Deep Blue Sea

We braved the awful noise and flashing lights of the adverts at Manchester's Corner House Cinema to see The Deep Blue Sea, a film based on the play of the same name by Terrene Rattigan.  A beautifully acted film with time given to the performers to think and feel their way through the intricacies of a marriage gone wrong.  When not actively engaged in dialogue we thought that holding on to 'well posed images' was a little too long.  The tongue in cheek claim made by Terrence that there were only three playwrights - Shakespeare, Chekhov and himself began to smack of the truth.  I think the bits not in the original script were unnecessary - especially the one in the underground with the referances to Anna Korenina and the wife in Brief Encounter dragged in.   To my mind the Barber concerto is too powerfully to be quiet right for the piece, but this is a quibble – it certainly has the loneliness.  We both felt that the last shots of opening the window to a bright future, and the world of others toddling along as per usual must have been done for the sentimental American audiences - in the original, the wife folds up the scarf of her departed lover - much more telling - and for those who like references, think ‘the mobbled queen’, in Hamlet!  My fussy carping apart Do see it if you can.  

I am still trying to understand Hamlet.  Every time I get an idea, I am led on to another. It grows like Hampton Court maze on nitrogen

Shall we have a quiet winter season, think you? I do hope so....

bookcase

I carry on painting, - reflections in a bookcase. 

painting hamlet 2

Although I feel happiest when I am painting what I see, or rather, trying to accurately paint what I think I see, I like, from time, to have a go at something different.  Recently I have found both rest and stimulation from thinking about Hamlet by tracing in paint and drawings what is beyond words but starts off on the canvas as a line or a blotch of colour that comes out of my thinking about that wonderful play. I enjoy watching tv programmes about art because of the historical content and the people involved, and the enthusiasm of the presenters. But because of the ineffable qualities of art, I better stop now or I too shall fall into the trap of tranlating what is untranslatable...so, ladies and gentlemen, Queen Gertrude, teranteraaa

painting hamlet

still writing about Shakespeare - will publish when ready, in the meantime, here's is a picture of the mobbled queen -

The Life and Death of Marina Abramović at the Lowrie Theatre.

I like the lighting... oh, and the live dogs at the beginning. Otherwise, unless you enjoy being surprised by loud ticks and thumps to keep you awake while watching actors paid to behave like electronically controlled puppets then I suggest you save yourselves a lot of money and just buy the programme - the write-up and the photographs more or less tell it all.

Shakespeare, the death of Hamnet, his son, Judith's twin

TWINS AND SHAKESPEARE’S RECONSTRUCTED FAMILY

- I have just added this article to my 'Pages' that are to be found in the column to the right of this...


I am very interested in the creative power of grief - sadness can be such a healthful and benign power, and so very different to depression -

flarepath by terence rattigan

wonderful! Visited London to see this wartime play - all my grumbles faded away.  Clear diction. Well thought out, well acted.  Happy now!

I spent the evening with friends -  a psychiatrist and a psychologist - they are very worried about what the Gvt is planning to do with the National Health Service.  I do hope the powers that be calm down and allow themselves more thinking time. More Cogitation and a little less adrenaline please!

voice, this time its the bbc - a grump

I am puzzled. I listened to the beginning of a BBC 3rd Programme play on Sunday - w'therin' 'ites by that Bronte lass  -  and then, on a nod from my partner, we agreed to turn it off.  Not because of the naughty words but becaause of the poor voices. I was looking foward to hearing the local dialects being richly spoken.  My dad had a marvellous Yorshire dialect.  We would far rather have had the words said with love of them even if a bit iffy on the side of being correctly Yorkshire than what we were given.  I'm intrigued by the lack of good voices coming out of drama schools.  I value dialects - Think Northern Broadside  - but....come on you voice teachers, do your stuff!

Here, for fun, is Horatio in Hamlet - paingting in progress

Shakespeare again

My partner and I had a great experience at the Lowrie recently when we saw a production of The Comedy of Errors - heard every word, laughed, and came away reassured there's life in British theatre. 

I've beem off line thinking about Hamlet - having long coversations with Shakespeare - he's very argumentative.  However, I dare to say we're beginning to agree with each other. Or, to be accurate, I'm beginning to agree with him.  He's thought to have been the first to take the part of The Ghost because he could produce an unearthly voice.  Here he is in acrylic paint. It isn't finished... a little greenish blue to push the figure back maybe to emphasise the directive finger as he pronounces the word "Swear!"...   

Hamlet at the NT on tour

The National Theatre’s touring production of Hamlet that my partner and I saw last night at the Lowry Theatre in Greater Manchester was for both of us a disaster.

Poor diction - heavy trundling scenery - sudden screeching like vixens on heat - weak characterisation - at least a couple of the cast appeared to be on chloroform.  Loose wandering about and masking each other.  We enjoyed a good grumble in the car on our way home so thanks for that.  We nearly left half way through
– I noticed that three people in the row ahead had done just that.

Poor bloody actors, at least you had a full house.  The NT should be ashamed to have demanded so much of  the cast.  As for bad directors, We’re dragons up here and gobble 'em up.

If any production goes to prove that working in TV weakens the muscles required for acting then this is it.

Get in a voice coach and some sleep, and pray - and of course, we wish you all all the best.

Love is

On my return home from London last week, where my partner and I had been to see Terrance Rattigan's play "Less Than Kind" at the Jermyn Street Theatre, I turned round as I was stepping into the metro, Northern Line, and, for a split second came eye to eye with one of two women who were in each other's arms. 
They touched hands as if their fingers were made of a gossamer of great value.  They were in another world.  The one who looked straight at me didn't see me, even though I could have reached out and touched her.  They could have been out of a modern production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.  As soon as I got home I spent some time trying to recapture their moment of rapture, first with charcoal and fountain pen and then with colours on the pc. I changed their ethnicity.  It was a moment of really super theatre stronger even than the excellent play I had just seen...and why? well, I suppose, I didnt have to suspend my disbelief.

Terence Rattigan's "Less Than Kind" playing at the Jermyn Street Theatre in London is a delight.

On our drive home, my partner and I chatted over how much we'd enjoyed the play and the acting, but agreed that there seemed to be something at variance with Rattigan's craftsmanship and the energy that the character, Michael, back home from Canada, had had to put into NOT appearing to be quite the awful young prig that his lines suggested.

We felt there was something missing, and that this might have been due to the passing of time.   Had the play been performed when it was written in 1944 audiences would have quickly recognised Michael as being someone under the spell of Moral Re-Armament, a worldwide organisation - but one that at the end of the war was to come under a very dark cloud.  People were remembering that its founder, Frank Buchman, had had dealings with the Nazis and Himmler, and, in the New York World-Telegram on August 26th 1936 had thanked God "for a man like Hitler".

Following the suggestion in the programme notes that the character of Sir John Fletcher was based on the influential Canadian, Lord Beaverbrook, I looked up MRA on the web and made an interesting connection.  It seems that there had been a scandal in Canada with regard to the tough methods involved in collecting money going to support what was seen as an inappropriate life style for the leaders of MRA.

Once, on theatre tour in Scotland, I heard from a group of ladies who had set up a hostel to care for sick miners in Stirlingshire, that Moral Rearmament had closed its doors to them in a most cruel manner because they suspected them of being lesbians.  From what I read, MRA put up a front of implacable homophobia to hide from the world Buchman's own homosexuality - an example of hypocrisy that might have added energy to Rattigan knocking the corners off Michael's 'superiority'. And, I suggest, would also have added authenticity to the character without straining the credulity of the audience of the time.

Spoken English in film and television

My partner and I watched a recording of the film “Atonement” last night.  'Watched' being the operative word.  We both got the impression that the actors were ashamed of using their organs of speech - they hid so much sensual enjoyment by mumbling and swallowing their consonants and croaking their vowels throughout the film.

It is strange to have to remind actors and actresses that tongues and lips are used in sex and speech.  I thought it ironic that Vanessa Redgrave, appearing right at the end of the film, and seemingly at the end of her character’s life, to give what was, in fact, a short master class on how it’s done.

I remember a fellow theatre director in 1969 complaining that theatre schools no longer taught their students how to speak on stage – now they seem not to teach them how to speak to any effect other than to irritate.