It was a fun evening, I did laugh a lot and thanks to the end number I did come out humming a tune which is what you want from a musical but it just wasn't quite the fabulous experience I was  expecting and I'm glad I didn't travel too far to see it.

Theatre 2015: Review Fifteen

King John, Shakespeare's Globe, London. June 2015.

Completely by accident I managed to book us tickets for this show just one day before the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta by King John in 1215.  Of course he didn't stick to it but this is what he is probably best remembered for in history.

Shakespeare's King John doesn't mention the document at all, and in this production it is name checked thanks to lines from another play The Troublesome Reign of John, King of England being incorporated to the script - it has to be said this was very well done as I had only read the play a few days before seeing the production and I couldn't spot any 'sore thumb' lines.

This production has been touring around the country and the staging was very striking in the Globe setting, with a big walk way stretching into the Groundling area as well as two extra parts of stage to either side of this - sadly from where we were sitting in the Upper Gallery we couldn't see these although the acoustics of the venue did mean that we didn't miss a word.

 The view from our seats, the walk way went on much longer and there were two other free standing stage areas.

King John is about succession, relations with France and relations with the Papacy. The falling out with the British aristocracy which so marred John's actual rule is a very small side story towards the end of the play.  For such an episodic play I found the narrative clear and followed the twists easily, although some of the cross casting did seem to confuse a few people sitting near us.  I think that I might have been more confused had I not read the play in advance of seeing it!

The first act of the play had some amazingly strong female characters - some of the strongest I've seen in Shakespeare - and I loved the idea that as well being, possibly, not the legitimate ruler of England John was also still ruled by his mother.  The three main women are sadly forgotten by the second half (original play and not directing choice) but they certainly drive the first half and in many ways set up the action for the second.

As for King John - I couldn't help but like him as he was certainly channelling King John as portrayed in the Disney cartoon Robin Hood and that has always been my favourite classic Disney film even though it is very cheesy!

I wasn't sure of the production at the interval but it has grown on me.  The simple staging was good and it was nice to see the musicians so clearly during the production but after a while they did become a little distracting and made the stage seem cluttered.

Minor niggles as I did like the play overall just a little sad that we did miss so much of the action visually.

Disney's King John from 1973

Random thoughts about books and authors

A lot of tweets in my time line have been about sexism lately, and not just from the @EverydaySexism feed.  Fuel was added to the fire this week when Sir Tim Hunt, a Nobel Prize winning scientist, called for segregated laboratories as women were just too distracting to work with, and cried too much.  I may have oversimplified his points here but like a lot of people he made me very cross.  The comeback on Twitter were great with people (men and women) posting photos of themselves at work in the scientific world with the tag #DistractinglySexy.

I am lucky in the way that I have never felt discriminated against for being female but I have regularly experienced sexism, probably from people who are unaware their behaviour can be thought of as such.  For example I am a keen photographer and I am looking to buy some new equipment in the next year or so.  Mr Norfolkbookworm and I went to a camera shop and although it was me with the good camera around my neck, trying new models and asking questions the salesman repeatedly spoke only to M and handed him all the cameras to try.  Little things like that happen far too often.

However I am not sure how I feel about one response to this from the book world.  Recently an author I admire made the 'provocation' that 2018 should be a year when only women writers are published.  This is in response to another study that has shown that books about women are less likely to win book prizes.

I am what you could call a prolific reader, from my journal I can see that so far this year I have read 81 books.

46 of these have been by male authors.  Now as I am studying Shakespeare and other dramatists from the late 16th Century I thought I'd take these out of the totals...

Thus so far this year I have read 68 books, of which 33 have been by men.

And if I am honest I am quite happy with that.  I read a book because it appeals to me not because of the gender of the author.  In fact due to another project that I'll talk about later in the year a further twelve books I've read this year have been selected for me and I've had no say on the gender of the author and again this has had no bearing on my views of the books.

To me a book is either good or it isn't and that has nothing to do with the author's gender, it is about the subject.  I like historical fiction, 16th century plays, and Greek and Roman classics - these are traditionally by men and about men and I know my life would be poorer.

I think that as women we do need to pull down barriers and make sure that sexism is relegated to a thing of the past but I am not sure that publishing female authors only is the way forward. I'm still thinking about this a lot and these are just two of the thoughts going around in my mind...

The book trade has always seemed a heavily female dominated industry to me and yet the books are about men...

Are there more books about/by men because as a rule women read more and will read widely where as men need encouraging to read....

For those interested my book stats at the nearly half way point in the year are:

• 81 books read
• 46 by male authors
• 33 non fiction books
• 15 plays
• 11 books in translation

many thanks to my friend Sam @samruddock who blogs here for really making me think about this with a random tweet about his reading habits.

Theatre 2015: Review Fourteen

High Society, The Old Vic, London. June 2015.

As a rule Rebecca and I don't see many musicals but this one proved too tempting - a venue we like, at least one actor that we admire and an impressive artistic director - it all added up to a must see.  Added to that very reasonable ticket prices and no planned engineering works/strikes on the trains meant we skipped off to London midweek quite happily.

I certainly wasn't sure what we were going to see - I'd neither seen the film version of High Society nor The Philadelphia Story but that didn't matter as the story telling on stage was very clear from the beginning.  We were in a wealthy American household, somewhere on the East Coast, to celebrate the second marriage of a wealthy woman.  That the groom to be wasn't suitable or liked was obvious.  Thrown into the mix was the ex-husband (much loved by the rest of the family) and a threatened scandal involving a journalist and photographer...

That the plot was so clear was a real plus point as often I found the sound balance to be out meaning that the dialogue was unclear, occasionally inaudible, especially during some of the musical numbers.
The staging also baffled me.  Currently the Old Vic is configured into the round and so the stage space itself felt very cramped, and in some seats the audience had no where to put their feet save on the acting space. This stage design did allow for multiple entrance and exit points which were well used and it was well used in an acting sense - no part of the auditorium felt like it was neglected/unplayed - but for me I thought the production needed the pomp and status that a proscenium arch theatre can give.  As for the number of props needed for each scene and carried on by the ensemble, well I think that they may have had more stage time than the main cast.

Oh dear, this is all sounding terribly negative and while it wasn't the best afternoon at the theatre I've had it was still entertaining and a feast for the eyes.  I think I'd compare it to a Chinese takeaway - at the time you are satisfied but very quickly you realise that you are hungry again!

The highlights for me were certainly the male leads - Dexter, Mike and Uncle Willie plus the little sister Dinah.  They had great roles to perform and fabulous voices to do them justice.  There were some funny lines and witty staging but overall no more than pleasant fluff.  It all felt a little overblown in the wrong way and it really pains me to have to say so,

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.