Review – The Father, Northampton Filmhouse, 12th June 2021

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I knew nothing of this film in advance, apart from the fact that it concerned dementia and that Anthony Hopkins has been widely acclaimed as having given one of his best performances ever. If you haven’t seen the film, I think it’s best to stay in blissful ignorance about most of its content so that it’s endless shocks and surprises hit you with all possible force. However, if you have seen it, or are prepared to risk reading more about it in advance – please continue!

There’s nothing Florian Zeller likes more than to deceive his audience. A few years ago we saw two of his plays at the Menier Chocolate Factory, The Truth and The Lie, both ridiculously entertaining plays involving deceit between couples but also leading the audience up several garden paths with hardly any way of knowing which is the right one. And now Florian Zeller has directed his own 2012 play The Father for a cinema audience; so the one thing you can be sure of is that you can be sure of nothing.

What you can reasonably assume is that Anthony has dementia and his daughter is trying to find a way for him to receive the best care treatment possible. Anything beyond that, and you’re straying into the world of the uncertain. But the delightful (if that’s the right word) web of confusion that the film weaves gives us a brilliant, albeit awe-inspiringly tragic, insight into Anthony’s true lived experience. After sleeping on it, I decided on my own interpretation of what was real and what was not. My interpretation is that the first scene is true; Anthony has dismissed his carer Angela in a whirlwind of insults and accusations, and daughter Anne says they have to find a better solution for his care, as she will be moving to Paris to live with her new partner, and will no longer be able to pop around all the time. The last scene is also true; Anthony is now living in a care home, with a kind nurse Catherine to look after him and take him for walks in the park. Everything in between is the mass of confusion in Anthony’s mind as he copes with (or fails to cope with) moving from his flat into the home.

This superb film can trigger a strong emotional response. Whether it is because of pent-up frustrations leading from months of lockdown, or because it reminded me of my own mother’s descent into dementia I’m not sure (I suspect the latter), but once the film had finished I had massive tears in my eyes, and, once out back on the street, I confess I bawled my heart out for about five minutes. So be warned!

The screenplay is perfect – Zeller in collaboration with his frequent partner/translator Christopher Hampton – and contains so many of the tell-tale phrases and obsessions of a dementia patient, such as “so you’re abandoning me” and being convinced that their possessions are being stolen. And the use of music is brilliantly integrated into the film, particularly the frequent repetition of what was presumably one of Anthony’s favourite pieces, Je Croix Entendre Encore from Bizet’s Pearl Fishers –  an aria appropriately about memory and recollecting distant moments of love. I also admired the fact that the film told its story fully and compactly, all within the space of 1 hour 35 minutes, continuing to prove that old adage, that brevity is indeed the soul of wit.

Without question, Sir Anthony Hopkins is absolutely at the top of his game with his portrayal of his namesake Anthony, a wonderful mixture of the irascible and the helpless; the kind of character who can sometimes “present well” when trying to make a jolly impression on his new carer, who carries on regardless when a circumstance arises that clearly makes absolutely no sense to him, who can lash out with vicious verbal spite and cruelty, and who can dwindle away into infantile crying – the perfect representation of Shakespeare’s Seventh Age of Man, in fact.

The ever-reliable Olivia Colman is also excellent as the much put-upon but kindly Anne; her eyes conveying all the love in the world for her dear old father even though she knows that caring for him is both beyond her capability and also not what she wants from life. Rufus Sewell, Imogen Poots, Olivia Williams and Mark Gatiss all give strong supporting performances, drifting in and out of his life, and not always as the same character.

A hugely impactful, stunning film. Whilst there is always a kind of gallows humour to be found in dealing with dementia, if you’re expecting a lot of laugh out loud moments, you’ll be disappointed. Instead it offers you a remarkable insight into the tragedy of a jumbled mind; don’t forget the Kleenex.

Review – Four Quartets, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 9th June 2021

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T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets comes to the Royal and Derngate hotfoot from its opening at the Theatre Royal Bath last week, with star of stage and screen Ralph Fiennes ambitiously presenting these four connected poems as a theatrical event; the perfect antidote to COVID, as it’s a naturally socially-distanced play in front of a socially-distanced audience, and lasting 75 minutes so that it needs no interval. It examines the concept of time, and who wouldn’t wish to go back to the relatively carefree days of 2019 when all we had to worry about was who would win the General Election.

Personally, I’ve always struggled with the Four Quartets. The first poem, Burnt Norton – which isn’t an obscure colour on an artist’s palette but a manor house in Gloucestershire – was published in 1936 as a stand-alone work. Later, Eliot decided to write three more poems, sharing the same five-part structure, to create an extended collection. Each poem starts with a series of statements and counterstatements; then moves into a more lyrical mode; then movement becomes the central theme; then a short lyric precedes a final resolution. Reading them, some of his lines bounce off the page with elegant clarity and inspirational thought. The still point of the turning world, for example,  is a phrase that has seamlessly floated into everyday language. Other parts come across as intractable and turgid, and you resent Eliot for being just too darn clever-clever for his boots, with his classical allusions, religious façade, and use of deliberately obfuscatory language. No wonder Toilets is T. S. Eliot spelled backwards.*

Back in the day, Eliot recorded a reading of the Four Quartets, and his recitative skill was utterly abysmal. Every word sounds the same, portentously, and dully given the same emphasis. It’s a very boring experience. The challenge for Mr Fiennes is to make the four poems come to life as a dramatic narrative, that either clarifies their meaning for us, or makes us look at them in a new way, or somehow gives us something more than just sitting down and getting our old Faber edition out.

And Oh My Giddy Aunt does he succeed! From the moment he gives extra, inquisitive weight to the word perhaps in the second line of Burnt Norton, you know this is going to be a real interpretation of Eliot’s words, not mere recitation. Imagine that Mr Fiennes is Mr Eliot, trying to grapple with a complicated concept that is emerging in his brain, speaking out his mind’s words to see if they make any kind of sense; if they do, he runs with it, excitedly giving them meaning and truth; if they don’t, he falters, his words fall away and we all feel as though we’ve reached the same dead end. If the Four Quartets were a game of rugby, and Mr Eliot the fly-half, he winkles an idea out of the scrum and either scores an instant try in a blaze of glory, or gets tackled by half a dozen burly opponents and gets squished. Either way, Mr Fiennes takes us every step of his journey, and it’s irresistible.

There’s no doubt that he is helped by Hildegard Bechtler’s domineering and eerie set – two big revolving drab slabs that evoke the dry concrete of Burnt Norton, Christopher Shutt’s sound designs that bring the crashing waves of the Dry Salvages thundering into the auditorium, but above all Tim Lutkin’s superb lighting that guides us through the sections of the poem, radiating light onto Mr Fiennes’ face when the surface glittered out of heart of light, beaming red to evoke pentecostal fire in the dark time of the year. Dressed in sombre colours and barefoot, Mr Fiennes takes Eliot’s words and eludicates and clarifies them, entertains us with them, surprises us with them, invests them with humanity rather than just dry and dusty theory. He demarcates each individual section of the poems with a change of tone or stance, so you always get a sense of the progress being made. He brings out the very slight moments of gentle humour; Eliot would be aghast at how populist his twittering world could be interpreted in the social media age.

From the audience’s perspective, the show can be as active or as passive as you wish it to be. The beautiful glossy programme starts with a quotation from Eliot’s own The Frontiers of Criticism: “As for the meaning of the poem as a whole, it is not exhausted by any explanation, for the meaning is what the poem means to different sensitive readers.” It’s entirely up to you. You can listen and watch, alert as a rabbit with your whiskers twitching, munching down whatever meaning you feel appropriate from the words and movements; or you can recline back, and let Mr Fiennes’ voice simply wash over you. Because I have always found the Four Quartets very hard to understand, I really wanted to come out of this show feeling better acquainted with it, with greater insights and awareness of what’s going on. And Mr Fiennes gives us that with huge generosity and patience. I can’t imagine how anyone could have converted Eliot’s words into a stage show better.

* It isn’t, but I made you think twice.

Production photographs by Matt Humphrey

Five Alive, let Theatre Thrive!

 

Lockdown Armchair Travel – Uzbekistan – October 2009

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Nearly at the end of our lockdown armchair travel alphabet, and U is for Uzbekistan – a country I’d always wanted to visit, ever since I first heard about the silk route and saw pictures of incredible Registan Square in Samarkand. So what do you think of, when you think of Uzbekistan? Maybe it’s the same as me – the Golden Road to Samarkand?

The amazing spires and domes of Registan Square. I’ve got so many photos to show you… 116 in fact, so buckle up and let’s start on the road to Samarkand from the capital Tashkent.

Our first port of call was Shahrisabz, the birthplace of Tamburlaine the Great, or Amir Temur as he is known locally. Here’s the Great Man himself

Here’s some of what remains of Amir Temur’s Ak-Serai Palace…

This is the Mausoleum of Jehangir, Timur’s oldest and most favoured son.

And this is the Kuk Gumbaz mosque, a Friday mosque built in 1437 by Sultan, astronomer and mathematician, Ulug Beg.

We continued our drive down to the border town of Termez. As the route is used for smuggling drugs from Afghanistan we were stopped regularly by police – maybe once every half an hour, to check our passports and the boot of the car. All very polite but no nonsense at the same time. Eventually we reached Termez! This was the view outside our hotel:

So there was never any doubt as to where we were! Our tour was to start at the local museum.

But it was a Monday, and the museums were shut. However, our guide also worked at the museum, and she arranged for it to be opened specially for a private tour just for us! That was quite a privilege. We saw loads of riches – here are a few of the exhibits that interested us:

Alexander of the Great Bust – if I read that right

Tamburlaine’s chess set (allegedly)

A fine samovar. And much more, as you’d expect. Our next port of call was the Hakim-al-Termizy mausoleum complex.

Beautiful inside:

Hakim-al-Termizy was a Sufi saint, jurist, and writer who died in Termez in 859. There appears to be a bandstand in the gardens.

See the flat white building behind? That’s a military installation in Afghanistan. That’s how close to the border we were! Nearby is the Fayz Tepe Buddhist Temple – a 2000 years old monastery complex

We also visited Kampyr Tepe, which had just (a matter of days) been released from being a miltary zone and opened up to tourists. There was no one else around for miles, and hardly any excavations had really been completed. Walking around, we spotted these kitchen containers, still in their original location.

And pieces of pottery just laying on the ground

Our final visit of the day was to the Murch Bobo Mosque, the Friday mosque built in 1916. Very colourful!

A slightly nerve-racking drive back from Termez to Samarkand – because none of the petrol stations had any petrol, as the government had sequestered it all for the lorries carrying the freshly picked cotton. So we relied on reused two-litre coke bottles of petrol bought on the black market in villages as we went! But we did reach Samarkand – and all its glories.

Just wandering around on our own, on our first day

so much fantastic architecture

the domes, the towers

Registan Square itself, made up of madrasahs and a mausoleum

Here is the famous Sher-Dor Madrasah, with its fantasy tigers on the front arch

The magnificence of it all takes your breath away

Plus these buildings are tall! This is the Tilya Kori Madrasah

The arches are immaculately defined

And the decorations extraordinary

Here’s the tomb of Tamburlaine (again allegedly)

Look at all this exquisite internal decoration

This is Ulug Beg’s Observatory, built in the 1420s.

A fascinating place

Here is Ulug Beg meeting some other people. And they all look like Ulug Beg.

The Shah-i-Zinda Necropolis. Stunning architecture, housing the bodies of the great and good, including a cousin of the Prophet Mohammed. The roofs under the outside part of the mosques are brightly painted in the Iranian style (apparently).

Beautiful colours

So much to enjoy

This is the other major Madrasah, Ulug Beg Madrasah.

We also visited the Bibi Khanum Mosque with its famous stone Koran stand. Childless women are meant to crawl underneath it to make them more fertile.

It’s all beautiful by night too.

And whilst this may look like a welcoming sight – the wine is very sweet and not that great. Still we bought a few bottles to take home, as you do.

Let’s take a pause from all this architectural splendour, and take a look at some markets. Some of them are in the usual format of – well, a market! This is the market in Termez

And this in Bukhara

And this in the capital, Tashkent. Nice melons.

But in most places, people just sell their home/farm grown/caught produce by the roadside. On the way out of Tashkent, people sell their wares out of prams.

Or some more melons

Fruits and spices

The ubiquitous pomegranites!

If you saw a pram, it never had a baby in it. This one in Khiva contained bread!

Anyway, back to the sightseeing. After we left Samarkand we had a long drive to our next location, Bukhara, crossing the Kyzylkum Desert. Our next night was spent in a desert yurt.

And it was in the middle of nowhere!

Sounds romantic, doesn’t it? I have never, ever been so cold in my life. My uncovered head sneaked out of my sleeping bag overnight and the subsequent headache didn’t lift for three days! I was very happy to move on towards Bukhara.

The outer walls of the fortress are enough to deter any invaders

And the old town is rather attractive – probably the most attractive place we found in the country

Evocatively lit at night too!

The next day our tour started with the Ismael Samani mausoleum


The Memorial complex of Al-Bukhari is a lot more modernAnd the Chashma-Ayub mausoleum, site of Job’s well – and now a museum for the town’s water supply!

This odd design looks as though it could blow over in a strong wind. Not so. It’s the Bolo Hauz Mosque. Very busy on Fridays, when the attendees spill out on to the street.

It was built in 1712


See the beautiful detail of the tiles
Here’s the Kalon mosque, rebuilt in the early 16th centuryIt’s a stunning sight

Madrasahs fill the courtyards

And more fantasy creatures on the decorations – Simurghs on the portal of Nadir Divan-Beghi madrasah

And the Chor Minor, with its four minarets

We saw the famous Bug Pit – but it was a bit shabby really

Onwards the next day to Khiva, a city protected by UNESCO but which has been transformed into a living museum, so it has a slightly odd feel to it.

This is the lovely Muhammad Amin Khan Madrasa

The walls of the city are immense!

And it’s very atmospheric by night

Various sights include the Kukhna Ark

which offers great views of the city from the top

including the walls

And the harem!

In the Juma mosque, every pillar has a different carving

In Khiva they celebrate the man who invented algebra, Al-Khorezmi.

Before returning to Tashkent (which we did on a most terrifying broken down old Uzbekistan Airways propeller plane) let’s have a look at some of those exquisite tiles that you find dotted around the entire country.

Tashkent is a modern city. From our hotel room we could see the TV tower straight in front of us!


But there is room for the famous storks too!Which are even immortalised in silver!

In Independence Square

There are modern schools

Modern Madrasahs

A modern Friday Mosque complex

Not sure the brooms in the market are that modern though!

And the super pears are imported from China!

There are modern statues! This is the Monument to the Fallen in the Wars

And this is the Memorial to the survivors of the Earthquake

Before we leave Uzbekistan – let’s have a look at the people. They say people make a place, and that’s certainly true of Uzbekistan. Lads on a street market outside Tashkent:

A bride and groom in Shahrizabz. They are meant to maintain solemn faces all day. If they (especially the bride) are smiling, it implies they are of, shall we say, loose virtue

Some reckless and daredevil Russian fellows (at least, according to the T-shirt one of them wore)

Photograph me please!!

Those impish Russian guys again

A calligrapher – almost everyone over the age of 30 in Uzbekistan has a mouthful of gold teeth!

A potter

Some likely lads

Folklore and fashion show girls
A happy bunch of farm workers

A family from Khiva

And a terrible Tashkent twosome!

Thanks for joining me on this long, but hopefully entertaining set of Uzbek reminiscences!

 

The Agatha Christie Challenge – A Caribbean Mystery (1964)

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STOP PRESS: The Agatha Christie Challenge is now available as a book in two revised volumes – details at the end of this blog post!

In which Miss Marple has been sent on a rest holiday to the Caribbean island of St Honoré, where she is cornered by an old bore named Major Palgrave, who tells her a story about a murder and offers to show her a photo of the murderer; however, at the last minute he thinks better of it. Nevertheless, murders follow, and Miss Marple is up for the challenge to find out the culprit is and prevent more deaths. As usual, if you haven’t read the book yet, don’t worry, as always, I promise not to reveal whodunit!

The book is dedicated “to my old friend John Cruikshank Rose with happy memories of my visit to the West Indies”. John Rose worked on the dig at Ur under Leonard Woolley, and when Max Mallowan oversaw a dig in Arpachiyah in Syria in 1932, he recruited Rose as his draughtsman. A Caribbean Mystery was first published in the UK by Collins Crime Club on 16th November 1964, and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1965. It was also published, in two abridged instalments, in the Toronto Star Weekly Novel in January 1965.

Although some significant contemporary reviewers saw this book as a return to form for Christie, personally I found it rather disappointing. As does sometimes happen with Christie, it gets off to a cracking start, but then it seems to lose its way in the middle, before gathering all its bits and pieces and getting its act together for a decent ending. Unlike most Miss Marple books that had been published by this date, A Caribbean Mystery places Miss Marple firmly in the heart of things, without a Detective Inspector Craddock or similar copper to do the majority of the donkey work, which normally leaves Miss M to hover in the wings and turn up for a few crucial blows.

No, in this book, the local Caribbean detectives play a very minor role and it’s up to Miss Marple to mastermind the investigation. She wastes no time starting her detective work, well before any of the authorities suspect that something might be amiss. But you quickly realise it’s a role with which she isn’t actually that familiar. Unlike Poirot, who lies with the greatest of ease, you see her go through pangs of guilt about telling porkies to suspects in order to find out what she wants. Moreover, she has to team up with the offensive Mr Rafiel, who treats most people like slaves; he’s a crude and offensive conversationalist at the best of times. We’re simply not used to seeing Miss Marple put up with impolite behaviour, and, without a decent English police superintendent or a polite environment to work in, this just doesn’t feel like The Real Miss Marple. Maybe we miss St Mary Mead too much, but sometimes it’s as though another character has invaded the book and taken over Miss M’s personality. That might account for the fact that once she had started her investigations in earnest, rather than finding it unputdownable, I found hardtopickupable.

Let’s take a further look at what more we learn about Miss Marple in this book; as she takes central stage throughout, there’s a lot of material to consider. Right at the beginning we hear her views on “modern novels” – “so difficult – all about such unpleasant people, doing such very odd things and not, apparently, enjoying them.” It maybe comes as no surprise that Miss Marple wouldn’t like that kind of book; one thinks of her with her Bible and maybe a Jane Austen if she wanted something racy. But Christie goes on with something that may come as a surprise: ““Sex” as a word had not been mentioned in Miss Marple’s young days; but there had been plenty of it – not talked about so much – but enjoyed far more than nowadays, or so it seemed to her. Though usually labelled Sin, she couldn’t help feeling that that was preferable to what it seemed to be nowadays – a kind of Duty.”” Miss Marple! Are we discovering that you’re not quite the maiden aunt we always presumed? Sometime later her mind goes back to the past. “A young man she had met at a croquet party. He had seemed so nice – rather gay, almost Bohemian in his views […] he had been suitable, eligible, […] and Miss Marple had found that, after all, he was dull. Very dull.” It doesn’t sound like they had a passionate affair, so it’s hard to know what to make of her romantic past.

Away from her natural environment, she’s not enjoying her holiday as much as she ought, and certainly not as much as her nephew Raymond would have expected. She’s bored by the weather always being fine: “no interesting variations”. Tim Kendal is alert to her slight unhappiness, and somewhat erroneously offers her bread and butter pudding to make her feel more at home. “Miss Marple smiled and said that she thought she could do without bread and butter pudding very nicely for the present.” But she doesn’t like the steel bands; “she considered they made a hideous noise, unnecessarily loud.” She doesn’t like the way young people dance; “flinging themselves about, seeming quite contorted.” She’s critical of Lucky: ““forty, if she’s a day, and looks it this morning,” thought Miss Marple.” She feels sorry for Esther: “Miss Marple sighed, a sigh that any woman will give however old at what might be considered wasted opportunities” – but in this instance it’s the fact that she doesn’t know how to make herself attractive. Miss Marple never was bound to the cause of feminism. All this amounts to the fact that there isn’t much joy in Miss Marple in this book – she’s out of sorts, out of place and the twinkle in her eye is missing.

One other aspect to the narrative that didn’t entirely feel comfortable to me was the side plot about Molly’s health. Without giving too much away, so I must pick my words carefully, it did feel at times as though Christie considered it a separate story, not properly integrated into the rest of the book. But that may be a deliberate ploy by Christie to mask an important part of the plot. I’ll leave you to decide!

Otherwise it’s quite a straightforward book; it all takes place in the one location, the Caribbean island of St Honoré, which is an invention of Christie’s, whose chief town appears to be Jamestown. That’s the original name of Holetown, the capital of Barbados, so maybe that’s where Christie is setting it in her imagination. Like Evil Under the Sun, And Then There Were None and the next book she was to write, At Bertram’s Hotel, a hotel plays a prominent part, which always lends a sense of confinement and claustrophobia to a story.

In other references, Miss Marple wonders if she made up the quote “the many splendoured weather of an English day”.  It looks like she did, as I can’t find any other instances of that phrase online. The bottle that was found in Major Palgrave’s room, Serenite, is a natural medication extracted from herbs and is a non-addictive sleep aid. It’s also the new name given to a gemstone found in Oregon, USA! There is also a magnesium-based drug called Serenight.

Miss Marple advises us that as a child they were told to put cobwebs on a cut. Really? I’ve never heard of that before. But apparently, it’s true. Spider webs supposedly have natural antiseptic and anti-fungal properties, which can help keep wounds clean and prevent infection. Who knew?! There’s also a couple of instances where Miss M appears to call on the Almighty to help. “Who will go for me? Whom shall I send?” she asks. This is taken from the Book of Isaiah, Chapter 6 Verse 8. And she misquotes the Bible in her sleepiness, “and the evening and the morning were the last day”; it should be the first day, not the last day, and that comes from the creation story, Genesis Chapter 1 Verse 5.

Talking of the Bible, one of the chapters is entitled “Without Benefit of Clergy”, which is a short story by Rudyard Kipling; and Miss Marple says that she once worked for “the Armenian relief”, which I presume meant working with refugees. There is an Armenian Relief Society, founded in 1910 and based in Boston, Massachusetts. Another tantalising insight into Miss M’s back story that is only lightly touched on. We want to know more!

Mr Rafiel comes out with some Latin: “Ave Caesar, nos morituri te salutamus”. Miss Marple apologises for not knowing much Latin; but it means, those who are about to die salute you – and is taken from Suetonius’ Life of the Caesars. Basically, Rafiel is telling Miss M that he’s not got long to go; and, indeed, by the time Christie was to write Nemesis, in 1971, Rafiel has died.

Regular readers will know that I like to consider any significant sums of money in Christie’s books and work out what their value would be today, just to get a feel of the range of sums that we’re looking at. There’s only one in this book – the sum of £50,000. It’s an important sum – and is the amount that one of the characters has willed to another of the characters – I’ll say no more on that front because it might give some of the game away! Anyway, that’s the equivalent of over £700,000 today. A very nice little inheritance!

 

Now it’s time for my usual at-a-glance summary, for A Caribbean Mystery:

 

Publication Details: 1964. My copy is a Fontana Paperback, twelfth impression, published in March 1972, bearing the price on the back cover of 25p. The cover illustration, presumably by Tom Adams, depicts the dead face of Major Palgrave, his bulbous glass eye staring out hideously at us. There’s also a snapshot – which is a Very Big Clue.

How many pages until the first death: 16. Another very quick death, which always gets the reader’s juices flowing!

Funny lines out of context: Sadly none.

Memorable characters: Most of the characters are not particularly memorable, or individually well drawn. I’d say the standout character is Mr Rafiel, because of his charismatic stature and ruthless domination of his staff and the other characters – even Miss Marple. He’s a shouting bully, used to getting his own way through a lifetime of successful business deals and with no sensitivity to other people’s feelings. But you can tell that there is a lot of intelligence there too, and he and Marple form a pretty useful detective team.

Christie the Poison expert: Poison is involved in the first death, and in another attempted murder that is frustrated just in time. There’s a suggestion that arsenic is involved, also Belladonna Atropine, and Datura, which is not just a pretty flower.

Class/social issues of the time: I said earlier on that I felt this was a very straightforward book in some respects, and that’s certainly reflected in the lack of social issues discussed in the book. Nevertheless, there are still a few interesting things to consider.

The book predates Roy Jenkins’ Permissive Society, but you can see some of the more modern ways of speech and behaviour appearing. Miss Marple’s nephew Raymond has a friend who wanted somewhere quiet to write a book – he’s going to stay in Miss Marple’s house whilst she is in the Caribbean. ““He’ll look after the house all right. He’s very house proud. He’s a queer. I mean –“ He had paused, slightly embarrassed, but surely even dear old Aunt Jane must have heard of queers.” I’m pretty sure that back in 1963 this was disrespectful, but common, terminology.

It’s also interesting how Molly seems to expect to have to put up with behaviour that today we’d consider unacceptable sexual harassment. The drunken Gregory, for example: ““now then, Molly my lovely, have a drink with me […] now don’t run away.” His arm fastened round her arm. “You’re a lovely girl, Molly […] I could go for you, you know, in a big way.” He leered at her.” Clearly, she looks on this kind of incident as just one of the down sides of the job.

Given Christie’s propensity for a little latent xenophobia, if not racism, it was always going to be unlikely that a story that takes place on a Caribbean island would get off scot-free in this department. There are, for example, some assumptions made about the local Caribbean staff, that, sexually, their morals are not all they should be. Miss Marple reflects: “nice natures, all these girls, and a pity they were so averse to getting married. It worried Canon Prescott a good deal. Plenty of christenings, he said, trying to console himself, but no weddings.”

There is also an uncomfortable moment where Dyson laughs at the sight of Victoria’s face; “it had looked like a faceless apparition but that was because, though the dress was white, the face was black”. Admittedly Dyson was drunk, but still I didn’t care for that sentence. Even more uncomfortable is when Tim tries to explain Molly’s anxiety: “Coming out here to the West Indies. All the dark faces.” There is, however, one paragraph where Rafiel appreciates how hard Molly and Tim have worked to get the hotel up and running, and his choice of language is very much of its day but now feels simply racist. I’m going to leave you the quote with no further discussion on the subject: “They’ve both worked like blacks, though that’s an odd term to use out here, for blacks, don’t work themselves to death at all, so far as I can see. Was looking at a fellow shinning up a coconut tree to get his breakfast, then he goes to sleep for the rest of the day. Nice life.”

Classic denouement:  The culprit is uncovered when Miss Marple and Rafiel step in to prevent another murder, and thus there is no time for a grand gathering of suspects in the best Poirot tradition. As a result the revelation is a little hurried, but, without question, it’s dramatic and exciting. Then there is a final chapter, where everything falls into place, followed by an epilogue, which makes the end feel a little lopsided. I should, however, say, that I couldn’t remember whodunit when I started to read the book, but about two thirds of the way through I successfully guessed who it was. And if I can do it, I expect most people can!

Happy ending? Not a traditional Christie happy ending – more a wistful one. Some people get a raw deal out of it.

Did the story ring true? There are two glaring aspects to the story which for me are entirely far-fetched. Palgrave is about to show a photo of a murderer and then stops in his tracks because he sees something/someone presumably involved in that old murder. There’s no way that that could have been the first time that Palgrave saw that thing or that person – so why would he start the conversation in the first place? That doesn’t make sense to me. There’s also a moment where Miss Marple just happens to find a book concealed underneath a mattress, which certainly provides something of a clue. Again, how did she know to look there? No, for me this book is one of those to be filed under Too Much Coincidence and Too Far-Fetched, sadly.

Overall satisfaction rating: A good start and a good end but it sags in the middle; and you also feel Miss Marple isn’t depicted in quite the same way that she has been before, which feels disappointing. Added to the coincidences discussed above, I can’t give this book more than a 7/10.

Thanks for reading my blog of A Caribbean Mystery, and if you’ve read it too, I’d love to know what you think. Please just add a comment in the space below. The next book that Christie wrote was At Bertram’s Hotel, but I’ve already written about that book, as my first few Christie blogs appeared in the order that I originally read them! Therefore next up in the Agatha Christie Challenge is the book after that, Third Girl, of which I only have a vague recollection – Hercule Poirot feeling very much out of place in Swinging Sixties’ London. I’m really looking forward to re-reading this one! As usual, I’ll blog my thoughts about it in a few weeks’ time. In the meantime, please read it too then we can compare notes! Happy sleuthing!

If you enjoy my Agatha Christie Challenge, did you know it is now available as a book? In two revised volumes, it contains all my observations about Christie’s books and short stories, and also includes all her plays! The perfect birthday or Christmas gift, you can buy it from Amazon – the links are here and here!

Review – Loveplay, University of Northampton 3rd Year BA (Hons) Acting Students, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 29th May 2021

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The third play performed by the University of Northampton final year actors is Loveplay by Moira Buffini, described as two thousand years, ten scenes, thirty-two characters, one location and one essential question – what is love? – all packed into ninety minutes of hard-hitting comedy drama. Directed by Tobias Deacon, the production also credits Esther Bartholomew and Daniel Hubery as Assistant Directors, both of whom gave excellent performances in their final year plays at Northampton University back in 2018/19.

I’m not sure the play really asks the question what is love – more like an exposé of sex throughout the centuries. It starts from the slightly odd viewpoint of sticking to that one location, which enables the later stages of the play to be affected by ghosts of the past – which comes across as a bit hokey, to be honest. Nevertheless, it’s a very good play – very funny, occasionally shocking, often thought-provoking and always entertaining.

And the final year students do a cracking job of presenting us this show. The range of playlets and characters gives them the opportunity to play at least three roles each, and they seize them with terrific enthusiasm. It’s a clear and crisp presentation, impeccably and faultlessly performed, and full of amazing performances. From the start, Elle Dudley delights with her hilarious portrayal of the early sex worker Dorcas, rejecting the affronted Didi Stocker’s Marcus’ Roman coin as payment for sharing her virtue. Beautifully performed and very funny. She’s also extremely funny as the upright Miss Tilley being taken from underneath on the lap of the master of the household whilst attempting to impress him with her verses.

Elsewhere, I loved the Age of Enlightenment scene between Katiris Cooper’s Roxanne and Oliver Lawrence’s Man, where she wants to inspect his body from a scientific perspective – her ever-so-slightly naughty curiosity was brilliantly conveyed in contrast with his passive acceptance of what an educated woman might want to discover. Mr Lawrence, though, excelled in the Age of Empire scene as the decadent artist De Vere, manipulating his straight-laced friend into a compromising position – all in the cause of art of course. Ms Cooper also came back as one half of the Age of Innocence scene in another extremely funny performance as the sexual cynic Lynne, dismissing her lover – and life in general – as totally useless. Here she was accompanied by Harry Delacey in a fine performance as the sex-weary Gwyn; he had also stood out as the hilariously stagey Llewellyn in the Renaissance scene, which probably offered the most laugh-out-loud moments of the whole show.

Other performances that I particularly enjoyed included Marina Mikeilla as the petulant and posing dating hostess Anita, Rebecca Alice as the nun-with-a-secret Hilda, Georgia Siân Clarke as the assertive actress Helen, Kai Beavers’ outwitted Rev Buttermere, and Matthew Keeroy’s hard-to-please rapist Eric (yes, that’s the scene that made everyone feel uncomfortable).

Brisk, funny, punchy and with superb performances throughout, this was probably the big hit of the three student plays this year. Congratulations to all on a terrific show!

P. S. The Martin Lawrence Awards are presented every year to the best actress and actor. Mrs Chrisparkle and I went into a judgely huddle and agreed to whom we would award our own Best Actress and Actor of the year. I’ve also chosen runners-up (because I can). My Silver Medals go to Robyn Isabelle Edwards (The Wolves) and Jimmy Ericson (Road); and our Top Dogs are Katiris Cooper (Loveplay) and Oliver Lawrence (Loveplay). Tremendous actors all – but so are many of the rest of these gifted casts. Well done to all!

Review – Road, University of Northampton 3rd Year BA (Hons) Acting Students, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 28th May 2021

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The second of the three shows to be performed by the final year acting students at the University of Northampton this year is Road, Jim Cartwright’s highly praised 1986 play about the lives of people on one road in an unnamed town during the Thatcher years. Directed by Séan Aydon, we’re led by our narrator Scullery, who introduces us to various houses and locations in the road to meet the locals, observe their lives, share their laughter and their tears. I’d never seen this play before so I was particularly looking forward to seeing whether it merits its reputation and if it has stayed relevant today.

This is very hard to assess because I’m afraid the play did absolutely nothing for me on a personal level. We get little snippets of people’s lives but hardly any insight into anyone’s progression, so there’s no sense of development and the play feels very static. Those characters that we do meet more than once, at the end of one long hard night, haven’t really gone anywhere. Scullery is the same optimistic cheeky soul at the end of the evening as at the beginning. Old Jerry is still padding around in his slippers, dreaming of his lost love. The girls who have gone out early evening to get wrecked have successfully got wrecked at the end of the night – no surprise there. Eddie and Brink go to the pub and come back with Carol and Linda, although their evening ends on a surreal note – as does the play.

The one time that the play does soar is when it goes out of time-synch and shows us what Scullery portentously calls The Story of Joey – a likeable lad who has locked himself away, descending into depression, refusing to eat, or come out of his room, and his friend Clare who joins him and stays because she loves him. It feels genuinely tragic; and when, fourteen days of self-starvation later, they come to take their bodies away you get an enormous sense of wasted life. The scene was also enhanced by having what was probably the best two performances in the play, with Jimmy Ericson as the frustrated and furious Joey, and Liz Millward as the sad and supportive Clare.

The play also feels very uneven because there are several very short scenes and a couple of inordinately long ones.  In the final, very long, scene, Eddie and Brink attempt to get the girls very drunk, which then turns into three minutes of character silence – nothingness really – whilst they dance, at first inanely then later recklessly, to a record on the turntable – and that whole experience seems to turn them all into amateur philosophers. I’m afraid it felt disappointingly pretentious. As some of the other residents of the road come out to gaze affectionately at the young people and the lights go down, we were wondering what significant thing it was that everyone else understood but we missed.

True, there were some more good performances there, with Liz Millward again as Linda, Miclaire Nkoy excellent as Carol, Shane McCormack as Eddie and, with a very subtly threatening performance, Elliot Andrew-Murray as Brink. Mr Andrew-Murray also turned in a very confident and strongly performed vignette earlier as the meditating Skin-Lad. Other performances I enjoyed came from Elliot Innes as the rather wacky Professor and the aggressive Barry, Dana Sergejevo in a number of roles, but best as the rather plastered lady trying to seduce the drunk soldier (another very good performance by Jimmy Ericson) and Ida Sade as the combative Brenda.

It’s a tough play to keep the energy levels up, because some scenes feel very slight in comparison with others. There were a few times when it sagged, and it occasionally annoyed me by what I felt was a shallowness; we only scratched the surface of these people’s lives and often what we saw made us more confused about who they were rather than enlightened us. Nevertheless, the cast made a good job of conveying the seedier and more depressing aspects of 1980s life, and I only wish I could have seen them perform something that would have allowed their talents a greater opportunity to shine through!

Review – The Wolves, University of Northampton 3rd Year BA (Hons) Acting Students, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 27th May 2021

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It’s a wonderful feeling to be able to see the great performances by the final year actors at the University of Northampton again; one of the many treats which we’ve all missed out on due to the wretched COVID. This year they have three productions for us, each with two performances, all performed on the mighty stage in the Derngate auditorium.

And the first is The Wolves, Sarah DeLappe’s play that was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Set somewhere in the United States, nine teenage girls play for The Wolves soccer team, each of them only identified by the number or position in which they play. We see their fitness warm-ups, stretching exercises, team talks, private anxieties, public dramas, jealousies, fights and all the angsts that you would imagine nine teenage girls would share between themselves. As the season – and the drama – progresses, ambition turns to fury which turns into tragedy, and in the final scene the girls are left to pick up the pieces despite an awful event which leaves them stunned. Nevertheless, they play on; and although this is a relatively short play – 75 minutes – all human life is there, and it’s not only a great slice of life experience, but a perfect choice to showcase the cast’s excellent talents.

Director Nadia Papachronopoulou has created a superb ensemble team who interact with each other seamlessly. The exercise routines are choreographed precisely and performed with immaculate timing – it’s incredibly entertaining to watch the players move from exercise to exercise as if it were second nature, never having to reference what element of their routine comes next. The overlapping dialogues, where two or even three conversations might take place between the players all at the same time, are delivered with equal accuracy and clarity. Kicking footballs on stage is a potential nightmare – one false move and you could take out the front row – but the football passing is done with great control and accuracy yet still gives the impression of “proper playing” – so that’s a terrific achievement. And the individual cast members bring out all the humour and sadness from their characters’ personalities – to the extent that it doesn’t matter that (for the most part) we don’t know their names.

I can’t name everyone in the cast, but some performances really stand out. Nadine Hamilton is brilliant as the sassy striker #7, totally self-assured, delivering her wisecracks and derisory asides with terrific comic timing; and her performance builds to a savage but highly credible argument followed by a beautifully emotional climax. Ali Paterson also gives a strong performance as the team captain #25, conveying superbly how difficult it is to tread that fine line between being one of the girls but also the boss.

I really enjoyed the performance of Robyn Isabelle Edwards as new girl #46, taking us on her character’s journey from being the outsider who won’t be let into the team huddles, to being the insider who gains the respect of the others by her sporting ability. There’s an excellent scene where she rounds on the rest of the team for taking the mickey out of where she lives; not only does it show how the use of mocking language can be hurtful, it also strongly depicts how fragile mental health can be. The audience is on her side from the start, and you really will her on to succeed despite the cruelty of the others.

There’s a hugely enjoyable performance from Andrea Muresanu as the questioning and analytical #11, dourly refusing to accept factual inaccuracies, and delivering her nuggets of observation with a beautiful feel for the throwaway line. I loved Shaye Thompson’s characterisation of #8, enthusiastically channelling a Legally Blonde-like omigodyouguys attitude, and Kristina Luksha is both funny and emotional as the perpetually throwing up goalie #00. But everyone puts in a terrific performance and it’s a testament to the enjoyment of the show that those 75 minutes absolutely fly by. Great work from the whole team – they definitely deserve to win the league!

Review – Othello, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 25th May 2021

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Fresh from a successful week with their production of Animal Farm, the National Youth Theatre are back at the Royal and Derngate with Othello, abridged by Dfiza Benson, and directed by Miranda Cromwell. When I originally read about the production, I expected it to be closer to a serving suggestion than anything approximating the original Othello. But well over 99% of the text is pure Will; and, anyway, Shakespeare is big and strong and tough enough to lend his work to all manner of adaptations and no number of radical reworkings is ever going to eliminate the Bard’s original plays. More about the language later…

We’re in the Club Cyprus, Manchester. It’s 1991 – thirty years ago. The joint is jumpin’ and the ravers are ravin’. Othello has just got married to Desdemona and they are now wife and wife, much to the fury of Brabantio. Iago, bouncer at the club, is the evil link that binds the story together, manipulating everyone to his own advantage, all of his villainy stemming from that one vital belief: “I hate the Moor.” It’s fascinating to see how this production, incidentally, with its gender-blind casting, strongly brings out the original themes of racism, but there’s not a whiff of homophobia. Brabantio is not remotely concerned that his daughter Desdemona has married a woman; it’s her colour that’s the issue.

The NYT cast and creative team have thrown everything at this production to make it a spectacle of light, colour, sound and movement that assaults the eyes and ears and gives the audience much to enjoy and appreciate. The commitment and creativity that has given rise to this 21st century Othello is to be applauded. And there are some superb performances. From the start, Francesca Amewudah-Rivers stands out as a truly noble and dignified Othello, crystal clear in her oratory, superbly at ease with taking centre stage with this enviable role. Her stage presence shines bright and she is very, very watchable. And she is matched by a fantastically confident performance from Connor Crawford as Iago who delivers an unusually frantic and jumpy reading of the role, but which makes absolute sense. This is a Iago who knows he is chancing his arm all the way through, desperate to achieve his goals, but with none of the laid-back, quietly superior attitude of some Iagos. This one has to work hard to engineer what he wants, and it works extremely well.

Ishmel Bridgeman gives us an amusingly cocky and vain Cassio, pretending to be streetwise but still a lightweight, wet-behind-the-ears kind of guy, so that he quickly finds life inside the Club Cyprus a dangerous environment. Julia Kass is excellent as Emilia, already knowing she is being duped by her husband when she gives him Desdemona’s scarf (there are no handkerchiefs in 1990s Manchester). And I really liked Jack Humphrey’s Brabantio, all powerless bluster and fury, seeing his paternal influence disappear in front of his eyes as old age inevitably gives way to youth. He almost makes you sympathise with his character despite his racism, which shows just how subtle a performance it is.

I firmly adhere to a belief I’ve held for decades now, which is that I would prefer to see a bold and brave attempt to do something new, even if it fails, than a lazy or complacent success. And that’s exactly how I feel about this production because, as a whole, it doesn’t fully work. There are two big innovations with the structure of this show. One is making Othello a woman, married to another woman, and that works extremely well. The other is the introduction of a Chorus, everyman characters whose voices emerge from the recesses of the dance floor whispering their words of suspicion and jealousy to Othello. At first, I thought it was a clever notion, representing all those unidentifiable thoughts that come into everyone’s head when you have a doubt about something. But the Chorus’ whisperings and warnings, endlessly repeated, soon took away the subtlety and nuance of Iago’s persuasions and influence. No wonder Othello fell foul of jealousy; it was delivered all around him like a sledgehammer. So, personally, that didn’t work for me.

The club/disco setting also begins to pall as the play progresses. Whilst there’s no doubt about the ensemble’s commitment to keeping that rave movement going, rather than enhancing our understanding of the story and the characters’ motivations, it becomes a distraction. It takes away from our understanding – and it certainly takes away the audibility of some of the more important scenes in the latter end of the play. As a result, the whole evening, which starts off very pacey and on-the-nose, begins to get a little drawn-out; and at 105 minutes with no interval, it feels surprisingly long.

Dfiza Benson’s new text takes much of Shakespeare’s original, replaces the Iago/Cassio drinking scene with the disco – which is clever, removes Iago’s last line (a shame, because his final silence is one of the most intriguing things about the play), and adds about twenty instances of the F word. Gentle reader, I am no prude. And it made me laugh that f**k was the first word uttered (much better than the original Tush!) But it didn’t always sit well for me. Othello always expresses him/herself with nobility and dignity, and imagination. Would Othello, who elegantly says Keep up your bright swords for the dew will rust ‘em, turn to Desdemona and storm off with a Well F**k You? It’s Othello’s language that raises the character out of the commonplace. By bringing her language down to the level of the others, it diminishes this stature. If the aim of the production is to establish Othello as a powerful, queer, black woman (quoting the online programme), I feel this use of language doesn’t help.

I also couldn’t understand why the play was set in 1991. Othello and Desdemona are proudly married – not just living together but the full legal ceremony  – but equal marriage wasn’t introduced in the UK until 2013. In 1991, the country was still in the grip of the dreaded Clause 28 and LGBT rights were being eroded. Surely it would have made more sense for it to be set in the here and now – pandemic notwithstanding?

For me, although the show is a plucky failure, that’s actually a much better thing than it seems at first sight. It takes one of the great theatrical classics and transports it into our lifetime with our cultural references and shows how we still have to learn the age-old lessons about racism, jealousy and man’s (in this case woman’s) folly. It’s also performed with huge confidence and style by a very talented company. Maybe it’s not for purists, but then maybe purists shouldn’t be such snowflakes (to use the pejorative term of the era). Quentin Letts would hate it, so that can only be a good thing.

3-stars

Three-sy does it!

Review – Animal Farm, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 17th May 2021

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You don’t know how good it feels, gentle reader, simply to be able to type the words “Review – “ followed by the name of a show again after fourteen months away from a theatre. The last play I saw last year was in the Royal Theatre, and the first play this year is in the very same space – seems almost poetic.

Before talking about this new production of Animal Farm, a few words about how the Royal and Derngate are welcoming us back safely in this new COVID world of ours. Timed entry to the theatre, one-way systems, mask on whenever you’re inside (unless you’re eating or drinking – we didn’t), the shortest of intervals – just enough time to nip to the loo which was well marshalled for extra safety, bars closed (you can pre-order drinks), no programmes on sale (there’s a downloadable programme on the theatre website) additional ventilation and the all-important social distancing.

I confess, when I first saw what seats were available for this performance – and bearing in mind the seats are sold within pre-determined bubble groupings – we thought we’d opt for super safety and actually bought a bubble of three seats when there are only two of us. Selfish perhaps, but for us safety measures means baby steps at first, and it just felt safer to have an additional empty space around us. All in all the theatre did a great job in making it a safe and secure occasion. Nevertheless, I’d be lying if I said I was completely relaxed. It’s hard to unlearn the lessons of fourteen months.

I had thought hard in advance whether social distancing would affect the atmosphere for the show. And, fascinatingly, it doesn’t. You’re not so remote that you don’t have other audience members in your peripheral vision, and of course you hear their laughter, and any oohs and ahhs. So if you thought that social distancing would take the heart out of a play – it really doesn’t.

But, as someone significant once said, The Play’s The Thing. Animal Farm is, of course, George Orwell’s allegory of the rise and further rise of Soviet communism told by the metaphor of animals who take over the running of their own farm and chase their drunken, cruel and wasteful farm-owner away. It’s a brilliant piece of writing, full of pathos, tragedy, wit, humour and the inevitability of disastrous failure. So how does this new adaptation by Tatty Hennessy, directed by Ed Stambollouian, bring the pages of this 1945 novel alive onto the stage, to be performed by members of the National Youth Theatre, under its new arrangement with the Royal and Derngate?

Answer – incredibly well. As the play progressed, the parallels with life today in the UK become horrifyingly clear. Squealer, the master of propaganda, is the ultimate spin doctor who makes you disbelieve the truth even when you have seen it for yourself. Clover is the kindly follower who wants to believe in the cause and is sadly gullible to every lie that the state reiterates. Boxer is the (literal) workhorse who works every hour of the day to the detriment of his own health – and then when he falls ill is sent straight to the knacker’s yard. Snowball is the scapegoat on whom the state can heap all the blame for their own deficiencies. Napoleon is the Machiavellian trickster who’s in the right place at the right time, a media-friendly figurehead with huge self-confidence, an opulent lifestyle, and no real ideas of his own. At the end, even Clover realises that they’re all in on the game, each one with their trotters in the trough, champagning it with the enemy; but it’s far too late to do anything about it. A story of the Russian Revolution and subsequent rise of Stalinism? Yes, but with so many similarities to the last thirty years of the UK as well.

Ed Stambollouian’s lively production is full of colour, noise, movement and song; sometimes harsh to the ears with the stomping and shouting, but this is no drawing room comedy. Out of necessity, Tatty Hennessy’s adaptation plays with some of Orwell’s characters – the book has a large cast of creatures that has to be shrunk down to fit a cast of sixteen – and the order of events is occasionally moved around. But the adaptation, though occasionally wordy, tells the story clearly and with no holds barred. The scene, for instance, where four of the animals are summarily executed hits you with its cleverly suggested brutality, and stays in your head a long time.

The cast put their heart and soul into the show and form a tremendous ensemble who work together superbly and generously. Jack Matthew has terrific stage presence and in his performance as Napoleon, we clearly see his character’s double standards and ambiguity towards both the truth and the society that looks up to him. Will Atiomo’s Boxer is the pinnacle of dignity and honesty; I don’t know how he does it, but he subtly contorts his face in a way that really suggests a noble horse’s head – it’s a wonderful achievement. Adeola Yemitan is also superb as Clover, her slow kindness and supportiveness radiating in every scene; whenever she questions the original policies that were agreed at the first meeting and doesn’t realise they’ve been manipulated by the Party, you can see, through her pained eyes, her thought processes slowly drifting into acceptance and the realisation that she must have been wrong. (She wasn’t).

There’s an excellent and agile performance by Ben Wilson as Snowball, bringing huge energy to the movement and dance sequences, and eclipsing Napoleon with his oratory skills. Matilda Rae’s Squealer is delightfully slippery and manipulative – her occasional firm and ruthless killer lines are brilliantly delivered. I thought Ishmel Bridgeman was brilliant as Blue the dog; starting off as a playful and impudent pup, but by the time he’s been “trained” by Napoleon, he’s turned into a savage Rottweiler who carries out his master’s orders with clinical malice. Will Stewart was also excellent as the vain Molly, desperate to cling on to her ribbons and rosettes because that’s the only identity she has.

James Eden-Hutchinson’s Milo was a favourite with the audience, breaking the fourth wall with his reflections on what’s happening so far – and also entertaining us with his music-hall style advice for how we should behave during the interval! I also really liked Connor Crawford’s grotesque caricature of both farmers, dominating the other animals with his physique and suggestions of violence. But all the performers give excellent performances; a technical thing that’s often overlooked, all the actors had terrific clarity of diction which is always appreciated by a theatregoer who’s getting older!

In the programme notes, Tatty Hennessy writes that she hopes the play makes you angry. It did. But our anger is not only directed to the Napoleons and Squealers of this world, but also to the Clovers and the Boxers for making it so damned easy for history to repeat itself.

Despite the slight unease about being back in a theatre, it was just such a thrill to be back in the Royal, witnessing the magic that only live performance can create. So, thank you – to the cast for their performance, to the creative team for organising it, to the theatre staff for making us safe and welcome, to our fellow audience members for simply being there and witnessing the return. And let’s hope for another return – to some kind of normality. With the rise of the Indian variant, it’s too early to know; but at least last night we could celebrate the here and now, and that was a wonderful thing to share.

P. S. If I have a suggestion for how it could feel even more secure in the theatre, I was expecting a more orderly and structured plan for everyone leaving the theatre at the end. Having carefully avoided each other with one-way systems and toilet marshalling, it was a bit of a free-for-all with the complete breakdown of social distancing. Next time I think we’ll deliberately wait for everyone else to leave first.

4-starsFour they’re jolly good fellows

 

Lockdown Armchair Travel – USA – New York City, March 2008 and July 2015

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Getting near the end of the alphabet now, and U is for the United States of America – and here are some pictorial memories of a couple of trips to New York City; in March 2008 and July 2015. So, what do you think of, when you think of New York City? Maybe this:

A gift from the people of France back in the 1880s. It stands on Liberty Island

And thousands of people visit it every day! When we visited New York the first time, we had to attend a business meeting in the Empire States Building – that was a treat. Here’s a view of the ESB from The Top of the Rock.

The Top of the Rock is the observation platform at the top of the Rockefeller Center – and it’s a great place to start your visit of New York because the views at the top are absolutely sensational – and in one crisp moment you can take in all the city.

There’s that Lady again:

From there we decided to check out Central Park – a very desirable area of the city.

Including the skating rink

Here’s the Dakota Building – where John Lennon lived.

We also had a touristy trip around the park in a horse drawn carriage. Our driver was called John – and our horse was called Rocky.

We had a quick trip around the Museum of Modern Art, where we had some soup

And left our shopping.

We were there for a week, so we had a chance to see some different districts. Here’s Chinatown:

And Greenwich Village:

The Flat Iron Building:

And the Chrysler Building – New York must have the best known skyscrapers in the world.

We saw some shows, on both trips, which gives you a chance to see Broadway and Times Square, both by day and night

Only A Chorus Line fans will get this reference:

This was Ground Zero in 2008:

We were also there at Easter time – and they have an Easter Parade, just like in the movies. This lady was very proud of her Easter bonnet.

I really liked the mixture of old and new architecture

But new will always overwhelm old in the end!

But you best get the feel of New York on the streets – as in all cities. Fascinating sights, quirky things, and stuff you’d never see in the UK – like puppies in a pet shop window!

A must have for your accessories collection:

Plus the ubiquitous taxis:

And school buses!

Happy memories – I hope we can go back sometime soon.