First off – many thanks to those of you who contacted me after receiving an urgent request from my Yahoo address for financial help, my family and I having been robbed by villains in the Philippines and desperately needing cash to get home.
Of course none of us was anywhere near the Philippines – in fact I’m happily dozing away much of the summer in Walthamstow – but I was worried that, since in recent years I’ve done quite lot of globe-trotting, people might just think it was kosher. Had anyone been taken in, the money would it seems have been steered into a bank account in Nigeria and never seen again. This is an increasingly familiar scam – I myself received a similar message a couple of months ago, which I guessed wasn’t for real as I hadn’t seen the supposed sender for at least twenty years.
But be warned if it happens to you, and your friends start calling you at 7 in the morning to check you’re OK. After I’d had about a dozen worried enquiries, I decided to contact my e-mail service provider. I googled “Yahoo Customer Services number” and the first site to come up was something called yahoo support/mytechstaff.co.uk, who were very efficient and helpful, clearing from my computer all evidence of outside invasion, and setting up new “network security” – all at a cost of £250. Of course it wasn’t until after I’d calmed down that I really thought about it, and realised that I’d bought into a commercial deal, which might not have been absolutely necessary. But by that time I’d spent the money…….
Anyway, while idling in E17 far from the mean streets of Manila, a task I’ve set myself this year is finally to learn how take photographs properly. The mysteries of the craft have long fascinated me – after all, anyone can press a button, but what preparation do the likes of Jane Bown, Ansel Adams, Simon Annand, etc do before they press the button and create such arresting, often quite astonishing images?
So I signed up for a summer course with the Walthamstow Photographic Society, and great, instructive fun it is. The instructors are patient and professional, and set us homework tasks, the most recent of which was “Wildlife”, so in the glorious sunshine of early August I’ve been patrolling the wetlands about my home, snapping birds and beasts. Here’s the picture I submitted, a swan gliding on the Lea Navigation Canal – what do you think?
All that hot sunshine hasn’t really made the insides of theatres compelling places to visit, be they never so air-conditioned, so a trip north to see Shakespeare in the open air was a welcome alternative. Shakespeare’s Globe has at least two companies out on the road, and the eight-actor-strong troupe I saw gave us “King Lear”, with a brisk lively presentation in the gorgeous grounds of Newby Hall, near Ripon, Yorkshire.
The picture above illustrates pretty well the only problem during an otherwise great evening of high-energy Shakespeare. The portable stage had been set up facing due west to due east – which of course meant that the glorious evening summer sun streamed straight into the audience’s eyes for most of the first half and we couldn’t see a thing! But by the time the King and his chums were out on the blasted heath, the sun had set and generated an appropriate, blood-red backdrop, so all was well. 
Once again RADA was well represented in the strong ensemble, notably by Oliver Boot‘s dangerous Edmund, and Ruth Everett‘s daunting Goneril. 
(I last saw Ruth wielding a mean broadsword as Macduff in our 4-hander version of the Scottish play on a Cunard world cruise, so it’s good to see the training still bearing exciting fruit, be it on the high seas or at the stately homes of England!)
Talking of “Macbeth”, back in London I went with a party of friends to the 02 Cinema in Greenwich to see the version starring Kenneth Branagh and Alex Kingston in a live broadcast from the Manchester Festival. I’d never seen one of these broadcasts before, and was mightily impressed by what can be achieved with digital technology. TV broadcasts of live theatre shows in the past I’ve always thought cringe-making, as the cameras usually had to be a long way from the action, the picture quality would be poor, and the performances far too big and “stagey” to be convincing in a medium geared to intimate close-up “naturalism”.
Well, the new small cameras with their brilliant lenses, and the hypersensitive microphones, deal with it. The presentation really makes you feel as though you’re at the venue in the audience, but with the added bonus of super-human eyesight that allows you to zoom in on moments of intense drama. Add the fact that for a cinema “relay” you’re probably going to pay less than half you would at the theatre, and there’s another reason to celebrate the digital revolution.
And also it’s good to celebrate the major talents of our day becoming that much more available. Given his teeming schedule as a producer, it’s not often we get a chance to see Sir Ken striding the boards. As a red-bearded, charismatic RADA-trained Celt he had to give us his Macbeth while still in his prime, and of course he didn’t disappoint, in a gutsy, compelling production. The detail the cameras gave us increased the impact, and underlined skilfully-wrought rhythm and pace. I urge you to grab the chance to see one of these digital broadcasts – they’re really, really good value.
This has been a month punctuated by Shakespeare’s plays. I went to see the all-male Propeller troupe give both “The Taming of the Shrew” and “Twelfth Night” at Hampstead. I’d never seen Propeller before, and boy are they bursting with talent and energy! They’re all multi-skilled, and at each show carried on performing musical numbers throughout the interval while collecting for charity. The shows are not to be missed, the plays being delivered in dazzling, virtuoso style.
However, I was left puzzled by a paradox. Ed Hall, the director, believes that Shakespeare should always be presented in modern terms, as though he were a contemporary writer. So how does that fit with a company whose composition is based on a 16th century model – i.e. with no female performers?
The company goes to great pains not to indulge in Danny la Rue-style “female impersonation”. Fine, but if you’re going to play someone of another gender, you have to find a way to take the audience with you – especially when, as in the case of Viola in “Twelfth Night”, you’re a man playing a girl playing a man…I honestly didn’t think the Propeller chaps had got it quite right.
Where else to look for comparison? Dammit, I missed the Globe all-male “Twefth Night” and now it’s finished its West End run and on its way to Broadway…But wait! Once more the answer is digital! Scouring the Internet I found there was to be a showing last Saturday night of a recording of a 2012 “live” transmission of the show at the Saffron Screen in Saffron Walden.
The only area where my disbelief felt under pressure was in witnessing (in his own way the equally phenomenal) Stephen Fry as Malvolio. Entertaining though Stephen F always is, a key element in Malvolio’s character is that he’s actually pretty dim – and alas, the performance couldn’t divorce, for me, the character onstage from the dazzlingly erudite chairman of Qi…
The whole question of male actors playing female characters is the stuff of fierce debate. I’m working with a male actor-client of www.teachyourselfacting.com on a female Shakespeare audition speech at the moment. So if anyone has any views you’d like to share, please don’t hold back!
Finally, again thanks to those who picked up on and expressed concern about my Twitter message complimenting the NHS services at Whipps Cross Hospital, whence I was ambulanced last week with ‘orrible pains and nausea. (@TYacting) At first it was thought to be a severe infection and I was put on horse-pill size antibiotics, but ultrasound has shown it to be “just” a hernia, so now I must wait in line for an operation and in the meantime be most careful when picking things up…
