DVD/150: LAST CHANCE HARVEY (Joel Hopkins, 2008)

A romance which wins you over thanks to Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson's chemistry but it's a close thing.

Jingle composer Harvey arrives in London for his daughter's wedding but discovers his ex-wife's partner is to escort her down the aisle.  Harvey leaves after the ceremony but misses his flight back for an important meeting and is sacked over the phone.

At the airport bar, he notices Kate reading alone and tries to engage her in conversation.  She is dissmisive at first but softens when she hears his troubles.

Kate is single, tired of uncomfortable blind dates organized by work colleagues and harrassed by her emotionally needy mother.

Harvey tags along with Kate to her reading class and they flanneur along the South Bank, realising kindred spirits.  

Kate pursuades Harvey to return for his daughter's reception which he invites her to...

Love appears when you are not expecting it...

Shelf or charity shop?  A contender for the DVD limbo of the plastic storage box.  If you are lucky your leading actors have a great chemistry and, luckily for LAST CHANCE HARVEY, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson have it in spades.  The film comes alive in their scenes together, also when it concentrates on Emma Thompson's perceptive performance, but Joel Hopkins' direction and script offers no surprises as the cliches whizz by: the testy first meeting, the shopping montages, the dancing montages, the 11 o'clock spanner in the works, and the inevitable race against the clock ending.  Eileen Atkins is wasted as Kate's mother, a role that beggars belief.  The always-dependable Bronagh Gallagher as Kate's matchmaking colleague stands out from a supporting cast that barely rises above forgettable. Mind you, for a film that relies heavily on London locations, there is only one glaring fail - they walk over Hungerford Bridge and are next seen walking towards it.

DVD/150: CRANFORD (Simon Curtis/Steve Hudson, 2007, tv)

"You're not in London now, you're in Cranford"

In 1842, the residents of the Cheshire market town of Cranford know their place in Victorian society and in God's eyes.  But slowly the modern world is coming...

The formidable spinsters and widows of Cranford spend their days seizing on any gossip and the sight or two women walking quickly usually means new scandal.  The arbiter of moral rectitiude is Miss Deborah Jenkyns, who lives with her younger, more gentle sister Matty but both can be relied upon to do the right thing.

The spinsters welcome in Mary Smith, the daughter of an old Manchester friend, when she is forced out by her step-mother and, together they experience new neighbours, new joys, but also new sadnesses because for all of them, death can come unexpectedly. 

Heidi Thomas' adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskill's novellas is a superb mix of comedy, tragedy and class.

Shelf or charity shop? Definite shelf.  Sue Birtwhistle and Susie Conklin's production would have seemed a natural for the BBC but it was hit by the corporation's budget cuts, postponed for a year and having to thin down from 6 episodes to 5 and then changing directors halfway through filming but luckily they persevered.  It goes without saying that the cast give excellent performances but they also provide a seamless ensemble: Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins, Julia McKenzie, Imelda Staunton, Lisa Dillon, Francesca Annis, Barbara Flynn, Deborah Findlay, Lesley Manville, Emma Fielding, Jim Carter, Philip Glenister, Michael Gambon and Alex Etel are all memorable.

Dvd/150: NOTHING LIKE A DAME (Roger Michell, 2018)

Every so often, four acting greats - Dames Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright and Maggie Smith - meet at Plowright's Sussex home to catch up and reminisce; this time director Roger Michell was on hand to film them.

With their friendships crossing generations. they have much shared experience: first nights, critics, playing Shakespeare, acting with husbands, getting older...

Of course Laurence Olivier pops up in conversation several times: when talking about acting partners, Plowright says "Mine was the most difficult" to which Maggie dryly responds "Well, we all found him tricky".

I suspect the real gold was left out - there is a flash of it when they discuss their wariness in playing Shakespeare's Cleopatra: Atkins says she has found all actors playing Antony dislike it as they realize the best role is Cleopatra "Alan Bates told me he hated it" to which Maggie says "That's because he wanted to play Cleopatra!"

Shelf or charity shop?  Shelf!

THE HEIGHT OF THE STORM at Wyndhams Theatre - Squall in the family...

When it was announced that Jonathan Pryce and Eileen Atkins were to appear onstage in a new play by French writer Florian Zeller, adapted by Christopher Hampton and directed by Jonathan Kent, I knew it was going to be something to see.  Then I saw the prices...  nothing in the stalls for under £74 - and it only lasts 80 minutes!  Luckily Owen nabbed some Upper Circle tix though of course they were restricted view with the edge of the stage obscured.  And the play?  Well...

This is the first play I have seen by Florian Zeller but I know of his work - all translated by Christopher Hampton in the UK.  While I appreciate what he is trying to do with the form, bending narrative structures and giving you characters who might not be the most trustworthy of narrators, however THE HEIGHT OF THE STORM feels annoyingly slight, like a writer cruising on his tricks, thinking "Oh I can do the same to this situation" rather than it feeling in anyway new and revelatory; just narrative guessing games for the sake of it.

Andre and Madeleine have been married for over 50 years and have two daughters.  Andre is beginning to show signs of confusion and although both daughters have arrived at the family home at the same time, he is vague as to why.  Marianne wanders in and out speaking to the family as she busies herself with dinner but the emphasis is on Andre who listens but doesn't really take in what his daughters are saying about a house that they have seen which might suit him better.  They even bring home a woman who vaguely knows Andre and Marianne - much to the latter's consternation as she has always thought she had been in an affair with Andre once - to talk about the house.  An appearance from the younger daughter's latest boyfriend who is a estate agent only makes the situation clearer to all but Andre.

It very soon becomes apparent (through the play and knowledge of Zeller's past work) that one of the couple has died - but which one?  I will not be the spoilsport and reveal who but it's all quite obvious really.  So in actual fact, I left thinking that the play could have been shorter, there seemed to be a lot of re-stating what was fairly obvious before, so much so that at times I felt like saying "Yes we get it, that person is dead!!"

Yes the play reverberates once the curtain has come down, but I think that has more to do with Jonathan Kent's taut direction - despite the several 'interludes' to show time passing - and of course his remarkable lead performers.  That said, credit is due to the fine supporting performances from Amanda Drew and Anna Madeley as the concerned daughters but Lucy Cohu is, as per, a trifle over-ripe as the mysterious friend of the family.

Needless to say there was enough coughing for the duration of the play to make it seem like Scutari Hospital on a wet Wednesday, but as a tribute to Jonathan Pryce and Eileen Atkins you could hear a pin drop in their scenes together, especially the final scene when all the threads come together.  To be honest, it is this final scene that has stayed with me as it was so beautifully pitched and played.

Jonathan Pryce was remarkable and heartbreaking as Andre, a man slowly losing himself in his own mind, given to panicked confusion as he gets stuck in painful repetitions of a sentence, not able to comprehend recent events despite the clues in front of him.  Onstage for most of it's running time, Pryce radiated an intense charisma.  Eileen Atkins was frustratingly under-used, drifting in and out of the action to drop some withering lines but as I said, the last scene was breathtaking as she took flight with a warm delicacy as Madeleine reminded Andre that she once said she would never leave him.

I'm glad I got the see these two favorite performers again on stage, it was just a shame the play was so maddeningly slight.

Dvd/150: AN AGE OF KINGS (Michael Hayes, 1960, tv)

With current Shakespeare productions full of gender-fluid casting, set in abattoirs or Carnaby Street, it's a pleasure to see the BBC's landmark 1960 fifteen-part series of The History Plays, from RICHARD II to RICHARD III, all the more remarkable for being broadcast live.

Yes, the performances are declamatory but at least the verse is spoken correctly.  In those pre-NT / RSC days, the cast were drawn from companies like Birmingham Rep, OUDS and The Old Vic; remarkably they are used as a proper rep company, playing different roles throughout the series - that would never happen now.

Particularly memorable are Sean Connery (Hotspur), Angela Baddeley (Mistress Quickly), Hermione Baddeley (Doll Tearsheet), Robert Hardy (Henry V), Judi Dench (Princess Katherine), Eileen Atkins (Joan d'Arc), Mary Morris (Queen Margaret), Julian Glover (Edward IV) and Paul Daneman (Richard III)... and a shock seeing Violet Carson (pre-CORONATION STREET) as Richard III's mum!

Shelf or charity shop?  I can see myself stepping back in time to experience the nervy, live-action performances again - i'faith.

 

 

 

DVD/150: I DON'T WANT TO BE BORN (Peter Sasdy, 1975): The Killer Baby Film From Hell....

You know a film's bad if the title keeps changing: I DON'T WANT TO BE BORN is also called THE DEVIL WITHIN HER, THE MONSTER, IT LIVES WITHIN HER and SHARON'S BABY, the last is bizarre as there is no character called Sharon!

Some films are so truly godawful they become hilarious and boy, this is one.  There are so many wrong elements here, it's a film you need to see for yourself - I am thinking of having a viewing party!

Joan Collins - always a narcissistic performer - is at her most am-dram while Ralph Bates and Eileen Atkins share laughable Italian accents - "possessed by the Dayvel" - as her husband and nun-in-law while Donald Pleasance just looks sad, probably thinking his career is over.

Collins and Bates' baby is evil, is it because of a curse by a demonic dwarf who danced with her in a strip club ? !

Shelf or charity shop?  A film this awful is a definite keeper - worth it alone for the inclusion of a scene where Ralph Bates can't hang up his trim-phone properly - and it stayed in the film!!!

ELLEN TERRY WITH EILEEN ATKINS - Lightning Strikes Twice...

Last Sunday I had the great thrill of seeing, at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Eileen Atkins in her one-woman show based on the Shakespearean lectures of the great Victorian actress Ellen Terry - and it was as good, if not better, than last time.  Click on the picture below to see my original blog:

What makes the show so fascinating is that, while Atkins is saying Ellen Terry's words, you cannot help to look through that to hear the actress sharing her own thoughts on acting, actresses and Shakespeare, so often are the lines blurred...

The 80 minute monologue encompasses Terry working with Sir Henry Irving as well as her reflections on the wonderful Shakespearean women she played and this is when the show becomes the stuff of legend - at times turning on a sovereign to play two characters within a certain scene, Atkins was simply dazzling in speeches from AS YOU LIKE IT as Rosalind (as well as Orlando and Duke Frederick),  MERCHANT OF VENICE as Portia, MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR as Mistress Page, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING as Beatrice (as well as Ursula and Hero), TWELFTH NIGHT as Viola, OTHELLO as Desdemona and Emilia (and even Othello!), ROMEO AND JULIET as Juliet, KING LEAR as Cordelia (and the King) and HAMLET as Ophelia.

Using Terry's own words to describe each heroine and to point out the pleasures and the pitfalls in playing them, the Victorian actress then gave way to the magnificent Atkins to fill the auditorium with wonderful readings of the parts, finding pathos, comedy and wonder in the words with no props or scenery.  Once within the role - even if for a few lines - the years fell away...

My favourite characters were Rosalind, loving and wise; the humanity of Portia; the fearless courage of Emelia; Juliet and her tremulous fear of waking in the burial vault (and giving a great example of the age-old observation that by the time an actress has the experience to play Juliet she is too old to be Juliet);  Ophelia and her broken mental state; and the finest of all, Cordelia and King Lear's reunion.  Atkins was simply stunning in both roles - an example of total theatre thanks to true acting genius illuminating the heartbreaking words of a bewildered, humbled King and his loving daughter.  You could hear a pin drop during this moment and I will happily admit to copious tears.

I am honoured to have experienced this wonderful event twice - PLEASE someone film this show!  It would be the perfect addition to the marking this year of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death.

Dvd/150: TALKING HEADS (Stuart Burge/Giles Foster/Alan Bennett/Tristram Powell/Patrick Garland/Udayan Prasad/Gavin Miller, 1988/98, tv)

Alan Bennett's incisive monologues never lose the power to draw you in, make you smile but leave you drained at the quietly desperate lives they depict.

They are performed by a dazzling cast: Bennett, Patricia Routledge (twice), Maggie Smith, Stephanie Cole, Julie Walters (twice), Thora Hird (twice), Eileen Atkins, David Haig and Penelope Wilton.

Standouts from Series 1 are Maggie Smith as the depressed vicar's wife whose secret drinking leads to the arms of an Asian shopkeeper and the BAFTA-winning performance by Thora Hird as Doris, reviewing her life in the dying light of day after suffering a fall.

Series 2 wasn't as consistent but several are stunning: David Haig as the park cleaner struggling to hide his secret, Julie Walters as the sour wife realising her husband is a serial killer, and a second BAFTA-winning performance by Hird as Violet, a stroke victim in her 90s.

Shelf or charity shop?  They can soliloquize from the shelf...

Interpreting Shakespeare

How to interpret a Shakespearean character?  I have had two opportunities to find out recently...

For the second time in as many years, there is a production that has been heavily anticipated so much you can feel the cognoscenti holding their breath.  Last year it was the combination of Adrian Lester and Rory Kinnear in OTHELLO and now this year we have Simon Russell Beale as KING LEAR, directed by long-time collaborator Sam Mendes.

 

I felt OTHELLO was less than was expected and at times KING LEAR was a bit disappointing too but on the whole it fulfilled the expectation raised.  It certainly was a huge production which opens with a huge flaming sun being slowly eclipsed and then gives us big open spaces on the Olivier stage, big statues, a big cast, torture by water-boarding - and even a big dead stag - but at times I yearned for the claustrophobic Cottesloe production from 1997 which was directed by Richard Eyre with a landmark performance by Ian Holm.

 

 

Mendes has set his production in a 20th Century totalitarian state that is ruled over by the hunched and shaven-headed Lear who calls a summit conference to ask his three daughters the famous question of which one of them loves him the most.

 

Interestingly this was the first production I have seen where the dual plot device was really apparent to me.  Lear isn't the only one who fatally makes a wrong decision regarding his children, Gloucester also chooses to believe his bastard son Edmund's lie that his legal son Edgar is plotting to kill him, his eager belief in the lie echoes Lear's banishing of his favourite daughter Cordelia for her perceived lack of love for him.  Both actions are catastrophic but, as I said this is the first production where I noticed the obvious parallel lines of the plot.

 

 

I think this is mostly down to the exceptional performance of Stephen Boxer as Gloucester, a career politician who realises too late, and at a terrible cost, his miscalculation.  The performances of Sam Troughton as the venal Edmund was very good, played like a faceless Special Advisor who seizes his chance in the power vacuum.  Troughton had good fun with his soliloquies where Edmund shares his delight in his machinations.  Peter Ackroyd's biography of Shakespeare suggests that the same actor would have played Iago in OTHELLO and I believe this to be the case as they both share a delight in their villany,  Sadly Tom Brooke's Edgar was a trifle anonymous, even with his old boy flapping about as 'Poor Tom'.

Stanley Townsend, not a performer I usually warm to, was excellent as Kent.  Gruff and burly and quick to anger, yet he could touch the heart especially with his dignified final lines "I have a journey, sir, shortly to go / My master calls me, I must not say no."

 

Adrian Scarborough was also very good as The Fool, becoming more and more despondent as his truisms fall more an more on deaf ears.  How do you solve a problem like the Fool?  He vanishes halfway through the play and there is a good reason put forward in the Ackroyd book that possibly the boy actor who played Cordelia also played The Fool which explains the character's disappearance as Cordelia comes back into the action. 

 

Mendes solves the problem the same way that Adrian Noble's 1982 production did, namely that during the trial scene Lear, in the depth of his derangement, kills the Fool in place of an imagined Goneril.  Here the violent act springs from nowhere and as such, was doubly shocking.

 

Sadly the daughters didn't do it for me at all.  Kate Fleetwood's Wallis Simpson lookalike Goneril seemed too under-charged while Anna Maxwell Martin was overly-screechy and too obvious as an over-sexed Regen.  Mendes has also chopped and changed the text in areas so in this production, the sisters die on stage: Maxwell Martin poisoned and dying huddled under a table while Fleetwood cuts her own throat.  It certainly moves the characters a bit more into the limelight but it all looks badly staged and not organic to the play's flow.

 

The good news was that I quite liked Olivia Vinall as Cordelia who showed a lot more presence than she did as Desdemona in last year's OTHELLO.

 

 

I have seen five Lears on stage and they have been inching up in ages: Michael Gambon (1983, aged 43), Richard Briars (1990, aged 56), Robert Stephens (1994, aged 63), Ian Holm (1997, aged 66) and Derek Jacobi (2010, aged 72).  Simon Russell Beale drops the scale back down as he is 53 but he gives a consummate performance, maybe just missing greatness.

 

Playing an obviously dictatorial Lear, Beale in the first scene gives a clue to his encroaching incapacity with a trembling hand that twitches behind him, and with each subsequent downturn in his fortunes the twitch becomes more pronounced.  Despite his fearful whispered "O let me not be mad" to the Fool, by the heath scene - oddly staged on a levitating ramp - he is deranged, even stripping down to a pair of baggy underpants in sympathy with the naked Poor Tom.

 

 

Beale appears in the Dover scene as an escapee from his hospital bed, wearing his hospital smock, the Fool's hat and a carrier bag of his meagre possessions.  The subsequent scene where he is reunited with Cordelia was also finely played as a man slowly recovering his memory of his daughter from a fit of anger.

 

The final scene was beautifully played and you could hear a pin drop when he said "Thou'lt come no more / Never, never, never, never, never!" each repetition pitched differently.  I am not sure why on reflection I feel he missed greatness, maybe a feeling that he missed the pathos that Ian Holm and Derek Jacobi brought to the final moments.

 

 

With this production so fresh in my mind, it was fascinating to then see ELLEN TERRY WITH EILEEN ATKINS at the new Wanamaker Playhouse, the Globe's companion theatre.  Built to replicate a Jacobean indoor theatre, it's tiny auditorium would feel claustrophobic if you were seeing a production the length of KING LEAR but this show's running time of 80 minutes was fine.

 

In 1910 the great 19th Century actress Ellen Terry was 63 and after failing as an actor/manager of her own theatre, she decided to do lecture tours on Shakespeare, especially his women.  Eileen Atkins has adapted these latter ones into a one-woman show which has her become Terry to tell us her thoughts on Shakespeare, stories from her career playing his heroines and also perform speeches and scenes from them.  In 1989 Eileen Atkins adapted Virginia Woolf's A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN into a one-woman play with much success and she has triumphed again with Ellen Terry.  I was transfixed by her.

 

 

As Ellen Terry she takes us back to when she played Puck in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM aged 9 years old and how in the final scene one night, her bare toe was caught in the trap-door.  As she wailed and sobbed, the producer of the show ran on stage and freeing her whispered "Finish the show and I'll double your salary".  Needless to say the always-practical Terry finished the show,

Through her insights into the roles she played, Terry shares her unique standpoint as the person who had to bring those characters to life.  She also includes Rosalind which she never got to appear in due to the fact that Henry Irving would not let her play the role at the Lyceum as there was no good role for him!

Eileen Atkins said in an interview that she would not attempt to act the scenes in Terry's style: "She was extremely clever and passionate, but we all know that acting is subject to fashion. You’re in, then you’re out. It makes me sad that even some of Laurence Olivier’s performances look old-fashioned now. So I’m pretty well Eileen Atkins when it comes to the actual parts" - and how wonderful for that as it's when Atkins plays the scenes that the true magic happens.

With no props or costumes - or even lighting cues - she became Rosalind, Portia, Mistress Page, Beatrice, Viola, Juliet, Desdemona and Emilia as well as Othello, Cordelia as well as King Lear, and finally Ophelia.

 

Several times, this most under-rated and astonishing actress brought tears to my eyes.  Her Juliet, trembling and afraid of having to swallow the potion that will make her appear dead; her Emilia, righteous in her fury at Othello's killing of Desdemona; Portia's 'The quality of mercy' speech; Ophelia's mad scene, and most poignant of all, Cordelia and King Lear's reconciliation.  Coming so soon after seeing the full production along the river, I know which one I would kill to see again.

 

It was an evening that will stay with me for a long time, it was living proof of that alchemy that true acting genius can achieve.