Essie Speaks - mostly about movies - but also of books, countries, life. Mostly movies though :) (Updated every weekend - sunday night latest ^-^)P.S. ALL THE MATERIAL ON THIS SITE IS COPYRIGHTED AND MAY NOT BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF ITS WRITER - AND THAT WOULD BE ME!
In our play this week Andre, our hero, struggles with his own mind as it plays trick after trick on him.
I personally have one heck of a week coming. I am no longer doing office work, I am back on the shift work so I now once again have multiple 6.00 a.m. starts looming on my horizo. Oy vey...
On a completely different note, this is London so we have officially said goodby to the sun until next spring.
Much clouds. Wow.
Anyway, I have to dash now, but I hope your week has fewer clouds than mine and much sun.
Oh I am not complaining. I am just a little chilly...
I love
going to the theatre. Movies have always been another matter, I don’t particularly
mind if I watch them in the cinema or in the living room. Well, possibly except
when the experience is better served by 3D and IMAX, you actually NEED to go to
the cinema for that. But all that aside, you might even say I prefer watching
films in my own living room, in my pajamas and munching as many noisy snacks as
my gut will hold. The magic of the theatre is completely different for me.
London is a great and wonderful place and if cheap theatre tickets are your
thing, there are a million and one different websites you can use to come by
them. You have to use your noggin a little bit, but with a minimal amount of
triage you can end up paying pretty much Band 3 prices for Band 1 tickets. I
tend to avoid Band 3 tickets, but for this play, the price was very good. So I
risked it. I ended up in literally the last row in the house, riiight up in the
rafters. I was kicking myself as I took my seat – never again such false
economies, I vowed – and my inner Middle Eastern started scanning the grand
circle below to see if there were empty seats I could sneak into during the
interval.
I am not
going to say that I will now sit in Band 3 for always and always, I will probably
still very much go for Band 2 at the very worst. But nor do I regret having got
these seats up in the rafters in this particular case. It reminds one how truly
powerful a live performance has to be. Especially as I now have pretentions at
crossing the curtain to the other side of the stage, it is awesome and quite
frightening that I, in a seat where I could comfortably touch the roof of the
building (or would be able to if I was only about a foot taller) I was actually
bowled over by the performances and the emotions. I cannot begin to conceive
how you would go about actually giving such a performance (I can’t yet,
anyway).
The Father
is the story of Andre (Kenneth Cranham). He is getting on a bit, but by and
large he is managing fine – or so he tells himself. His daughter Anne (Claire
Skinner) would tell a different story. Andre doesn’t understand why she insists
on finding him carers. Or why he frequently ends up still wearing his pajamas
at the end of the day. Or where his watch is. Some days strange men and women
come into his house (or is it is daughters?) and claim to be his daughter and
son in law, Andre just doesn’t understand. But surely it’ll all come to him…
He’s fine… Right?
Translated
from the original Moliere award winning French play by Christopher Hampton, The
Father gives us a toe-curlingly realistic portrayal of a decaying mind. The
truly fascinating thing is the way the play shows us both sides of the
argument. Kenneth Cranham’s Andre – who, in case you needed it spelled out for
you, is clearly suffering from some form
of dementia – is a larger than life character who is painfully realistic. And
the play is structured in a way that brings his disease and confusion right to
you with hair raising (in a good way) reality. But although the disease is
swallowing Andre whole, it does not swallow the story. In the midst of this
confusion we see Anne and her husband Antoine desperately trying to cope with
the effects of this disease. All characters are unflinchingly human. One
vacillates between wanting to strangle them and wanting to comfort them… And
this makes the story that little bit harder to watch if, for whatever reason,
the topic is close to your heart.
The Father
is definitely not your average evenings light entertainment. This is the kind
of show that makes you stop, shake yourself and seriously think about life.
You’ll go to the pub badly in need of a stiff drink and be a little too boisterous
and loud as you try to expulse the dark clouds that gathered in you throughout
the show. And as someone who has dementia in her family, I can testify to the
fact that you will get a powerful insight into what life with dementia truly is
like. I described the play in some detail to my mother and she reckons she
wouldn’t be able to watch the play. And for all her eccentric tastes in film (I
am yet to be able to discern a pattern with your viewing Mom, and this is from
someone who has known you for 32 years) Mom is a tough cookie. Sensitive souls
beware.
So how
would I summarize The Father ? Strong, beautiful and dark. Very dark. I would
also point out that it is in London’s Wyndham Theatre for a very limited run,
so I would strongly advise you catch it before it is gone. Go on. Get out of
the pajamas and put the popcorn to one side for two minutes. Life really does
begin outside of your comfort zone and it is worth getting a little
uncomfortable to really learn something about life.
So, week two (give or take) in my office life. It still feels like a suit of clothes that doesn't fit very well. But I am getting my own stuff in as well, so for now all is well.
It really is turning into a sort of high-stakes juggling act though. I don't find the work itself that tiring, it's the fitting my own life around it bit that is complicated. It is a valuable time-management lesson for when I return to the wierd and wonderful world of shift work. I mean, if I can actually manage my escalating acting world, household responsibilities and blog going with this sale of 9 hours of my day every day (though technically more because it takes me over an hour to get to work every day) imagine what will happe when I am back to making my own schedule! I can't wait!
In the meanwhile here's a slightly tardy review. Tardy as in the show closed two weeks ago. Oh well, it doesn't stop me thinking about it and talking about it.
Well this
is messy. This is precisely what I was talking about last week. The whole point
of my writing about plays I go to was to shine a tiny candle onto the theatre
scene. Sort of asking you to accompany me as I sneak slowly (and on a budget)
into London’s theatre scene. I saw this play absolutely ages go. I finally was
able to put some time aside to catch up on my writing. One search on Google
shows that it closed the day before I wrote this. FFS.
Never mind.
It may reopen. And there is no harm in being retrospective. And this is MY blog
God-darn it, if I want to write about a play that closed two weeks ago, I will,
so there. Boo to anyone who criticizes me.
Future
Conditional is the story of what is wrong with the British educational system.
Sporting a cast of talented young actors and starring Rob Brydon, we take a
look into the lives of those on all sides of the system. The families, the
teachers, the law-makers… In the thick of all of this, we have one young and very
talented Pakistani refugee who has an extraordinary idea about how we can make
the whole thing a lot fairer. The question is, can she get past the preconceptions
and bad habits to actually change the world…
I will
start off by assuring you that while the play really and truly IS about “what
is wrong with the educational system”, it is neither as serious or as dry as
that sentence makes it sound. There is a lot of laughter, on big topics and
small, and while we are definitely pushed to think while we watch this play –
and it clearly has its political message well and truly at the forefront of its
mind – it is not didactic at all.
That said,
it does work a lot better if you actually know a bit about the British
educational system. My knowledge, it must be admitted, is patchy. And I did
find bits of the play – it is quite heavy on very serious political discussion
– a tad hard to follow as far as the topic went. I mean don’t get me wrong you
can follow it. I am just quite sure I would enjoy it more if I knew more about
the topic.
The other
surprise for me was Rob Brydon. His role is basically that of John Keating in
Dead poets society. The only thing is, he is a very toned down version of him.
Yes his scenes are good and striking but to be that “extraordinary teacher” who
“changes his pupils’ lives” as the posters for the play professes he needed
that extra bit of “umph”. As it is, he is good and portrays his part more than ably,
but , I do wish there was more of him doing more.
I mean I
can sort of see why that artistic choice was made. Rob Brydon is the big name
of the play, but the spotlight of it stays on the topic and the young, talented
and energetic cast. He is an integral part of the process, but not the centerpiece
of the affair. This means we the audience can give a fair share of attention
and limelight to all the parts and hopefully give some thought to the message. And good theatre is all about teamwork, at the end
of the day. I have more of a problem with the fact that the whole part of the
“life saving teacher” lacked a certain je ne sais quoi. I don’t really have a problem
with whether Rob Brydon was playing the part or not. The part needed something more, something
bigger. I mean either that, or the play really should stop using the line “who
is the teacher who saved your life” (or something to that effect) in its
advertising. But the other point is that Alia, who is based largely on Malala
Yousufazi the Pakistani schoolgirl who fought for the right to female
education, does not necessarily need “saving”
in the first place. She is perfectly capable of doing it herself.
But this is not a play about teaching any side
“a lesson”. It is neither that serious nor that glum. On the contrary, it brims
with hope for the future and the new generation. Yes, it points out the flaws
in the current system clearly and concisely. Ruthlessly even. But the
overwhelming message, I felt, was one of hope. We have many bright and
beautiful young men and women growing up in this country right now. Give them
half a chance and they can fix it. All you need to do is not get stuck in your
old ways and cling to old methods that clearly don’t work. Just open your mind to
the possibility that there is a whole different way of doing things that would
make us all a lot happier.
I went to see the play on a matinee. I counted
no less than three different school uniforms in the auditorium. This gives me
hope. Young people are not just “constantly
staring at their phones” as the
older gener ations would have us believe. They are interested, and
engaged.They just do things differently –
as does every new generation.
I guess I owe you guys an explanation. So, I work in an office now. It literally happened overnight, the agency I work for needed folks to work in the office, I was magicked up. From one day to the next. Now the reason this happened so quickly is that I had been going on at them a bit to give me a stint in the office. Ya know the score, I'm over 30 now, this whole working night shifts and day shifts running into eachother, on your feet and awake until 3 in the morning is a young womans game. So finally I got my wish, I must be happy, right? Well, well...
I mean don't get me wrong I am not unhappy. It's just drastically different. And I am having to relearn survival skills I had learnt over 5 years ago and subsequently abandoned. I have to figure out a new way of organising my time. I am, provisionally, here until Christmas. For about three months I shall have a drastically different life. I shall reserve judgement about what I make of it and wether I want to keep it up or not.
The one thing that has happened is that artistic endeavours have had to be shuffled around, timewise. Acting and all my activities acting related are now part of my absolute essential daily activities like eating, washing and (ehm) going to work. They also happen to take up a good number of my evenings. And I now work 9 to 6. What I liked the most about working irregular hours was the ability to crowd necessary working hours into fewer days and have more completely off days or half days. It allowed me to have time to write and be rested on days I have a lot of artistic endeavour planned. My new schedule means I have to push through the mental leftovers of a day at the office to get to my creative juices. Sometimes I simply can't get to them all.
Now, I am getting better and better AND BETTER at maintaining energy levels and planning my time. We should be ok from this point onwards. But rest assured, if we have another massive slip-up I am going to sit down and really think about what we need to do about it. We can cross that bridge if we ever get to it. In the meanwhile please accept my humble appologies for the delay and enjoy the write-up!
I have said
this before and I will say it again, there is nothing quite like a good period
drama. The sweeping skirts the high emotion, that sense of being transported to
another world… Many are the cases where there isn’t much thinking needed – we
are watching a thing of beauty, to be admired as the embodiment of a beloved
tale but then set aside – except possibly to form mental pictures when we read
the book itself if, like in the case of Far From The Madding Crowd, it was an adaptation.
This newest
incarnation of the spirited young heiress Bathsheba Everdene comes at a very
interesting time in cinematic history. Her current embodiment, Carey Mulligan,
is a part of a very vocal part of a growing and high profile movement in the arts
promoting equal pay and opportunities for women. Her next big film will in fact
be none other than Suffragette, the story of the birth of the women’s rights
movement in England. Unless you have actually been living under a stone, you
will have heard something about how Viola Davis triumphed at the Emmys and you
will have read something of her acceptance speech that underlines the need for
more opportunities for actresses of colour . You might not think that a 19th
century novel taking place on a sweeping country estate is not the ideal place
to start discussing women’s equality (except maybe to point it out as a
terrible example). But those who are in the know will know, Bathsheba Everdene
is not your average 19th century heroine…
She is, in
fact, a young woman of very modest means who is swept to the head of an
illustrious country estate as an heiress
and fear not, the whole Deus ex machina nature of this is really, really
not lost on me. But this is not about
her rags to riches story. It is more about what she does after she arrives at
the riches. It is common to think of 19th century heroines as faint
hearted little things, all tight corsets and smelling salts, but Bathsheba is a
definite exception. She isa
canny businesswoman, excellent at managing her staff and brave in the face of
the disapproval surrounding her. Her beauty and intelligence (and of course her
riches) make her the catch of the area, soon suitors of all walks of life start
openly courting her… Bathsheba is her
own woman, and has a lot of plans about her life – and becoming someone’s
wife is definitely not among them…
What
strikes one straight away is what a modern heroine Bathsheba is. Even in modern
cinema and literature one struggles to find a heroine that is so much an active
agent in her own destiny – so it is surprising to see a heroine from a hundred
years ago putting modern heroines to shame. Carey Mulligan, it must be said,
takes the role on with gusto and spirit. I can, at this point, barely imagine
anyone else taking on the part. Another performer who has been highly praised
is Michael Sheen or stars as one of her suitors, her neighbour Mr Boldwood – I
honestly wish we could see more of him in the story but he has two other
suitors to contend with so we must make do with relishing the sheer quality of performance
over the comparative lack of quantity. One of the main suitors, Gabriel Oak, is
brought to life by Mathias Schoenarts. Schoenarts is well suited for the
handsome yet slightly sullen Farmer Oak, although – and I don’t I can never decide whether he has simply been
cast in a series of characters that find it difficult to display emotion or
that the actor himself actually finds displaying emotion hard…
A lot has
been said on how pretty the film is, and I must agree. The stunning Kent
countryside is a character of the film itself. And although there are some very
poignant moments in the film where you are literally hanging off the edge of
your seat, by and large, the film is beautiful. But not that deeply engaging. This
is an unsurprising result of adapting a long and complex
novel into a two hour commercial film intent on getting bums on seats (as is
the want with all of show business).The resulting film is rather pretty but has
lost some of its grit along the way. It is polished and a little too perfect –
as if it is trying very hard to get all the requirements for a period drama
correct so that we can focus on the more thought provoking aspects of the film.
Or possibly so we can pardon them…
The problem
is that the lack of grit makes the whole affair even less believable. The story
loses some of its strength through sheer poise and grace. To give but one example,
I would have wanted Gabriel Oak to have a bit more of a rant – not full-blown
broken furniture but still something – when he realises that Sergeant Troys
insistence on ignoring the approaching storm may well ruin them all. Similarly,
in the scenes that follow I think Bathsheba could very well have made a bit
more of a fuss (to put it mildly) as the details of Troys past come pouring
out. I mean of course she reacts but it all feels very much single tear rolling
gracefully down the cheek… It is as if marriage (minor spoiler alert) has
deflated Bathsheba’s spirit overnight, making her very elegant but about half
the woman she was at the beginning of the film. This change may well have taken
place during married life but I very much doubt it would have happened
within about a week of being wed…
All told,
Far From The Madding Crowd is enjoyable. Yes it could have been bigger,
stronger, more. But what it has is still quite strong, elegant and graceful. It
is an artistic choice at the end of the day – you could go down the route of
underlining the feminism in the story and going for something more gritty,
modern and realistic. But another choice is to hint at those themes and stick
with the period drama routes of the production – it makes it the best of both
worlds, edgy but just safe enough… Being a businesswoman, I am sure Bathsheba
would have understood…