Skylight

jumper envy

I have this uneasy feeling that some people always look stylish. Perhaps this is just a paranoid fantasy from which all twenty-something year old females suffer, but I can’t help but wake up screaming with visions of girls who apply mascara, straighteners or bras for the most trifling of social functions. Even trousers seem a far cry from my preferred outfit: pyjamas at all times (a possible title for my autobiography or epitaph for my tombstone). And, when pyjamas are absolutely socially unacceptable, skinny jeans and a baggy jumper. But it is reassuring, not to mention elating, that I have now witnessed the mother of all comfy jumpers as modelled the other night by actress Carey Mulligan in Sir David Hare’s play Skylight. And whilst she made the voluminous jumper more glamorous than if it had been a Vera Wang wedding dress – a feat that I, in its doppelgänger, seated in Row C of the Hexham Forum Cinema, alas cannot boast – it does at least allow me a review of the latest National Theatre production screenings. Hell of a segue, huh?

On booking the tickets for this show, I cannot stress how little I knew about this play. I hadn’t seen a review and I had avoided all mentions of plot twists. For all I knew it could have been an all-Japanese, ballet, farce set in the wake of an apocalypse caused by an evil god whose cruelty knew no bounds and who had unleashed, for reasons known only to himself, a plague of man-eating gerbils. The only thing I knew – other than the baffling and, ironically, unenlightening title, Skylight – was the cast list. But that was more than a recommendation. The words ‘Bill Nighy’ followed by the words ‘Carey Mulligan’ sent me into a fit of gleeful excitement, and I would have paid double the cinema ticket (yes, that’s right ladies and gentlemen, a whole £22) to see them read the Encyclopaedia Britannica, dance the tarantella, or eat cheese. I was, if anything, slightly disappointed when, on popping to the loo before the play began – a treat afforded me because there was, for peculiar reasons, a woman sitting in my seat when I arrived, who had to be removed by the relevant authorities – I was diverted from the tedium of loo-going by reading the handily placed synopsis on the back of the cubicle door, and learned that it was not the Simon Pegg inspired rodent debacle that I had conjectured. I shall give you a brief and largely unhelpful summary. Basically, it’s one of those two-people-in-one-room, set-in-real-time sort of fandangos that sounds intrinsically self-righteous (which it is) and extremely dull (which, mercifully, it isn’t). Kyra – Queen of the pixie cut, Carey Mulligan – is an impoverished, do-gooding, teacher in the East End (think Slumdog Millionaire but with snow) living in a London flat with little more than a red scarf and some onions for company, when she is unexpectedly visited by three ghosts… No wait. That’s Muppet’s Christmas Carol. Or, if you prefer, Dickens’ Christmas Carol. Thirty year old Kyra is visited by two people. First by 18 year old Edward, who brings her some rap music, sulks about the death of his mother and his insufferable father, and then the two of them cosily discuss the joys of going out for breakfast. Edward then pootles off, and said-father Tom completely coincidentally drops by, played by none other than squid face, Bill Nighy. And so it begins. The play is a clash of political ideals, and Tom is Thatcher to Kyra’s Blair: a rich, greedy, entrepreneur restauranteur and recent widower, who just happens to be her ex-employer and ex-lover. Although their real life 35 year age gap is perhaps a touch Operation Yewtree. The story of their affair and the future of their relationship unfolds over a spag bol supper. The begging question is the cliched ‘will they, won’t they’, and the fate of their relationship hangs in the balance, dependent on whether they can successfully reconcile their opposing political beliefs before the pasta goes cold. With me so far? It is also suffice it to say that skylights, whilst they do feature, have a minor part to play in the action and are not recreated in the set by gouging a large hole in the roof of Wyndham’s.

fantastic set

Let me turn quickly, therefore, to the set. Wyndham’s Theatre is utterly enchanting and an absolute privilege to sit in, but the seats are narrower than the average twenty-first century viewer’s buttocks and therefore I was grateful to be reclining in luxury in a modern cinema seat. However, director Stephen Daldry, who directed the enjoyable, smash hit Billy Elliot and then regrettably took a nosedive directing Hare’s own adaptation of The Reader – probably the longest and most boring film about the Holocaust ever made – managed to restore my faith in him here. Although I do question the wisdom of setting Skylight in the 80s, complete with rotary dial phone and brown floral cooking pots, when the play is so obviously a product of the 90s. Aesthetically, it looked sensational and the space worked really well for what he wanted to create. The backdrop of the other flats and the layers of rooms, with a sliding wall to hide the bathroom if necessary, was fluid, easy and natural. It wasn’t fussy, it didn’t get in the way, and it didn’t gently rotate or do anything unnecessary just because it could. Kudos. The entire first half happens whilst Kyra actually makes dinner onstage. Pretentious? Yes, probably, but I loved it. A bit of pretension hurts nobody. And, while what I actually did was wonder how she didn’t cry whilst chopping onions, and whether the sound guys were kicking themselves as the bubbling sauce sounded like a freight train in a windy tunnel, my parents were busy grumbling that she seemed to be cooking a meal for fifty on her tiny pauper’s budget. But it turns out that I’m simply a sucker for a bit of onstage snow. When it happened in Stratford’s Beauty and the Beast, the Comedy Theatre’s La Bête and now at the end of Skylight, it’s all I can do not to applaud with teary and childlike wonder. What can I say? I’m easily amused.

The acting was utterly flawless, which I suppose is easier when there are only three actors, rather than Hamlet or Guys and Dolls where there’s a whole throng of them to forget their lines or overact. But fair’s fair. Even three people have the potential to make a hash of it. But Nighy and Mulligan were faultless in their contrasting and complementary performances. There is momentum, humour and purpose to Nighy’s rambling style; his chaotic descriptions, swearing and gesticulating. His tics and jerks are so incredible, so attuned to the character, that it’s hard – if not impossible – to discover where Tom ends and Nighy begins. How do you make Dupuytren’s Contractures so effortlessly and mesmerisingly part of a character?  His timing and pacing are impeccable, capturing and exacerbating every moment of comedy. His long speeches are broken up with confused fragments about his late wife and the room he built for her, the crumbling of their relationship and the revelation of what happened between him and Kyra. Nighy handles this with aplomb. It is not overly soupy, apologetic or caricatured anger. Tom is a man caught in the confusion of grief and relief: both longing for the past and yet wishing it had played out differently. As more is revealed, it is hard to say whether I felt greater pity for him or began to despise him. And it’s this conflict that he treads so artfully. He is a terrific actor, worthy of any award the powers that be can throw at him. Plus, if all teenage girls want to be BFFs with Jennifer Lawrence, does that mean that Carey Mulligan is going spare? And that I can have her? There is an understated quality and sincerity to Mulligan whose ability knows no bounds. She really listens. Her stillness is entrancing, as she doesn’t overact in the shadows, yet your eye is drawn to her. She is a simply superb actress who, I hope, goes far after this whirlwind of a West End debut. Unlike a whole host of pretty girls I can think of, she doesn’t hide behind her hair – she can’t! And it may be a strange thing to say, but she isn’t afraid of her face. She isn’t frightened of laughing, smiling, crying (on which note, she evidently attended the same school as Tom Hiddleston and is capable of filling the auditorium in a Noah-esque deluge) and all those other emotions that unappealingly scrunch the porcelain features. What I’m saying is that Mulligan is confident enough in her abilities and beauty to look ugly. It’s her greatest gift. Oh, and Matthew Beard as Tom’s son Edward, who I fear will be forgotten and overlooked by critics everywhere. I don’t know whether he was an avid stalker of Bill Nighy before rehearsals kicked off, but to hit every mannerism so completely on the head like that must have taken some work, and possibly night vision goggles and a zoom lens. It’s clever stuff, this acting business.

Yes, if the play had a fault, or anything less than five blazing stars lighting every headline, it was not because of the actors. Sad, and far less fixable, is the truth. The problem with Skylight is the play itself. Like more and more plays I see at the moment it had real second act problems. The first half was quick, witty with a touch of pathos and mystery, and even a bit of sentimentality that didn’t have me (and more astoundingly, my mother) reaching with exaggerated gasps for the sick bucket. But that was it. All the plot and drive and excitement, over and done by the interval, with the result that when we returned, after ice cream and a costume change, it was to an equally long and sanctimonious sermon. We get it David. You’re a Blairite. Duly noted. Now please feel free to say something else. No, really. Don’t hesitate. We get that you think teaching is a worthwhile and under-paid profession. And somewhere through the fifth hour we’ve grasped that you admire public servants. And whilst the live audience in London applauded these over-egged sentiments in a ‘yah boo sucks Mr Cameron’ sort of way – ‘bring back the liberal haven of the 90s and down with the bankers’ – Hare’s writing was about as subtle as a herd of rhinos at afternoon tea in Claridges. It was more broken teacups and irate cucumber sandwiches, than sophisticated satire. Not to mention Hare’s apparently somewhat hazy memory of the 90s. Does anyone else remember the idyll of socialist freedoms under Mr Blair in which bankers were forced to donate their annual bonuses to needy children? No. Me neither. Does the word Iraq mean nothing to you, David? But I digress. To have produced such an intricate, intelligent and tangly first half, it was disappointing for the curtain to rise on a preachy and artless one note samba of a second half. There was no hint of nuance to the argument that takes place between Tom and Kyra. Nor was there any hint that it would ever end. It was just a Groundhog Day snooze-fest of the same obvious points: ‘I’m all damaged and liberal and unvalued by society’ versus ‘I may be a pig, but I’m rich and you’re jealous so stop living in a fairytale’. Let me add that this goes on for a good forty minutes of my life. Forty minutes which I must stress I will never get back. Ever.

On a side issue, may I just ask why directors feel the need to have women take their tops off in the middle of arguments? Culturally ingrained casual sexism is something I value so much over my tub of vanilla ice cream. Still, considering that for the sake of realism we were forced to watch the preparation of actually spaghetti really bolognese earlier, I’m not convinced that women, in the throes of political debate, feel the need to strip down to their bras. Vulnerability is not something people search for when quarreling. I’ve never watched a live international political debate per se, but I’m sure it is not the mainstay of Merkel’s technique. Nor, for that matter, was it Thatcher’s.

And so at last, with a sigh of relief, I turn to the ending. I won’t tell you if there is resolution between Kyra and Tom, what it is (if there is any), and whether at this point we care. But – spoiler alert – Kyra is left alone until Edward comes back, most uncivilised at some ungodly hour of the morning. With breakfast. I think it’s meant to be symbolic. She misses going out for breakfast because it represents Tom, his restaurant and the days when they were a family. But Edward’s too naive to realise that his father and Kyra were having an affair, so to him it’s just… eggs. I can instantly think of better ways to have ended the play, but Hare gives it a cyclical nature that GCSE creative writing students would beam upon, and it’s only very twee rather than actively nauseating. But David Hare, in amongst his didactic politics, has got something right. And it is the lasting message which, several weeks on, will journey through the ages as the cornerstone of Skylight‘s philosophy. Going out for breakfast truly is one of life’s greatest pleasures.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

If you weren’t lucky enough to have £40 to spend on a train into London – or £800 000 to spend on a studio cupboard in London – and then a delicious supper at Browns, a ride on the London Eye and stroll on Hampstead Heath, all topped off with a £65 ticket to see the adaptation of Mark Haddon’s book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at the Gielgud  Theatre, then join the club. I cannot be the only one whose open inverted commas graduate job does not involve finding, receiving or excreting gold. Fortunately I could – or more importantly my parents could – afford the tickets at the Hexham Forum cinema to see this much-hyped production streamed for only £11. Long may such a scheme continue for the likes of us in the Frozen North; partly because it makes the theatre a more accessible, less London-centric pastime for us non-gold-defecaters, but also because it means that I can indulge in a totally necessary review.

For those few of you who haven’t had the privilege of reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, first of all, what were you doing with your life in 2003? And secondly, I suggest that you jot down the title before you – right now and post-haste – launch into your nearest bookshop and request The Weird Thing That Happened to a Poodle at Sunset. A brief summary so you’re not left behind clinging to the diving-board, cold shivering and afraid to jump. It’s a book told through the eyes of a boy with behavioural difficulties (think Asperger’s). His name is Christopher John Francis Boone, he is fifteen years old and he wants to be an astronaut. The book is a twist on that old British favourite, the murder mystery and Christopher’s quest to find out who killed his next door neighbour’s dog with a garden fork. During his sleuthing, he discovers things about his family, his neighbours and himself that lead him to the killer. It’s brilliantly written and in 2012 it was expertly transformed for the stage.

This is not going to be a review where I snipe about the selection of rubbish that artistically falls from the sky or moan about the apparent shortage of actors capable of saying their lines and convincingly being someone else (you know, the really unusual, hard-to-come-by bits of acting that only the true pros know about?). First up, a resounding cheer for Marianne Elliott who, unlike Josie Rourke – who I was tragically forced to disparage in bygone days – has managed to pull off a masterpiece of flawless and beautiful directing. This is despite being portrayed as a vapid ninny in the totally pointless and spoiler-riddled preamble that the National Theatre force you to watch if you go to a streamed show. She oh-so-cleverly confided in us that she’d spotted a blindingly underlined metaphor in the production. Good job, Marianne. You get a gold star. Also she fell several further notches in my estimations for saying to the actors, in her best solemn voice, ‘I feel like the energy is very dissipated today’. All aboard the Pretension expressway. *Slap*. However, the spectacle of the show completely redeemed her. For those two million people who read the book, what captured our hearts and minds – what made the book stand out – was Christopher’s narrative voice. His difficulty in understanding others allows him to express himself with total honesty in the face of etiquette, whilst he makes us question the bizarre ways in which we communicate: ‘I think [a metaphor] should be called a lie because a pig is not like a day and people do not have skeletons in their cupboard.’ (By the way, I can think of no better way of showing you how great the narrative is than by quoting chunks at you – apologies). Dialogue and narrative from the book was lifted straight out and read aloud, as though from Christopher’s diary, by all the members of the cast to recreate his voice. And it worked. Elliott’s direction captured every aspect of Christopher’s relationship and interaction with everything around him, using dance, lights, music, shadows, voice-overs, drawings, mathematics and projections. It was a totally immersive sensory experience and not pretentious or complicated or frankly bamboozling. To be honest, she should win an award simply for how she portrays an escalator. You’ll have to see it, but it’s great. The entire directorial composition was clever and sophisticated and elegant.

It was also really funny. The woman next to me left during the interval saying to her friends – friends who genuinely couldn’t have cared less and barely turned their heads from the screen to acknowledge her departure – that it was too upsetting for her. I’m not sure that I know what she was watching. Alright, bits of it were distressing to a more shrinking-violet nature than my own – Christopher’s screams of confusion and fear in the face of physical abuse, for example, although it’s far less Hollyoaks than that sounds – but by using lines straight from the books Christopher’s deadpan, concrete approach to our confusing world is also humorous: ‘if heaven was on the other side of a black hole, dead people would have to be fired into space on rockets to get there, and they aren’t or people would notice’. Even the moving and magical scene in which Christopher imagines himself achieving his dreams, floating in space as an astronaut, the constellations drawn out in lights on the floor, can’t help but add his pet rat Toby drifting about in zero-gravity in a hamster-ball. Pictures are a big part of the book and Christopher’s explanation of the way he views the world. In the play, the whole floor acted as a gigantic blackboard on which Christopher drew, attempting to understand what facial expressions denote. He tried, for example, to understand how ‘if you raise one eyebrow it can mean lots of different things. It can mean, I want to do sex with you, and it can also mean, I think what you just said was very stupid’. Seeing the world through Christopher’s eyes perfectly captured the book, its quirkiness, its humour and its philosophical nature.

I may never say this again. Every member of the cast was faultless. I repeat – and so am saying it again – every member of the cast was faultless, with many falling into that category where you have to remind yourself, over the interval’s vanilla ice cream, that they probably have lives of their own when the curtain closes. Metaphorically of course, as there was no curtain. Niamh Cusack is superb as Siobhan, Christopher’s charming, patient and caring teacher. If only all teachers were like Siobhan I suspect the world would be a better place and I really hope that Haddon was inspired by one of his teachers to create this character. Of course, I shall struggle to think of Cusack in any other role than as Beatrix Potter, and my parents kindly reminded me that since the days when I curled up thumb in mouth in front of The Tale of Samuel Whiskers or The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, I have aged far worse than Ms Cusack, who clearly has a portrait in the attic. Cheers. And the real Mrs actually Hudson, Una Stubbs, as one of Christopher’s neighbours was as delightful and talented as ever. Star of the show, Luke Treadaway (and here is as good a place as any to spare a thought for his twin brother, who is also an actor) created the role of Albert in the National Theatre’s production of War Horse and was superb, I suspect irreplaceable, as Christopher. Despite obviously not being 15, Treadaway is believably ageless and not like Joey in Friends trying to play 19 by pulling the waistband of his underwear up over his trousers, wearing a ridiculous beanie and saying the word ‘whack’. Nothing I could write would really do him enough credit. He simply was Christopher: uncringeworthy, innocent, honest and loveable. But of course, the stars of the show were the rat playing Toby the rat (who wasn’t credited on the cast-list, so I can only presume his name was Toby or he is currently in touch with his union and a good solicitor) and the gorgeous yellow Labrador puppy whose stage debut was met with universal acclaim.

However, Wednesday’s child is full of woe and no review would be complete without a good dollop of creamy criticism. So it’s been arduous, but I have managed to unearth my bugaboo with this production… and it was the second half. Not the train section. That was epic. The commotion of the overwhelming train station choreographed with intrusive crowds, imposing announcements and the passengers beating the floor and their chests to represent the pounding of the train. That was physical theatre at its best. But after this it was a tad slow. The tortoises skipping by. And all a bit GCSE. Too many Dramatic Moments in Meaningful Voices and not enough plot driving it forward. Too much Significant Silence. And that tiny bit of me – the part that inwardly groans during a film over 100 minutes and hates that it takes 10 series for Ross and Rachel to get together – wanted to shout, “get on with it!” But that’s it. I promise. The nitpick brigade has stood down. Honest.

So finally an echoing round of applause that will outlast many moons, train journeys and brutally stabbed dogs for Mr Mark Haddon, vegetarian, atheist and – most importantly to me – author. This was without a shadow of a doubt my favourite book when I was 14 and I needn’t have been afraid to revisit it. The stage show stands up to the hype and enhanced the book rather than trampling all over it. His next novel, A Spot of Bother, had me distracted and laughing through A level not-so-revision, and his latest, The Red House, kept me page-turning through the night, exhausted and sun-burned, during my holiday round Italy. I only hope he’s writing now.

PS Here is another curious incident concerning a dog. My dog. Fortunately, I am not about to reveal that last night a demented neighbour stabbed my dachshund with a pitchfork, although it could be done with a cake fork. The people in my village are much nicer than that, my dog is adorable and we don’t have a garden fork. However, I have learned that dachshunds were bred to hunt and kill badgers, so for the highly sensitive badger-cuddlers amongst you – well, first of all I salute you because badgers are feisty and pointy, so I myself would never feel comfortable to give one a hug – but I also advise you to look away now. What you are about to see may upset and distress your inner badger-disciple.

I can only apologise

King Lear

My best friend’s boyfriend wants to be an actor. He’s at a leading London drama school and he’s jolly talented… so it’s all off to a good start and not like me wanting to be a lion or Cleopatra. However, I hope that he (and she: best friend, not Cleopatra) is prepared for the new trend that is sweeping Shakespeare performances. Yes, welcome in the reign of the – capital letters for emphasis – Completely Unnecessary Gay Kiss. We saw it in Coriolanus and now it’s Edmund and Cornwall who totally pointlessly lock lips in the 2014 National Theatre production of King Lear, the live screening of which I toddled along to see at the Hexham Forum Cinema. As will become apparent this was not my first blindly-led cliff walk into the world of Lear (witty joke for those in-the-know there I hope you twigged). I will therefore be littering spoilers with reckless abandon and cannot be held responsible for the ruining of your day as a result of revealing what happens at the end of a Shakespearean tragedy. So if you’re keen to keep the secret of King Lear for another time and are instead waiting for the… well, for the play to come out… stop reading now!

They all die. (I did warn you). Like much of his earlier and later work – not to mention most of his work in between – Shakespeare doesn’t quite master the nuanced ending, instead preferring to leave no stone unturned and indiscriminately massacring the lot. It’s more convenient. Less messy. There are fewer threads to tie up when most of the cast is left bleeding, gasping or face down on the stage. In fact, in this production, so keen was the director to hasten on the barrage of blood that is Shakespeare’s forte, that he actually killed the Fool off early just to get us in the party mood. And had him beaten to death by Lear (which he isn’t) with a length of piping (which he isn’t) in a bathtub (which he definitely isn’t) before the audience’s eyes, thus proving that directors can be both subtle and tasteful… but usually choose not to be.

Goneril and Regan. Or is it Regan and…

The director was none other than Cambridge-graduate, Skyfall-directing, Kate-Winslet-leaver, Sam Mendes, whose initials incidentally also spell Sam. Poor bugger. Under his eye King Lear had some interesting choices and even some good ones. Unlike all other productions I’ve seen, Goneril and Regan (portrayed expertly by Kate Fleetwood and Anna Maxwell Martin) were not interchangeable Cinderella-esque sisters: an irritating habit of directors, presumably stolen from Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, only he’s a genius and they aren’t. But here I actually knew which was which! In fact, thinking about it, I realise that Goneril and Regan both have affairs with Edmund – a fairly major plot point – which had previously escaped me, so baffled was I as to which evil version of Tweedledum and dee I was watching. So hats off Sam: I knew who was who. So much so that my mind could wander, leaving me to gaze in awe and admiration as to how they both walked in such immensely high heels on such a highly polished floor. Which spins slowly. Throughout. Leading me to my first critique. Just because it can, doesn’t mean it should. As a matter of some urgency, could somebody at the National Theatre please show them how to switch it off? It leaves all the actors constantly realigning in order to face the audience throughout a long speech. It leaves all the props in places that they weren’t five minutes ago, and it leaves the entire audience tapping their friends on the arm and saying ‘look! there! see it was facing slightly more right a few moments ago!’ I had to watch a Greek, blind and hideously bleeding Ralph Fiennes gently rotate many moons ago. It was infuriating then too. Moving on, Mr Mendes also did Mr Shakespeare proud with a sort of debouched ‘lad’ culture scene when Lear stalks off to one of the Tweedle’s houses. This included an entire deer carcass on the table and lots of live music and singing and eating and general misbehaving. It was excellent. The Fool’s jokes were actually met with the occasional titter and somehow Lear dissecting a ham sandwich seemed integral to the whole identity of the play.

However, (and here I use my Very Stern Voice like a good aunt) why can’t directors just leave it at that? Modernise the clothing so they’re not all curvetting about in ruffs, set it somewhere – no one cares where or is paying any attention – and get the whatevers on with it. Why are directors not prepared to rely on the text? Why do they think that it’s been popular for 400 years? Why must they try and be original? Do they march into every rehearsal and proclaim ‘why not set this iconic piece of theatre not just in a room in clothes, but on a fly-fishing trip, in the year 2050, in a world inhabited only by yellow-cheeked gibbons, in ballet leotards?’ (I hasten to add this wasn’t the storyboard that Mendes worked from, but it might as well have been). Why use very clunky listen-to-my-ominous-violins music for the early scene changes only to abandon it and never use it again? Why have entirely-superfluous-to-Sherlock actor Tom Brooke play Edgar as a sort of cockney idiot for no apparent artistic or dramatic merit? Why get terribly preoccupied with wheat somewhere through the second half and have to suddenly stage everything in a wheat field for no discernable reason? Why did so many of the characters, brandishing a weapon with an expression akin to ‘aha – a sword’, actually brandish a small butter knife? (A small but surprisingly devastating butter knife which killed almost everyone instantly with one single stab). And why oh why was there a massive and totally unexplained bag hanging from the ceiling during the final scene? Just thank God they didn’t have real rain, which was part of what blighted Trevor Nunn’s 2007 production. Although my favourite production note goes to the comic brain – and perhaps it was Mendes himself – behind putting an enormous statue of Lear, with the word LEAR engraved in capitals underneath it, at such a height that when anyone sat beside it – and they did – their ear was immediately followed by a helpful notice reading EAR. Excellent.

It’s always a little creepy as a sentence: I’d like to see Simon Russell Beale’s Lear. What’s he meant to do? Flash the white and pearly? But he was superb. The entire wheat-bedazzled production was worth it for him alone. Kicking off as a bald, bad and dangerous dictator with a displeasing tendency towards incest, he descended into tragically self-aware madness. Playing him as a man in the downward spiral of some sort of dementia just clicked. His killing the Fool (instead of the sisters) gave his madness a disturbing twist, that he could destroy the things he held most dear to him whilst in the grip of madness from which he might suddenly awake. The audience couldn’t help but feel great pity for him. Beale is unafraid of the silences. His haunting rendition of ‘let me not be mad’ left this previously cruel despotic leader childlike and frightened. Beale has also undergone incredible physical transformation… by growing a beard and shaving his head. It makes him look – in his own words – less like Father Christmas.

Turning to the Fool, Adrian Scarborough excelled. I only really knew him as Miranda’s Dreamboat Charlie and I’d only seen the Fool played by a whole range of unlikely and unsuitable candidates. From a drippy girl in clown makeup on a unicycle to escaped up the home-for-the-bewildered’s chimney Sylvester McCoy: the audience relieved and holding back stifled cheers when, days into the play, the spoon-playing (oh yes) McCoy was finally strung up from a tree. Scarborough did not ride a unicycle and on no account attempted to play the spoons. He did however wear blue tinted glasses, a top hat, sing and play the ukelele: all four with aplomb. Twenty-five year old Olivia Vinall added Cordelia to her list of achievements, alongside Juliet and Desdemona, which can only embitter the most accomplished of twenty-three year olds. Although she was perhaps a little too aware of being an actress and ‘acting’ every word, she’s got shallow breathing whilst being dead down to a tee. As you would expect, for neither Juliet nor Desdemona meet with much bonhomie, tea drinking, crossword doing, Sherlock watching, sock knitting, sudoku puzzling, joie de vivre on their short little journeys through the pitfalls. But her coat – when she inexplicably sauntered on in army getup clutching a Kalashnikov – well, it almost stole the show. I’m envious!

So after nearly four hours of helicopter noises, tedious amounts of thunder, a strait jacket and more wheat than the mind can comfortably conceive (not to mention Gloucester’s eyes being removed with a corkscrew – I’ve also seen it done with a high heeled shoe) King Lear really boils down to lots of people named after places faffing about killing each other and not being too fussed about the laughs they elicit along the way. And somehow – although I did recently reread Victoria Coren Mitchell’s very helpful article which points out that, whereas it’s okay to sneer at D H Lawrence, mocking Orwell proves you to be an illiterate imbecile – I’m just not convinced that Lear is all that it’s cracked up to be. Sorry.

PS. In my final undergraduate year at university, I elected to take a module on Shakespearean tragedies. King Lear was the hot topic of three equally fascinating and laborious weeks, mainly comprising heated discussions about Folio versus Quarto, and pawing over theorists who may have known a thing or two about Lear but undoubtedly had no friends. Needless to say, the essay which I eventually cobbled together on ‘representations of the body in King Lear’ was the worst piece of work I submitted in my three years. I remain to this day unashamed.

The Great Gatsby

It’s taken me two days, three sessions and about four hours, but after much perseverance of mind and fork I have finally finished my five-tier slice of red velvet cake. And to celebrate I appear to be quite unintentionally rewatching The Great Gatsby. I say ‘unintentionally’: I mean, I did rent it from LoveFilm (now snappily renamed Amazon Prime Instant Video) but I’d already seen it at the cinema and had no intention of seeing it again until it plopped through the letterbox, having accidentally been allowed to sneak its way to the top of my rental list. So I think a review is in order. Apologies.

In 1925, Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald – a splendid name, eh? – wrote The Great Gatsby. And when Baz Luhrmann got his hands on it he transformed a classic 180 page novel into a 142 minute film. That’s just over one page per minute, following an uncomfortable trend in modern movies for those of us who like our films to bing-bam-boom finish-before-the-popcorn-goes-cold; instead taking nearly an hour to start and seeming to take place in real time. Judging by other recent trends, somewhere deep in the earth’s core the powers that be are probably plotting a 2017 sequel, The Great Gatsby 2: Finding Miss Daisy starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Yet in this tediously-too-long adaptation, Luhrmann still cut crucial sections and subplots from the book. Or so is my understanding. For you see (I am making this confession early on) I have never got through more than the first chapter of the novel. To be fair, I have read that chapter three times, leaving some confused memory of wests, easts and Eggs.

Now, put the book down and turn to the film. Something your mother will never say. In 1920s New York, a time of extremely pronounced left-side partings and terribly loud ties, Leonardo DiCaprio plays deluded fool, suspected murderer, moonshine peddler and wannabe-Kardashian, Jay Gatsby: a man whose biggest secret is that he is a very angry florist. He throws huge parties to ensnare a girl he hooked up with half a decade ago. Hopeless romantic or creepy stalker? You decide! Meanwhile, Tobey Maguire, whilst not being able to spell Toby, redeems himself in my eyes by proving himself to be an actor in his portrayal of Nick Carraway, who moves in next door to Gatsby. He is our narrator and gets tangled up with another pair of these ever-so-common star-crossed-lovers Gatsby and his cousin Daisy Buchanan. She’s played by the jaw-droppingly beautiful Carey Mulligan. I confess I feel a little green bubble of envy popping as she flits about in beautiful costumes, bedecked with a great haircut. I wish I could pull it off but alas can’t, and know few who can.

This is a film full of juxtapositions and clashes… which are not to everyone’s taste, but I love them. Give me Jay Z, Amy Winehouse, will.i.am and Lana Del Ray thrown together with 1920s jazz any day of the week. If this is what people hate about dearest Baz, then I shall defend him with my life, or at least a blog. I adore the interplay between 1920s icons and modern day culture. It stops people seeing The Great Gatsby, and the 1920s in general, as a cemented historical event like the Aztecs or the Hanoverians. Slapping a bit of Beyonce in the mix helps the audience remember that the 1920s was modern and ‘cool’ in the 1920s. It wasn’t aware that the word ‘spiffing’ was soon to be dated and ridiculed. Jazz wasn’t some sort of nostalgic yearning for a past century and a signifier of ye longe time ago. It was the equivalent of Radio 1. To Nick, he is listening to Florence Welch. Oh, and Mr Luhrmann also commits the cardinal sin of changing the ending a little to fit a more hopeful agenda. Tweeking it, as t’were. Again, something I have no problem with. If you love a book, a film adaptation will inevitably make you angry. Just clench you fists and hide in the airing cupboard until it’s all over. Worked for me and Brideshead.

However, Luhrmann does employ every film technique in the book (a book he presumably downloaded onto his Kindle called ‘film techniques for dummies’): sepia, black and white, text, flashbacks, car chases, POV, dramatic irony, voice-over, framing narrative, nausea-inducing 3d, aerial shots, newspaper headline bridging shots, extreme Tom Hooper-esque close-ups, slow motion… Honestly, it’s exhausting watching him try. And oh the sweeping, gushing orchestral music at dun-dun-daah Important Moments.

In fact, now I’m on a roll, if you were caught up in woozy excitement and fell in love with this film, stop reading now. My review is unerringly going to spiral into a sort of hit-man’s list entitled ‘things that bugged me’:

1. Are we meant to like Gatsby? I sort of got the impression that women (and men) everywhere are meant to swoon like giddy morons at his appearance and feel in their gut that he’s the perfect man for Daisy. Well, frankly… he’s an arse. He’s a violent, lying, stalker who represents the ultimate perils of Golden Age thinking. Who tries to recapture the past to that extent without being tested for a serious underlying mental illness? And for all of his ‘oo I’m so thoughtful’, he chucks all his shirts about with reckless abandon, I bet not giving two hoots about who is going to have to fold them all later. And, to be honest, although it’s claimed that he’s cheated out of an elderly gentleman’s inheritance, funnily enough elderly gentleman’s inheritance goes to elderly gentleman’s family; not some deluded teenager who rocks up and then sticks around impersonating the elderly gentleman in hope of pocketing a coin or two when he snuffs it. Is he every girl’s ultimate dream: a money-grasping, jealous, control-freak with a God-complex? Yum.
2. And, while we’re about it, why are his eyes so blue? Turn down the filter, Baz!
3. Some people didn’t think that the film captured quite enough homoeroticism and Nick’s questionable sexuality: a theme that allegedly permeates the book by the bucketful. But these people are clearly morons. Subtlety is not Baz’s middle name. Just rewatch the dancing scene. It’s all very Cabaret and a little bit how threesomes get started. Let’s be honest, it’s all a bit… well, gay.
4. For all the millions Baz spent on special effects, why was the hat continuity still a nightmare?
5. Many characters suffer from a strain of amnesia common in literature: Nick forgets that it’s his thirtieth birthday until midway through it, Jordan forgets meeting Gatsby five years previously, despite all of her best friend’s tears and pearl scattering on the stricken wedding morning from hell. Maybe they should take more water with it.
6. Vie are some of ze Buchanan’s staff French?

I promise that I actually quite enjoyed this film and would consent to watch it again with or even without a gun thrust into my temple. It just had it flaws. And they were many. I hate the unnecessary sanatorium framing narrative with its constant foggy motif. But I also hate aubergines, and that doesn’t stop me liking their amazing colour or cradling them like babies. It’s totally possible to despise and quite enjoy a movie (or vegetable – how did I get into this tangled web of simile). I’d just probably rather watch Romeo + Juliet. That’s all.

Frozen

It is April. Your last blog was in February. You have had 9 weeks to think of something amusing to say. I DEMAND another post.

Alright. DMY – an expression so vile that it is forced by me and The Simpsons to have an acronym (see Urban Dictionary to reveal the unpleasant truth). Keep your knickers on! Here is a long overdue blopic. And because the most exciting thing that’s happened to me in the past nine weeks is that I bought a fifty pound pair of River Island jeans for a fiver, and because you did something bad in a previous life, you will now be subjected to one of my film reviews. Today: Frozen. My suggestion would be to save yourself the trouble and just watch the Honest Trailer here. Try not to waste too much of the rest of your life hopelessly devouring all Honest Trailers available like a fat kid with a caterpillar cake. Man those things were great…

*Ahem*

Most people – and by ‘people’ I mean adults who have NO children and are NOT children and therefore have NO excuse to waste an afternoon watching a film aimed at six year olds – probably encountered this film through the posters and trailers, or if they work in hospitality and catering, walking back and forth through a hot kitchen to hear Idina Menzel singing That Song. I suspect my first encounter with Frozen was a tad more niche (that’s neesh, not nitch by the way). To keep sane through the drizzle and fog of… well 2014, I’ve been watching Looking. It’s a brand new HBO series and it’s basically America’s attempt at Queer as Folk (something incidentally which, like The Office, our cousins across the pond enjoyed, got their hands on, missed the point entirely, and ruined). Looking is therefore fifteen years behind the times as it attempts to follow the lives of three gay men in Manchester’s gay scene – no wait, that actually is Queer as Folk – this is set in San Francisco’s gay scene. It’s a sort of well-acted and moderately-amusing drama series which gives the impression that gay men in San Francisco are all sauna-going, threesome-having, facial-hair-growing, leather-wearing, cone-smoking, artsy-fartsy, startlingly ethnically diverse, dissatisfied, thirty-something year olds who are almost constantly having anonymous sex whilst exposing almost no flesh on camera, continually skiving work with no consequences and traveling everywhere on public transport. Seriously, for rich kids who party all night and own cars, they spend a lot of time abandoning their cars in favour of sitting on trains, in buses and walking. And then the one who’s in Being Human and Sherlock – the history boy with the ears – he shows up and is described as ‘a white Will Smith’, and he’s like the English, ethical one with the steady job and the boyfriend… until he cheats on his boyfriend with a co-worker. But I digress. The main character in this series is played by goat-farmer turned teen-star-of-the-stage Jonathan Groff. So I watched Frozen because when I Google-d him I was bombarded with adverts for Frozen, interviews about Frozen, awards connected with Frozen and That Song.

So at last, Frozen. For those of you who haven’t seen it, it’s a good film. Blondy and Gingy get embroiled in a sort of magically induced amnesia plot, requiring 24 hour surveillance. The unimaginable trauma of growing up inside the family castle, complete with its own statues of armour, huge empty banquet halls and art gallery, is too much for Gingy. It’s hard to comprehend such suffering! Whereas the unexpected deaths of their parents in a freak boating accident leaves both girls strangely unmoved, mainly because Gingy suffers from an undiagnosed neurological disorder which leaves her fixated with building a snowman. Seriously. She sings about it. A lot. In short, Blondy is some sort of icy King Midas who uncontrollably unleashes an eternal winter on Arendelle, so Gingy stomps off to find her and bring her home, with help from who else but a schizophrenic, his long-suffering reindeer and a talking snowman whose catchphrase ‘Hi, everyone. I’m Olaf and I like warm hugs!’ is the least memorable catchphrase since David Mitchell was forced to say ‘it only remains for me to thank our guests. They were all truly unbelievable and that’s the unbelievable truth’. Shortly before rushing to the asthma pump.

Blondy and Gingy

Look, the film was fine. And yes I bought the CD and no I still can’t get That Song out of my head and yes it spoke to my inner teenage girl who wanted to be misunderstood and used the word LOL on MSN too much. But – and please don’t send round a pack of angry troll rocks (yes you heard me: troll rocks) to sinisterly ‘fix me with love’ when I reveal this – but I’m not sure that I really understand what the fuss is about. Sure, the songs are great and it looks… like Tangled, and Blondy will inspire her fair share of anorexic peroxided girls and lovestruck boys blah blah blah. I’m not sure that I lived it, breathed it, dreamed it and wanted to be either Anna (official Gingy) or Elsa (Blondy’s baptismal name). Maybe it’s because, as always, I’m right and it just isn’t as good as The Aristocats and Aladdin and The Lion King and all my other childhood favourites, and things really do just get worse and worse, and everything really was better when I (and everyone) was younger. Or maybe – oh good lord – maybe I’m just no longer Frozen‘s target audience? Maybe Disney aren’t pandering to me? Maybe I’ve grown up…

Nahhh.

PS. Oh my God, the can is open and there are spoiler-shaped worms wriggling everywhere. Don some sturdy shoes and stop reading now if you don’t want to be wading ankle-deep in them. I’m going to reveal my biggest irritation with this perfectly good film. It was the critics and audiences everywhere going ‘Oo, it’s a story all about girl power and feminism and sisterly love and everything is sunshine and rainbows and dogs poo candyfloss’. Only it isn’t is it? Because Gingy still marries some stereotypical manly man, without whom she would have been – okay, not totally – but mostly useless. I mean, before he turns up she has no idea where she’s going and there’s a whole montage of her just falling in snow. Like a fool. A girly fool. Plus she fell in love with the first man she clapped eyes on, even though he did turn out to be the evilest thing since sliced bread… evil sliced bread. Sorry Gingy, but you’ll just have to admit that Brave got there first with a much better redhead and a much more powerful idea. Although I think it’s safe to say that Frozen’s tagline writes itself. “Frozen: a world where girls are not completely useless without men.” It truly is the feminist statement for a new generation.

Coriolanus

I’d never heard of Hadley Fraser. And, unless you were paying fastidious attention to the interminable cast list of Les Mis, you have probably never heard of Hadley Fraser. And my prediction is that none of us will hear much more of him, after he makes a big splash in the headlines, driven to suicide by the reviews of Coriolanus, which single him out as the worst thing to happen – not only to this Donmar Warehouse production – but possibly ever to happen to humanity. My Mother and I went to the live-streaming of Coriolanus at Exeter Picturehouse and I was surprised that critics attack Hadley Fraser for over-hashing a pointless Northern accent and needlessly overplaying the homoeroticism. Before beginning my own review therefore, let me first say that surely these criticisms are better and more justly aimed at the director (Josie Rourke) and that Hadley Fraser (whose name you definitely know now) is not the worst thing about this production. And that’s damning with faint praise.

This is a play I don’t know at all. It’s not like seeing Hamlet or Henry V or Diehard, where I could join in if given half the chance, a skull, a crown and a Beretta 92F. And unlike the sneering newspaper reviewers – who seem to think that not possessing an encyclopaedic knowledge of Coriolanus is simply further evidence of a life wasted – I enjoyed not being achingly familiar with where we were going and what was going to happen. So – as usual with my reviews – my aim is to spoil so little about the plot that you’ll barely realise I’m talking about a play at all.

I really wanted to love the direction. It’s shamefully unusual to have a female director and – although I was not burning my bra in the front row, much to the chagrin of the Picturehouse ushers – I was hoping for a triumph of artistic direction and greatness. And it just wasn’t. It wasn’t the same shambling smorgasbord of ideas that befell the 2013 RSC Hamlet courtesy of David Farr. But – and yes, a rant is coming – Rourke’s image of ancient Rome was… unusual and inconsistent. For starters, Rome was experiencing some very peculiar weather. What is the obsession directors have with hurling things from the sky at their actors? Inexplicable rose petals, water and pebbles were amongst the objet d’art hurtling from above, causing misery for various people with mops who trudged on throughout the action and interval. If the red rose petals were meant to symbolise blood or the red ballot papers used later in the play or American Beauty or roses, then frankly it escaped me. And I would have been happier without them. As would the moppers. It all rather inescapably reminded me of a Just William story called ‘William the Great Actor’, in which William – who is meant to float little bits of paper representing snowflakes onto the actress below – instead empties the bucket of fire water over her head from a great height… with hilarious results. Why Tom Hiddleston had to stand under a hose and shake bloodied water all over the stage, to be laboriously mopped, I do not know. Or worse. I fear I do know and that it was pre-shadowing something Aufidius does later on. Unfortunately, I still didn’t care. I felt that Rourke had fallen into a classic trap of trying to modernise a difficult and rarely seen play, but then got cold feet half way through. It began all edgy: graffiti, trainers, slogans, paint, jeans, and horrible modern music. But all of that soon disappeared in Coriolanus’s Roman battledress and leather boots. And the slogans, music and graffiti fizzled out all together by the second half. Why paint a square on the floor and then not use it? Why have petals fall from the sky and not incorporate them? Why have chairs along the back wall, in which the actors sit when not in the scene, only to randomly remove some of the chairs so that Tom Hiddleston has to edge awkwardly around in the semi-darkness to find an empty seat, while some of the actors give in and just leave the stage?! WHY? So don’t blame Hadley Fraser. Alright? Okay, rant over. Let me smooth my clothes, hair and mind, and move on to the man himself: Tom Hiddleston as Caius Martius Coriolanus.

Hiddleston displayed a number of hidden talents in this production. To kick off, who knew that he was built like an ostrich? Whilst everyone else talked eagerly about the gore and the production values, my Mother and I were more transfixed by Hiddleston’s ridiculously long legs; taller, in themselves, than several of the other cast members. Even in a not-quite-see-through-so-it’s-fine-and-not-soft-porn-at-all nightie (him, not me) I couldn’t work out where the legs ended: a faintly mesmerising game for the long winter evenings, I feel. Seriously, where does he start? Stilts aside, he is unbelievably quick at his bazillion costume changes. At one point he goes from shirtless, soaking wet and doused in several gallons of blood to clean, dry and re-clothed so astoundingly fast that we concluded that he is either an identical twin or they have a full-height Dyson dryer backstage. Plus, whatever he thinks about to emote the tear-filled glance is powerful stuff, and I can confidently assert that the hours learning to cry on cue at RADA were hours not wasted. Forget the single, elegant tear. This was real crying. Flawlessly executed. And it can’t do the play, the audience or the box office any harm that he’s not too uneasy on the eye. For all critics lay into him for being a pretty-boy from Eton (who got a double-first from Cambridge, I might add) he really is a superb actor and beautifully cast in this role. Trying to find a picture of him was a challenge unto itself. For some reason, typing ‘Tom Hiddleston Coriolanus’ into Google provoked a picture of Mark Gatiss going through customs, a picture of Tom Hiddleston with the cookie monster, and a picture of Benedict Cumberbatch who has apparently hijacked all words on the internet. It was impossible to find one in which Hiddleston keeps his clothes on. Quel dommage…

The real surprise was Mark Gatiss who, with a slice of Mycroft’s intelligence, is knockout as Menenius. Act now and start a petition to demand to see him in more Shakespeare. Borgen‘s Birgitte Hjort Sørensen was good as Virgilia – a part which mainly seemed to consist of sticking her tongue down Tom Hiddleston’s throat: a tough job, but someone’s got to do it – and Deborah Findlay was excellent as the shocking, anti-maternal Volumnia. Although my personal award goes to the little boy playing Martius, who stifled at least eight yawns in the fifteen minutes or so that he was on. Bless him. Unfortunately, pretty much all other members of the cast made me wonder – with a 92% unemployment rate in acting – why it was these individuals who had made the cut. Of course, the ending *spoiler alert* in which Coriolanus is strung up by his feet in a slightly killy bit, is run of the mill for those of us who have seen James McAvoy strung up with meat hooks driven through his chest in The Last King of Scotland. But the final image of Coriolanus won’t disappoint and had several audience members recoil in horror. Although the shock value was somewhat decreased by the evident health and safety requirements needed to hang Tom Hiddleston upside down by his feet, revolving slowly (and, I should imagine, dizzily).

As usual, my final thoughts fall on the beloved audience of Exeter Picturehouse. The two women next to me seemed to enjoy it. They talked loudly all through the interval with enthusiasm, howled with dismay at any bloodshed, and laughed and cried in all the appropriate places. As the credits began to roll, one said to the other, ‘The chap taking his bow in the middle is very good. What’s he been in?’ They read his name aloud from the list. ‘Mark Gatiss’. They didn’t think they’d heard of him. Then the name Tom Hiddleston scrolled past. ‘Tom. Hiddleston.’ they remarked slowly. It rang no bells. I wonder what they thought they’d booked tickets for? I half expected them to say ‘Coriolanus? Who’s he?’

PS. Driving (or rather being driven) on an 890 mile round trip in the last week, the radio happened to tune in to something about bee-keeping. Scintillating. ‘Always wear a bee suit’ it announced. Which amused me. Because I didn’t know that a bee’s loyalty was so easily bought. And it took me some moments to realise that it was referring to the all-in-one, astronaut-style onesie and not – as I at first enchantingly presumed – this outfit.

Pirates of the Caribbean: the Curse of the Black Pearl

It’s 2003. It’s August. It’s Cardiff. It’s probably raining, despite the heat wave. And we’re going to the cinema. (Go with me on this one – I’m not having an episode). I’m staying with my best friend who, although now better known for her love of lemurs and the bard, at that time spent an inordinate amount of pocket money on teenage magazines – not for the quizzes almost certainly inappropriate for the innocent 12 year olds we undoubtedly were – but in order to cut out the pictures of a certain Orlando Bloom and festoon them about her bedroom, covering Paul McCartney’s weeping face. I was less enamoured. I wanted to see The Man Who Sued God or Lara Croft… or Piglet’s Big Movie rather than see anything pitched to me as a pirate movie starring Orlando Bloom. But I’d get out of it. I’d fake illness, or bereavement, or run in front of a bus in the cinema car park.

hahahaha…

And so there I was; sitting in the dark with an ostentatious and terminally bored expression plastered on my face, secretly hoping that someone would see it and call animal rescue on my behalf. Fortunately, at that moment, as I started to think that I would have to force pieces of popcorn into my nostrils and end it all in Row H of the Cardiff Odeon, Keira Knightly fell off the battlements into the sea and I started to enjoy myself.

For the few of you poor individuals who have been otherwise wasting your time not seeing this film, it’s a swashbuckling, mutinous, apple-eating, ship-swapping, romance, thriller, comedy, pirate movie with a monkey and Aztec gold and a lot of rum. Whilst pirate-blooded, orphan-turned-hopeless-love-puppy, blacksmith Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and ringlet-headed, ever-pouting, Governor’s-daughter Elizabeth Swan (Keira Knightly) prat about pretending they’re not eventually going to steamily get together – in front of her father on the same battlement she earlier tumbled from when ignoring a proposal from the rather dashing if extremely tiresome Commodore Norrington (Jack Davenport) – the rather frightening and cursed Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), whose pirate is more Irish than his native Australian and harbours a penchant for granny smiths, is desperate to lift the curse of (well… as the title might suggest to the Herlock Sholmeses amongst you) the Black Pearl, thus not turning into a skeleton when the moon rises. Although being immortal does turn out to have its advantages: who’da thunk it? In a not-confusing-at-all case of mistaken identity, involving gold coins and dead fathers, the hugely-overdressed-Elizabeth is kidnapped instead of suspected-eunuch-Will and it’s a race against time to save her or him or stop Barbossa’s lot from being immortal. (I promise that a lot of this will make more sense on seeing the film).

This film also contains further proof that the Oscars are a sham. If Robert Newton created the pirate of the 1900s, Johnny Depp can surely be accredited with creating the modern pirate. And he’s far sexier (sorry Rob). Depp should have scooped every award going, instead of which the Academy Award went to some bloke called Sean Penn. Pah! There’s a lot of Pepé le Pew meets Keith Richards in the form of Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), staggering deranged and drunken in too much eye-makeup and a gargantuan hat. This Machiavel’s constant dishonesty and self-serving treachery somehow leaves you cheering for him in a slightly confused way. Every deft detail of his performance, from the walk to the voice to the banana (watch out for it – it’s there) makes this film just about perfect. And hilarious. And ultimately quotable. Too much of the “naughties” (as we must apparently sickeningly call them) was wasted quoting from Pirates of the Caribbean. No. Not wasted. Thoroughly enjoyed.

Hats off to Hans Zimmer too. A glorious, stirring and far too hummable theme of which my entire form group, many years ago, considered soaring into a triumphant rendition during our woeful ICT GCSE examination. So all hail the love of Orlando Bloom. It came good in the end.

PS. And finally, to soothe your tattered brains after all of that, a story about my grandmother, who has never graced my blog before. Aged 77 on its release, she really enjoyed Pirates of the Caribbean despite, I suspect, having slept through vast portions of the whole skeleton-fandango. However, during the several days for which the credits roll before the monkey goes crazy again (you’ll see), she did turn to me and say – and don’t forget in your head that she sounded like the Queen trying to keep the royal standards from slipping – ‘I can’t imagine why everyone bangs on about this Johnny Depp when he’s just a very standard leading man with a pretty face. But that Orlando Bloom…’ Oh dear, I thought. I’ve lost another one. First my best friend, and now this. ‘He’s sensational: the makeup, the voice, the offbeat stagger, the…’ Hang on! I see what’s happened here. Do you?

Now, bring me that horizon…

Philomena

Helloha and welcome to my second secret blog which, in the spirit of full disclosure, I am writing whilst watching the X Factor. And – I hope you’ve deduced from the title, just call you Sherlock – I thought I’d indulge in a little review of Philomena which I saw on Wednesday. Although no longer being a student is devastating, it was made a little less arduous by the fact that cinema tickets at Picturehouse are still only £3.10. Hurrah! I knew that I stayed in the southwest for a reason. Sorry people who moved to London and now have to sadly gaze upon Sir John Houblon’s smug face when they fancy 98 minutes with a bag of popcorn (look him up!).

Now, we know I like a short film – I was comfortably certain that I would fail in the task of finishing my mega packet of sour skittles in under 98 minutes – but other than its precise length I knew very little about this film. Which is rare. I’d seen Dame Judi Dench (that’s Dame Absolute Legend to you and me) talking about it on TV, and I knew that it was her and Steve Coogan (former-Partridge) in a based-on-real-life-events story, searching for her long lost child. Other than that, I hadn’t a clue where it was going. Although I did presume from that premise that it wasn’t a jaunty romp set in an Alaskan vegetable market. I’m going to attempt not to rip off the plaster of ignorance, revealing the hideous wound of spoilers, so that you can watch it as I did, which I think was at its best. As usual, I was the youngest person in the cinema… only by eleven days, but after my housemate by some forty years. Entirely unusually these pensioners didn’t fall about laughing throughout the entire film, as they had done in Blue Jasmine, A Single Man and even Shame. In fact, the woman next to me began crying somewhere around the second trailer and was still snivelling when I left. She may still be there; dehydrated and wishing that her guardian angel had led her to the waterproof mascara that morning.

In my review of Blue Jasmine some weeks back, I pondered whether anyone could give Cate Blanchett a run for her money in a bid for the Oscars. I now have an answer. Yes. Step aside Blanchett – Dench is in the room. And she is on fire. (Not literally. That would be a disaster, either ending in a day of national mourning or Judi Dench doused liberally in water and sand). Her performance as the sometimes naïve, enthusiastically ditsy and loveable Philomena, searching for the little boy she was forced to give up for adoption fifty years ago, was charming, funny and heart-breaking. I defy all of you not to feel a certain lump – similar to a grapefruit or other large citrus – in the throat at certain points of the film. In fact, a lady behind me cried out with a little gurgle of despair at one point and the fact that I didn’t become paralytic with laughter shows, I hope, how entrancing this film was. Her double-act with the cynical journalist, played by Steve Coogan, creates numerous laughs along the way, not unlike a modern-day Odd Couple: if the Odd Couple had comprised one little old Irish lady who is overly impressed by omelette stations and trashy novels, and a worldly ex-spin doctor who is deeply suspicion of nuns.

Although perhaps the truth is proven to be more devastating than if Philomena had stayed at home and kept the secret of her first child to herself, I don’t regret that the film, the real people and so the characters set out on this journey, or that I went with them. There is a sweet and redemptive side to this film which neither the script nor the actors overplay. It is not saccharine and didactic in its message and I don’t think that it does seek to condemn outright the Catholic Church (although the Catholics amongst you may feel differently). It is a story about hope and forgiveness and companionship that I think is fitting for the world we live in. Not everyone will leave this film with a gazelle-like spring in their step, feeling that God is in his heaven and all is right with world, singing a merry Christmas tune (even though it is still November)… But there is resolution to this story. I promise.

Now I look back, I haven’t really told you much about it. But you see, I don’t want to spoil it. I don’t want you to hear from me what happens when Philomena goes to the convent in search of her Anthony, or what happens when they reach America. So you’ll just have to go and see it. It’s very funny, but ladies, do remember the waterproof mascara – and gents, for that matter.

Blue Jasmine

This is my first secret blog. In other words, this is the first of a few blogs that only the sixteen of you who subscribe – it’s a lovely number: The Sixteen are a great ‘early music choral group with a supporting orchestra, concentrating on the heritage of early English polyphony’… or so says their website – but anyway, only you will be informed of this little blopic’s existence, instead of the endless globules of self-promotion that I am forced to trail on Facebook, Twitter and other frightening internet forums of which I understand very little, in the hope of getting 40 hits per post. Now I’ve unburdened a few of my woes, it’s time for a quick review of Woody Allen’s latest film Blue Jasmine, about which everyone seems to be raving. And I promise that there are no spoilers below. Unless you wanted to keep the title as a lovely surprise, in which case, I can only apologise and we’re not off to a good start.

My first ever film review was almost a year ago to the day and, amongst being rude about cinema staff and quoting vitriolic reviewers, I was perfectly lovely about Allen’s last film To Rome with Love (yes, I have to look that title up every time – is it To or From?). So what better way for me to use the last day of my student card’s lamentably brief life than to get a £2.50 cinema ticket at Exeter Picturehouse and watch Blue Jasmine. Incidentally, my housemate and I have epically struggled to remember the title of this feature too and have exhausted our limited knowledge of flora and fauna, prefixed by all the colours of the rainbow. Critics have hailed this film as a return to form for Woody Allen; something far more like his old style dramas Annie Hall, Hannah and her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanours. At this point I must utter in a stage whisper that I’m not wholly convinced that there’s such a thing as definitive, to-style Allen. When a man’s career spans the better part of 60 years with more than 50 films to his name, of course he develops and changes, having the luxury of being able to branch out into something new, only to discover it doesn’t work and retreat. Perhaps if the two Ronnies had been blessed with such commercial longevity, they would have branched into bleak, misery memoirs. Allen can make comedy, pastiche, tragedy, surrealism, drama, slapstick and, were he to turn his hand at horror movies or mime, few amongst us could honestly say we wouldn’t give it a watch.

Blue Jasmine is a triumph. It’s only 98 minutes which instantly puts me in a good mood. Even the tedious and endless changes in the timeframe only delight me in this film. They make sense. It wouldn’t have worked without them and it didn’t feel like a cheap gimmick Allen was sacrificing the film’s structure and sense to include. Bravo! It had me wondering where it was all going to end right up until the last amusing but heart-breaking moment. There isn’t a member of the cast that I can fault, even though memories of Bobby Cannavale still haunt me from the fatally late episodes of Will and Grace. Alec Baldwin and Peter Sarsgaard make terrific alternative love-interests, both promising stability and wealth for our lost heroine, and Baldwin’s sleazy contrasted with Sarsgaard’s sexy showcased each actor with ease. I fear that Sally Hawkins will be overlooked by awards, reviewers and enthusiastic bloggers, but having never knowingly seen her in anything, I would willingly watch her read Paradise Lost to herself (not something she does in the film), eat popcorn (nor is this) or get a phone hauled off the wall and thrown at her (ahem). The plot is perhaps a little predicable and the twist promises more than it can ultimately deliver – yes, it’s very like Streetcar blah blah blah – but the acting and attachment to the characters enabled me to gloss over this. The only clanger was a moment involving Hoagie – no, wait, that’s what Eastern Americans call sandwiches… for some reason – Augie! You’ll see. He pitches up from nowhere, in the middle of a busy LA high-street, recounts his entire life story, and is so clearly a thinly veiled plot device that Allen doesn’t even bother to have him walk on, but simply turn back the way he came as if his purpose in life is complete.

But, as all the reviewers have done, I must turn my attention, fleetingly, to Cate Blanchett. Having been derogatory about the abysmal spelling of her name in previous weeks, I must now doff the metaphorical hat to her. In, I suspect, a career-defining performance, she seems born to be the leading lady of this film and it’s no surprise that everyone else seems to fade in her presence. I will be interested to see if anyone can outshine her in a bid for Oscar nominations.

PS. Of course, the 3.30pm Wednesday audience had their foibles. There wasn’t one a day under 65 – not a problem in itself – but I wonder whether there is an age at which all films, no matter how upsetting or heartfelt, become hilariously funny. Every scene had them rolling in the aisles, and although Allen has done his best to chuck in the odd joke, I really can’t imagine it will scoop in any comedy awards, what with the tumultuously relationships, the violence, the mental illness, the infidelities, the… I could go on. (I can promise that the plot has not been deftly revealed and it’s considerably more light-hearted and less like a particularly gloomy episode of Panorama than that summary made it sound). Maybe it’s simply that, aged 65, you’ve either experienced these things, so callously laugh at those in the same predicament, or you consider youself too old to now have them pop out at you and so chuckle at those beset by tragedy. Sorry 65 plusers: you don’t come off very well either way…

Film

And I’m back in Exeter.  I’ve washed my sheets, I’ve made a huge consignment of chilli and – you’re not here – hell, yes, I’ve even vacuumed.  So all I’m waiting for now, other than a job, a substantial lottery win and a magic wand or lamp-harbouring-genie, is the phone call from national treasure Kirsty Young.  Now, I know exactly which eight songs I’d choose for Desert Island Discs; and my goodness, people will be snapping off their radios and gnawing through their power cables I can tell you, in a valiant yet futile attempt to escape the confusion of Robbie, Elgar and Tim Minchin that will render Kirsty speechless that day.  In fact, I’m waiting for the day when the Discs format begins to pall – and seeing as it’s been a radio stalwart since 1942, that day must surely be creeping ever closer- and Miss Young steps up as the first presenter of Desert Island Films.

Some Like It Hot (and don’t pretend you didn’t know that you would now be subjected to my list in full) would be top of my list if I were, by some fortuitous misfortune, marooned on a desert island with a hamper of DVDs, a DVD player, a widescreen TV and an inexhaustible supply of electricity.  No one my age seems to have seen Some Like It Hot and I have made it my duty to make the formal introductions: two musicians, gunfire, cellos, Marilyn Monroe, cross-dressing, birthday cake, Spats, terrible impressions of Cary Grant, pearls, Osgood Fielding III (what a great name), roses, elevators, alcohol, saxophones…  Yeah, that about sums it up.  It’s a farce-comedy-romance-musical-gangster movie.   My adoration of Jack Lemmon simply increases whenever I watch this film and here he conjures up one of the best sequences in film history.  You’ll see…  It must also surely have won the award for ‘the best final line in a film ever’.  If such a category does not exist, instate it now, and posthumously give it to Lemmon.  Once you’re a signed up convert, you can watch The Apartment too.  Although, Some Like It Hot is undoubtedly lessened in its glory by Marilyn Monroe’s absolutely awful dress, and the delightful knowledge, courtesy of Tony Curtis, that she was like kissing Hitler.  Or do these things only add to its charm?

Singin’ in the Rain: (I may as well come out now as allergic to Andrew Lloyd Webber.  To those who adore him, I apologise, but I don’t really even like the song he wrote).  But yes, I love a good musical.  I’d be sorely tempted to conceal High Society, My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music in the box as well, but I would have no hesitation in choosing Singin’ in the Rain every time; even though it’s a wrench to lose Bing Crosby.  I have known this film by heart for as long as I can remember and my island would never get me down so long as I could caper and sing along to every single song in this film.  Plus, watch Gene Kelly dance and hear Jean Hagen speak.  “Haunting”… in two very different ways.

Hamlet: ‘You see, little creatures that have gathered on my island, where I come from, we do this thing called ‘acting’.  We also write these things called ‘plays’.  And although the 1996 film may total 4 hours and 2 minutes, it is at least 4 hours and 2 minutes of one of my favourite plays with one of my favourite actors.’

I suspect that it is necessary to take a children’s film with you: something to sit rather sadly on your island, on the less jolly days, and revisit your own childhood with wistful nostalgia.  Whilst I’d be tempted to take Aladdin or Pirates of the Caribbean or The Lion King or… this could become a very long list.  But, in my heart of hearts, I know I would grab the 1995 version of The Wind in the Willows complete with its beautiful music, exquisite animation, the Vanessa Redgrave framing narrative, and Alan Bennett, Michael Gambon, Rik Mayall and Michael Palin.  And it keeps all the bits with Pan and the otters.  To be honest, who could possibly say no to such a great book with such a brilliant cast?  If you could say no to it, then I am afraid you are not welcome on my island.  Swim on by please.

I think I’ll have to take something, brace yourself September, Christmassy.  Tempted to nab Diehard or The Taylor of Gloucester, but would in fact take The Muppet Christmas Carol.  Of course.  It’s sort of a musical, sort of a children’s film (great), but it’s also a heart-warming Dickens-novel (even greater) told through the medium of muppets (definitively greatest).  And who doesn’t laugh at Michael Caine awkwardly singing and, with no less awkwardness, smiling with muppets?

So now I’ve got ‘only one more sleep till Christmas’ firmly in my head, it all gets a bit tricky.  Would I take Beginners or Grosse Pointe Blank?  Shame or Withnail and I?  The Talented Mr Ripley or 12 Angry Men?  A Hitchcock or a Woody Allen?  I’m not even considering television series (that’s a blopic for a different island altogether which would be rocking a lot of Brideshead let me tell you).  All of the aforementioned films are, in my humble opinion, brilliant.  Obviously, some things are instant no-nos.  The Impossible for example.  Quite a good film, but no one stranded on a desert island wants to watch a film about people drowning or being horrifically injured on a small island; nor do I wish to feel that Naomi Watts, in the midst of a natural disaster, has still scrubbed up better than I do on an average day.  There’s nothing quite so bad for the soul as being ill-favourably compared to a celebrity by a coconut.  So, for my final three film choices I’m going to have an independent arts film, something that always makes me cry, and something I haven’t seen yet.

And here they are.  I really want to take An Education, The Opposite of Sex or Cold Comfort Farm, but I fear they’re not pretentious enough (!), and their titles make very peculiar reading when placed side by side.  I’ll have Trainspotting instead, with An Education on the B side, if I may (and I may).  It has the advantage of making Britain look bleak enough for me to find my island cosy and inviting.  Also it has Ewan McGregor in it, so I’m sold.  My island’s feeling cosier by the second.  You may wonder why I want something sad with me, but I think it might be nice to sob with some purpose on my island.  Not that having a coconut as your only friend isn’t sad enough when you’re stranded in the middle of the ocean (it had better be a Caribbean island with a coconut tree), but sometimes you just fancy a sad film.  Seeing as there is no way I am taking Life is Beautiful or Amour to a desert island – there are limits to just how sad I wish to be and limits too to the amount of emotional support a coconut can provide – I suspect I shall have to take American Beauty, which for some reason I found incredibly sad (and it’s little comfort to me now that I’ve been through the emotional wrangler it’s on IMDb’s saddest films ever list).  And finally Pulp Fiction, because everyone goes on about it as though it’s the answer to something.  And if it is, then fabulous.  I’ll be able to say that I liked a Tarantino film which will be a novel experience for me.  And if it isn’t, then it gives me something to moan about on my island.

PS. This was an unbelievably difficult task and I’m so sorry I name-checked so many different films.  I want to take every one of the ones mentioned, and about thirty others.  It turns out that living on a desert island just isn’t for me after all.  Damn.  My pal Kirsty, if she hasn’t tried to asphyxiate herself with a plastic bag by this point, would probably ask me, slightly fixedly, which one I’d save if my island flooded.  ‘Definitely Singin’ in the Rain.’  Appropriate.  And a luxury?  ‘Either my teddy-bear or a guitar.’  Meanwhile, the coconut sends his best.