The Fortune of the Winczlavs 3: Danitza, 1965

The Fortune of the Winczlavs 3: Danitza, 1965

By Jean Van Hamme and Philippe Berthet

Cinebook, 2023

ISBN: 9781800441170

The sweep of history alongside compelling, emotionally wrought stories.

It was only on completing this, the final volume of The Fortune of the Winczlavs, that I realised its full significance. For it transpires that the whole of the trilogy is a sort of prequel to the Largo Winch series. Largo is Danitza’s son.

When the story starts we are in Tito’s Yugoslavia around about the mid 1960s. Quite a difficult country for Jovan (Danitza’s father) to live in, because during World War Two (Jovan’s own father) was a Chetnik (a kind of Royalist). This political grouping was opposed to Nazi Germany, indeed they stalwartly fought against the occupying forces, but at variance with Tito’s Communist Party. Jovan is still considered suspect; the Communists have long memories and the society they have constructed has plenty of malicious individuals. Sure enough, Jovan is arrested. His wife and new born daughter flee towards a big city, looking to disappear.

Meanwhile, over in America, Nerio Winch is building up a business empire, diversifying from banking and finance into oil exploration and aircraft production. He is an unscrupulous operator, not entirely sympathetic, though that may be simply the river in which he swims. At any rate, his methods of doing business are worthy of a Mafia don. You’d say that his is a privileged life, for sure, but it is a demanding one and not without its dangers.

The two narrative strands merge and cohere when, late in life and career, Nerio develops some niggling pangs of conscience and begins to seek the whereabouts of his family in Yugoslavia, a country coming apart at the seams following the collapse of the Soviet Union (it is the early 1990s). Danitza, now a young woman, is a Serb in Croatia, which places her in mortal danger.

There is much to love about this volume and the trilogy as a whole. I have been enchanted by the sweep of history and the scrupulous attention paid to period detail in Philippe Berthet’s artwork, which has as well a wonderful sense of space and inventive use of perspective. Jean Van Hamme’s script has given the reader compelling, emotionally wrought stories throughout and, in this respect, this final volume did not disappoint. In fact it had a heartrending final scene which I felt as a personal betrayal – that’s how much you’re made to care.

The publisher’s description of The Fortune of the Winczlavs 3: Danitza, 1965 can be read here.

Elias String Quartet: Mendelssohn Cycle #4

Elias String Quartet: Mendelssohn Cycle #4

RNCM Concert Hall, 19 April 2024

A captivating concert.

We had caught the first of these concerts in the Autumn and this one was, I believe, the final one. Here we heard an astonishing programme of music:

• Felix Mendelssohn: Four Pieces for String Quartet Op 81
• Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel: String Quartet in E flat major
• Felix Mendelssohn: String Quartet in F minor Op 80

All Mendelssohn, as can be readily seen, but Fanny’s music as well as that of her more famous brother Felix. In recent decades Fanny’s music has been brought forth to the light and duly appreciated. Some may say: about time too.

Curiously what all these works have is an undertow of anxiety, precarious as a rock on a cliff edge. There is the presence of a threat also. Together with enchantment, melody.

In particular there is an emotional complexity to Mendelssohn’s (that is, Felix’s) music that you really cannot find anywhere else. Not even his model, the great Beethoven, comes close. Or, at any rate, he doesn’t quite possess it to the same extent. He flounders in that he is just too resilient, heroic even, whereas Mendelssohn could very easily shatter, you feel. IT is as though he has attained, or accepted within himself, a certain human fragility – it is there, unabashedly.

And to fully understand (or feel) Mendelssohn’s music you must accept your own fragility too, I would suppose. (As for Beethoven, you feel at times: he is indefatigable, a monster, and can never be fully understood.)

That the Elias String Quartet were fully on top of these technically demanding works, especially the monumental String Quartet in F minor, almost goes without saying. A captivating concert.

Details of future concerts at the RNCM can be found here.

Opera North: Cavalleria rusticana & Aleko

Opera North: Opera North: Cavalleria rusticana & Aleko

Cavalleria rusticana by Pietro Mascagni

Aleko by Sergei Rachmaninoff

The Lowry, 20 March 2024

Robert Hayward as Aleko (front), the Aleko company and the Chorus of Opera North in Aleko © Tristram Kenton

Two for the price of one.

For this evening, we got not one opera but two: a double bill of Cavalleria rusticana and Aleko. There was the same cast, more or less, in both and a similarity of theme (illicit love, passion, jealousy), though there were key differences.

In Cavalleria rusticana Turiddu (Andres Presno) has an affair with Lola (Helen Evora) and is killed by her husband Alfio (Robert Hayward). Adultery is quite clearly punished and I was reminded that it is still illegal in some American states.

As for Aleko, here the story and actions are similar but the judgement is very different. When Aleko (Robert Hayward) kills Zemfira (Elin Pritchard), his estranged wife, and her younger lover (Andres Presno) the community reacts to these two killings with horror. Not only because Aleko exacted punishment (revenge) by his own hand but because the very idea of a woman being faithful to one man goes against their values. This is a community that believes in free love, polyamory in all its glory, and liberal values. And Aleko is not executed for murder but rather banished from their lands. He is now a pariah.

Cavalleria rusticana (1890) and Aleko (1893) were near-contemporary works, both one act operas. There is some evidence that the young Rachmaninoff knew of Mascagni’s work and was influenced by it, though the libretto is based upon Pushkin’s poem ‘The Gypsies’, so this pairing is apt. It is curious that the Russian play has what we would think of now as the more progressive values.

This was another all-around, excellent production by Opera North. There were superb performances from all of the cast, plenty of sumptuous sets and costumes, and the vibrant orchestra powered the twin dramas along. An evening of fiery passion that will live long in the memory.

Cavalleria rusticana and Aleko have a short run at The Lowry. Details of future performances can be found here.

La scala di seta

La scala di seta

Music by Gioachino Rossini

RNCM Theatre, 17 March 2024

Jessica Hopkins as Giulia and Yihui Wang as Dorvil in La scala di seta © RNCM Craig Fuller Photography

The vagaries of the human heart.

There was much to admire in this splendid staging of Gioachino Rossini’s one-act opera La scala di seta. Not least the set, which showed us the interior of a salubrious, nineteenth-century Parisian apartment. Chaise longues, floral panelling, all of that. It had an interval, this RNCM production, and afterwards we saw the apartment but from a different perspective, ‘back to front’, as it were.

I relished the story, which was basically about a young woman, Giulia (Jessica Hopkins), trying to shoo off an unwanted suitor by name of Blansac (Adam Jarman) onto her cousin Lucilla (Charlotte Baker). Guilia was apparently secretly wedded to Blansac’s best friend Dorvil (Yihui Wang), who visits her each night by climbing a silken ladder, the ‘La scala di seta’ which gives the opera its name. In the end, after much ado, Love triumphed and there were happy endings all around. A good natured farce.

Rossini’s jaunty score carried the story along and the opera was chockful of wonderful love songs, wonderfully performed. Virtually every lover got an opportunity to lay bare the secret murmurings of their heart. Even Blansac, who we were given to understand had been a bit of a Jack the lad, professed a need for love and tenderness.

If you are looking for a love story – well,  a couple of them – founded on all too understandable misunderstandings and the vagaries of the human heart, La scala di seta is prescribed.

Details of future performances of La scala di seta at the RNCM can be found here.

Tyler Hay (piano)

Tyler Hay (piano)

RNCM Carole Nash Recital Room, 11 March 2024

Superb performance and a stylish programme.

And this too was an excellent recital by Tyler Hay, notable for both his superb performance throughout and a programme of music that was surprising yet rewarding.

I had never heard (or heard of) Carl Czerny, nor Sigismond Thalberg, nor Charles-Valentin Alkan before this evening. But I was rapt when hearing Hay perform their works. Certainly, I intend to research these composers and their works further.

The full programme was as follows:

• Carl Czerny: Nouveau Gradus ad Parnassum Op 822 No 46 ‘Grande Étude en forme de Variations’
• John Field: Nocturne No 4 in A major; Nocturne No 6 in F major
• Adolf von Henselt: Études caractéristiques Op 2 Nos 6, 3 and 8
• Sigismond Thalberg: Tarantella Op 65
• Charles-Valentin Alkan: Symphonie Op 39 Nos 4-7
• Franz Liszt: Variations on Bach’s Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen

For me, the undoubted highlight was Franz Liszt’s ‘Variations on Bach’s Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen’, due in large part to its rousing finale, Hay’s delicate and precise playing full of great feeling. But in truth every work was a bejewelled beauty.

An enchanting evening.

Details of future concerts at the RNCM can be found here.

Wenhan Jiang (viola)

Wenhan Jiang (viola)

RNCM Carole Nash Recital Room, 4 March 2024

From the ends of the earth.

To give you a sense of the scope of this concert, let me simply list the programme in full:

• Thea Musgrave: In the Still of the Night
• Frank Bridge: 2 Pieces
• Gang Chen arr Jiang: The Sun Shines on
• Tashikuergan Tōru Takemitsu: A Bird Came Down the Walk
• Ruan Ji arr Jiang: Jiu Kuang
• Kaija Saariaho: Vent Nocturne
• Luciano Berio: Naturale

You will see at once that it is a wildly eclectic mix, the composers coming from Scotland and England, China and Japan, Finland and Italy (or to be more precise, Sicily). Some of the music was written specifically for the viola, whereas some had been arranged for it by Wenhan Jiang himself. He is a versatile and talented guy.

Speaking for myself, I have to say that I was absolutely engrossed in the concert from start to finish. And this was one of those concerts where you can truly say that the best was left until last. The performance of Luciano Berio’s Naturale was spectacular, what with Simone Rebello accompanying Wenhan Jiang on percussion and the live music interspersed with a tape of, I think, a Sicilian storyteller.

Such an enjoyable concert, really; a delight throughout.

Details of future concerts at the RNCM can be found here.

XIII 25: Reloaded Memory

XIII 25: Reloaded Memory

By Yves Sente and Youri Jigounov

Cinebook, 2022

ISBN: 9781800440739

Raise the flag high, then exit via abyss.

There is an astonishing scene near the start of this intricately plotted volume: a group of Islamist terrorists opening fire on civilians as the Pope visits the White House. Shortly after that we see a menacing swarm of predator drones attacking the Capitol Building. What in is going on? you may wonder. Well, it looks for all the world as though there is a chaotic, opportunistic coup in progress. It comes down to the old truth: people who have power always want more.

Over the course of the following days we see politicians jockey for power (and survival) and watch as a prominent general flees towards Canada, in a desperate search of asylum. Yes, it appears to be the real thing.

Meanwhile, our story zeroes in on Jason McLane, who is apparently the protagonist of the series. He takes part in the coup as an assassin, so merely a pawn in someone’s dystopian game, but he’s a pawn hankering for promotion, on the look-out for transformation into a more meaningful, a much more powerful piece. He is starting to find his way back to a path that he’d been thwarted from taking long before.

I was quite perplexed by the story at first but sufficiently intrigued to follow it right to the end. It seems that McLane’s ancestors were killed by the Puritans who arrived in America on the Mayflower, a murder long buried in time. His attempts to get at the root of the matter and bring the names of the culprits and their descendants to light is, from what I could gather, a driver for the whole series. Anyway, what I can say with certainty is that this was an explosive episode, full of political intrigue, fiery violence and heart wrenching betrayal.

The publisher’s description of XIII 25: Reloaded Memory can be read here.

RNCM Symphony Orchestra

RNCM Symphony Orchestra

RNCM Concert Hall, 1 March 2024

Raw, raucous emotion.

It is always a joy to get to hear the RNCM Symphony Orchestra play and to find out what they have been up to.

Let me list the programme in full:

• Benjamin Britten: Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes Op 33a
• Julia Perry: A Short Piece for Orchestra
• Keiko Abe Prism: Rhapsody for Marimba and Orchestra
• William Walton: Symphony No 1 in B flat minor

If you have ever heard an instrument called the marimba, you will know that it is capable of some wondrous sounds. It even looks the part, for you could easily imagine it as a mythical sea monster. Here we heard Keiko Abe Prism’s Rhapsody for Marimba and Orchestra with Ho Yin Wong taking the reins and giving the sea monster song.

Before that we had heard Britten’s rousing Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes and Julia Perry’s lively A Short Piece for Orchestra. When introduced, it was suggested that Perry’s work might evoke an American city scene; and certainly it was raucous, highly wrought and atmospheric.

As for the final work, Walton’s great first symphony, forged out of personal tragedy, is a foundation stone of classical music. It rounded out a splendid evening.

Details of future concerts at the RNCM can be found here.

Roman Lytwyniw (violin)

Roman Lytwyniw (violin)

RNCM Carole Nash Recital Room, 28 February 2024

Soviet Jazz and a Viennese vibe.

Roman Lytwyniw’s recital was certainly an evening to remember.

We heard violin sonatas from Janáček, Debussy and Eugène Ysaÿe, an original work by Joseph Howard called ‘Bleed’, a fiery slice of Soviet jazz (Nikolai Kapustin’s Violin Sonata) and a traditional Ukrainian folk song at the close. It was action packed.

Here was the programme in full:

• Leoš Janáček: Violin Sonata
• Claude Debussy: Violin Sonata in G minor
• Amy Beach: Romance for Violin and Piano
• Eugène Ysaÿe: Sonata for Solo Violin in G major
• Joseph Howard: Bleed
• Nikolai Kapustin: Violin Sonata

Of these, I maybe enjoyed Amy Beach’s Romance for Violin and Piano most of all, Roman Lytwyniw accompanied by Sophia Rahman on piano. Mostly because the music had such a Viennese vibe.

A memorable evening.

Details of future concerts at the RNCM can be found here.

Jan Lisiecki

Jan Lisiecki

Grosser Saal, Wiener Konzerthaus

17 February 2024

Moonlight and starlight, then sunlight.

It is hardly controversial to say that Jan Lisiecki is the most enthralling and exciting pianist in the world right now.

Here was yet more evidence of his extraordinary talent. A high-quality, no frills concert, this one, and it could probably best be described as a concert of preludes.

The first part featured a diverse range of composers: Bach (for example, his Präludium 2 c-moll), Chopin (he had three preludes, an augur of what was to come), Rachmaninoff (his Prélude d-moll), Szymanowski (the Prélude h-moll and two others), Messiaen (his La colombe, as an instance) and Górecki (the Präludium). Though the composers varied, the musical form remained constant. We were shown the prelude before and after Chopin.

As for part two of the concert, here Lisiecki expertly performed Chopin’s 24 Préludes (opus 28) in their entirety.

Overall, there was a wonderfully dramatic dynamic to the programme, despite its almost academic slant. It was as though someone showed you a book of sonnets, all wonderfully written and beautiful, but then showed you Shakespeare’s sonnets – which are something else again. Or perhaps it was as though you somehow saw moonlight and starlight (moving and mystical, to be sure) but only later sunlight, the light that brings the world into being. Anyway, it was clear that Chopin’s 24 Préludes represented the pinnacle of the form. The concert was almost a proof of that.

The programme was technically demanding but Lisiecki was equal to it, he took it in his stride. His playing was lyrical, enchanting, captivating and bespoke an immense musical intelligence.

Details of forthcoming concerts at the Wiener Konzerthaus can be found here.

Antoine Tamestit and Mao Fujita

Antoine Tamestit and Mao Fujita

Brahms-Saal, Musikverein

16 February 2024

Imperial mountain, exuberant variety.

It was clear from the very start that these two fine musicians, Antoine Tamestit (Viola) and Mao Fujita (Klavier), enjoyed a very special rapport. Also clear was their evident pleasure in the music, though that in truth didn’t come as a great surprise. The concert featured music by Mozart, Schubert and Schumann. Quite a home-coming to Vienna.

I was impressed by the expertly curated programme, with quite a few of the works (where needed) being adapted for viola by Antoine Tamestit. There were substantial works by Mozart (his Sonate für Klavier und Violine e-Moll) and Schubert (the Sonate für Arpeggione und Klavier a-Moll) in the first half, whereas the second half consisted of shorter works by Schubert and Schumann (for example, the latter’s Märchenbilder: Vier Stücke für Klavier und Viola) and a spectacular medley of Lieder.

These Lieder were quite a highlight. For here we heard Schubert’s An den Mond and his Nacht und Träume, together with Schumann’s Mondnacht, following one after the other. Somehow it was warming yet evocative of a winter’s night. Antoine Tamestit’s viola was song enough.

Details of future concerts at the Musikverein can be found here.

How to Be Healthy: An Ancient Guide to Wellness

How to Be Healthy: An Ancient Guide to Wellness

By Galen

Selected, translated And introduced by Katherine D. Van Schaik

Princeton University Press, 2024

ISBN: 9780691206271

Can the ancients help us today to be healthy?

There is no getting around the fact that, since the great Greek physician Galen lived and worked, medical science has progressed by leaps and bounds. Can it be said, therefore, that his writings on health, founded as they were on now defunct medical models and theories, are still helpful in thinking about our own health and well-being? Well, going by the lights of this fascinating book, which features excerpts from eight of Galen’s key treatises arranged in five chapters, the answer has to be a resounding Yes.

The first chapter is entitled ‘The Mind-Body Connection’ and here Galen discusses mental health and how the body and mind interact; for it was clear, even in his day, that they do. He gives advice on avoiding, or at any rate dealing with, negative emotions. This is followed by a chapter on ‘Exercising the Body’, of which much more below, and one entitled ‘Individual Physiologies’, an ancient notion which has acquired current relevance. Here Galen talks about the prime importance of the doctor knowing their patient well. For only then can they devise a course of treatment tailored to their individual needs. We know now that, even at the level of DNA, human response can be curiously idiosyncratic. Another chapter, ‘Nourishing the Body’, is devoted to food and diet and also the importance of fresh air. For a healthy, natural environment is as necessary as nutrients.

I would characterise the final fifth chapter, ‘Definitions of Health and Disease’, as being quite different to the previous ones, in that it is more theoretical in nature. Note, though, that these questions of definition (What is health? disease? fitness? and so on) are never wholly abstract for Galen, since they must be related to an individual human being who may be young or old, rich or poor, male or female, and so on. And the answer will vary in each case. It is likely he would say that all people have a best or an optimum healthy version of themselves. But he’d also likely add that ‘health’ is not a ‘one size fits all’ proposition.

Throughout, Galen’s Greek text appears in the book with Katherine D. Van Schaik’s translation facing it. She also provides a general introduction and an exposition of Galen’s thought at the start of each chapter. There are notes to the selected texts and pointers to further reading. at the end of the book. Some of these notes are fascinating, making you aware, for example, that ‘contagion’ had a quite different meaning in Galen’s day.

Of all the subjects covered, exercise is probably the one of greatest interest to most modern readers, so it is worth looking at the second chapter in greater detail.

Here Galen starts out by saying that exercise is good and desirable, though he believes that the exercise regimes of top athletes can, in fact, be injurious to health. In his time these were wrestlers, discus throwers and marathon runners, and he directs his criticism toward them. But it is easy enough to think of relevant modern examples. Elite tennis players who have back problems, say, or athletes who must take painkillers to perform. Former footballers who suffer from brain injury having headed a football for much of their career. And so on. In addition, athletes usually have a specialisation that ordinary people don’t really need and that is not directly beneficial to health. 

For Galen, the ideal exercise should serve ‘to train the body but also to delight the soul’ and he gives hunting as a good example, though it is not available to everyone – and certainly not today. Instead, he recommends ‘exercising with a small ball’ – and this for several reasons. First, it is an exercise that is accessible to everyone and can be done almost anywhere. Second, it involves all parts of the body: the legs, the arms, the torso. Third, you can do it with others, so it is or can be sociable. Fourth, since it can vary in intensity young and old, those fighting fit and those recovering from injury, can all do it. It is versatile. Fifth, it engages the soul or mind: you need to catch the ball, throw it, anticipate its flight, and so on. It is sport, a game you can play.

Incidentally, Galen wasn’t too keen on running as an exercise, though it is popular nowadays amongst politicians and media types. He says here that the Spartans were victorious because they stood and fought their ground, not because they were good at running away…

We all have an interest in being healthy and fit and enjoying a good quality of life. How to Be Healthy: An Ancient Guide to Wellness shows that, in pursuit of these aims, we should not neglect the classics.

The publisher’s description of How to Be Healthy: An Ancient Guide to Wellness can be read here.

Budapest Festival Orchestra

Budapest Festival Orchestra

Grosser Saal, Wiener Konzerthaus

13 February 2024

A fresh vibrancy as of flowers in spring.

This highly enjoyable concert was, in a sense, a double celebration. It was both a celebration of Brahms’s music and a celebration, also, of his love of Hungary, its people, landscapes and music.

The first part featured a short dance, the Ungarischer Tanz Nr. 10 F-Dur, followed by a substantial concerto, the Konzert für Klavier und Orchester Nr. 2 B-Dur. Here the Ukrainian pianist Vadym Kholodenko accompanied the orchestra.

After the interval, the second part proceeded along similar lines: a pithy dance, the Ungarischer Tanz Nr. 7 F-Dur, and a substantial orchestral work, this time Brahms’s Symphonie Nr. 2 D-Dur, virtually a foundation stone of classical music.

We all sometimes feel that the performance of a particular piece of music is intended for ourselves alone, even though its origin may be obscure. That is how I felt often during this concert, due in part no doubt to the immediacy of the musicians’ playing. Their performance had a fresh vibrancy as of flowers in spring. As I listened to the music, it seemed expressly directed at me. Little matter that the letter had a foreign postmark and was written in an unknown hand. It held a message only I could decipher.

A concert full of hope, good will and prosperous things.

Details of forthcoming concerts at the Wiener Konzerthaus can be found here.

The Route 66 List 3: Kansas

The Route 66 List 3: Kansas

By Eric Stalner

Cinebook, 2020

ISBN: 9781849184533

Wild flood, placid city.

There is a perilous tussle for survival and supremacy in this Cold War drama set in America in the early 1960s. The field of play is saturated with KGB agents, planted as part of a sleeper cell, sometimes unknown to each other, who look and behave like normal Americans. They could almost pass for FBI, and in fact some are double agents playing both sides. It is that kind of drama: treacherous, highly dangerous, great care required.

This episode sees us in Kansas during the catastrophic floods of Autumn 1961. Houses are partly submerged, people are stranded, but safeguarding of the homeland continues as before. It is a world where violence is generally covert, usually taking the form of deceit and betrayal, but where it can very easily explode into gunfire and murder. There’s a wonderfully exciting speedboat chase.

One thing that struck me while reading this story: how difficult it was to distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys. Or simply to spot who was honest and on the level. I found myself rooting for some guy, but then it turned out that he was a double agent. That’s not a deal breaker in the sympathy stakes, but still… all is not as it seems.

Eric Stalner’s artwork is beautiful to look at, showing us an America of jumbled city streets wrestling with a plethora of cars and a flooded countryside replete with isolated, sunken farmhouses. River water covers the land while elsewhere people are drowning in lies.

The publisher’s description of The Route 66 List 3: Kansas can be read here.

Luc Mangholz, Sebastian Breit, Wolfgang Härtel and Johannes Maria Bogner

Luc Mangholz, Sebastian Breit, Wolfgang Härtel and Johannes Maria Bogner

Brahms-Saal, Musikverein

14 February 2024

Caviar for the connoisseur.

What we were treated to here was an unusual but very enjoyable concert of largely eighteenth century music. There were works by composers both familiar (Boccherini, Bach and Telemann) and, to me at any rate, little known (Quantz, Heinichen and Lotti).

The musicians were an impromptu quartet consisting of Luc Mangholz (Flöte), Sebastian Breit (Oboe), Wolfgang Härtel (Violoncello) and Johannes Maria Bogner (Cembalo). On this excellent showing, it would be a surprise if their collaboration were not made more permanent.

Most of the works saw all four musicians on stage, but for some (Boccherini’s Sonate für Violoncello und Cembalo Nr. 2 C-Dur, say, or Bach’s Sonate für Oboe und Cembalo obligato g-Moll) only two or three musicians were present. Throughout, a congenial and collegiate atmosphere reigned as masterpiece followed masterpiece.

It was an exhilarating concert, due not only to the excellent musicianship on show but also to the well thought out, finely curated programme. There were affinities, often quite subtle, between many of these works, which is hardly surprising, you may say, since they derive from the milieu of court and church. Still, it seems worth mentioning.

At the end, the greatness of Boccherini, Bach and Telemann was reaffirmed and you were sufficiently delighted and intrigued by the beauty of Quantz, Heinichen and Lotti as to seek out their other works.

Details of future concerts at the Musikverein can be found here.

Ian 4: Metanoia

Ian 4: Metanoia

By Fabien Vehlmann and Ralph Meyer

Cinebook, 2020

ISBN: 9781849183819

Rogue AI, human folly.

It begins with a hunt in a Louisiana bayou. Ian, a humanoid robot, is on the run, pursued by a deadly assassin. There had been a lethal kerfuffle in Los Angeles and Ian took the blame for it. Some very important people want him dead.

In time and thanks to a spot of nifty work, Ian eludes his deadly enemy. He meets up with Ruby, an investigative journalist, someone sympathetic towards his plight. And he shares his story with her.

We often hear talk nowadays of autonomous AI. The possibility that robots may, one day, have consciousness; that they might be able to can on their own volition in the world. This intriguing story (and series, it looks like) dramatises these issues, or some of them anyway.

There is a tech billionaire, Swainston, who believes that a war between AI and humanity is inevitable; and he sides with the forces behind AI. Whereas Ian, an actual robot, is uncertain and conflicted. For while Ian may be alive (of that he has no doubt) and conscious, and is willing to fight for his survival and his right to exist in the world, he is reluctant to harm innocent others. Maybe that is due to Ruby’s humanising influence; maybe along with consciousness comes a conscience, a kind of moral AI if you like.

Fabien Vehlmann and Ralph Meyer are both Frenchmen, and that is hardly surprising. Only a French author and artist could have produced such a tantalising, choice delicacy of the American Imaginary. And what a shock ending also, the dénouement due to a super-fit assassin who carries the name of a great Surrealist poet.

The publisher’s description of Ian 4: Metanoia can be read here.

Ligeti Etudes with Jackie Jaekyung Yoo (piano) and RNCM Pianists

Ligeti Etudes with Jackie Jaekyung Yoo (piano) and RNCM Pianists

RNCM Concert Hall, 6 February 2024

Poetic pianos.

It began with Jackie Jaekyung Yoo playing the first 6 of György Ligeti’s Etudes. Then RNCM students played a further dozen, bringing the total to 18.

I enjoyed the performances and it is not often that you get to hear the complete Ligeti Etudes, all 18 of them, scored across three books. Curiously, all have individual titles, usually in French, and I wondered whether Ligeti might have had some connection with Romania. He did, apparently.

An evening of virtuoso performance.

Details of future concerts at the RNCM can be found here.

The Zone of Interest

The Zone of Interest

Directed by Jonathan Glazer

Great Britain, Poland and USA, 2023

HOME, 6 February 2023

Evil contaminates.

It is impossible to do justice to this extraordinary film without mentioning aspects of the plot. Fair warning then: here be spoilers.

We are invited into the home of a middle-aged German couple: Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller). They have three children, who are apparently happy and healthy.

As for Rudolf, he has a demanding job as the commandant of Auschwitz but seems to be holding up well. The actual activity of what goes on in the camp (extermination of Jews) is peripheral to the film, though it exerts its effect on all people here. Hedwig obtains a fur coat, apparently taken off a Jewish woman, and when wearing it finds a stick of lipstick in the pocket. She opens it and puts it on. It is not theft but rather a perk of her situation. She has adapted to circumstances; she scavenges on the dead.

The children too seem well adapted, but they play curious games and dress up in Nazi uniform (to be expected, perhaps). One boy has a collection of teeth he toys with….

When Hedwig’s mother comes down for a visit she is enchanted by what Hedwig has made of the kitchen and garden. It is a virtual paradise. But she steals away abruptly one morning, not appearing for breakfast, having made the mistake of opening a bedroom window, allowing ash to seep in.

Everything is normal (I am tempted to say ‘banal’) yet awry. Rudolf is an earnest executive interested in meeting his targets and looking to advance his career. But he does this through murder. We hear, sometimes, orders barked and gunshots fired and sirens blaring. The wall of the camp is so close. Evil, a contaminant, cannot help but invade.

At one point Rudolf gets a job away, inspecting facilities elsewhere, but Hedwig decides to stay on in the home she has made. There is a sense that the war is being lost, and the rush to exterminate Jews is becoming ever more urgent.

Near the end there is a switch a bit like Fassbinder pulled in the final episode of Berlin Alexanderplatz. It happens when Rudolf involuntarily vomits, maybe at the thought of returning to Auschwitz.

This is a film of awful absences, dreadful lacunae and unspoken terrors. It does full justice to the late Martin Amis’s novel.

Details of The Zone of Interest can be seen here.

Noir Burlesque

Noir Burlesque

By Enrico Marini

Titan Comics, 2023

ISBN: 9781787739956

Glitter and gutter, sex and violence.

There is a pervading atmosphere of glitter and gutter in Enrico Marini’s fine graphic novel, which takes its inspiration from film noir of the 1940s and ‘50s, that being around the time when the story is set. By glitter I mean that there’s a promise of riches and paradise, while also the possibility of an ignoble death, your soul bound for hell.

As for the story, it concerns a tainted romance between Terry, a veteran just returned from fighting Nazis over in Europe, and Caprice, a red-headed burlesque artist (she is a sort of risqué Gilda, not that the original Gilda was a wide-eyed innocent herself) who Terry used to go steady with before the war; though at that time she went by her given name of Debbie.

On his return, Terry learns that Caprice is now engaged to marry Rex, a nightclub owner and crime boss. Terry is compelled to do the odd spot of work for Rex in order to pay off a debt that would otherwise fall to his sister and his beloved nephew. He is strapped in tight but by no means out of range.

None of the characters here are entirely straight or loyal with the others; double crosses are rampant and kind of contagious.

That the story and artwork holds your attention throughout hardly needs stressing. The author and artist here is Enrico Marini after all, and this graphic novel very much had the feel of a labour of love. I loved the attention to detail, for example that you could see The Asphalt Jungle on the signage outside of a movie theatre on Grand Street. Amid the black and white, sepia-tinted panels there are dashes of red. The red of Caprice’s hair and her red, red lips; the red of a long, luxurious carpet in a fancy country house; and even, in a diner, the red of a tomato ketchup bottle. Some of the panels are for adults only.

The publisher’s description of Noir Burlesque can be read here.

Lady S. 6: A Second of Eternity

Lady S. 6: A Second of Eternity

By By Aymond and Van Hamme

Cinebook, 2018

ISBN: 9781849184212

Careful clarity, scattergun noise.

It is an exciting package, this one: in part a tragic romance, in part a brutal crime story, a wholly engaging thriller throughout.

Shania (Lady S.) is arrested following a burglary and recruited by a mysterious colonel, head of a clandestine French intelligence agency, into helping him bring down Ange Nicolini, boss of the Corsican Mafia. He is quite a character, this colonel, what with his monocle, cravat and cane, and his missing arm, a la Blaise Cendrars. He is also cold, calculating and callous.

The plan is for Shania to take the place of Liuba, part of the Russian Mafia, who is transporting diamonds to Nicolini as payment for a contract killing. All goes smoothly and Shania infiltrates Nicolini’s salubrious villa in Marseille. But then things go awry when Liuba escapes and shows up too. Who is the real Liuba? Nicolini doesn’t know and so locks them both up and calls on Nicolas Darakhin, son of the Russian crime boss who sent the diamonds. Nicolas takes one look at the two young women and pronounces the real Liuba to be… Shania.

Later, matters become even more confused. Shania learns that the target of the contract killing is her own father, and she strives to prevent it. Meanwhile the colonel pins Shania as part of the Russian Mafia and turns on her. As for Nicolini, he’s been paid and has a job to do. Oh, and Liuba has escaped again, this time from some Corsican henchmen. She is on the loose and angry. Everyone is trying to kill, and not be killed by, everyone else.

I greatly enjoyed Van Hamme’s smoothly oiled, slickly told story. But here is something I found curious in the comic: how low-key Lady S.’s involvement was, given she is the eponymous heroine, by contrast with (say) Liuba, who’s violent and vengeful, explosive as dynamite, downright evil. Wherever Liuba has been, gory massacre and bloody carnage are sure to follow in her wake; and Aymond’s artwork when it comes to Liuba is spectacular. She is a nasty gal and way deadlier than the male. By contrast, Lady S. is perhaps a little clingy.

The publisher’s description of Lady S. 6: A Second of Eternity can be read here.

The Oath of the Five Lords

The Oath of the Five Lords

By Yves Sente and André Juillard

Cinebook, 2014

ISBN: 9781849181914

A comforting yet disquieting experience.

Another marvellously vivid Blake and Mortimer adventure, this one set for the most part in mid-1950s England.

What happens is that Professor Mortimer is invited to Oxford to take part in an archaeology seminar and finds that there have been one or two mysterious thefts from the Ashmolean Museum. While Captain Blake, fellow bachelor and London flatmate, travels up to Bournemouth to attend the funeral of an old friend, a certain Lord Pickwick. Shortly afterwards another nobleman, Lord Liddle, who also happens to be a friend of Blake, is found dead in violent circumstances. All these events, it transpires, are related; and in due course we see Blake and Mortimer working together to prevent more killings and apprehend the culprits. It seems also that Blake himself, despite being a commoner, has a target on his back.

At one point in the story a character remarks of a car that it will roar away because its engine has been souped up. You could say the same about The Oath of the Five Lords itself, for this alluring yarn proceeds at breakneck speed. I won’t reveal too much about the nature of the mystery, except to say that the story does have an intriguing premise. It is that the death of T. E. Lawrence in 1935 was not as a result of a motorbike accident; rather, it was carried out by shadowy state actors.

The world in which these actions take place is reassuring, due in no small measure to the charm of its English setting and André Juillard’s elegantly composed artwork. Yet it is unsettling as well, since Yves Sente’s characters are rarely as virtuous or straightforward as they seem. The tension between these two authors’ work, while they undoubtedly form a whole, makes for a comforting yet disquieting experience.

The publisher’s description of The Oath of the Five Lords can be read here.

Insiders 1: Chechen Guerrilla

Insiders 1: Chechen Guerrilla

By Jean-Claude Bartoll and Renaud Garreta

Cinebook, 2009

ISBN: 9781905460960

False blowback, honest gift.

When our story opens we are in Chechnya around about 2000. The Russians have invaded and Najah is fighting against them. Her boyfriend was a Chechen and she joined the fight alongside him, though he is now missing in action, presumed dead. Soon she discovers that her comrades-in-arms, many of them anyway, are Islamist Fundamentalists; and she wants no part of them. It is not her fight and so she leaves.

Sometime shortly thereafter, Najah is forcibly recruited into a clandestine intelligence operation (codename: Project Insider) aimed at thwarting an international crime syndicate (think Spectre but led by a committee) with its tentacles ensconced in various lucrative pies. We learn much about Najah’s origins here, since the ‘forcible recruitment’ involves a healthy dose of blackmail: delving into her past (Najah’s real name is Isabel Mendoza and she is Colombian) and promising to erase it, but only if she is cooperative. They offer her another past, one that will robustly support a new, clean identity. How can she say no? And so, for the moment at least, she joins Project Insider.

There are actually two volumes herein, entitled respectively ‘Chechen Guerrilla’ and ‘Operation Offshore’, and they take us from the mountainous wilds of Chechnya, to the high-finance houses of Switzerland and then along the salubrious corridors of power in various European capitals. And even at one point to the White House. At the close we are in Cabinda, an oil-rich African country that the crime syndicate is aiming to muscle into. Najah is not far behind, ostensibly on their side, playing a double or triple game.

As with a later volume in this series, I was very impressed by the depth of research that has gone into the writing of the story and Jean-Claude Bartoll’s apparent familiarity with this world, or rather these worlds: there are a fascinating variety of milieu on show. Renaud Garreta’s artwork is dynamic and cinematic in that it serves to tell the story. His panels can be savage or tender or humorous; they constantly surprise. There are deft vignettes, yet spectacular action sequences too.

The publisher’s description of Insiders 1: Chechen Guerrilla can be read here.

Little Women

Little Women

By Louisa May Alcott, adapted for the stage by Anne-Marie Casey

HOME, 19 December 2023

Anne-Marie Casey’s effective staging of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel is a delight.

Set against the backdrop of the American Civil War, it tells the story of four sisters: Jo, Amy, Beth and Meg. They, together with their mother and elderly aunt, are the ‘little women’ having to cope and make do on the home front as their big bad men folk are away fighting.

They are sisters, so sometimes squabble and make up, but they are also young women with very different dreams and ambitions. Jo (Rachael McAllister) wants to be a writer, while Amy (Julia Brown) sees herself as a lady of the house. Their lives are not without jeopardy. They encounter poverty and disease and learn that bad things happen to good people.

It is interesting that, for these young Americans, Europe is where it’s at: real culture is there. All of them want to go on a grand tour of the continent. Whereas for Jo’s suitor Prof Bhaer (Tom Richardson) Europe is moribund and America is a land of hope. That’s why he left. Also, as he rightly says, in New York Europe is everywhere present: it is a city of immigrants.

In speaking with Jo, Prof Bhaer becomes angry when he learns that she writes ‘sensationalist fiction’ for a living. Instead, he argues that she should write from the heart. Is this good advice? I have my doubts. Poe, surely a ‘sensationalist’ writer, is still read today whereas many of his worthy contemporaries are forgotten.

Little Women is an engrossing, heart-warming play about a quartet of women who, in a time of war, decide to fight for their dreams. To walk or run you need friction and the world, as ever, supplies it. I got a lot out of this production and enjoyed it very much.

Details of future performances of Little Women can be found here.

RNCM Big Band with Dennis Rollins (trombone)

RNCM Big Band with Dennis Rollins (trombone)

RNCM Theatre, 15 December 2023

Photo by Darren Cowley

A daredevil ride through midnight city streets.

Dennis Rollins on trombone was the star performer at the annual, end of year RNCM Big Band concert and it was his music (for the bulk of the concert anyway) that we heard as well. Throughout there was a virtuoso vibe to the evening’s proceedings, the music bold and daring, so much so that it seemed at times like a daredevil ride through midnight city streets.

During the course of our ride we came to hear each individual instrument, and not only Rollins’s beloved trombone, for pretty much all the musicians got to give solos. From the guitar to the trumpet, the drums to the saxophone, the piano to the clarinet: each musician stood up and took a bow. We got to hear them all, we were able to relish what each instrument could do.

His (Rollins’s) love of music and appreciation of the RNCM Big Band (not least its trombonists: an indication of their quality) was evident and plain for all to see. And certainly mighty thanks were due to the trombonists, the cool spine of the band, with the guitarists and drummers being its ardently beating heart.

We were sat very near to the front of the stage of the theatre here and so were well positioned to see what a tightly knit outfit the the RNCM Big Band have become under Iain Dixon’s stewardship. Altogether, the Big Band were a ferocious presence and they delivered a stylish, thrilling, utterly brilliant concert. Long may it continue.

Details of future concerts at the RNCM can be found here.

The Snow Maiden

The Snow Maiden

Music and libretto by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov

RNCM Theatre, 12 December 2023

There is a profound conundrum at the heart of this really quite tragic opera.

For the Snow Maiden, a young woman in part human and in part winter deity, inspires love in others but apparently cannot feel love. In fact, she fears the power of love. Right from childhood, she has been given a warning: feel love and you will be consumed by its fiery passion. You must dwell in the cold, it has been drummed into her, for only there will you be safe from the molten sun.

Then a day comes, as may well have been inevitable, when she feels the green shoots of longing. A suitor touches her heart and she falteringly reciprocates. She wants to know what love is all about. Retreating into the shadowy cold is no longer an option and so, braving the attendant risks, she steps forth into the warm sunlight.

It is an engrossing opera and the drama and passion of the story were compelling. It reminded me in a way of Wim Wenders’s great film Wings of Desire, but that’s by the by.

The Snow Maiden was wholly unknown to me. That Rimsky-Korsakov was capable of writing an operatic score of this quality, and a thought-provoking libretto too to boot, was surprising, to say the least. The staging was dynamic and inventive, there were some lovely arias throughout, and your attention never flagged for a moment, despite its length. There were four acts, two before the interval and two after, and altogether it lasted perhaps three hours.

At the end you were left with the impression of a magical story that contained a core kernel of truth.

Details of future performance of The Snow Maiden at the RNCM can be found here.

Cinderella

Cinderella

Presented by eight-freestyle and Contact Young Company

Contact, 10 December 2023

Cinderella at Contact. Photo by Shay Rowan

Cinderella, Dancing Queen.

There is a disco, dance-frenzy vibe to this retelling of the classic fairy tale. For here Cinderella, or Princess Ella as she likes to be known, is a girl who loves to dance, just loves to dance, whose dream is to perform at the Royal Ball. The presence of Prince Charming is , it would seem, a mere afterthought. Grand Romance takes a back seat to Career Opportunity.

We get lots of dad jokes (or should that be ‘bro jokes’?) courtesy of Buttons, while the Ugly Sisters provide us with inviting banter and bawdy innuendo (which sailed safely above the heads of the much younger members of the audience: whew). With all pantomimes, audience participation is key and the Manchester crowd played their part, as you would expect. They gave a generous and enthusiastic response, whether by their contrary and contradictory proclamations (‘Oh No, you’re not…’) or cheerful greetings (to Buttons, their old chum) and disdainful boos (it’s those aesthetically- challenged sisters again) or myriad helpful elucidations (‘He’s behind you…’). All in the good old pantomime tradition.

In the end you felt pleased for Cinderella and her Fairy Godmother, who had surely done enough to earn her wings (Yep, we got the odd allusion to It’s a Wonderful Life) but a bit gutted for Buttons, to be honest. Despite all his good intentions, he had lost out to the smarmy Prince.

It was a colourful production, full of mayhem and high jinks, highly entertaining throughout, and big on dance moves. If you want to see Cinderella shaking her thing and making shapes to Abba’s ‘Dancing Queen’, amidst diverse other numbers, then this is the pantomime for you.

Cinderella is at Contact until 31 December. Details of future performances can be found here.

Opera North: Falstaff

Opera North: Falstaff

The Lowry, 15 November 2023

Photo by Richard H. Smith

Human folly, divine laughter.

Verdi’s opera places one of Shakespeare’s most memorable characters, the nobleman Sir John Falstaff, centre-stage. The action is taken from The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry IV (these are the sources for Boito’s libretto also), though we miss out on the emotionally harrowing scenes in Henry IV where the newly crowned king rejects Falstaff, awful scenes where Falstaff becomes a wounded, authentically tragic figure.

Instead we are given comedy and bawdy humour, and quite excellent it all is too. This is Falstaff the corpulent knight as ageing swinger, storming into battle against the fairer sex, his hoary staff (alas!) not quite up to the job. He flounders, sad to relate; he is all over the shop. There is a will but no… well, no way, let’s leave it at that.

That this proved to be a production to be relished was due in no small measure to Henry Waddington’s turn as our bawdy hero and Kate Royal’s stern Mistress Alice Ford: a fierce Mistress indeed, she being determined to humiliate the good knight and bring him to his knees. It is miraculous how Verdi’s score contrives to capture every word and emotion; and how completely it succeeds.

About 10 minutes in, I resolved to view Falstaff as a farce (for it has schemes, seductions, cases of mistaken identity, not to mention an insanely ludic vibe to human nature: we are all players, ladies included) and I am glad I did. Thoroughly entertaining.

Falstaff has a short run at The Lowry. Details of future performances can be found here.

The Testament of William S.

The Testament of William S.

By Yves Sente and André Juillard

Cinebook, 2016

ISBN: 9781849183390

Hostile age, quiet moments.

It is set in the scorching summer of 1958, this Blake and Mortimer adventure, where we have a gang of Teddy boys attacking and robbing people in London parks. They do this, seemingly, to order: their victims are high class, well-to-do people who offer the prospect of rich pickings. Curiously, the Teddy boys are armed with walking canes that have animal heads (a detail that made me think of Clockwork Orange). One night they happen to tangle with Captain Blake, and it is fair to say that matters do not go as smoothly for them as in previous encounters. He is determined to bring them to justice.

Far away in continental Europe, meanwhile, in the fair city of Venice, a curious manuscript has come to light after four centuries. And it bids fair to solve the mystery (if such it be) of who wrote William Shakespeare’s plays. A distinguished academic, well known to Professor Mortimer, is sent over to investigate. The manuscript reignites a long standing feud between Oxfordians, here presented as quite a sinister sect, and Shakespeare loyalists. There is an urgent desire to get hold of the contentious text, whether that be by fair means or foul.

In short order these diverse narrative strands dovetail into one; and our two favourite bachelors, who here happen to share a flat in Park Lane, find themselves facing the same adversary.

This was another highly enjoyable Blake and Mortimer adventure. As I have found before, there is plenty of recondite historical detail (both fact and, frankly, conjecture) and it is put to good use in the story. I note also that there is an air controllers’ strike here, which hampers Mortimer’s progress; he has to travel from London to Venice by train. One can glean a fascination (Anglophile, to be sure) with London and England, an England made strange. Or perhaps we simply are strange in others’ eyes. Anyway, well worth a read.

The publisher’s description of The Testament of William S. can be read here.

Ballet Black: Pioneers

Ballet Black: Pioneers

The Lowry, 31 October 2023

Your glorious, lamp-lit line trailing along a lunar lane.

This show, Ballet Black: Pioneers, was made up of two works. The first, Then or Now, came closest to classical ballet. Here dance was accompanied by music, Daniel Pioro playing his Then or Now – variations on a theme by Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, and poetry, with some lines taken from Adrienne Rich’s work. The words spoke of a time ‘when You and We were reduced to I’; and you got a sense of a midnight journey, an existential struggle, that may for the moment have been paused, but that must soon be resumed.

Midway through I spied a bare tree, branches outstretched, part of a starkly evocative set; and it made me think of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama.

As for the second piece, Nina: By Whatever Means, it was a sort of narrative ballet, centred on the life of Nina Simone. She had a hard life, with many knocks and pushbacks. Her dream of becoming a concert pianist faded when she was rejected by the classical music establishment, so she turned to blues and jazz. In time, she became a prominent figure in the civil rights movement.

For the most part it was joyful and celebratory, though there was one intense sequence which conveyed her years of physical abuse at the hands of her second husband. It was powerful, this, as we saw Nina being struck repeatedly by this man, and responding in kind. In the row in front of me, I saw a mother glancing anxiously toward her daughter in an adjoining seat as it was going on. For several excruciating moments, it seemed that it would never end.

I was very much taken with this show, felt moved by it, was impressed by these two substantial works. It evoked much. There are gestures, movements, sights, emotions that are with me still.

Ballet Black: Pioneers is at The Lowry until 2 November. Details of future performances can be found here.

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

By William Shakespeare

Royal Exchange Theatre, 30 October 2023

Romeo (Conor Glean) and Juliet (Shalisha James-Davis). Credit: Johan Persson

Writhing reward, happy pittance.

I was very much taken with this really quite tremendous production of Shakespeare’s great play. What does it achieve, above all? Well, Romeo and Juliet has always been a play that combines amour and enmity in equal measure. This production really allows you to see that. There is romance but violence too.

Here Conor Glean took the part of Romeo and Shalisha James-Davis that of Juliet, and each brought something special to the role. This Romeo was a poet and lover, yes, yet he was also seemed somewhat fickle in his affections. There was a fragility to him. And he could be a callous killer when the situation warranted it. As for Juliet, she was a child of joy, wholly consumed by love, absolutely fearless in her affections and therefore oblivious to danger. If love so strong can be infectious, Romeo could not fail to succumb. And if he did, he was a goner.

Amidst the courting, there were prodigious street fighting scenes, the two feuding families battling with knife and sword and axe.

One supporting role that almost stole the show was Mercutio, played by David Judge. At the interval my companion remarked that she was sad that Mercutio had died, because we would see the astounding actor that played him no more (in fact he appeared briefly in the second half in another role). She had a point. Judge’s Mercutio was fierce, lively, witty, rude, malicious, bursting with vitality. In fact, very much like the production as a whole.

Romeo and Juliet is showing at the Royal Exchange until 18 November, further details here.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Directed by Robert Wiene

Germany, 1920

RNCM Concert Hall, 25 October 2023

Painted light, angular sets, dread and trepidation.

Altogether, it was a highly agreeable evening, attending a big screen showing of Robert Wiene’s wild and wonderful The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), with live organ accompaniment courtesy of Darius Battiwalla.

Some later directors stole or, if you want to be kind, borrowed piecemeal from the film, using its style to depict drug trips (The Big Lebowski) or dream sequences (Spellbound) or flights of paranoia (Dr. Strangelove). For other directors, the film has been central and integral to their work, even if they have not purloined from it directly.

By using painted light and acutely angular sets, Wiene created his own world: a lesson not lost on Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger or, some time later, Tim Burton (his approach in Sleepy Hollow is Robert Wiene writ large). It is filmmakers such as these that have truly learnt the lesson of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari holds ones attention still, not least because of a stupendous turn by the colossal Conrad Veidt. That such an accomplished work of cinema should have come out of Germany immediately after the Great War is remarkable. But that it took the peculiar form it did (it is a film saturated with fear, horror, uncertainty and trepidation), considering the historical circumstances in which it was made, is perhaps less so.

Darius Battiwalla’s organ playing provided the perfect accompaniment to the film.

Outlaws 1: The Cartel of the Peaks

Outlaws 1: The Cartel of the Peaks

By Sylvain Runberg and Eric Chabbert

Cinebook, 2023

ISBN: 9781800441040

Illegal aliens, foreign criminals, not so gentle police.

When this very first volume opens, we are on a spacehip bound for the planet Drenn. In the cargohold there are a group of aliens huddled together, including a human girl. They are a desperate bunch, fleeing difficult circumstances, on the way to being trafficked onto the planet.

Once on Drenn, the aliens are put to work by the criminal gang that has smuggled them in (the gang is called the Cartel of the Peaks). It is perilous work the aliens are forced to undertake, and most won’t survive it.

From the looks of it, this is a promising new series. Eric Chabbert’s intricate, Piranesi-like artwork makes a vivid impression. There is a strong sense of there being a world, or rather a galaxy and even a universe, beyond the mileau in which the action takes place. And we know, for example, that there are a confederation of planets, e+with Earth being but one of them.

Also, you cannot escape the suspicion that Sylvain Runberg’s story is, in part, political allegory, an allusion to the EU and its dysfunctional policies with respect to migrants arriving in Europe from Libya and elsewhere. This is definitely a series to watch.

The publisher’s description of Outlaws 1: The Cartel of the Peaks can be read here.

Richard Goode

Richard Goode

RNCM Concert Hall, 10 October 2023

Photo by Steve Riskind

Clear path, deep thickets.

Here Richard Goode played Bach then Chopin then Fauré.

It was an excellent concert, one of those no-frills, high quality affairs that are so characteristic of the RNCM. There was an austere purity on display, Goode’s performance possessing having an ethereal, lucid quality. He was there, or so it seemed, simply to serve the music, to let the beauty and spirit of each work shine through.

For an encore we heard another Chopin, an extra one. So, overall, a generous helping.

It was a memorable concert indeed.

Details of future concerts at the RNCM can be found here.

The U Ray

Before Blake & Mortimer: The U Ray

By By Edgar P. Jacobs

Cinebook, 2023

ISBN: 9781800441057

Minute crossing, eternal abyss.

Apparently this is the first English version of Edgar P. Jacobs’s The U Ray, which originally came out in 1943. I was surprised to discover that fact, for it is a graphic adventure of great charm. It has a lovely Saturday matinee quality all its own.

The story concerns a competition between two nations, Austradia and Norlandia, to find Uradium, a substance needed to power a new fangled weapon called the U Ray. Norlandia (the good guys, it would seem) have located deposits of Uradium in a far-off volcano called Urakowa. Austradia learn of this discovery and, when an expedition is sent to Urakowa, they decide to sabotage it.

As a result, Norlandia’s aircraft crashes into a land where there are immense forests and mountains, dragons and prehistoric beasts of various kinds (dinosaurs, a sabre-toothed tiger, a giant snake). Not to mention extreme weather, hurricanes and the like. The expedition team, led by Lord Calder, must make their way through treacherous terrain toward the mighty volcano. Along the way, they encounter ape-men and an ancient people who seem Mayan or maybe Egyptian.

What you find, as you read The U Ray, is that it creates a world that you can immerse yourself in, despite its vintage. It is about 80 years old, a venerable age, yet still going strong. I would add, also, that Jacobs was clearly a film fan. He has obviously taken a lot from The Lost World (1925), notably the dinosaurs and the terrain and even the jungle canyon rope bridge. There is a panel on page 34 which evokes the famous scene from Nosferatu (1922) of the vampire’s shadow ascending a wall, claws outstretched. And the ancient civilisation that the Europeans encounter has statues that remind one of Metropolis (1927). All good stuff.

Edgar P. Jacobs wrote and published his story as World War Two was ongoing. As it draws to a close, there is a warning that Uradium can be used for good or ill; and here The U Ray feels prescient. For the atom bomb was also being developed at that time and would be used a few short years later.

The publisher’s description of The U Ray can be read here.

In Search of Gil-Scott Heron

In Search of Gil-Scott Heron

The Godfather of Rap

By Thomas Mauceri and Seb Piquet

Titan Comics, 2023

ISBN: 9781787740235

Payback time.

It begins in 2010, though soon enough we are in 2011. Thomas Mauceri recounts how in the spring of that year he swiftly flew to New York to meet up with his hero Gil Scott-Heron. He was compelled by a sense of urgency. Previously they had only written to each other and spoken briefly on the telephone. He is looking forward to the meeting intently.

Alas, the meeting never happens. Instead Mauceri finds out about Gil Scott-Heron’s sudden death shortly after his arrival. This was in May 2011.

Mauceri decides to stay on in the city for a while nonetheless and attends a wake where he meets many of Gil’s friends. And he goes to the funeral service held at Riverside Church in Harlem, where he sees Kanye West pay a tribute to his fallen hero.

There are two stories (at least two) here, two distinct narrative strands. On the one hand, Mauceri tells us something about his own life, about how he went to the USA in 2000 to study film, and was there during the period of 9/11 and it’s immediate aftermath. The decision to invade Iraq, all of that, told. This was a period of political awakening for Mauceri, and it was around this time that he first discovered Gil Scott-Heron as poet and musician. Somehow the poet’s vision of America struck him as true. Scott-Heron’s depiction of the African-American experience informed his own understanding of the country. (I should add that Thomas Mauceri is a French writer and filmmaker and also black.) All the way up to the election of Barack Obama in 2007 and Trump in 2016, events Mauceri reported on at the time, he draws on Scott-Heron as guide and analyst.

The main story here, mind, belongs to Gil Scott-Heron himself. We learn of how his career began, and of his collaboration with the pianist Brian Jackson, whose words (from an interview with Mauceri) are astutely incorporated into the narrative. Whilst there is no getting away from the events in Gil’s private life, not least his difficulty with drugs and alcohol, the greatest prominence, quite rightly, is given over to his astonishing art. In this graphic novel (or graphic memoir or biography, to be precise) there are full page panels devoted to key Gil Scott-Heron songs such as ‘The Revolution will not be Televised’ (1970), ‘The Bottle’ (1974) and ‘I’ll Take Care of You’ (2010). Seb Piquet’s artwork, always splendid, really comes into its own here.

At the end of the memoir, by the way, there is a full annotated discography of all of Gil Scott-Heron’s albums, from his first, ‘Small Talk at 125th and Lenox’, released in 1970, to the final undertaking, ‘I’m New Here’, which came out in 2010, a year before his death.

All told, In Search of Gil-Scott Heron is a splendid package, a solid, hardback volume that has the look and feel of an old fashioned annual and which works as the story of a young man’s political awakening, a tribute to Gil Scott-Heron and an introduction to his work for those unfamiliar with it. It is a labour of love. Thomas Mauceri is well able to convey the quality and texture and colour of Gil Scott-Heron’s work, what it means to him and why you might want to get into it too. Gil was a bluesman as much as a poet. He suffered doubly.

The publisher’s description of In Search of Gil-Scott Heron can be read here.

Dragons

Dragons

Choreography by Eun-Me Ahn

The Lowry, 26 September 2023

Here be dragons.

On stage Eun-Me Ahn joined her eight young dancers for an expressive show that mixed modern, hip-hop and traditional Korean dance styles. The accompanying music was melodic but predominantly percussive. It began slow then it cracked on and really got going.

There was animation and special effects, conveying woods and mountains and lakes, places where dragons might dwell. As for the lighting, it was often used to spotlight each dancer in turn.

You got a sense of the dragon as a titular creature, one that is different for each person. We all encounter dragons in our lives and the dragon you happen to confront is as individual as your soul. Probably it is the dragon you need at that particular moment.

Dragons is showing at The Lowry for just one more night only, details of which can be found here.

Austria Behind the Mask

Austria Behind the Mask

Politics of a Nation since 1945

By Paul Lendvai

Hurst, 2023

ISBN: 9781805260592

Austria ist anders.

In this fascinating and informative book Paul Lendvai takes a long, hard look at the politics of Austria, a country that he has come to love. And with that love, as always, comes fear for the future. Lendvai came to Austria in 1957 as a Hungarian refugee, attaining Austrian citizenship in 1959, and has been reporting on the political scene there ever since. He knows (and knew) the main political actors, has spoken to and interviewed them many times. This is therefore as close and true and deep an account as you are likely to read. It tells you how Austria got to where it is now. It tells you where the bodies are buried.

We learn, for example, that it was Bruno Kreisky, leader of the SPO (the Austrian Social Democrats), who first went into government with the far right FPO (the Freedom Party of Austria) in 1970. Nowadays, this would be like Germany’s social democrats going into government with the AfD; and that is quite unthinkable. But, actually, the situation in Austria was even more extraordinary. Because Kreisky was Jewish and many of the FPO were actual ex-Nazis (an accusation of ‘Nazi’ wasn’t simply a slur in this context), their supporters being sympathetic to, not merely apologetic towards, the Nazi past. Indeed, Friedrich Peter, for long a Chairman of the FPO and one of Kreisky’s colleagues in government, had served in a SS Brigade which had committed many war crimes. While Kreisky was a wildly successful politician in his own day (under his leadership the SPO achieved five election victories, back-to-back) and by all accounts a remarkable man (as shown by the fact that he was a Jew who was forgiving or reconciliatory toward ex-Nazis), his decision had major repercussions. By bringing the FPO into government, he made voting for them acceptable, even respectable. At the moment in Austria, the FPO are resurgent, whereas the SPO, Kreisky’s beloved party, are in the doldrums.

Lendvai’s overarching approach in the book is to examine the difficulties arising from Austria’s past history before 1945 – the fallout from the collapse of the Dual Monarchy in 1918 and the defeat of Greater Germany (of which Austria was a part) in the Second World War – before turning his gaze towards the Second Republic, formed in 1955. He looks mainly at the history of the three main political parties: the SPO, the OVP (the Austrian People’s Party) and the FPO. A later chapter covers the emergence of the Greens, though there is scant mention of the NEOS (the Austrian Liberal Party).

That Austria got off lightly after World War Two is due in large part to Karl Renner and his peddling of what has become known as ‘the victim myth’, the claim that Austria was a ‘victim without complicity’ when it came to Nazi war crimes. In this, though, it has to be said that Renner had the full support of Western allies; they did not want to see Austria rent asunder as happened with Germany. But ‘the victim myth’ had at least one perilous consequence: it allowed the new republic to evade responsibility to its Jewish citizens, many of them exiles and emigrants who wished to return to the country. Property was stolen and was not, has still not been, returned. Justice has been denied. In time, the claim of victimhood and innocence has been abandoned; it was simply untenable. Austria now acknowledges its role and involvement in Nazi crimes, and the creation of the Shoah Wall of Names in Vienna’s Ostarrichipark, which was opened in November 2021, marks a milestone along this path, a ‘road into the open’. Though it has to be said that substantive action, even now, is often lacking.

At one point in the book there is a level headed discussion of the infamous case of Kurt Waldheim, once Austrian President. Lendvai concludes that he was not guilty of war crimes, as some assume to this day, but that he likely did feign ignorance of certain wartime atrocities, which he must surely have known about.

What does Lendvai’s book tell us about Austria today? Despite Putin’s war in Ukraine, Austrian politicians are by and large content for the country to remain neutral – unlike as in Sweden and Finland, say – and the country’s citizens seem to support this. Neutrality has become part of Austrian identity, apparently. There is a dependence on Russian gas still, and quite a few Austrian businessmen, politicians and ex-politicians are close to Putin and his oligarchs. Corruption is a serious problem, and even Sebastian Kurz, the recent ex-Chancellor, is under investigation. (Indeed, I read in an Austrian newspaper in the summer that an anti-corruption czar was under investigation for corruption.) The ascendancy of the FPO and the adoption of right wing policies and ideas by other parties, notably the OVP, is troubling. Austria is by no means an authoritarian regime, much less a kleptocracy, but no one can deny that these sorts of tendencies and tensions are present.

Lendvai is right to be proud of how far Austria has come, but he is right also to fear for the country he loves. If you want a sound grounding in modern Austrian politics, this book is the best place to start.

The publisher’s description of Austria Behind the Mask can be read here.

The Fortune of the Winczlavs 1: Vanko, 1848

The Fortune of the Winczlavs 1: Vanko, 1848

By Jean Van Hamme and Philippe Berthet

Cinebook, 2022

ISBN: 9781800440609

An epic comingling of human fates.

There is a wonderful historical sweep to this fine graphic yarn, which is the first of a trilogy, I believe.

Vanko Winczlav, a Serb hailing from Montenegro, is inspired by the Revolutionary Spring of 1848 to rise up and fight. He fights against Ottoman oppression but, when things go awry, finds himself fighting for his life. He is forced to flee, first from his own country and then from the European continent altogether.

On arriving in New York, Vanko attempts to revive his medical career but, although a fine doctor, it comes at a cost and involves awful compromise. Scandal and intrigue and rejection lie in store for him.

Adventures lie in wait also for Vanko’s two sons, Sandor and Milan. When they head out West the two young men come across Native American tribes and encounter predatory Robber Barons. It is not exactly Blood Meridian (the two men live on a more elevated plain than a ragbag bunch of scalp hunters), but for Sandor it comes close. He meets a grisly end.

This is a comic, or a graphic novel, and so the history is to some extent simplified and made bold and plain. Yet the way it ranges across continents and decades is most impressive. And nor are you ever allowed to doubt that this is a human story, but not just the story of one person’s lfe. Instead, it is an account of a family, of human fates, a comingling of people’s lives.

At certain moments the artwork is absolutly mesmerising and beckoning. These are landscapes you would like to traverse, worlds you want to live in.

The publisher’s description of The Fortune of the Winczlavs 1: Vanko, 1848 can be read here.

The Chuckling Whatsit

The Chuckling Whatsit

By Richard Sala

Fantagraphics, 2023

ISBN: 9781683966975

It bleeds black.

Richard Sala’s Gothic extravaganza was first serialised in the seminal comics anthology Zero Zero over a period of about three years, from 1995 to 1997. Fantagraphics’ gorgeous hardback edition brings his elaborate fantasy together at last, the convoluted, labyrinthine yarn being spread over 17 densely imagined chapters, so that it can be seen and appreciated in all its murky, Expressionistic glory.

The story begins when a physician, a certain Doctor Vogardus, whose motto might be: ‘do harm if you can get away with it’, calls upon a former patient of his, Emile Jarnac, and finds him dead. Apparently he has just committed suicide. Jarnac had been a loner and an oddball, but after his death he acquires a reputation as an outsider artist, noted for creating miniature dolls, including one in particular (long gone missing) called a chuckling whatsit.

As the years pass, many tears fall, and interest in Jarnac’s work grows, from art historians and collectors, journalists, dabblers in the unusual and occult. Why the latter? Well, it is discovered that his dolls are made from human hair, skin and flesh. And the chuckling whatsit acquires a notorious status. How was that made? There is also a serial killer on the loose, dubbed the Gull Street Ghoul by the tabloids, who has an acute antipathy towards astrologists for some reason. And it seems that he has a connection with Jarnac as well. Are they, in fact, one and the same? Supernatural shenanigans proliferate, as do shenanigans of the more prosaic kind.

It is a topsy-turvy tale, all told, with Sala’s atmospheric artwork creating a world of constant, claustrophobic menace. We have Crow’s Creek, an isolated coastal town sitting on the edge of a cliff, and an anonymous city with jumbled, well lived-in streets, the houses too close together for comfort, existence somehow precarious, not to say perilous. Mind, it is also a city with certain forbidden spaces, secret fountains and fields unknown to the diligent worker minions, redolent with tenebrous dangers. In this world there are grotesque men, disfigured and scarred by experience, and beautiful, deadly females, often wearing exotic garb and a patch or face mask over the eye. Perhaps Broom, an investigative reporter, comes closest to being the good guy here; but he is altogether too laid-back and is quickly overwhelmed by this world and the people in it. He only seems resilient; pretty soon he is exposed as naive and out of his depth. Love comes in the form of a deranged romance, and it is not a pretty sight. Elsewhere, someone asks: ‘Have there ever been limits to evil?’ Answer came there none.

At one point, in an interview somewhere, Sala said he wrote The Chuckling Whatsit as a schlocky horror yarn, no more than that, when he began; but that in writing it he somehow came to know himself better. And, indeed, one can sense a psychodynamic element, a forceful meaning, behind the story. Obsession is a driving force for many of these characters. Also, they often have recourse to violence and cruelty. Maybe they are necessary weapons in a world such as this? At any rate, the innocent soon become victims.

This is a compelling morsel of graphic horror. It bleeds black.

The publisher’s description of The Chuckling Whatsit can be read here.

Neptune: Episode 1

Neptune: Episode 1

By Leo

Cinebook, 2023

ISBN: 9781800440913

An intriguing galactic adventure.

At the start of this futuristic epic a spaceship is seen to approach earth and rest just outside its orbit.

In due course contact is made, but these messages elicit no response. The spaceship is deemed, therefore, to pose a possible threat to life on earth. A UN team is hastily scambled- including Marie, a new recruit – and is sent to investigate. Once inside the ship, the team find that two crew members, apparently human, are dead.

So begins this meticulously imagined galactic adventure, set some two centuries into the future. We encounter a planet called Belelgeuse populated by lovable creatures called Ium; and a strange people called the Tsalterians. It is a richly conceived universe.

Matters hot up when the mothership of the aforementioned interloping spaceship is spotted elsewhere in the solar system, moored off Neptune. This is found to contain a sort of eco-system, virtually a portable planet, where there are forests and rivers and where humans and robots live. At first a full crew go in, but this time they come up against resistance. Their failure to enter means that Marie and her partner Kim are given the task of going in alone.

I was alternately perplexed, intrigued, then hopelessly immersed in this slow burning science-fiction drama. By the close I was pining for the next episode.

The publisher’s description of Neptune: Episode 1 can be read here.

All right. Good night.

All right. Good night.

By Helgard Haug

Music by Barbara Morgenstern

Rimini Protokoll

HOME, 6 July 2023

A formidable feat of theatre.

You are presented with two intertwined narratives. First, there is one concerning the disappearance of an aircraft (Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370) with about 300 people on board, a plane that had seemingly vanished off the face of the earth. Second, there is an account of a man with a strong and definite, even defiant personality entering old age, leading to a gradual loss of power and eventual loss of self.

With one you have an extraordinary tragedy that begins in puzzlement and ends with some kind of resolution, if not meaningful answers. While the other gives you an increasingly commonplace predicament, though one that is painful and perplexing for all those involved.

As I have said, the narratives are intertwined, one with the other, and presented as text projected from the stage. It is a bit like reading messages in an app, actually. The events that are related are not acted, or acted out, instead five musicians perform Barbara Morgenstern’s elaborate score on stage. The music in a sense punctuates Helgard Haug’s text. Indeed, All right. Good night. is more like a concert than a conventional play.

At about two hours and twenty minutes (no interval!) it makes solid and substantial demands on the audience; and I must confess that, on more than one occasion, I closed my eyes because the text was distracting me from the music – and that’s what I really wanted to hear. Indeed, it would be highly rewarding in my view to hear Morgenstern’s score on its own.

In its attempt to make sense of loss and uncertainty, and the tangled vagaries of fate, I found this intricate work to be salutary rather than comforting. It’s an elegy clean and clear that yet fails to console. Europe, it seems, is all out of myths; and shoring up fragments and ruins will not do any more. Rilke’s Angels have vanished along with the lost aeroplane and an old man’s soul.

Nonetheless, it is clear that All right. Good night. is a formidable feat of theatre.

Further details about All right. Good night. can be found here.

Details about future theatre at HOME can be found here.

Eight Hours in Berlin

Eight Hours in Berlin

By José-Louis Bocquet, Jean-Luc Fromental and Antoine Aubin

Cinebook, 2022

ISBN: 9781800440852

Set in 1963, this vigorous Cold War adventure has a curious Old World flavour.

It features two intrepid Britons, Professor Mortimer and Captain Blake, characters conceived by Edgar P Jacobs, a comic creator notable for having worked with the great Herge. Together, they bestride the world.

Professor Mortimer is called to the Urals, where an archaeological dig has unearthed several corpses in suspicious circumstances. His investigations lead him to a secluded mountain spa. While Captain Blake, a bigwig in British counter-intelligence, travels to Switzerland, then is wanted in Berlin urgently. Matters are kicking off in the East of the city, just on the eve of a visit by the American president.

Steadily, the paths of our two heroes cohere and coalesce; it seems that they are pursuing the same culprit. There is a mad scientist (he’s a bit kooky, anyway) in the mix and what is at stake is a dastardly plan involving brainwashing (a modish fear in the 1950s and 1960s, just think of The Ipcress File) and the seizure of the reins of American power.

While an engaging yarn overall it yet has a subtle anti-American strand. For here Americans are seen as interlopers on the European continent, vulgar, none-too-bright blunderbusses, rather than as representatives of a formidable military power that’s the guarantor of Europe’s security. By contrast, Professor Mortimer and Captain Blake, though denizens of a faded imperial power, are calm, collected and very capable. When the American Secret Service flounders, it is Mortimer and Blake, who step in to save the day.

The publisher’s description of Eight Hours in Berlin can be read here.

RSC: Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar

By William Shakespeare

The Lowry, 20 June 2023

Thalissa Teixeira as Brutus in Julius Caesar. Photo by Marc Brenner © RSC

Kill the tyrant.

It begins with the whole cast baying like wolves before the moon. We see a volatile people prone to violence. There is a martial dance. What was human is lost. Then we are away.

Atri Banerjee’s rendering of Shakespeare’s most violent play is fast paced and compelling, but not without moments of reflection and humour. The highly accomplished cast, notably Annabel Baldwin as Cassius, Thalissa Teixeira as Brutus, William Robinson as Mark Antony and Nigel Barrett as Julius Caesar, are on top form here. And the language, as ever, rouses and stirs the passions.

While an historical drama, Julius Caesar is a remarkably prescient play, even as regards English history. Suffice it to note that in the 1650s, following victory in the English civil wars, Oliver Cromwell twice refused the crown before the Restoration. I suppose the reason for the play’s enduring relevance is human nature and human folly. We learn that an attempt to stop tyranny yet results in more of the same. Who’d have thought?

There is political confusion and uncertainty at the start but Julius Caesar is very quickly seen as a tyrant (or would be tyrant) who must be killed. He is a popular leader, well able to orchestrate the passions of a mob, and this is disconcerting to his fellow elites. Cassius enlists Brutus’s help in his planned assassination, to give the killing a veneer of legitimacy. Brutus acts out of a regard for the common good, in the hope that peace, freedom and liberty will arise out of murder.

Of course it doesn’t quite work out that way.

I was very much taken with this enthralling RSC production, which brought the play to life in all its raging, ragged glory. Your sympathies constantly shift, at one moment you’re rooting for Mark Antony, next you’re on Cassius’s side. Maybe Brutus eventually edges it in the sympathy stakes, but it is a close run thing.

Julius Caesar is showing at The Lowry until 24 June, details of future performances can be found here.

Opera North: The Pearl Fishers

Opera North: The Pearl Fishers

Music by Georges Bizet

The Bridgewater Hall, 8 June 2023

The Pearl Fishers at the Bridgewater Hall. Photo by Charlotte Wellings

Diving for pearls.

Here you get Bizet’s great opera The Pearl Fishers but this time presented as a concert. The orchestra takes up most of the stage, rather being sat in the pit, while the choir sits above and behind them. Our principal singers, the actors in the drama, enter and exit as required. They stand or sit before the orchestra.

Though some of the spectacle is lost, there are substantial gains. Chiefly, Bizet’s wildly swirling, vertiginous score is given star billing. There are waves upon waves of spiralling emotion, engulfing the listener as the tale takes hold. It is, at the start, a love triangle: Zurga (Quirijn de Lang) and Nadir (Nico Darmanin) both love Léïla (Sophia Theodorides). But then it becomes the trial of one man’s conscience and soul: Nadir and Léïla love each other, will Zurga grant them happiness or scupper it? He holds their fate in his hands.

It is a satisfying opera and perhaps even more powerful because of the spare, Spartan presentation. In particular, Nadir’s aria in the first half was absolutely gorgeous. There is such a strange, exotic melody at work and the deep emotion of the song (it is all about listening to your beloved in a forest at night) was beautifully expessed. Nico Darmanin delivesrs an absolutely riveting performance.

Details of future performances of Opera North’s production of The Pearl Fishers can be found here.

The Talent

The Talent

Action Hero, in collaboration with Deborah Pearson

HOME, 1 June 2023

Deborah Pearson in The Talent. Photo by Ana Viotti

Beta testing the apocalypse.

There is a woman in a sound booth. She seems to be a kind of voiceover artist, maybe a radio actor. At the behest of two others, a man and a woman who call in, she will voice advertisements (for a breakfast cereal, a high performance car), or act out a character (say a cartoon beaver, crying), or an action (at one point she is asked to die many different deaths).

We never see the callers, only hear their voices. They will allude once or twice to the world outside and an unspecified cataclysmic event that they are living through. It could be a (or the) pandemic, a nuclear winter, environmental collapse, maybe even a world-wide coup staged by rogue, super-smart AI. Anyway it seems that we are in a near-future dystopia, beta testing the apocalypse, a world where the best might not be enough.

Unlike the callers, the woman that we see (played by Deborah Pearson, who is absolutely brilliant here) never appears to reflect upon her situation. You feel that she is never really herself. She is, quite literally, an actor. And that leads you to suspect that she might not be human at all. Perhaps she is an automaton, an AI artefact in dire need of an update in a world gone awry, spooling out redundant output as chaos assumes monstrous guise.

The Talent is a compelling work of theatre, always engaging and, ultimately, enigmatic. What brings it all together is Deborah Pearson’s virtuoso performance. Her voice is a precious instrument that is seemingly capable of expressing anything. An astonishing play that is somehow able, miraculously, to conjure multitudes, it will live long in the mind.

Further details about The Talent can be found here.

Details about future theatre at HOME can be found here.

Gun Honey, Volume 2: Blood for Blood

Gun Honey, Volume 2: Blood for Blood

Written by Charles Ardai

Artwork by Ang Hor Kheng

Titan Comics, 2023

ISBN: 9781787739048

Blood for Blood indeed.

The second volume of Gun Honey sees Joanna Tan go up against a formidable female assassin in Filippa Sterling. She is a woman hell-bent on revenge: determined to kill the drug dealers that caused the death of her parents, determined, also, to avenge the death of the person who took their place, Lydia Morse, her mentor and virtual guardian. And since Tan had a hand in the latter killing, Sterling sets her sights on her. Blood, precious blood, will be spilt.

It is an intricate tale of intrigue and violence that ranges across America before journeying forth to Europe, touching down in Italy and Monaco. Somehow, you do feel for Filippa Sterling. She is a monster, yes, but one made by circumstances. There are compelling reasons why she acts as ruthlessly as she does. As Auden put it, ‘Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return.’ In Filippa’s favour, you have to concede that at least her violence is focussed.

At the end, Brook has left the clandestine government organisation of which he was a part and he, together with Joanna, is on the run. He is now an outlaw too.

I greatly enjoyed the melding of Charles Ardai’s neo-noir yarn with Ang Hor Kheng’s marvellous artwork. Here you can expect to see underwater fighting sequences, elaborate pursuits through city streets at night, explosive car chases, fiery gun fights and lengthy detailed interrogations in darkened rooms with a single light bulb. And there is, quite unexpectedly, a lovely rendering of the Duomo in Milan.

Gun Honey, Volume 2: Blood for Blood hits the target. Time to chalk up another bulls eye.

The publisher’s description of Gun Honey, Volume 2: Blood for Blood can be read here.

Halle Orchestra: Beethoven’s Triple Concerto

Halle Orchestra: Beethoven’s Triple Concerto

The Bridgewater Hall, 19 May 2023

Hyeyoon Park. Photo by Andrej Grilc

A magnificent evening’s entertainment.

Hyeyoon Park played violin here, stepping in to replace Nicola Benedetti, who could not make it due to illness. She showed a wonderful freedom and was absolutely splendid.

The first work was Sibelius’s Karelia Suite. All three movements were excellent, with the final Alla Marcia being especially uplifting. Hazily romantic, grandly hopeful, irrepressibly optimistic.

Then we came to Beethoven’s Triple Concerto for Violin, Cello and Piano, where Hyeyoon Park played alongside Sheku Kanneh-Mason (cello) and Benjamin Grosvenor (piano). Astoundingly brilliant, this one: the trio of young virtuosi and the Halle itself, conducted by Dalia Stasevska, delivered in spades. It was Beethoven at his peak, as complex as the universe and as unnerving.

Although the Bridgewater Hall is a fine music venue (it has excellent acoustics), the catering is variable. During the interval we had ice-cream and I plumbed for vanilla, rather than such flavours as strawberry cheesecake or chocolate fudge. At one time the Bridgewater provided wonderful dairy ice-cream from a Cheshire farm; now they depend on Tom and Jerry (correction: Ben and Jerry’s).

In the second half we heard Andrea Tarrodi’s Paradisfaglar (Birds of Paradise) and Sibelius’s Symphony No.7. The two works followed each other without pause, it was quite literally seamless, and this made for a strange end to the concert. Mind, the symphony is quite strange in itself, consisting as it does of just a single movement. And it is also quite short, maybe half an hour tops.

All in all, a magnificent evening’s entertainment.

Details of future Halle concerts can be found here.

Lonesome 3: The Ties of Blood

Lonesome 3: The Ties of Blood

By Yves Swolfs

Cinebook, 2023

ISBN: 9781800440814

A stranger hits town.

There is a lot going on in this erstwhile Western, which sees our mysterious stranger in actual fact head east from Kansas to New York. His actual name is unknown, but here he’s passing himself off as Markham, a man he may have killed previously, or maybe not (at time of writing I’ve not yet read the prior volumes in the series). Once in New York, he encounters something of a culture shock: there is no carrying firearms in the big city streets. But eventually he finds his feet and sets about finding a man named Dawson, apparently a senator.

The year is 1861, the New World is looking pretty tarnished, and social tensions are running high. As we now know, the country stands on the eve of a civil war. Our stranger stumbles across a far-reaching political conspiracy, of which there were likely plenty, and learns something about his roots.

It is an action packed story, featuring punch-ups and shoot-outs and the protracted police siege of a country mansion where Dawson and his fellow conspirators are ensconced.

It is an action packed story, featuring punch-ups and shoot-outs and the protracted police siege of a country mansion where Dawson and his fellow conspirators are ensconced. Intrigue and espionage are everywhere but tensions are quelled for now. In the end, our stranger winds up perplexed and confused, but also somewhat enlightened. He may be called Elijab or Elijah. At certain moments in his life, he has made use of some sort of intuition, an antenna that can detect other people’s intentions. Now he is driven to conclude that it likely may have a supernatural, or even a satanic origin (though perhaps his intuition could conceivably be a form of grace, a divine response to an evil threat?). That leads on to other, more pressing questions: who is he? And what is he?

The publisher’s description of Lonesome 3: The Ties of Blood can be read here.

White Riot

White Riot

By Joe Thomas

Arcadia Books, 2023

ISBN: 9781529423372

A poet of the city.

Joe Thomas’s White Riot is a blistering read. As a novel it is fast-paced, panoramic in its sweep of recent history, yet with a vivid sense of place and time. We are in London, specifically Hackney, the author’s hometown, during the years 1978-1983.

Some real people are present (Margaret Thatcher, Paul Weller) and many of the political events and a key crime (at least one) actually occurred, but of course this is fiction, a ferocious reimagining of a mangled, magical country.

As Thatcher gains prominence and power, hate erupts on Britain’s streets and, in its wake, ugly violence. Patrick Noble is a copper looking in to the killing, likely murder, of a Pakistani man by a canal. He is also the lynch pin when it comes to running an undercover operation against the National Front. In addition, there is pushback against the National Front from a left wing anarchist punk group and Noble keep tabs on them too. Not to mention monitoring his own colleagues, for there are quite a few rotten apples in the police’s own ranks, brutal reprisals against black people being not entirely unknown around this time.

Noble is Thomas’s main protagonist, but not the only one, there being an array of characters both reprobate and brave. The prose is as punchy as James Ellroy’s and the plotting intricate and serpentine. What I love about Thomas, though, is that besides being a superb crime writer he is also a poet of the city. Somehow he is able to conjure London’s vanished arcades and once proud facades.

The publisher’s description of White Riot can be read here.