Over on My London Your London, I’ve just put up a review of Speechless, now at the Etctera Theatre in Camden. It is an intensely topical, and intense play, which definitely has its moments.
And do please read it; this has been a jinxed review – various computers and sites managed to swallow it twice, so this is my third, reconstructed, version…
I’ve just put a review up over at My London Your London of the press night for the first production of the new director at the Globe. In summary: If you like charisma, sex appeal and lots of swordplay the first half will satisfy you; if that’s a bit testosterone-drenched for you, the second half will be much better. Margot Leicester is superb as Volumnia – Shakespeare’s pushy mother from hell.
If you are planning to see the exhibition, the very strong advice is book ahead. (You can buy timed tickets – although that does mean a booking fee.) But it seems you are unlikely to get in otherwise. They’ve even had to make a couple of special opening times so that staff can get in. (It continues until June 25, and I am planning a write up soon – after the election…)
My retroblogger Frances Williams Wynn (whose site hasn’t moved) is today commenting on watching Charles Kemble – an elderly Charles Kemble – performing Hamlet.
This site says that by the time Miss Williams Wynn was watching, he had been saved from bankruptcy by his daughter Fanny going on the stage. He was the sister of Sarah Siddons, on whom Miss Williams Wynn has also delivered her verdict.
Some links: Images of Kemble at the National Portrait Gallery; a playbill of a Macbeth production in which he played Malcolm.
Today, of course, Hamlets are getting younger all the time.
There are some interesting characters in 15 Minutes, which has just opened at The Arcola,. Maggie (Moira Brooker) is a veteran television documentary-maker battling to come to terms with the “reality TV” age. Her married (to someone else) boyfriend Robin (Tim Block), is a cynical old Fleet Street hack – a type I recognise all too well. Maggie’s “subject” is Toni (Carly Hillman), a rebellious youngster who after a stretch in Holloway is trying, sort of, to get her life into line, not helped by her angry young man Mason (Ashley Rolfe).
These are familiar – perhaps too familiar – characters, but a combination of solid writing and excellent acting take them beyond the stereotypes. The problem with the play is clear, however, in its title. 15 Minutes refers – the programme explains – to the Andy Warhol quote about fame, something that has gone beyond cliche to the point of joke. The story here is of the exploitative and partial nature of “reality” TV. Yes? And it is about how subjects can sometimes turn the tables and become (for their “managers”) all too active agents. Yes?
These ideas are simply too familiar, too obvious, to make an entirely satisfying evening. The writer, Christine Harmar-Brown, has a real ear for dialogue and an eye for dramatic movement, but she needs to find some bigger themes, bigger ideas, to explore.
That doesn’t mean you won’t have an entertaining evening at the Arcola. The acting is top class, and director Paul Jepson does interesting things with giant television screens that shift uncertainly around the stage. But don’t expect to spend a delicious after-show dinner at the many excellent restaurants around the Arcola fervently arguing the issues it raises. You’ll have said and heard it all before.
The production continues until May 13.
After one brief, disastrous journey (to Bali as a green young Australian, with the sister of my boyfriend, who insisted I do the bargaining for her, then complained about the results), I’ve always travelled alone. Sure there are times when it is tough, but mostly it is wonderful – you talk to waiters, to people on buses, to passing strollers. You get enmeshed in the local world in the way that a couple – that self-contained unit – never do.
If I ever set out on a journey with the specific aim of writing a book, I’ll certainly do the same thing. That intention was only confirmed by reading Frances Mayes’ A Year in the World. The book is subtitled “Journeys of a Passionate Traveller”, yet the only passion she seems to feel is for the husband with whom she travels. As a self-contained unit they sweep (not around the world, as the title misleadingly proclaims), but around the Mediterranean, like a couple cuddling in their living room watching a video.
The result is a book that reads like a school report of “what I did on my holidays”. Well, that’s a little unfair; there is a reasonably sophisticated account of the culture of the destinations – although the sophisticated habit of tossing in local words when English would do perfectly well does become irritating. And it seems every meal, even every instance of window-shopping, is recounted in agonising detail:
“We stop to gaze at a window arranged with trays of candied fruits, gleaming like jewels. The prince perhaps partook of cedro candito, those huge gnarly lemons, almost all peel, as well as the whole candied oranges and lemons, and the array of marzipan fruits, and piles of torrone bianco con fighi secchi, white candy with nuts, and dried figs.”
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