DVD/150: MY BOY JACK (Brian Kirk, 2007, tv)

In 1997, I saw David Haig play Rudyard Kipling at the Hampstead Theatre in his play MY BOY JACK, ten years on he starred in a tv adaptation, with Daniel Radcliffe as his son John, Kim Cattrall and Carey Mulligan.

In 1914, Kipling was an exponent for Britain entering World War 1 - and accepted a Government offer to write propaganda - while also encouraging his 16 year-old son John to join up.

But John was rejected by the navy and the army due to chronic short-sightedness.

Kipling pulled strings and John became a lieutenant in the Irish Guards, much to the shock of his mother and sister. 

A fortnight after arriving in France, John went missing during the Battle of Loos. He was 18.

After doggedly inspecting photographs of injured soldiers, the Kiplings finally heard that John was last seen disorientated during the battle. They never found his body.

Shelf or charity shop?  One for the plastic storage box.  It is a sombre story, soberly told.  A little too soberly perhaps as the film seems to want to build to an explosion of anguish which never comes.  Carey Mulligan is fine as the 'modern' sister who shares John's wish to leave their stuffy family home but her character fades after John's death, while Kim Cattrall is admirably restrained as Kipling's American wife Carrie but her release of anguish is not the fireworks you expect.  Daniel Radcliffe's usual gauche manner suits John Kipling well and he plays well against David Haig's all-enveloping Kipling, his stiff-upper-lip facade trembles marvellously as he attempts to hide his pain.  The most niggling thing about it all is that the poem MY BOY JACK was not written for his son but for Jack Cornwell, the youngest sailor to die earlier in 1916 during the Battle of Jutland.  John Kipling was always called John, not Jack.

"Have you news of my boy Jack?”
    Not this tide.
"When d'you think that he'll come back?"
    Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

"Has any one else had word of him?"
    Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
    Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

"Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?"
    None this tide,
    Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind—
    Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
    This tide,
    And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
    And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

Sweet Bird of Youth flies away...

Last week I finally saw the Old Vic's production of Tennessee Williams' 1959 play SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH in it's last week.  When we arrived there was a queue snaking around onto Waterloo Road just to collect tickets.  When I finally got to the counter they hadn't even printed my tickets off for collection.  Jesu Christi - what on earth had they been doing all day?

I had seen the play once before, in 1985 when Harold Pinter directed Lauren Bacall and Michael Beck (whatever happened to...) at the Haymarket in a production of which I retain the flimsiest of shadowy images.  I do remember Bacall being suitably domineering when her character flared into full diva status but unable to convince as the scared and frantic washed-up star. 

I had also seen Richard Brooks' 1962 film version in which Paul Newman (Chance), Geraldine Page (Alexandra), Madeleine Sherwood (Miss Lucy) and Rip Torn (Tom Jnr) recreated their original stage roles while Ed Begley won an Academy Award as the corrupt politician 'Boss' Finley.  Geraldine Page was memorable in only her fourth film role.

 

SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH was almost the last of Williams' run of 'classic' plays with just THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA to come.  In 1963, written in the shadow of his partner's death, THE MILK TRAIN DOESN'T STOP HERE ANYMORE started the decline in both quality and his popularity.  His alcoholism and drug dependency made the quality of his later plays more erratic and harder to like so he was judged by producers and critics to be a busted flush.

Knowing this, it makes SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH an unsettling experience as the air of desperation at the passing of time hangs heavily on the main characters.  Another reason why I like the play less than his earlier works is I feel Williams' ambivalence towards his characters.  None of his characters here are written with the love you feel he invested in Laura Wingfield, Blanche du Bois, Lady Torrence or Maggie & Brick.  Although both Alexandra and Chance can easily be seen as having the traits of Williams' 'fugitive kind', they both lack Williams' soul.

Chance Wayne (Seth Numeric) returns to his home town on America's Gulf Coast, hiding out in the shabby elegance of the hotel where he once worked in the bar.  Chance left with hopes of becoming a film star but his dream foundered and he ended up as the plaything of rich, older women.

His latest meal-ticket is film star Alexandra Del Largo (Kim Cattrall) who is travelling with him under the name of Princess Kosmonopolis.  She too is a fugitive from her life as she believes her screen comeback has failed disastrously and is lost in drink, drugs and hysteria.

However Chance wants to use Alexandra for one more... er... chance: wanting her to use her alleged star power to launch him as her new 'discovery'.  But he also has an ulterior motive - to win back his first love, the groanworthy-named Heavenly (Louise Dylan) who is unfortunately the daughter of 'Boss' Finley (Owen Roe) the town's corrupt and white supremacist politician.

What Chance doesn't know is that after his last visit, he gave Heavenly an STD which has resulted in her father forcing her to have a hysterectomy and he is now out for revenge...

Director Marianne Elliott threw everything at the audience: in the big climactic scene, we have flashbulbs going off, thunder and lightning as a storm breaks, 'Boss' Finley haranguing the audience on large TV screens and amplified sound and Finley's thugs beating up a heckler while Finley's mistress screams her head off.  The odd thing was that none of it seemed out of place!  She also kept the pace going until the final scene which seemed oddly becalmed.

In a cast where the accents swung all over the place, the best performance came from Owen Roe as 'Boss' Finley who cast a loathsome shadow over the play as an all-too-believable "Family & State" politician who approves of castrating black men and denies the existence of his mistress.  I liked Kim Cattrall's exhausted and suspicious Alexandra, in particular how she slipped back into the manner of the screen diva as easily as donning her fur wrap.  She certainly humanised Alexandra - but does a humanised Alexandra serve the play?  I'm not really sure it does.

For the most part Seth Numrich was fine as Chance, his self-belief radiating from him but in the last scene I felt he simply drained away the closer Chance got to his destiny.  This production knitted together several versions of the play and Numrich's poetic last lines seemed oddly out of keeping with his performance up until then.  Also a special mention for Brid Brennan's Aunt Nonnie, a woman used to being ignored and browbeaten in the Finley household.

I also feel compelled to mention Lucy Robinson playing 'Boss' Finley's not-so-secret mistress Miss Lucy who gave a performance of quite jangling inadequacy.  It's a role that gives some spark of humanity as the forces of darkness move in but her shockingly poor attempt at a Southern accent had me wishing one of designer Rae Smith's peeling columns to fall on her just to stop the noise.

I am glad I saw it as it made me reassess this play in contrast with Tennessee Williams' earlier plays but I left the theatre with the feeling that the full power this play is capable of had not been fully explored.

Earlier this week Owen and I made a return to our London theatregoing when we went to the Vaudeville - again! - to see Richard Eyre's production of Noel Coward's PRIVATE LIVES.

From it's original production in 1930, the play has become one the most beloved comedies - by both audiences and actors! This time Kim Cattrall and Matthew Macfadyen are playing Amanda and Elyot, the lovers who can't live with each other - or without each other.Coward wrote the roles with himself and Gertrude Lawrence in mind and a flavour of these two individual performers haunt the teasing, darting repartee, the illusion being of a soapy bubble being kept floating in midair by the most delicate of touches.

Like THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST the reason for the play's longevity is that it just works - the effortless wit and frothy air hides the play's solid foundation within the classic three-act structure, no line superfluous, no action out of place. Remarkable then that when it first opened that it received mixed reviews at best from the London critics.

The glittering wit and sharp-as-knives barbs also conceal a fascinating central story of two people who are constantly aware that while they are ideally suited, yet they can't stop the arguments that regularly erupt between them. Life imitated art in the 1972 London revival when Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens' marriage crumbled away during the run and in a 1983 New York revival this love you-hate you aspect was more than played up with the casting of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, seven years after their second divorce. It was a box office hit even though as Frank Rich said in The New York Times "it had all the gaiety of a tax audit".Luckily you are in safe hands at the Vaudeville.

Richard Eyre brought his usual clarity of vision to the play - the first act slowly but surely gathering momentum until we too were swept up in the giddy excitement of Amanda and Elyot eloping to Paris. The second act is again paced carefully as we ride the rollercoaster that is the couple's determined efforts to stay in love and not fight until all Hell finally breaks loose.
His handling of the third act was interesting, not playing up the slapstick elements but again leading effortlessly up to the final famous image - Amanda and Elyot slipping away together again as Victor and Sibyl have a stand-up fight. Eyre makes sure that the bittersweet regret at the heart of the play is never far from the surface froth.

Eyre also has elicited interesting non-Coward performances from his two leads. Matthew Macfadyen still strikes me as an odd choice - he initially seems far too sturdy, too proletarian for Elyot and his understated performance sometimes throws the play's inner motor off but he does suggest the core of doubt under the witty banter and he made the fight scenes quite believable - this Elyot certainly makes you believe that he would "strike certain women, like gongs".
Kim Cattrall - who luckily did not receive the round of applause on her delayed entrance that I was dreading - also is hardly the brittle, angular and waspish Amanda of tradition. She possessed a worldly air that made you believe her distrust of convention and 'the done thing'. Her Amanda fully makes you understand how both Elyot and Victor would want this maddening, erratic woman as their own. I enjoyed her performance very much.

The hapless Sibyl and Victor - who by Coward's own admission are only there as skittles to be knocked down and put back up again are played by Lisa Dillon and Simon Paisley Day.

If Lisa Dillon didn't totally convince as Sibyl it's maybe because she is too intelligent a performer to fully convince as a prattling ninny. Simon Paisley Day followed up his scene-stealing role as brother Ed in last year's ENTERTAINING MR. SLOANE with a delightful turn as the hopelessly out-of-his-league Victor. While hitting all the obviously comic moments with aplomb - the things he can do with a vowel sound - he also managed to suggest the sadness behind the buffoonery when he haltingly suggested that he would let Amanda divorce him to save any scandal - as if Amanda would mind!Rob Howell's designs were suitably lavish for Amanda's Paris flat and how the triple
-sphere upright goldfish tank stays in one place is beyond me.

I cannot recommend this production enough. It has the wit and panache one would hope but also the sadness behind the frivolity which can make a line like “Let’s be superficial and pity the poor philosophers, let’s blow trumpets and squeakers, and enjoy the party as much as we can, like very small, quite idiotic school-children” quite heartbreaking.