This play got rave reviews when it opened last year at the National, as well as some headlines as to how the director, Nichola Hytner, was having to have words with the protaganist, James Cordon & other leading members of the cast, on how the adlibbing was getting all a bit out of hand. The request was to reign it in! That version has just opened in Broadway this week to glowing accolades. The cast in it’s new home at the Theatre Royal Haymarket do a superb job, & it is definitely an evening with a lot of laughs. Farce seems to be a curiously British invention, & like the genre of portraiture, it is always something we have excelled at. The only problem I find with a comedy, is there are always some audience members who seem to be having too good a time. It tends to be the people with the slightly ludicrous, or otherwise just downright annoying laughs. For people easily distracted like me, they become too noticable & detract from the fantastic spectacle unfolding below. I was pleased to note I wasn’t the only one cursing at the completely mad blonde lady further down in the upper circle.

The only part I didn’t particularly care for was indeed the adlibbing by Cordon’s replacement, Owen Arthur, playing Francis Henshaw. I found it slightly contrived, not that that was any fault of his. I think I would have just preferred it if it hadn’t happened at all, & they’d just got on with the fantastic, (& hilarious!) story.

I was excited before this play. I thought if it is half as eventful as it must have been when it premièred at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1907, it would certainly be memorable. The Dublin audience had reacted badly to what they perceived as their mocking by the playwright, JM Synge, with this story set in County Mayo on the west coast of Ireland. A full-scale riot ensued! I’m sure Kevin Spacey & the rest of the Old Vic were mightily relieved there was no such repeat here.

The play opens with a group of rustic looking folk playing atmospheric music with the backdrop of the outside of a crofters house. Something is a little amiss however. The men have all got bonnets & dresses on. They are clearly a tad on the sappy side. As they depart the stage, & the house spins around, we are all of a sudden on the inside, & it is clear we are at the local drinking establishment. The setting, the costumes & the characters are all so authentic, it feels like I have been transported there by an Irish Chekhov.

There seems to be a slight issue however. A division in the audience. A split between the Irish in the theatre & everybody else. The Irish seem to be at an unfair advantage in that they are getting it all, where as us others are struggling to comprehend the West coast accent. They’re laughing but I’m not too sure why. I shift uncomfortably in my seat. Then after a few minutes, the ear tunes in & the brain subconsciously engages. Just as if I was reading an Irvine Welsh novel, the fog of confusion lifts & I am completely absorbed.

The protagonist, an outsider, Christy Mahon, walks into the pub & announces he has killed his father. The response of the community verges on farce – he is feted like a hero returning from battle, and two of the local women compete for his amorous attention. With his tales of his daring exploits, this rather ordinary young man is – according to these rather misguided locals – the playboy of the title. Then there is a twist to the story, & the community suddenly turns against him. The change in attitude of the main female character, (played by Ruth Negga), was quite shocking. It made me wonder about the nature of a tribal, pitch-fork, sheep-like mentality. She ultimately feels sorrow for the loss of her man, although I didn’t feel sorry for her.

I loved the action that unfolded when people were on the stage, & the quality of the performances. However one of my favourite scenes was when nobody was on the stage, (ie in the pub), & all the action was taking place down the hill with a sporting event & the whole village cheering on Christy – before his rather spectacular, (& surprising) fall from grace. I’ve never seen the technique employed, & it worked really well.

Heartily recommended.

I was looking forward to seeing this show, about everybody’s favourite ogre, as I thought if it was anything like the films, it would be an entertaining experience. However in the end, it was more than just another entertaining show. I thought it was really special, & the best musical I’ve seen since ‘Hair’.

The performers all do a great job, & belt out the surprisingly wide-ranging & catchy score. I loved the character of the dastardly Lord Farquhar. His wonderfully costumed entourage reminded me of Willy Wonka & the Oompa Loompas. I was mightily surprised to discover on getting home that he is played by Nigel Harman, who used to be in my class at school when I was 13. He left to go to stage school. The boys done well!

The changing sets had a real cinematic quality about them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such varied & ingenious scenery. I’m not going to say any more here, but you’ll be impressed! There are not many stages in London where one can be this ambitious with set design, but the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is definitely one. To get an idea of just how vast it is, take one of their excellent theatrical theatre tours that they do most days of the week. Details can be found on the visit london website.

The lighting was wonderfully atmospheric – especially the sunsets. The special effects were clever – Pinocchio is one of many fairy tale characters that makes a mass entry onto the stage. How do they do that thing with his nose? And the prince racing up to the top of his tower at breakneck speed. And the speedy transformation of Fiona? I could go on & on!

Don’t think that because it is based on a cartoon character, it is just for younger ones. The script has plenty of gags which go straight over there heads, which is probably just as well.

….& who would have thought that 3 blind mice could be so alluring!

There seems to be a trend developing of plays starting out in the Royal Court to critical acclaim, & then embarking on the journey to the West End where they become huge hits. We had ‘Jerusalem’ & ‘Enron’ last year, & now it seems we have this extremely entertaining & funny play about race & property, which is playing just off Leicester Square until May.

Now I know the two words ‘race’ & ‘property’ don’t sound like a bundle of laughs. However, the script is so sharp, the actors are so sparkling & plausible, & the set so convincing, that it really does all lend itself to a thoroughly entertaining evening.

The first act is set in an American town in 1959. A white couple have just suffered the tragic personal loss of their Army son, who has taken his own life upstairs. In their desire to break free of the memories that haunt them, they are about to sell their property in exclusively white Clybourne Park to a black couple. Their conservative white neighbours are horrified at the prospect of this being the tip of the iceberg, with regards to the value of their own properties in the street, & hypocritically attempt to convince them to stay on. The insensitivity of some of the home owners in the first half beggars belief. However, we have to remind ourselves that this was over 50 years ago, at a time when parts of the segregationist US didn’t differ much from apartheid South Africa,& it really was a very different time.

At the start of the second act, we jump forward to the same house in 2009, & things are completely different. The house is almost unrecognisable. There are holes in the wall & the wallpaper is peeling off. The same actors are on stage, but playing different characters & with what seems initially very different sensibilities. The white couple are in the firing line again, but this time the situation has been reversed. They want to flatten the house, & build a new home in what is predominantly a traditionally black area, & are receiving a lot of flack as a result, particularly from the economically empowered black couple. However, scratch under the surface, & we see that the old fault lines of division & suspicion are still there, and this is what makes the play so clever.

There seems to be a general consensus these days, that one of the greatest threats to this planet is global warming caused by the greenhouse effect. So it is a surprise there haven’t really been any plays in the West End about this most vital of contemporary topics. All that has changed, thanks to the arrival of Greenland, an ambitious play about the multi-layered fight against the destruction of the environment.

I have never seen anything so visually impressive as this before on the Lyttleton stage. Traditional theatre it is not. The usual elaborate set design one finds so often in London theatres has been eschewed in favor or something more raw. It’s big, & bold & brash & noisy – which it quite rightly needs to be to get through to us cynical Brits. Absent is the traditional structure of a play, with a single story running through from beginning, to middle to end. This spectacle focuses on a number of different protagonists, each doing their bit to different extents, & to varying degrees of success.

The play cuts across decades in an ingenious way that I won’t elaborate on for fear of giving away the nice little twist at the end. However the play is set in the run up to the Copenhagen summit in 2009, and the focus switches between four different sub-plots. There is the chemistry between the scientist and the policy advisor working for the then Secretary of State on the issue, Ed Miliband. He’s uncovered some startling new evidence, & she wants it for the summit. There is the conflict between the idealistic teenager campaigner and her middle England parents. They’re worried she’s going to hurt herself, or get in trouble with all the authorities. She worries over their apathy. There are the 2 women constantly arguing over the subject. However, I wasn’t able to work out their relationship, which lessened the dramatic impact of this particular story. Finally there are the two environmentalists doing research up in the North pole.

The effects are superb. I have never been as amazed in a theatre as the moment when a polar bear walked into the arctic camp. I’m still trying to work out where they found a polar bear in London. There were wonderful Complicite-style projections onto a screen at the back, and some pretty inventive, (& noisy) occurrences involving more paper than I’ve ever seen in my life before.

This is a truly ensemble piece the National Theatre have put on their stage, & very entertaining. Let us hope that the message is heard & understood before it’s too late. If Hollywood are right, we only have a year until the end of the world, so we better get going fast!

Oh & don’t worry about that last bit. NASA recently put ‘2012′ at the top of the list for most scientifically inaccurate film ever.

We all know the story. The Queen’s father, the Duke of York, had a speech impediment that made giving public speeches an excruciating experience, (for everybody!) The opening scene, (pictured above), makes that painfully clear. His brother, Edward VIII abdicated in 1936, as a result of wanting to marry the unsuitable American, Wallis Simpson, thereby thrusting poor ‘Bertie’ reluctantly into the limelight as he takes up the mantle as George VI. With the help of an Australian speech therapist, Lionel Logue, & his somewhat unorthodox techniques, he was – to a certain extent – able to improve. This film concentrates on the relationship between the Duke of York & his therapist.

Back in the stuffy 1930’s, aristocrats & working men came from different planets, but Logue refused to play the deferential game. He insisted on them being equals, calling the future king by his nickname Bertie – to the understandable initial horror of the Duke of York! Yet he comes to accept it, & when you think about it, it must have been rather liberating for the Duke to be treated like a regular human for once in his life. The scene where Logue’s wife finally clocks who is the new client is wonderful.

The performances are breathtaking. Believe the hype with Colin Firth. He is both powerful & moving in this film. I really hope he gets the Oscar for best actor. Helena Bonham Carter is superb, & delivers some wonderfully funny lines as his wife, the future Queen Mother, and Geoffrey Rush superbly conveys the surreality of his particular situation with his rather unique client. I was surprised to see an Australian actor, Guy Pierce, playing the useless Edward VIII, but my fears of him not sounding convincing disappeared the moment I heard his clipped RP accent – which is even a challenge for posh British actors! Although Timothy Spall doesn’t look anything like Churchill, he completely nails his voice and authority, whereas Michael Gambon does indeed strike an uncanny resemblance to the Queen’s grandfather, George V.

However, I feel more could have been made of the abdication itself. It is such a pivotal moment in both royal history, & the storyline of the film, & yet it seems to all happen very fast. The Duchess of York was furious with Wallis Simpson & Edward VIII for thrusting her reluctant husband into the limelight. However, apart from a brief & frosty exchange between them at a Balmoral dinner, this isn’t touched on at all.

The scene involving the dying George V made me think of a good trivia question. ‘Who was the last British king to be murdered?’ Depending on your definition of murder, it was George V. Not wanting his death to be announced in the evening press with the racing results & gossip, his doctor took the unilateral decision to hasten his demise with a lethal concoction of morphine & cocaine! In this way, his death would be announced in the morning papers, as would be befitting the king of the British Empire.

Watching the scenes between George VI & Churchill, I recalled the last – known – time a monarch gave an order to a PM. To readers not familiar with the machinations of our constitutional monarchy, it is Parliament, not the monarch who rules the roost in this country. Therefore it is not a monarch’s position these days to tell PM’s what to do. However in June 1944, George VI forbade Churchill to be present at the D-Day landings in Normandy. Apparantly the 70 year old PM wanted to be amongst the first off the boats & onto liberated French territory!

Wallis Simpson did this country the biggest favour ever by being both divorced & married at the time that she started her relationship with Edward VIII – thereby provoking the abdication crisis in the first place. Edward VIII would have been a useless king. He was a fan of Hitler, and with WW2 around the corner, it would have been disastrous to have had him as the monarch at a time of such profound national crisis. Before the war, the Duke & Duchess of Windsor, (as they became known) went to visit Hitler for goodness sake! George V1 & Queen Elizabeth went on to be an apt focus for national identity & unity during the dark days of the war, & their daughter Elizabeth II……well she’s brilliant in every way!

What I REALLY want to know is what she made of the film?!

STOP THE GAUGUIN BANDWAGON!! I WANT TO JUMP OFF!!!!!!!!!

We’ve all seen Paul Gauguin’s Tahitian beauties over the years, reclining on beds in nothing but their birthday suits. This exhibition of course has a number of them, and fairly unmoved I was.

I was however, pleasantly surprised to see many in France, painted earlier on in a more impressionistic style. There is no doubt that he was a prodigious talent – particularly with regards to the sheer variety of his styles. However, boy didn’t he know it! Modesty wasn’t one of his strong points! Anybody who says, ‘You’re not mad, I am a great artist & I know it’ and depicts himself as Jesus in ‘Christ in the Garden of Olives’ sure isn’t lacking confidence.

The exhibition starts off with a number of self-portraits in the early 1890’s, & each one is completely different from the other. In some he is incredibly tanned, in others deathly white. To me, one stands out – ‘Self Portrait dedicated to Carriere’ – painted in 1889, it has an air of Van Gogh about it – which is appropriate since Gauguin had recently left the artists colony in Arles which his fellow artist had set up. There was a huge amount of admiration between the two artists, although the friendship was tempestuous to say the least. Van Gogh cut his ear off after an argument with Gauguin.

The link to Van Gogh is important as – for me certainly – all the best paintings in this exhibition were painted within a year of his time in Arles, and the influence of Van Gogh strongly runs through them, as you can see in the pictures above. Like other post impressionists such as George Seurat, he wasn’t bothered about painting colours as they were. In ‘Still Life with 3 Puppies’, you can make out above the yellow & orange ears of the pups.

All in all, I left this exhibition feeling a little cold. The exhibition has had rave reviews left, right & centre, but I wasn’t feeling the Gauguin magic. It didn’t help that there is very little information about the pieces one is looking at – just the standard write-up on the walls at the start of each room. This is definitely one exhibition where paying extra for the multimedia tour is worth it.

Mind you – maybe I am in the minority with my negative feelings towards both Gauguin, (well his Tahitian phase in particular) and this exhibition in general. The galleries were absolutely packed, which I’m sure would have pleased the man himself no end.

Move over Harry Potter, there are some new spells in town, and these ones are the real deal.

Well that depends on your point of view of course, but for the ancient Egyptians they were the key to reaching the afterlife. The spells would empower, guide and give knowledge on this long and dangerous journey. See it as a one-stop shop to imortality.

Everything that was needed to protect the body on this journey was diligently and expertly transferred onto papyrus by talanted and hardworking scribes. The papyrus would then be buried in the tomb. The papyri on display are beautifully illustrated, and are in remarkably good condition considering they are over 3,500 years old .

We all know that the rich Egyptians were mummified before they were placed in a tomb. This was done to emulate the god Osiris, who was killed by his wicked brother Seth. Their sister, Isis, wrapped Osiris’ cut body in linen, where it was rejuvenated and he was reborn in the Field of Reeds – the afterlife. The ancient Egyptian belief structure revolved around the desire to get to dwelling place of Osiris.

To ensure this happened, they would have their tombs loaded with objects – amulets, figurines, images of gods and magic bricks. Each would have it’s own particular purpose, which would be activated once the relevant spell in the Book of the Dead had been read aloud by the dead person.

The original name for The Book of the Dead was ‘the spells for coming forth by day’. A key part of their belief system was the idea of the soul or spirit roaming the earth, heavens & netherworld during the day and rentering the body at night in the tomb. This was known as ‘Ba’. On the day of burial, outside the tomb and under the life-giving rays of the sun, ‘the opening of the mouth’ ceremony was performed, (2nd picture above). A priest would touch the mouth, nose, ears and eyes of the death mask with a rod. This would allow the dead to regain control of their senses and reanimate their bodies. Their journey had begun. The most common way of depicting the soul was in the form of a human-headed bird, which had to return to the tomb by nightfall and reunite with the body. Sometimes a ram would be used in place of a human-headed bird. I was puzzling over the significance of a ram. Then I thought, what sound does a ram make? It goes ‘Baaaaa’ doesn’t it? The Egyptians really were the masters of phonetics.

The different amulets on display would provide for a wide variety of protection, and some were ingenious – The heart scarabs on display are images of scarab beetles that were placed over the heart. The heart contained the record of a persons life. It ensures that on the Day of Judgement, during the weighing of the heart ceremony, (shown in the first picture), the heart doesn’t speak the truth on what you’ve been getting up to in your life. I like their pragmatism!

It has to be said that those rich Egyptians were a lazy lot. Figurines known as shabti would also placed in the tomb. Since the Field of Reeds was an idealised version of their own agricultural society, there were the fields to attend to, and they were certainly not going to do that themselves. Enter the shabtis. These were miniature figures holding the tools they were going to be using. After the spell had been read out – hey presto, they awaken and do all your work for you. Brilliant!

I’m getting ahead of myself here. They had to reach the afterlife, & this was a dangerous mission and as huge challenge in itself. Hostile creatures abounded in the form of snakes and crocodiles, and they had to be dealt with. Spells would give you the ability to kill them – just as well really, since these creatures represented a double threat. They could not only kill you, (again!) but take away your magic powers, rendering your journey effectively over. There were also fearsome Gods that would be guarding gates. There were spells to make sure one remembered their names. Handy, since you’d be killed if you forgot them. Spells would transform the dead person into different animals when needing to. A serpent with legs & you could travel through earth. Need to be swift and powerful? Then turn into a crocodile. Want to be lively? Become a ram.

You know what? Being dead in ancient Egypt actually sounds like quite good fun, and I am definitely seeing the potential for a ‘Book of the Dead’ computer game!

No but seriously, in our modern, cynical, rational times, The Book of the Dead exhibition is a fascinating insight into a completely different type of society with a different structure of beliefs. Yet maybe it is not all as ancient as it seems? Amulets and charms are still used in many places in the world today, to bring the owner good luck, and to protect against evil. Nothing wrong with hedging one’s bets.