Charley’s Aunt @ the Royal Exchange Theatre

Charley’s Aunt
By Brandon Thomas
Royal Exchange Theatre, 28 June 2010

Oliver Gomm as Lord Fancourt Babberley. Photo - Jonathan Keenan

Such a play, and in such an uplifting production as this, will be rightly treasured by the granny tranny troupe and their many fans and lovers.

The play moves along at a speedy (one might almost say jildy) pace: romance, intrigue, coincidence and comedy are all to be found here, and relished and enjoyed.

Oliver Gomm, terrific as the eponymous aunt (and some Lord), gave the outstanding performance of the night: a proper rum ‘un and no mistaking it.

If a nice line in priggish, yet sometimes sycophantic and ingratiating, and always ever so slightly hypocritical guardians of young girls is to your fancy, then you’ll also enjoy Malcolm Rennie’s fine turn as Stephen Spettigue, the guardian of one or two beloveds.  He pulls it off to a T.

Not unnaturally, perhaps, the play brought to mind P.G. Wodehouse: it has the same jokey portrayal of venality, stupidity and crass conceit among the upper classes.  But I learnt after that Charley’s Aunt was premiered in 1892, a decade or so before Wodehouse wrote his first novel.  So any influence went towards the creator of Bertie Wooster.

Both Russell Dixon as Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest and Oliver Gomm here have, by-the-by, performed a sterling social service.  They have shown us that granny trannies have no need to lurk in the shadows and the supermarket corridors.  No, they should be out and about (on a bus pass, no doubt) and proud.  Today Manchester, tomorrow the world!

Charley’s Aunt is at the  Royal Exchange Theatre until 7 August.  Details here.

Whatever Works

Whatever Works
Directed by Woody Allen
USA, 2009
Cornerhouse, 27 June 2010

If you like Woody Allen’s past recent efforts you will probably like this film.

It is full of the moderately amusing kvetching and the moderately angst-ridden musings that have become his current trademark.

Larry David plays Boris, a chess coach and former physics professor and all-round general purpose genius, or so he thinks.  His chess lessons seem quite superficial.  Does he provide his students with an explanation of the terms ‘prophylaxis’ and ‘zugzwang’?  No, he does not.  Maybe instead he can be found recommending a good line for White against the Sveshnikov Sicilian?  Scratch that hope too.  He has a good line in banal invective, mind, always an admirable quality in a teacher.

For way too long now, Allen’s films – and Whatever Works is as good an example as any – have taken on the appearance of a precious item of clothing that has been washed too many times.  You recognise the garment still as something you once loved, but there’s no doubting it’s become faded and tired over time.  This is a film that just about works.  Barely, truth be told, or thread-barely if you prefer.  Whatever.

International Film Guide 2010

International Film Guide 2010
Edited by Ian Haydn Smith
Wallflower Press, February 2010
ISBN: 978-1-906660-38-3

As one might suppose, the vast bulk of this book is devoted to a survey of world cinema.

Well over a hundred countries are covered, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, and each chapter is written by a specialist in film in that particular country.  Some of the writers are critics and journalists, while others are academics or curators or programmers.

Typically, the writer will discuss a variety of films released during 2009 before choosing their own personal top five.  One can also expect an appraisal of each country’s film industry and a listing of key contact information.  In the chapter devoted to the UK, for example, you will find listings for BAFTA, the BFI and the UK Film Council.

Several chapters covered film festivals and there was an in-depth look at the Berlinale, now 60 years old, by Andrea Dittgen.  It was interesting to note that the winner of the Golden Bear in 2009 was Claudia Llosa’s The Milk of Sorrow, a film that has been favourably reviewed on this site.

Another section of the book, ‘Directors of the Year’, included profiles of Kathryn Bigelow (quite prescient to choose an Oscar winner!) and Claire Denis, whose White Material has been reviewed here also.  A retrospective of Denis’ work, Intense Intimacy, is touring the UK and I hope to review some of these films later this month when they are screened at the Cornerhouse.

Other features included ‘In Memoriam’, a series of short obituaries and appreciations of those who had passed away in the previous year, and an article on the future of 3D by Ben Walters.  Also, the editor has written a chapter looking at DVD releases during 2009.

For any film fan or movie buff, especially one prepared to look beyond the narrow horizon of Hollywood blockbusters and their local clones, this book is a godsend.  If you are at all involved in the film industry (or you aspire to be) it is well-nigh essential.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
Directed by Karel Reisz
UK, 1960
Cornerhouse, 27 June 2010

The late Alan Sillitoe (1928-2010) wrote the screenplay to this film of his classic debut novel, so lending it an added authenticity.

Salford’s Albert Finney plays Arthur Seaton, a Nottingham factory worker who rails against the confines of working class life but is not interested, either, in climbing the greasy pole of social advancement (so-called).  His motto is ‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down’ and he’s determined to enjoy life.

Even now, Finney’s performance is powerful and surprisingly nuanced, especially in the scenes that he shares with Rachel Roberts (who plays Brenda, the married woman that he gets pregnant).

What we see is an England that seems almost like a vanished country: working class estates with cobbled streets, men who are away doing national service, women who aspire to live in houses with an inside toilet, pubs where you could get a pint glass with a handle…  Hardly surprising, perhaps, since the film was made half a century ago.

At the end, Arthur is still defiant and has a lot of vital fight and cunning left in him.  But he can see the future that is to come: no more ‘blackberrying’ in the hills he roamed as a lad, not for his son anyway.  It is difficult indeed to see Arthur sticking out his factory job, and perhaps he’ll eventually wend his way to London, like Jim Bankley in Wide Boys Never Work, Robert Westerby’s great novel of the ‘30s.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is one of the great British films.  Now to re-read the novel.

Britain’s Got Bhangra

Britain’s Got Bhangra
The Lowry, 23 June 2010

Just a wonderfully entertaining show.

The musical tells the story of Twinkles Singh, who arrives in Britain from India in the 1970s.  He forges a career for himself as a Bhangra singer and we follow his life and loves all the way up to the present day.  It is a rollercoaster ride.

There are many songs, both in Punjabi and English, and plenty of vibrant dancing.  Sure it is that the Dhol drum, the pivotal instrument in Bhangra, has a loud and intoxicating beat.  Thus the dancing, when it comes, comes fast and furious.  And you simply cannot take your eyes off it.

 Let me not forget to mention also the humour – this is a very sonsy show indeed.

Go along to Britain’s Got Bhangra and you will be guaranteed over two terrific hours of entertainment.

Britain’s Got Bhangra is touring throughout the UK until the middle of July.  Tour dates here.

Three Hundred Tang Poems

Three Hundred Tang Poems
Translated and edited by Peter Harris
Everyman’s Library, March 2009
ISBN: 9781841597829

This volume contains fresh and vibrant translations of all three hundred poems in Sun Zhu’s celebrated eighteenth century anthology.

Within these pages, you will find about seventy five poets who wrote during the Tang dynasty (618-907), among them poets of the stature of Wang Wei, Li Bai, Du Fu, Li Qi and Wei Yingwu.

The poems convey a diverse range of moods and themes: love and longing, celebrations of nature and music and drinking ale, sorrow and melancholy, mysticism.  One common subject is the sadness of saying goodbye to friend whom you may never meet; another subject, less common, is the joy of meeting a long-lost friend or a family member on the desolate road or in a companionable inn.  We can get a sense here of the vastness of China, an immense country where it would have been easy to lose touch with people.  And easy, hermit-like, to lose yourself in.

Of the three hundred poems here, I’ve selected three short ones that I especially like.  Call it a small sampler, if you like.  First, a poem by Wang Jian about a newly-wed bride which I love for its recognisable quotidian detail and its familiar portrait of family life:

After three days I went down to the kitchen,
Washed my hands and cooked a well-stocked soup.
I didn’t know my mother-in-law’s tastes in food,
So I got my little sister-in-law to try it first.

 Next, two rather melancholy poems.  Li Shangyin’s The Pleasure Gardens is a poem that I read in Rexroth’s translation several years ago.  It captured my attention then.  Here is Peter Harris’s equally fine version:

It’s evening and I am feeling out of sorts,
So I drive my carriage up to the old plateau.
The sun at dusk is immeasurably fine –
Or it would be, but for the coming twilight.

And here is a curiously haunting poem that was new to me, Climbing Youzhou Tower – a song by Chen Ziang.  It is like hearing a voice from beyond the grave, but in the present moment.  An anguished voice, addressing those whom he cannot see, though we can hear him:

Looking back we cannot see the people of the past;
Ahead of us we cannot see those who are yet to come.
I muse on heaven and earth, immense and enduring,
And lonely, engulfed by sorrow, my tears fall.

These are wonderful poems all, and wonderful translations.

Looking again at La Boheme

La Boheme
By Giacomo Puccini
Opera North
The Lowry, 16 June 2010

It has been given a more modern setting, Italy during Mussolini’s reign, but in essentials this is the opera as Puccini’s contemporaries would have known it.

The composer’s incisive dramatic touch was rendered perfectly as were his sumptuous melodies.  As the star-crossed lovers, Rodolfo and Mimi, Aldo Di Toro and Sarah Fox brought humour, a sonsy appeal and a rare delicacy of feeling.  If this opera is a palace, Opera North are its vital and respectful and loving occupants.

Another review of this same production, seen when it visited The Lowry in February, can be read here.

La Boheme is touring throughout the UK until the end of June .  Tour dates here.

The Harder They Come by Perry Henzell

The Harder They Come
By Perry Henzell
The Lowry, 22 June 2010

This is a musical adaptation of Henzell’s classic film, tracing the rise and fall of Ivan, a country boy with a desire to make good even if it means doing bad.

Matthew J. Henry as Ivan was a dynamic presence throughout, and the rest of the cast were never less than excellent.

What the musical retains is the film’s sense of thwarted ambition, though it is not quite as raw and angry.  Present also is the same unblinking eye for church hypocrisy, police corruption and the caprices of the music industry.  It is the infectious reggae that gets to you most all, mind, relegating all else to the periphery.

There were terrific performances of ‘You Can Get It If You Really Want’, ‘Many Rivers To Cross’, ‘Wonderful World, Beautiful People’, and quite a few others, including the title song.  With melodic and mellifluous mastery, the Hilton All Stars rocked and steadied all.  They shone like the Jamaican sun.

The Harder They Come is touring throughout the UK until mid July.  Tour dates here.

Rusalka by Dvořák

Rusalka
By Antonín Dvořák
Opera North
The Lowry, 17 June 2010

This was the opera that inspired Handke and Wenders’ Wings of Desire.

It tells the story of Rusalka, a naiad who falls in love with a prince.  She wants to become human so as to win his love, but such a radical change in the natural order comes at a cost.

Dvorak’s delicate music gave the drama a high-performance emotional engine, and it was rendered splendidly.  Giselle Allen, in the central role, was wonderful and Anne-Marie Owens as the forest witch caught the eye and enchanted the ear too.

Of the sets, it must be said that they had real gusto; they were like the vividly coloured panels of a comic book.  And the nature of the story, what with its supernatural elements and the myriad spirits and forces with their strange powers and duties, enhanced this sense that you were watching the pages of a superhero comic slowly turn.

It made for an enchanted experience.

Rusalka is touring throughout the UK until the end of June .  Tour dates here.

Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Poems
By Edna St. Vincent Millay
Everyman’s Library, March 2010
ISBN: 9781841597850

‘She was… an American girl!’  Somehow the voice of Tom Petty came to mind as I read these poems.

It was the publication of her second volume of verse, A Few Figs from Thistles, that established Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) as a major poet and as an exemplar of the New Woman: romantic and often times reckless, always independent.

The two short poems that opened that volume (the ‘My candle burns at both ends…’ one and the ‘Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!’ one) pithily expressed her ‘live and love today, for tomorrow we die’ philosophy.

This went down well with her generation and the one that followed, the flappers and the hard-boiled, wise-cracking dames like Dorothy Parker, but it wasn’t entirely a pose.  She held to it all the way down the line.  In the late sonnet, ‘Let you not say of me when I am old’, she writes that ‘the sands of such a life as mine run red and gold, even to the ultimate sifting dust’ and again: ‘In me no Lenten wicks watch out the night / I am the booth where Folly holds her fair.’

Clearly Millay was attracted to the sonnet as a form and she wrote many throughout her life, as though attempting to out-Shakespeare Shakespeare.  There are thirty among the selected poems here, from the well-known and heavily anthologised (‘Time does not bring relief; you all have lied’ and ‘What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why’ among them) to the little-known and unfairly overlooked.  That the latter are as fine and sometimes sublime as the more famous is apparent.  ‘I think I should have loved you presently’ is the pick, for me.

Reading through these poems it is plain that her themes were the classic and important ones: love, beauty, passion, integrity (which can be construed as independence or inconstancy, depending on the flip of a coin), the passage of time and mortality, death.  You could make a reasonable case that death was as much a preoccupation for Millay as love, with the poem ‘Mariposa’ being as stark an example as any.  Or the sonnet beginning, ‘And you as well must die, beloved dust.’

And, at a pinch, you might describe her as an Emily Dickinson who liked to party (though Emily Dickinson herself may not have been quite as retiring as has been assumed, if Lyndall Gordon’s recent biography is anything to go by).

Though Millay plays to the gallery a bit, mindful that she has a bit of a reputation to keep up (Byron did it too), she is a poet of substance.  This fine, generous selection of her poetry includes also Aria da Capo, a one-act verse drama about xenophobia and the suspicion of the stranger.