Last night - before I was As Seen On Newsnight - Owen and I went to see the new production of Matthew Bourne's dance-noir THE CAR MAN at Sadlers Wells. I missed the Old Vic premiere in 2000 so was more than somewhat excited to finally see it in the steamy, illicit flesh.

I must admit for the first 15 minutes or so I was beginning to think "Could this be the one Bourne show that doesn't engage me?" then suddenly bang! We had a great reveal - which actually caused a rather flustered ripple across the peanut gallery - and there I was hooked. Suffice to say it boiled down to a gag from an old Danny La Rue skit on CARMEN:

Don Jose: I love Carmen
Mercedes: I know.. I've seen you with a few!

THE CAR MAN is a knowing take on THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE but being Bourne the inspiration also comes from several other films. POSTMAN is an inspired choice to fit with a reinterpreted version of Bizet's memorable score for CARMEN as both stories deal with the fatal consequences of a lustful relationship out of control. Mind you I added my own bit of cross-cultural referencing by running through the lyrics of CARMEN JONES as the music played!

In the Italian quarter of a Southern town called Harmony a drifter called Luca walks into the garage/diner run by Dino and his wife Lana and soon fills the position of Man Wanted.

He soon establishes his character among the macho workers there, sticks up for the bullied quiet co-worker Angelo and realizes that Lana is simmering with discontent with her oafish husband. Angelo is loved by Lana's younger sister Rita, the diner waitress, but the relationship is tentative for some reason.

One hot summer night it all comes to a head. While Dino's away Luca and Lana get busy in the upstairs apartment. Interrupted by Dino's return Luca finds a sexual conquest in one of the cars in the garage... he emerges followed by Angelo. Cue my engagement and the slight ruffling of some balletomane feathers.

But of course once the line is crossed there is no going back and in the best noir tradition by the interval curtain Dino is lying dead on the garage floor at the hands of Luca and Lana with lovesick Angelo in the frame.

I really loved the performances. Alan Vincent brought a brooding sensuality to Luca, physically vibrant in the first act and broken by his crimes in the second act with an excellent drunk scene in a club. Michaela Meazza was a tall and sinuous Lana, Richard Winsor was excellent as Angelo, left broken and vengeful by his abuse at the hands of others, Kerry Biggin was moving in the potentially tricky 'nice' role and Bourne's longtime colleague Scott Ambler was delightful as the cuckolded husband. The company were marvellously energetic with an explosive dance-off early on that had a distinct nod to WEST SIDE STORY. As usual the production was helped immeasurably by Lez Brotherston's set design and Chris Davey's lighting.

The score by the very fine Terry Davies is a reworked version of Rodion Shchedrin's Carmen Suite and it made the familiar music new and vibrant orchestrating it for percussive and latino rhythms. The score actually played a huge part in making the show so suspenseful and thrilling.

We are definitely going to see Matthew Bourne's acclaimed re-imagining of NUTCRACKER which will be on at Sadlers Wells over Christmas... and the great news is that there is going to be a new New Adventures production sometime in 2008.

Although it finishes at Sadlers Wells this Saturday it will be popping up again in Wimbledon in September.

Yes Constant Reader...

that was my e-mail read out and scrolled across the screen on Newsnight tonight and yes that was my name pronounced correctly.

I'll try not to let it change me.

Chris As Seen On Newsnight

Ingmar Bergman died today and cinema lost the last of it's great masters.

Bergman was a director I felt I had to educate myself to and it was an uphill struggle as I was working so hard at them. Eventually I gave up and just started watching them as films and not as Monuments Of Cinema which needed to be genuflected before. That's when I started to appreciate them.
So many great films, so many great performances...

The beleaguered young couple in IT RAINS ON OUR LOVE, Harriet Andersson's luminous performance in SUMMER WITH MONIKA, the way Eva Dahlbeck and Gunnar Bjornstrand have to learn A LESSON IN LOVE to realize they are happier together and the remarkable one-two of SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT and THE SEVENTH SEAL. There are the female duels of Ingrid Thulin and Gunnel Lindblom in THE SILENCE and Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson in PERSONA as well as in the 1970s the painful-to-watch dissections of a marriage - Ullmann and Erland Josephson in SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE - and of the relationship between a mother and a daughter - Ullmann & Ingrid Bergman in AUTUMN SONATA. Bergman's other mainstay apart from his remarkable actors - Max von Sydow should of course be mentioned - was his brilliant cinematographer Sven Nykvist.

Of course not all the films are good - I will happily walk a mile in tight shoes to avoid seeing THE SERPENT'S EGG again - but dear Lord there is more to be gained by watching one of his worst than to view any number of other directors' best.

Now I have been to some dog shows but DAMN I wish I had been in South Florida this night....

"Farrah Fawcett had a rather strange opening night in Butterflies Are Free at the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theater in Jupiter, Florida, on 30 July 1980. An obese lady in the front row of tables began yelling insults at her and making bird calls during the performance. Later, this unidentified lady raised her dress and flashed the performers, causing co-star Dennis Christopher to take notice, although the character he was playing was a blind man. Nearby, a male patron began vomiting, and yet another patron fainted. Incredibly, the reviews for Farrah's performance were positive"

I wonder what they were putting in the food??

It could just be me but I'm getting a strange whiff off the news coverage of the floods oop north.

Almost as if they are strangely disappointed this hasn't turned into the British version of New Orleans.

You can almost hear the disappointment in the reporters voices that the water *is* going down...

The balcony outside the office about 12:30 yesterday morning.

I think I was saying EEEEK at the time...

Downtown or uptown it's all the same

Click on Pet's picture to make her a Dame!

So the big news is that certain BBC light entertainment shows have mislead the viewers.

Television misleading viewers? No shit Sherlock!

...and here it is, the signed.. er... pre-signed Suzi Q photo.

A TALE OF TWO SOOS...

A few weeks ago Owen and I saw Suzanne Vega at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.
This is the second time we have seen her at that venue and the third time in all.
She was promoting her new album BEAUTY AND CRIME - songs inspired by the people and the city of New York.

I have to say I enjoyed it more than the last time we saw her there when it was kinda just her and her resident bassist Mike and it felt all a bit subdued. This time however she was in fine form, very chatty with the audience - we weren't very chatty back initially but we warmed up. She has an interesting stage persona: witty and insightful while also retaining a guarded coolness. Her wearing of a light beige trench coat added to this unflappability. I am not an out-an-out fan unlike Owen who has all her albums, I only have a 1998 Best Of but she played a great selection of songs from her 22 year career. My favourites included the two versions of TOM'S DINER which bookended the main set, first a capella then the DNA-styled dance version; NEW YORK IS A WOMAN; CARAMEL; FRANK & AVA; SMALL BLUE THING; LEFT OF CENTER; BLOOD MAKES NOISE; IN LIVERPOOL; LUKA and MARLENE ON THE WALL. There is something very austere about her songwriting that I like a lot and hopefully she will be back again soon.

With a bit of prompting from O I said hello to Fred Shortlands in the foyer. Fred is one of the main advisers behind the JUSTICE FOR KIRSTY campaign being waged by Jean MacColl trying to bring Guillermo Gonzalez Nova to account for Kirsty's death in 2000. Fred is also involved with Casa Alianza which helps deprived children in South America and as Suzanne Vega is a keen supporter of this charity he is usually in the foyers of her UK shows promoting it. No discernible headway is being made with JFK but there is still movement happening in various Mexican legal circles.

I've been meaning to blog about the above but going to see Suzi Quatro last night was the final push needed!

She rocked out in the bizarre surroundings of Cannizaro Park in Wimbledon as part of their 2007 festival. The set up is a bit odd - a stage is set up at the end of a smallish Astroturf lawn with 2 covered seated stands facing each other on either side. The show started dead on 8pm with Suzi taking to the stage and rocking away to little avail as it was still light and a steady light rain fell on the anoraked fans sitting on blankets - yes Dawn... the curse of the blankets returns after our Kid Creole experience in Kew! A couple of new songs were okay but most were forgettable - sadly not a truly naff Elvis Presley tribute song which even she admitted was cobbled together from the titles of his songs.

However Surrey politeness is no match for 30+ years slogging away in the business and as darkness finally closed in and the rain stopped she returned for a second half of her more famous songs and in her tight leather pants - soon the stands were being deserted for a good-natured jig about in front of the stage. She worked that crowd - knowing exactly how to tease out the intros and the call-backs and by the end everyone was happy - from her grand-daughter held aloft at the front of the stage to the 50-somethings in too much leather. There was a meet n greet after the show unsurprisingly next to the merchandise counter which was run by some very mannish-looking ladies in their 40s. After manoeuvring Owen into position in the polite scrum behind the crash barrier I decided to get a photo signed too - well let's face it she's a 70s pop icon eh? And you don't meet many of them on a Sunday evening in a park in SW19.

and the final pile of celluloid...

Sabrina Fair - Le Samourai - Saturday Night Fever - Savage Nights - Scarface - The Scent Of Green Papaya - Scream - Serial Mom - The Servant - Seven - Seven Samurai - The Seventh Seal - Shaft - Shane - Shaun of the Dead - The Shawshank Redemption - The Shining - Shoah - Short Cuts - A Short Film About Killing - Shrek - The Silence of the Lambs - Silent Running - Silkwood - Singin' in the Rain - The Sixth Sense - Sleepy Hollow - Sleuth - Smiles of a Summer Night - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - Some Like it Hot - Sons and Lovers - The Son's Room - Spartacus - Spider-Man - Spirit of the Beehive - The Spy Who Loved Me - Stand by Me - Star Wars - Steamboat Bill, Jr - The Sting - Strangers on a Train - Straw Dogs - A Streetcar Named Desire - Sunset Boulevard - Superman - The Sweet Hereafter - The Swimmer - The Taking of Pelham 123 - The Talented Mr Ripley - Taxi Driver - Ten Things I Hate About You - The Terminator - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - Thelma & Louise - There's Something About Mary - The Damned - The Thin Blue Line - The Thing - The Third Man - The Thirty Nine Steps - The Thomas Crown Affair - The Three Musketeers - Throne of Blood - Time Regained - Titanic - To Be or Not to Be - To Have and Have Not - To Kill a Mockingbird - Tommy - Touch of Evil - Toy Story - The Train - Trainspotting - 24 Hour Party People - Two Lane Blacktop - 2001: A Space Odyssey - The Umbrellas of Cherbourg - The Unbelievable Truth - Unforgiven - The Untouchables - The Usual Suspects - Les Valseuses - The Vanishing - Vera Drake - Vertigo - Victim - Village of the Damned - The Warriors - Wayne's World - West Side Story - What's Up, Doc? - Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? - White Heat - Who Framed Roger Rabbit? - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - The Wicker Man - William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet - The Wind - Wise Blood - Witchfinder General - The Wizard of Oz - Women in Love - Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown - The Women - Working Girl - X - The Man With The X Ray Eyes - X-Men - Y Tu Mama Tambien - Yellow Submarine - Young Frankenstein – Z

and out of them 112 filums I have 13 on dvd.

So I am either a bit picky about what I buy, they haven't released what I want to buy - or I've wasted a hell of a lot of time seeing films I never want to see again!!

And the hits just keep on comin'

L- R

LA Confidential - The Lacemaker - The Lady Eve - Last Metro - The Last Picture Show - The Last Seduction - Last Tango in Paris - Laura - Law of Desire - Lawrence of Arabia - Léon - Lift to the Scaffold - Little Big Man - Little Caesar - Live Flesh - Local Hero - Logan's Run - Lolita - Lonely Are the Brave - The Long Good Friday - The Long Goodbye - The Lord of the Rings trilogy - Lost in Translation – M - M Hulot's Holiday - The Magnificent Seven - The Maltese Falcon - The Man Who Would Be King - The Man With Two Brains - The Manchurian Candidate - Marat/Sade - MASH - The Matrix - A Matter of Life and Death - McCabe & Mrs Miller - Mean Streets - Meet Me in St Louis - Men in Black - Mephisto - Le Mépris - Metropolis - Midnight Cowboy - Mildred Pierce - Million Dollar Baby - The Misfits - Monty Python's Life of Brian - Muriel's Wedding - My Beautiful Laundrette - The Naked Gun - The Nanny - Nashville - Near Dark - A Night at the Opera - The Night of the Hunter - Night of the Living Dead - Nightmare Alley - A Nightmare on Elm Street - Nikita - Nil By Mouth - Ninotchka - The Ninth Configuration - North By Northwest - Nosferatu: a Symphony of Terror - Notorious - Now, Voyager - Ocean's Eleven - Odd Man Out - Oliver Twist - The Omen - On the Town - On the Waterfront - Once Upon a Time in America - One False Move - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - One Million Years BC - Onibaba - Osama - Pandora's Box - Pan's Labyrinth - The Parallax View - Parents - Paris, Texas - The Passion of Joan of Arc - Peeping Tom - Pépé le Moko - Performance - The Philadelphia Story - The Piano Teacher - The Piano - Picnic at Hanging Rock - Pink Flamingos - The Pink Panther - Pirates of the Caribbean: the Curse of the Black Pearl - Planet of the Apes - Platoon - Play It Again, Sam - The Player - Plein Soleil - Poltergeist - The Postman Always Rings Twice - Pretty in Pink - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - The Princess Bride - The Producers - Psycho - The Public Enemy - Pulp Fiction - Purple Rain - Quadrophenia - Quiz Show - Raging Bull - Rancho Notorious - Rear Window - Red Rock West - Red Sorghum - Repo Man - Reservoir Dogs - The Return of Martin Guerre - Robocop - Rollerball - Room at the Top - Room With a View - Rosemary's Baby - Rude Boy - Rumble Fish - Running on Empty

126 films - 12 on dvd

Next lump of the films I've seen off The Guardian's 1000 FILMS TO SEE BEFORE YOU DIE in which I rated a measly 497...

E-K

East of Eden - Edward Scissorhands - Eight Men Out - Election - The Elephant Man - Elizabeth - Les Enfants du Paradis - The English Patient - Enter the Dragon - Eraserhead - ET: the Extra-Terrestrial - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - The Exorcist – The Fabulous Baker Boys - A Face in the Crowd - Face/Off - Fahrenheit 9/11 - The Fallen Idol - Far from Heaven - Farewell My Concubine - Fargo - Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! - Fight Club - A Fish Called Wanda - Five Easy Pieces - Force of Evil - The Fortune Cookie - Frankenstein - Freaks - The French Connection – The General - Get Carter - Ghost - Ghost World - Gigi - Gilda - Gimme Shelter - Gladiator - Glengarry Glen Ross - Gloria - The Go-Between - The Godfather - Goldfinger - Gone With the Wind - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - Goodfellas - Gosford Park - The Gospel According to St Matthew - The Graduate - La Grande Illusion - Grease - Great Expectations - The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle - Greed - Gregory's Girl - Grey Gardens - The Grifters - Grosse Pointe Blank - Gun Crazy - Guys and Dolls – Hairspray - Halloween - Happiness - A Hard Day's Night - Harold & Maude - Harper - The Haunting - Heat - Heathers - Heaven's Gate - Heavenly Creatures - Hedwig and the Angry Inch - Hell Is a City - Hellzapoppin' - Henry V - Hidden - High Noon - The Honeymoon Killers - Hot Fuzz - House of Flying Daggers - The House of Mirth - The House of Wax - Howards End - Hud - The Hustler – I Walked With a Zombie - The Ice Storm - If... - I'll Never Forget What's'isname - In a Lonely Place - In the Heat of the Night - In the Name of the Father - Independence Day - The Innocents - Intolerance - Invasion of the Body Snatchers - The Ipcress File - It's a Wonderful Life - The Italian Job - Jackie Brown - Jason and the Argonauts - Jaws - The Jerk - Johnny Guitar - Jubilee - Jules et Jim - The Jungle Book - Jurassic Park - Kes - The Killing - Kind Hearts and Coronets - King Kong - Kiss Me Deadly - Kiss of the Spider Woman - Klute - Knife in the Water - Koyaanisqatsi

117 films - 9 on dvd!

At the end of June The Guardian - for reasons known only unto themselves - published a list of the 1000 FILMS TO SEE BEFORE YOU DIE.

I am ashamed to say I didn't even make 500. I made 497.

So here's my first lot, from A-D:

Ace in the Hole - The Adventures of Robin Hood - After Hours - Airplane! - Alfie - Alien - All About My Mother - All That Heaven Allows - All That Jazz - Amadeus - Amelie - American Beauty - American Gigolo - American Graffiti - An American in Paris - An American Werewolf in London - Amores Perros - An Angel At My Table - Annie Hall - The Apartment - Apocalypse Now - L'Appartement - The Asphalt Jungle - L'Atalante - Atlantic City - Au Revoir les Enfants - Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery – Babe - Back to the Future - Bad Day at Black Rock - Bad Lieutenant - Badlands - Bagdad Café - Bambi - Barbarella - Barton Fink - Batman - The Beat That My Heart Skipped - Becket - Being John Malkovich - Being There - Belle de Jour - Belleville Rendez-vous - Betty Blue – The Big Chill - The Big Heat - The Big Lebowski - The Big Sleep - The Birds – Blade Runner - The Blair Witch Project - Blazing Saddles - Blow-Up - The Blue Angel - The Blue Dahlia - The Blue Lamp - Blue Velvet - The Blues Brothers - Body and Soul - Bonnie & Clyde - Boogie Nights - The Boston Strangler - Le Boucher - Bowling for Columbine - The Brady Bunch Movie - Brazil - Breakfast at Tiffany's - Breaking the Waves - Breathless - Bride of Frankenstein - The Bridge On the River Kwai - Brief Encounter - Brighton Rock - Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia - Broadway Danny Rose - Brokeback Mountain - Buffalo 66 - Bugsy Malone - Burnt By the Sun - Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid – Cabaret - The Cabinet of Dr Calgari - La Cage Aux Folles - Carry On Cleo - Casablanca - Casino - Cat On a Hot Tin Roof – Central Station - La Cérémonie - The Charge of the Light Brigade - Chariots of Fire - Chicken Run - Chinatown - The Cincinnati Kid - Citizen Kane – Clerks - Close Encounters of the Third Kind - Clueless - Come and See - The Company of Wolves - Comrades - The Conversation - Coogan's Bluff - The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover - Cool Hand Luke - Crash - Crimes and Misdemeanors - Crossfire - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - The Crying Game - Cul-De-Sac - Cyrano de Bergerac – Dancer in the Dark - Dangerous Liaisons - Darling - Day for Night - Days of Heaven - Dead of Night - Dead Ringers - Death In Venice - The Deer Hunter - Deliverance - Desperately Seeking Susan - Detour - The Devils – Les Diaboliques - Dick Tracy - Die Hard - Dirty Harry - Dirty Rotten Scoundrels - Distant Voices, Still Lives – Dog Day Afternoon - Dogville - Don't Look Now - Double Indemnity - Downfall - Doctor Zhivago - Dracula - The Dresser - Drugstore Cowboy - Duck Soup - Dumb & Dumber

and out of these 142, how many do I have on dvd? 17!

If the concert for Diana wasn't bad enough we now have the Live Earth concert.

I have just watched a bit of it. Keane. Why? People were actually singing along. So someone must like it. The bizarre thing is the interviewees all seem a little unsure about what message they are supposed to be on - is it global warming? Is it recycling? Is it political? Personal? Is it for now or the next generation?

And where is that sanctimonious monghole Bono? Does he not approve? Or is there nothing in it for him?

I think the televisual port will be shut down til Madonna comes on.

20:21 - news just in: Chris Rock said Nigger on live tv. Lucky it ain't Big Brother eh

Saturday... Soho was given over to Pride.
Wherever you looked there was pink. Pink wigs, drag, flags, people.
Old Compost Street were awash with couples holding hands - a rarity I know - and Soho Square was surrounded by stalls yearning for the legendary pink pound.

Constant Reader I fled to the dark joys of the cinema.

But in keeping with my idren I did see a film about a tortured female singer with the obligatory gay following - LA VIE EN ROSE, Olivier Dahan's controversial film of Edith Piaf.

The film has provoked a few column inches over Dahan's approach to telling the incident-packed life of France's greatest chanteuse with it's flashbacks and flashforwards as well as certain incidents left out, most notably the odd way the whole of World War II is glossed over. This is strange as she certainly played an interesting part in covert resistance.

However Dahan certainly fits in all the other major incidents in her extraordinary life - born in poverty during WWI, brought up in her grandmother's brothel then on the road with her acrobat father, singing on the street for money where she is spotted by gay club owner Louis Leplee, her first triumph at his club and her implication in his gangland murder, the love of her life, the boxer Marcel Cerdan, tragically killed in a plane crash while flying to see her, her car crash that left her addicted to morphine shots, her triumph in the 1960s at the Olympia and her death in 1963 aged only 47.

Dahan's cross-cutting through her life makes the film sometimes difficult to like as it seems willfully to confuse the viewer. However the film works as a new way of telling a screen biography and of course the film is made entirely watchable by the astonishing performance of Marion Cottilard, a true tour-de-force.

From the cocky, abrasive 20 year old to the shrunken, frazzled-haired rheumatic shell 27 years later, Cotillard delivers a tour-de-force performance. Never playing for the audience's sympathy, she is a compelling actress - as anyone who remembers her chilling avenging prostitute in A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT will attest.

The large cast give good support - Gerard Depardieu brings great charm and - oh all right - weight to the role of Louis Leplee, his sudden absence leaves the audience as floundering as it does Edith. Sylvie Testud makes the most of the role of Momone, Edith's sponging friend from the gutter and Jean-Pierre Martins is fine as Cerdan - again like Depardieu he is perfectly cast so the audience feels a genuine loss with his death in the plane crash. In the early brothel scenes I was intrigued who the amazing actress was who played Edith's grandmother... she looked so familiar yet I had no idea who it was. So it was genuinely thrilling to see in the end credits that it was Catherine Allegret, daughter of the wonderful Simone Signoret - she is definitely her mother's daughter! It's also a neat piece of casting as her step-father Yves Montand was discovered by Piaf and was indeed her lover for a short while.

The production design, cinematography, costumes and make-up are all top-notch but the film is rendered memorable by Marion Cottilard's astonishing screen presence.

If you have tears to shed... start your laughing now

Prestelle are to divorce.

Someone better get word to Ziggy and Chanelle in the Big Brother hoose...

This is priceless....

Watch the woman behind Harriet Harman when it's announced Harman won the Deputy Leadership

Ok enough's enough....

From the Beeb News website

"The McCanns are also considering releasing a cover version of the Bryan Adams' song Everything I Do, I Do It For You, in an effort to raise more money for their campaign"

Could someone PLEASE give this kid back...

This afternoon I finished THE FABULOUS SYLVESTER by Joshua Gamson and what a great read it was.

When I first saw Sylvester in the jaw-dropping video for MIGHTY REAL on TOP OF THE POPS back in the day (see here) I knew I had found a musical heroine. Although I never got to see him - I hate you Dawn Coates - he has always been on my walkman/portable cd/MP3 player/iPod down the years.

Gamson's sparkling biography gives Sylvester a flawless setting.
From a little boy startling the church goers with a soaring soprano to the adolescent sissy hanging with fellow drag teens The Disqotays, from his move to San Francisco and performing with the hippie commune drag gayers The Cockettes, from his frustration at their unprofessional attitude to his singing with the soul-funk Hot Band and ultimately his solo success at Fantasy Records as one of Disco's brightest stars.

Joshua Gamson sets against Sylvester's almost Hollywood movie-like rise to fame and fortune the times he lived through and more importantly the city of San Francisco which becomes almost a character in itself: the city of the late 1960s with it's radical politics and hippie communes, the early 1970s with the birth of a gay political movement and identity which transmuted towards the end of the decade into the sexual hedonist years of the baths and the clones to ultimately the Ground Zero of the AIDS pandemic in the early 1980s.

What struck me from reading the book was that throughout Sylvester's working life he was surrounded by producers and musicians who mistrusted his style - Ben Sidran, Harvey Fuqua and even James 'Tip' Wirrick who worked with him through the glory years had ambivalent feelings about the work they were doing. I am sure he could be difficult and frustrating to work with, pulling diva strokes when he hadn't earned the right to do it but his sheer joy of living and being Fabulous means it is impossible for the reader to dislike him.

Gamson also writes illuminatingly about the two waves that checked Sylvester's career: the 1980s backlash against Disco music which can now be viewed as much as being about racism and homophobia as it was to do with musical taste and the slow dawning of the cold white light of the AIDS pandemic. Sylvester's own battle with it is told movingly and his quiet dignified end watched over by his mother and sister is enough to moist any eye.

His magnificent backing singers Martha Wash and Izora Rhodes add their their voices to the book too, although sadly Izora died before the book's publication. After they left him to add their own moment in Disco history as The Weather Girls he recruited Jeannie Tracy to back him and she too continued the tradition in his life of strong women.

Joshua Gamson's style is insightful but with the right beaucoup attitude too - "there is no weapon more powerful than the right hair".
Sylvester would have been 60 this September. Would he still be performing? Who knows but his wonderful cameo in 'Diana' drag in Bette Midler's THE ROSE and the music lives on... a perfumed and painted extravaganza of joyful dance music... Go 'head on girl.

I am still kerklempt... Suralan Sugar picked Simon over Kristina in THE APPRENTICE final.
I am sure she will get a better job than the one that Simon will be heading up, developing a hotel and golfing complex near Stansted Airport.

Owenwatch:

Let there be dancing in the streets, drinking in the saloons and necking in the parlours... he's out!

I got a call from himself around 10:30 this morning - obviously not THAT well to remember I am monosyllabic till at least 3pm on a Sunday - to let me know that the physio was happy with his walking to let him go home.

After an interminable wait for a taxi we arrived back in Streatham after 3pm.

It's good to have Owen back where he belongs.

I will of course be drinking both the flutes of fizz... well, he's on so much medication....

Owenwatch:

I saw him tonight and he wanted you to know he has a new morphine machine, the last one was acting up a bit. He is at the stage where the shock of the new has worn off and the adrenalin/fear of the upcoming operation has gone... so boredom is beginning to creep into his day. Sleep has been difficult at night too. The ward bay he is in has only 6 beds and the past two nights have seen a new patient being admitted around 3am each time! Oh and the Alter Kocker in the end bed talks to himself all night.

It now looks like he won't be out till Monday, the troublesome disc has caused more internal damage than was originally thought so the surgeon wants to keep him in for a bit longer to make sure he's responding as he should.

Tomorrow (Saturday) is a big day.. he is going to attempt to stand for the first time since the op... say a prayer to your personal Jesus.

On other matters...

Just finished reading Jill Dawson's WATCH ME DISAPPEAR which is about Tina, a woman in her 40s, returning for her brother's wedding to the Cambridgeshire village where she grew up. Inspired by the Soham schoolgirl case of a few years ago the book tells of Tina being haunted by the memory of her best friend at primary school who disappeared one summer afternoon and was never seen again. She also cannot shake the gnawing fear that her own father might have the murderer.

Dawson certainly conjures up the strange sunlit world of a ten year old girl that contains the long shadows of sexual curiosity and unspoken family tension. She also captures the limbo of guilt and unresolved feelings that Tina feels at her friend - who she had recently had a falling-out with - disappearing yet being present in the newspapers and television re-invention of her personality. This all comes to a head when Tina is asked by the police to "be" her friend in a televised reconstruction of the girl's last known journey.

So there was I, being quietly gripped by the narrative and in particular the spot-on evocation of growing up in the early 1970s when suddenly there it was, staring out at me on page 195...

"...cutting out pictures of Clodagh Rogers winning the Eurovision Song Contest..."

OI DAWSON NO!
Clodagh RoDgers didn't win bloody Eurovision!!

I should know... I was watching the bloody thing through teary eyes.

Now over the years I have learnt to gloss over cultural references in books or tv shows where an actor or a film are muddled up - but it's hardly like Eurovision isn't well referenced on the damn internet.

Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

Constant Reader

I would like you to know that Owen had his operation at lunchtime today. I saw him this evening and he seemed a lot more 'together' than I was expecting. I am sure the fact that he had a handheld button that released morphine into him when he felt any pain had absolutely nothing to do with it. The surgeon sees him tomorrow to assess how he is doing but it looks like he may have to stay in until maybe Sunday.

Don't worry I filled him in about Emilygate on BB. Did we watch it tonight?
A total riot - loved Shabnam trying to find out what had been said while Charlie and Emily were both telling her to drop it, Shabnam saying she totally wasn't interested anymore...... "But what did you say though?" - all talking over each other - a hoot n a half.

And the clever way Charlie didn't want anyone to know what had happened. So proceeded to tell everyone in the bedroom that someting happened but she couldn't discuss the really really bad thing that Emily had said to her and not to ask her. No she couldn't discuss it, it was between her and Emily so don't ask her. About what Emily said to her. 'Cos she wouldn't tell them. No.

This pleading denial was topped only by the response from Ziggy saying "Ohhhh I know, yeah.... she fancies you, right?"

That was me on the deck.

Two more blokes are being released into the house on Friday instead of the eviction. Dear lord let them have a bit more spunk about them. As t'were.

WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS?

In August of this year I will celebrate 25 years of proper theatre going. How is it possible that GUYS AND DOLLS at the National Theatre was 25 years ago? I have stayed loyal to Theatreland through those years, now it's the only art form I look forward to going to... no matter what the production.

And now see how the West End is repaying me... with stage versions of two of my favourite films.

ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER is to be staged at the Old Vic in September. To sweeten the pill allegedly Pedro Almodovar will have final script and casting approval with talk already that Lesley Manville is up for the role of Manuela, played luminously in the film by Cecilia Roth.

And even more destressing, DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN: THE MUSICAL is pencilled in at the Gielgud in November. Among the producers are Old Vic Productions.

Remind me to pop a note though to bloody Kevin Spacey.

The ...SUSAN musical - perish the thought someone in the West End have an original though - will be set to the back catalogue of Blondie which I guess fits in with the New York scene of the 80s. I can just see it... Roberta dreams of Susan's life singing (I'M ALWAYS TOUCHED BY YOUR) PRESENCE DEAR or chasing her round Manhattan to the strains of ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.

Yeesh.

But just to show potential disasters are a two way street... Tim Burton's screen adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's SWEENEY TODD is due to finish principal photography soon.

The role of Sweeney has in the past taxed the vocal limits of such actor/singers as Len Cariou, George Hearn, Alun Armstrong and Denis Quilley and is now to be immortalised on the big screen by... Johnny Depp who by his own admission has a voice like "the mating call of a rutting stag".

And as Mrs. Lovett which in the past has been played wonderfully by such greats as Angela Lansbury, Sheila Hancock, Julia McKenzie and Patti LuPone?

Helena Bonham-Carter.

Yes.. THAT Helena Bonham-Carter.

Who just happens to be Tim Burton's girlfriend.

Pass me the razor when you're done with it Sweeney...

DEADLIER THAN THE MALE?

Quite by accident the two films I watched over the weekend both dealt with real-life women whose names have becomes infamous.

I finally caught up with Channel 4/HBO's LONGFORD starring Jim Broadbent as the eponymous Lord and Samantha Morton as Myra Hindley. I remember back in the early '70s the furore when it was revealed that after years of prison visits, Lord Longford was pressing for the chance of parole for Hindley, mainly I think because it was the first time I had heard what The Moors Murderers had actually done. I also remember Longford appearing on the current affairs programme Brass Tacks with the mother of Lesley Ann Downey which certainly made for gripping tv - they have even included it in the film with Broadbent as Longford cleverly spliced into the real broadcast.










It's a natural for screenwriter Peter Morgan who is making a speciality of scripts which feature confrontations between real-life characters - David Frost & Richard Nixon, Tony Blair & The Queen, Tony Blair & Gordon Brown - but the film could have done with maybe a more insightful director than Tom Hooper as it's pace eventually seemed a bit plodding. Longford was also painted whiter than white - his recorded homophobia could easily have been brought in to the few scenes showing his anti-pornography campaign.










What made the film watchable were the excellent performances - Jim Broadbent was superb as Longford, it's hard to think of another actor who could have made his strange, old-fashioned, demeanor sympathetic. He was matched by a fascinating performance by Samantha Morton - not an actress I usually care for - as Myra. Like Longford you are thrown at her first appearance in a prison visiting room, not the blonde from the famous police photo but a dark-haired mousy woman hunched over a corner table. Her watchfulness broken only by occasional shots of impatience she makes a convincingly supplicant trying hard to atone.

These scenes of intellectual seduction are shattered when Longford receives a letter from Ian Brady, played in a malevolently evil performance by Andy Serkis. In three short scenes Serkis revels in his role, toying with Longford each time until he delivers news of Myra's duplicitous nature. It is after the last of these scenes - when Brady announces that he will talk to the police about the two missing victims - that Morton has her best scene. After letting Longford prattle on Myra interrupts him to tell him she too will admit to the killings and that a new lawyer has advised her to drop Longford like a hot potato. Morton's cold reading of the scene is perfectly matched by Broadbent's utter devastation. An invented scene of them meeting again a year before their deaths is unnecessary, giving the film a neat button that it really doesn't need. If you haven't seen it though I recommend it for the three excellent central performances.

My other femme fatale was in the 1931 MGM film of MATA HARI starring Greta Garbo.

Although 89 minutes it's hard to sit through now without wincing. Although Garbo is never less than watchable, several times she appears to be in a silent film, her responses are so broad. Amazingly it was one of her most successful films. This despite a clunky script, a truly bizarre storyline and now laughable performances by co-stars Ramon Navarro - playing a Russian in his thick Mexican accent - and Lionel Barrymore chewing the expensive scenery. It's odd that despite two silent films and later ones starring Jeanne Moreau and Sylvia Kristel no one has yet taken the plunge and made a film of the real story behind Mata Hari.

Margaretha Zelle was born in the Netherlands and at 18 she married a naval officer who was then posted to Java where Margarethe bore a boy and girl. In the first bizarre twist in her life the son was poisoned by an ex-employee. Divorced a few years after and back in Europe she moved to Paris working as a circus act, an artist's model and finally becoming an 'exotic' dancer under the Javanese name Mata Hari claiming to be an Eastern princess. She was soon the talk of Paris and naturally took the next step in becoming a courtesan of men in high places. When WWI broke out, being neutral Dutch, she was able to pass easily over borders which eventually aroused suspicion. When interviewed by British military intelligence when travelling via London she informed them she was employed by their French counterparts, which the French vigorously denied. No firm evidence has ever been found to say she was or she wasn't so perhaps she was simply embroidering the truth as she had done before.

In 1917 a coded message was sent from the German army in Spain to Berlin commenting on the success of a French double agent named H-21. The code - which the Germans knew had been cracked by the French - also pointed to the identity being Mata Hari. A month later she was arrested in Paris and put on trial at a time of great demoralisation about the progress of the war and the huge death toll of troops. Again no lasting proof has ever been found as to her guilt but she was found guilty and shot in October of the same year aged 41. So was she the deadly spy of legend, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of soldiers or a fantasist over her head in dangerous times, tried as much for her sexual mores as for any alleged treason?

What I do know was her real life is a damn sight more interesting than the one cobbled together for Garbo - exotic mantrap spying for both the Russians and Germans falls in love with a young Russian pilot, shoots her Russian spymaster as he is about to indict her lover as a traitor and is arrested for his murder. Her lover is blinded in a plane crash, she is sentenced to be executed for treason, but not before being visited in the condemned cell by her blinded Russian who is led to believe he is visiting her in a hospital where she is about to go and have surgery!! She goes to her death smiling at finally having known true love.

Believe me there are times one should be grateful they don't make them like that anymore!

Sunday Night Is Pet Shop Boys Night

I have been so busy with theatre-going and work shenanigans that I hadn't had to time to work myself up into a suitable state of PSB excitement. I was getting a bit worried that even with ten minutes to go I was still in a resolutely un-excited mood - despite buying merch, being in a nice central position and standing in the Hammersmith Apollo stalls with the seats all taken out - all live venues should have such a precipitous rake even if it's eventually killing to the small of the back. But all was put to right when the lights went down!

The last time I saw them was at Brixton Academy in 2002 on their RELEASE tour when they eschewed the lights and costumes and were performing as a 'straight' band. I had heard nothing about this tour so was a bit worried that they might still be into their 'unplugged' vibe but luckily no! The setting was a neon square surrounded by dark curtains and a keyboard on a neon stand to one side. After a tease of having first two backing singers then two dancers come out dressed as Neil and Chris, the real ones appeared and it wasn't long before the neon square was shown to be neon poles that went up and down or expanded to a 'cinemascope' screen with projections behind to fill the stage with glorious pulsing colour.

It wasn't long before full PSB service was fully resumed with the appearance of the magnificent Sylvia Mason-James to provide her soaring backing vocals so missing on the RELEASE tour. Neil was in good voice, Chris even smiled a few times and the crowd were suitably in good voice. The only dodgy aspect of the show were the two body-popping hip-hop stylee dancers who certainly added to the onstage traffic but who didn't add much to the show artistically.

There were so many great songs although they did relatively few from the new album FUNDEMENTAL. We got "West End Girls", "Opportunities", "Suburbia" (with an enormous twitching lace curtain behind them), "Paninaro", "Shopping", "Rent", "It's A Sin", "Heart", "Left To My Own Devices", "Domino Dancing", "Always On My Mind" (against huge cut-out heads of themselves), "Being Boring" (and yes I did get moisty-eyed), "Where The Streets Have No Name", "Can You Forgive Her?", "Dreaming Of The Queen" (wonderful, against grainy film of Diana's funeral car driving through a rainstorm of flowers), "Go West", "Se A Vida E", "Home And Dry", "Flamboyant", "Integral", "I'm With Stupid", "Numb", "Minimal" and "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show".

I hope it's not 5 years before seeing them again.

Owen supplied the nice photos!

Tonight was the last of mine and Owen's marathon theatre-going month and, like THE ENTERTAINER, I finally got round to seeing a famous play I had never seen on stage or film... Peter Shaffer's EQUUS at the Gielgud Theatre. In the front row yet!

As Mr and Mrs World knows it stars Daniel Radcliffe as Alan Strang, a 17 year-old boy who has blinded 6 horses with a spike and Richard Griffiths as Martin Dysart the psychiatrist assigned to his case who is determined to understand what brought him to doing it. In the course of his interviews with the taciturn teen he uncovers the boy's fixation with horses, seeing them as all-seeing and god-like.

Premiered by the National Theatre at the Old Vic in 1973 the play was a huge hit both in the West End and Broadway - and certainly had a huge effect on someone I could mention (hi Suzanne!). in 1977 Sidney Lumet directed Richard Burton and Peter Firth in the film version. Amazingly this production directed by Thea Sharrock is the first London revival since then.

I enjoyed it much more than I was expecting. The play might have one or two niggling faults: under-developed supporting roles; the boy's parents are rather too obviously textbook cases being stern Atheist father / emotional religious mother while the ultimate question posed by Dysart - should he 'cure' the boy thus rendering him ordinary and neutered or does his fixation and passion lift him out of ordinary experience - is a bit woolly. But one and the same it is still a fascinating piece of writing and a powerful theatrical experience.

The original designer John Napier revisits the play and gives us a haunting dark space with shadowy horse stables surrounding the central raised platform while above two rows of audience seats on the level of the dress circle give the impression of a courtroom or old operating theatre.

Napier's design masterstroke however is the horses, six tall actors dressed in brown, hands clasped behind them, wearing metal platform-hooves and wrought metal horse's heads. They are led by the marvellous Will Kemp who plays not only Nugget the horse the boy most reveres but also the horseman who gives him his first experience of touching horseflesh. This scene in particular was nerve-jangling as it involved Kemp giving Radcliffe a piggy-back then racing around the stage - a tribute to his upper-body strength if nothing else. Napier's design, John Hershey's atmospheric lighting and Fin Walker's choreography combined to make them fully believable as Alan's objects of worship and desire.

Richard Griffiths seems an odd choice for Dysart bearing in mind some of his predecessors - Alec McCowan, Colin Blakely, Anthony Hopkins, Anthony Perkins, Burton - but he certainly made the psychiatrist a humane man all too aware of his own failings.
Jenny Agutter is inspired casting as the Magistrate who elects to send the boy to her friend Dysart as in the film she played Jill the stable-girl. However she was only fitfully impressive and in her major scene in the second half, arguing with Dysart as to what the boy needed from those in authority, frankly it was hard to believe she has over 30 years stage experience. Admittedly it's a thankless part, only ever appearing so the Dysart character can voice his concerns about his life. In the two tricky roles of the boy's parents, Jonathan Cullum was fine and Gabrielle Reidy was particularly moving - her Irish brogue making the character's devoutness believeable. Joanna Christie was also good in the role of Jill the stable-girl who unwittingly is the catalyst for Alan's horrific action.

Which leads us to Daniel Radcliffe as Alan Strang. I suspect the role is a bit like Juliet - difficult to cast exactly to age as it's a rare actor who can have the stagecraft required at that stage in their career. But on the whole I was impressed with his performance. Certainly as some reviews have pointed out he does not have a particularly wide vocal range but then he IS playing an emotionally-damaged teenager! He certainly has a presence however and bearing in mind the production's publicity is all centred on him and not Griffiths - despite his recent Tony Award - he is obviously an actor who can draw a crowd. It will be interesting to see where he goes with his stage career now.

Of course all the press has been about the scene towards the end of the play where Alan strips off to have sex in the stable with Jill. All I can say about this is what a lot of fush about - ah - nothing.

Clash of The Divas!

I'm in Theatre Queen heaven.... Vanessa Redgrave and Angela Lansbury - in the same photograph!!! - at a press junket for the Tony Award nominees in New York. *swoon*