This blog is in association with www.teachyourselfacting.com providing access to an amazing range of presentation and performance skills training.
Is this the fairest pie-shop of them all? Manze’s Walthamstow eel pie and mash emporium is but a few hundred yards from my front door, but I had no idea of its new Listed Building status until my friend Townsend told me on Thursday – in an email from Wellington New Zealand! He’d picked up a report in the on-line “Guardian”. A key figure in this encouraging event has been the English Heritage designation director, Roger Bowdler. Could he be, I wondered, a descendant of Dr Thomas Bowdler, who in 1807 published the famous “Family Shakespeare”. The best of the Bard without the rude bits, to be read “without incurring the danger of being hurt with any indelicacy of expression”? A tradition of meddling with us even today as Baron Fellowes takes time off from “Downton” to “modernise” bits of Romeo and Juliet. Anyway, let’s hear it for Mr Bowdler of English Heritage, who has redeemed the family name with a fine act of preservation. Walthamstow also made news this week when Grayson Perry said in one of his Reith lectures he was moving his studio away from E17 now it’s becoming gentrified and fashionable…steady on – Hoe Street’s got a way to go before it threatens Sloane Avenue…
There’s so much input into our drama these days from Scandinavia – those brilliant TV series – “The Bridge”, “The Killing”, the matchless “Borgen” (due back in January, can’t wait) – and now we have a rash of Nordic stage plays.
Norwegian Henrik Ibsen was a late nineteenth century master, switching on the light for hundred of modern writers from Shaw to Mamet and Ravenhill, his plays expertly combining shrewd social insight with wit, style and vision. Within the last year or so we’ve had an elegant if somewhat unbalanced “Hedda Gabler” at the Old Vic, and a slightly hectic Young Vic “A Doll’s House” – currently back in the West End.
Now in and out of London you have a choice of two “Ghosts”, one adapted and directed by Stephen Unwin for English Touring Theatre starring Diana Quick, the other at the Almeida in Islington. This is Richard Eyre’s production of his own adaptation, starring Lesley Manville, which I saw last week with the young Americans. It looks stunning – designed by Tim Hatley, lit by Peter Mumford. Superb acting from a fine cast, though alas the highly-charged closing sequence when Oswald succumbs to a ghastly brain-eating disease in the presence of his distraught mother failed to take me along. Desperate, high emotion is always tricky to nail, and the most excellent of actors need delicate steering to retain credibility.
I wonder how the touring version is handling it? Has anybody out there caught it?
I suspect that for some reason it’s more difficult to suspend the audience’s disbelief when you’re acting strong emotions in costume and dialogue from another era. (The reason for so many confusing, ill-thought-through “contemporary ” productions of Shakespeare?) No such problems in “Scenes from a Marriage” at the St James’s Theatre, where Trevor Nunn creates a stage version of a famous movie by the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, in an adaptation by Joanna Murray-Smith.
Olivia Williams with Mark Bazeley
Photo: Evening Standard
The script produces exactly what it says on the tin. If any of you have ever been in an intense, long-term relationship, prepare to look into a mirror being held up relentlessly to nature. The script, the directing and the acting – especially from Olivia Williams – grab you and won’t let go. It’s raw, enthralling and cathartic. I went with Andrew Burt, who was on his second visit. I absolutely loved it, but I don’t think I could take it all over again – I’ve lived through several intense long-term relationships….But go, if you cherish fine theatre, just go. There’s a link to the trailer at the bottom of the page.
The latest excursion this week has been to the Menier Chocolate Factory in glittering Southwark, nestling beneath the Shard. This was a play called “The Lyons”. I hadn’t read the reviews, I just picked up on the title and the name of the main character, and had assumed it was inspired by a radio sitcom only people of my advanced years will remember called “Life with the Lyons” starring Bebe Daniels and Ben Lyon, written by Bob Block, who went on to script a TV sitcom I was in. Anyway, it’s nothing of the kind. It’s an abrasive comedy about a dysfunctional New York Jewish family – sort of Neil Simon without a trace of sentimentality, if you can imagine that. Strong, spikey work from Nicholas Day, Isla Blair and Tom Ellis.
A great thing about this year has been that we’re actually having seasons. The much advertised Great Storm turned out to be a bit patchy and short-lived, but it marked well the time of year – it would have cheered the poet Shelley no end.
On the day of the storm I took these shots at 6.45 a.m. from my bedroom window. Please supply your own sound-effects.
The St James’s Theatre is currently my favourite London venue – it has the welcoming air of one of the great regional reps, in the days when we had lots of great regional reps. Here’s the link to the trailer:
http://www.stjamestheatre.co.uk/events/scenes-from-a-marriage/#prettyPhoto/6/
I’m off to the Isle of Skye to film a commercial for Wellington boots, for which I am growing a beard….I will report back, possibly with photos…
This blog comes to you courtesy of www.teachyourselfacting.com. If you need help with voice-training, presentation preparation, getting ready for an audition or access to classes and advice from some of the best trainers in the UK, just click on the link.
