Author: Bouquets & Brickbats

Theatre Bouquets 2016

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We’ve been lucky enough to see some amazing theatre again in 2016. Here, in order of viewing (and with the benefit of hindsight), are our favourite productions of the year.

Hangmen – Wyndham’s Theatre, London

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An excellent start to the year’s theatrical viewing, Martin McDonagh’s play was absolutely superb: funny, frightening and thought-provoking with an outstanding central performance by David Morrissey.

The Girls – The Lowry, Salford

This was the biggest surprise of the year for us: on paper, it sounded a million miles away from the sort of thing we usually enjoy, and we went along reluctantly. But it was a truly delightful production – flawlessly realised.

The Merry Wives – The Lowry, Salford

Northern Broadsides version of The Merry Wives of Windsor was a rambunctious, irreverent take on the tale, with the inimitable Barrie Rutter clearly relishing the role of Falstaff.

I Am Thomas – Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh

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A strange and eclectic production, telling the tale of Thomas Aikenhead, the last person in Scotland to be hanged for blasphemy, this was essentially a series of vignettes and musical interludes, with an ensemble taking turns to play the eponymous role.

King Lear – Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester

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Michael Buffong’s King Lear was a tour de force, a gimmick-free yet undeniably modern production. Don Warrington was well-cast in the central role, but it was Pepter Lunkuse’s Cordelia who really stood out for us. She’s definitely one to watch!

Stowaway – Home, Manchester

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Analogue Theatre’s troubling tale of a stowaway falling from a flying aeroplane and landing in the car park of a DIY store was fascinating, depicting a moment where worlds collide and understandings begin to take root. A thought-provoking, political play.

Royal Vauxhall – Underbelly Med Quad, Edinburgh

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A quirky and irreverent musical, telling the true story of when Freddie Mercury and Kenny Everett dressed Princess Diana in drag and took her to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in London for a night out, incognito. We loved this production.

Wonderman – Underbelly Potterrow, Edinburgh

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Based on the short stories of Roald Dahl – and incorporating a true incident from his eventful life – Gagglebabble’s collaboration with the National Theatre of Wales was a sprightly mix of drama and music with a deliciously dark heart.

Cracked Tiles – Spotlites, Edinburgh

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This beautifully crafted monologue, written and performed by Lorenzo Novani, was the downbeat tale of a young man who inherits a Glasgow fish and chip shop from his father Aldo. Novani was quite staggering as Riccardo.

Dear Home Office – Underbelly Med Quad, Edinburgh

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This was the story of unaccompanied minors applying for asylum in the UK, performed with touching vulnerability by eight refugee boys. The play was an amalgamation of the performers’ own experiences, blended with fictional accounts. A raw and truthful exposé.

The Suppliant Women – Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh

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It’s a rare thing indeed when you go into a theatre and are treated to something unique – but that is the word that kept coming to us, as we sat entranced in the stalls of The Lyceum, watching David Greig’s production of The Suppliant Women. Truly brilliant.

Grain in the Blood – Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

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A real one-off, this was a stark, unnerving chiller, at once contemporary and classical, with dialogue that was taut and ultra-modern in style, all fragments and silences and unfinished thoughts. This was a complex, angular, unwieldy play – a fascinating watch.

Jack and the Beanstalk – King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

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By far the best panto we have ever seen, this was a standout production, with fantastic performances from King’s Theatre regulars Allan Stewart, Andy Gray and Grant Stott. It brought the year to a celebratory end.

Susan Singfield

Film Bouquets 2016

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It was an interesting year for film. Here, in order of release, rather than stature – and with the benefit of hindsight – are our favourite movies of 2016.

Room

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This superb adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s novel got 2016 off to a cracking start. There were powerful performances from Brie Larson and young Jacob Tremblay as the central characters in a tragic yet oddly inspirational story.

The Revenant

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Alejandro Gonzalez Inaritu delivered another dazzling movie, this one as savage and untamed as the grizzly bear that mauled Leonardo Di Caprio half to death – but made up for it by helping him win his first Oscar.

Anomalisa

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Writer/director Charlie Kaufman gave us a quirky (and deeply disturbing) animation that was a Kafkaesque meditation on identity and the bleak nature of the human condition.

Dheepan

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Jacques Audiard’s fascinating study of the lives of refugees never fell into cliche. There was violence here, but it felt horribly real and totally devastating. There were affecting performances from a cast of newcomers.

Victoria

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Sebastian Schipper’s film really shouldn’t have worked. Delivered in one continuous take, the fact that it hooked us in so brilliantly was just the icing on the cake – a real ensemble piece but plaudits must go to Laia Costa as the eponymous heroine.

Sing Street

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John Carney may have only one plot but when it was delivered as beautifully as it was in Sing Street, we were happy to indulge him. This was a beautiful, heartwarming film with appeal to anybody who has ever dreamed about pop stardom.

The Neon Demon

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The fashion industry as seen by Nicolas Winding Refn is a hell hole and here, Elle Fanning as Jesse, was the latest recruit. A weird mash-up of sex, violence and extreme voyeurism, this was the director’s most assured effort yet.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

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New Zealand director Taika Waititi offered up this delightfully quirky story about a troubled teenager (Julian Dennison) and his friendship with crusty curmudgeon, Hec (Sam Neill). This film reeled us in and kept us hooked to the end credits.

The Girl with all the Gifts

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Just when we thought the zombie movie had stumbled as far as it could go, Colm McCarthy’s film gave the genre a hefty kick up the backside – and there was a star-making performance from young Senna Nanua in the lead role.

Under the Shadow

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Babek Abvari’s film had all the tropes of the contemporary horror movie and a powerful political message as well. Set in post war Tehran, young mother Shideh (Narges Rashidi) struggled to keep her daughter safe from the forces of darkness.

I, Daniel Blake

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Ken Loach’s return to the screen resulted in one of the most powerful and affecting films of the year – a searing look at ‘benefits Britain’ that would have the most stony-hearted viewer in floods of tears. Should be required viewing for Tory politicians.

Train to Busan

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Another day, another zombie movie – but what a zombie movie! Korean director Sang ho Yeon gave us a galloping ‘zombies on a train’ thriller that nearly left us breathless. There were some incredible set pieces here and a nerve-shredding conclusion.

Paterson

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Jim Jarmusch presented a charming and quirky tale about a would-be poet living in a town that had the same name as him. Not very much happened, but it didn’t happen in an entirely watchable way. A delightful celebration of the creative spirit.

Life, Animated

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This compelling documentary squeaked in right at the end of the year – the true life tale of Owen Suskind, an autistic boy, initially unable to speak a word, but rescued by his love of Disney movies. It was funny, uplifting and educational – and our final pick of 2016.

Silence

03/01/17

If I were ever asked to nominate somebody as ‘Greatest Living Film Director,’ Martin Scorcese would be a serious contender for the title. He has an exceptionally strong and eclectic body of work, which includes bona fide masterpieces like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Good Fellas –and even occasional misfires like The Last Temptation of Christ are never less than interesting. Silence is a film he’s been trying to make for something like thirty years. Based on a novel by Shusaku Endo and co-written by Scorcese with his old collaborator, Jay Cocks, it’s essentially a meditation on the power of belief – and the lengths to which people will go to in order to observe their chosen religion.

In seventeenth century Portugal, two young Jesuit priests, Father Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Father Garrpe (Adam Driver), set themselves a difficult mission – to travel to Japan in search of their old tutor, Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson), who disappeared whilst trying to convert the locals to Christianity. Rumour has come back that Ferreira has ‘apostatised’ – renounced his faith – and is now living the life of a Buddhist under the watchful gaze of his captors. The young priests refuse to believe that this can be the case and they set off on the perilous journey to Japan, knowing that from the minute they arrive they will be in grave danger. Christians are hated there and are cruelly tortured and executed in large numbers. But that’s not to say that the film is necessarily pro (or anti) Christian; indeed, questions are raised about the very nature of missionary work, and the religious zeal that prompts people to try to force others to accept their ‘truth’.

Silence is a powerful slow-burner of a film, that certainly won’t be to everyone’s taste. It takes a while to unfold an intriguing story and with a running time of two hours and forty-five minutes, it will undoubtedly test the patience of many; but there’s a great deal here to enjoy – the ravishing cinematography of Rodrigo Prieto, Dante Feretti’s costume design and a superb central performance by Andrew Garfield, clearly delivering on a role that’s a bit of a stretch from his earlier turn as Spiderman. Liam Neeson, now the go-to guy for any performance requiring gravitas, delivers his cameo role with aplomb and I particularly like Yosuke Kubozuka as the Jesuit’s guide, Kichijiro, a would-be Christian who continually betrays his chosen faith only to come scrabbling back seeking forgiveness through the act of confession.

There are also some scenes of terrible violence here; the unflinching depictions of the barbaric treatment meted out to those who refuse to renounce their faith are not for the faint-hearted. People are burned alive, crucified and drowned all in the name of religion.

As to the film’s central tenet – is there a God? – Scorcese (who himself trained as a priest before deciding to seek his absolution through celluloid) is wise enough to resist offering a definitive answer. In the end, it is left to the individual viewer to decide. But I would urge you to go and see this film. It may have taken a very long time to bring it to the screen, but in my opinion at least, it has been well worth the wait.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney

A Monster Calls

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A Monster Calls is an intensely emotional movie, telling the tale of twelve-year-old Conor O’Malley (Lewis MacDougall), and his struggle to deal with the realisation that his mother (Felicity Jones) is dying of cancer. It’s made all the more poignant by the knowledge that Siobhan Dowd, who conceived the novel the film is based on, died of the same disease before she could write her book. What we have here, then, is fellow author Patrick Ness’s interpretation of Dowd’s idea – and it’s good to see he’s done her proud.

Lewis MacDougall’s performance is extraordinary. (I should perhaps note here that he’s a student at The Drama Studio in Edinburgh, where I now work; sadly I can’t claim any credit for his achievements, as he’s not in my class, I’ve never met him, and he’d filmed this before I even joined the team.) He’s a gifted young actor, perfect for the screen, with a touching vulnerability here that’s reminiscent of David Bradley’s Billy Casper in the 1969 classic, Kes. His anger, fear and frustration are all writ large, and Philip and I find ourselves crying at regular intervals.

The story is essentially a simple one, making use of the idea of ‘the monstrous other’ and exploring the concept of duality. Conor is conflicted: he loves his mother, but he can’t live with the uncertainty of not knowing when she’s going to die. And so he stumbles between quiet acquiescence and towering rage, the latter symbolised by the unleashing of the yew-tree monster – like Jekyll’s Hyde, Frankenstein’s monster, Bertha Rochester, or even Blue’s Savage in David Almond’s graphic novel. Like its literary predecessors, this monster allows Conor to release his repressed emotions. It is both his undoing and his salvation.

There’s a stellar cast at work here, with Sigourney Weaver and Toby Kebbell occupying the roles of Gran and Dad respectively, neither of whom are what Conor needs to fill the void left by his mum, although they both try hard, in their own ways. Felicity Jones’s portrayal of the dying Elizabeth is utterly heartbreaking; she’s a real chameleon, and it’s hard to think of her as the same actor I saw in Rogue One last week. And the monster’s stories are beautifully realised, with some delightful sequences featuring dazzling, stylised animation.

There are some flaws: the bullies’ dialogue, for example, is wholly unconvincing and depressingly generic, and the first fifteen minutes or so seem aimed at a much younger audience. But these are minor niggles in the face of such an affecting, tragic piece of work. It’s a lovely film, and well worth going to see.

4.2 stars

Susan Singfield

Hilton Edinburgh Grosvenor

31/12/16

Grosvenor Street, Edinburgh

It’s New Year’s Eve, and it’s grey and drizzly here in Edinburgh, so we decide to take our guests to the Hilton to sample their afternoon tea. It seems a civilised way to spend our time, talking and eating being two of our favourite pastimes.

There’s a range of sandwiches (smoked salmon, cheese and chutney, and a rather decent egg mayonnaise), and a selection cakes, of which the lemon drizzle and the carrot are definitely the best. There are scones too (fruit scones, which necessitate two of our party picking out sultanas with a grim determination), and these are warm and fresh and really very good. We polish it all off with ease, and wash it down with coffee and tea. The service is friendly and attentive, and we all enjoy ourselves.

So yeah, it’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with any of it, but it’s slightly disappointing anyway. Maybe it’s the fact that we’re sitting in what feels a bit like a corridor, and there’s barely anyone around. Maybe it’s the huge thick Costa mugs, and the full sized cutlery. It just doesn’t feel very luxurious; it lacks the refinement I expect from an afternoon tea. A decent nosh, then, just not much of a treat.

3.1 stars

Susan Singfield

HOME

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Home 1 SA : The opening of Home restaurant, Edinburgh. Josh Littlejohn with Dean Gassabi of Maison Bleue at the opening of Home7-8 Queensferry St Lane, Edinburgh. Picture by Stewart Attwood All images © Stewart Attwood Photography 2016. All other rights are reserved. Use in any other context is expressly prohibited without prior permission.

30/12/16

Queensferry Street, Edinburgh

Maison Bleue at Home is a restaurant with a mission: to provide for the homeless. On Monday afternoons, it opens its doors to those of no fixed abode, and training and employment opportunities are also available for some of Edinburgh’s most disadvantaged people. A quarter of the staff working here have been homeless at some point in their lives, and all profits go to Social Bite’s parent charity. In short, it’s a business with a heart.

It’s also a very good restaurant. It’s Philip’s birthday, so there are four of us out celebrating, and we are off to a good start with a complimentary glass of fizz in honour of the day. It’s a special occasion, so we’re planning on indulging ourselves by going à la carte, but it turns out we all want things from the keenly priced set menu (£29.90 for three courses), so that works out well. We have olives and bread and wine while we’re waiting. We’re happy.

I start with a shellfish bisque, which has such depth of flavour that I feel like I could dive right into it. It’s delicious. Philip opts for the Saigon beef, redolent with the flavours of soy and sesame, and he clearly enjoys every mouthful. His daughter and her boyfriend both have the fondue de Camembert; they allow us to sample a mouthful and we’re glad we do. It’s a creamy, indulgent delight.

For his main, Philip has the North African lamb tagine. The lamb is mouthwateringly succulent and tender, and the dish is robustly spiced. The rest of us all go for the Châteaubriand filet steak (which carries a £5 supplement). I like mine rare, and this is perfectly judged, very pink indeed but nicely warm and soft enough to cut without a special knife. It’s served with fondant potatoes and a ratatouille, both of which are bursting with flavour. The pepper sauce is a bit too peppery (I like a punch, but this is a more like a kick in the teeth) but it’s our only criticism, so that’s okay.

For pudding, two of us take the sticky toffee option, and it’s everything you’d hope for it to be. The other two sample the Xmas pudding brûlée, which is a festive delight, with Christmas spices adding an interesting twist to an old favourite.

The service is excellent: warm, friendly and relaxed. And of course we take up the offer to pay it forward, adding twenty pounds to our bill to pay for two homeless people’s Monday meals. It’d be wrong not to, wouldn’t it?

This is a lovely place to be. Try it. If it’s good enough for Leonardo di Caprio, then surely it’s worth a visit?

4.6 stars

Susan Singfield

Passengers

30/12/16

It has, for a very long time now, been my custom to go to the cinema on my birthday – and this year, Passengers was pretty much the only film on offer that we hadn’t already seen. We picked an afternoon showing at the small but perfectly formed Cameo 2 and we settled down to watch with open minds. I have to say that I enjoyed this film; it’s a slick futuristic creation that is centred around an interesting question. What are people prepared to do in order not to be alone?

Engineer Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) wakes from suspended animation aboard the Starship Avalon, en route to the ‘Homestead Colony’, where he intends to forge a new life, but an unexplained malfunction in his sleep pod had led to him waking a little bit earlier than planned. Ninety years too early, in fact. And the problem is that none of his five thousand or so fellow-travellers have woken up with him. He is faced with the awful prospect of spending his entire life alone. To give him his due, he manages for about a year before finding himself on the verge of suicide – but then he notices another passenger asleep in a pod, writer Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence). He reads her files, which include some of the articles she has written and he starts to think about waking her up.

Right there lies the film’s moral conundrum – to wake her would be, essentially, an act of murder – but he is going slowly insane with loneliness. Obviously, it’s hardly a plot spoiler to say that he does wake her and that, after a tricky start, the two of them hit if off – but as sure as eggs is eggs, it’s only a matter of time before Aurora discovers the truth about her awakening – and she is not going to be happy about it.

Morten Tyldum’s sleek imagining of the future is beautifully done and, given the absence of many actual characters in this story – the central duo are augmented only by android bartender, Arthur (Michael Sheen) and one of the ship’s crew, Gus Mancuso (Laurence Fishburne) – it’s amazing that the film never drags. The Starship Avalon itself is a remarkable creation, a towering edifice of lights and movement and the special effects are generally well-handled, but this is essentially an intimate story about a relationship. Lawrence and Pratt make an appealing double act and Passengers is well worth checking out – but the galaxy may not move for you.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

Tamatanga

26/12/16

Trinity Square, Nottingham

It’s Boxing Day and we’re both suffering from the after-effects of eating way too much in too short a time – a wonderful problem to have in such harsh times, but not one that is conducive to going out for dinner. But going out we are for a big family nosh-up and, happily, the chosen venue is Tamatanga, an upmarket curry joint in Nottingham city centre. After a glass or two of Cobra, I can detect a small part of my insides that isn’t totally stuffed – but still it seems wise to share a thali rather than having one each, which, I have to say, is probably a first for us.

A word or two about the venue. It’s a lively, vibrant dining place, pretty much open plan with an upstairs section to handle any overspill, and the staff are very attentive. A lot of restaurants go to pieces when the demand is high, but this place seems to be run with absolute precision, so we don’t have to wait very long for the thali, which arrives looking absolutely splendid (see picture). I love this kind of dining when you get lots of different flavours to try. The Tamatanga Thali comes with a choice of two curries – we choose Butter Chicken (rich, creamy and succulent) and, perhaps the star of the show, a Balchao Prawn Curry, fragrant with fresh coriander in a coconut finished sauce. There are also generously sized portions of Bombay Potatoes, Bhindi Do Piaza (okra with caramelised onions), daal, chutney, a delightfully fluffy naan bread and several poppadums. Our flagging appetites are revived enough to prompt us to order another naan to mop up the last of these mouth-watering juices, and we resolve that we will come again, when we have eaten less beforehand.

Around the table we see plenty of other colourful options – fabulous birianis, spicy salad bowls, and there’s a wide range available for the vegetarians in our group. Would we recommend Tamatanga? Yes, for sure. This is classy Asian food, superbly cooked and beautifully presented.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

Dark Water

20/12/16

When it comes to celebrating the festive season, many people forget that Christmas is traditionally associated with the telling of ghost stories. Happily the team at the Cameo Cinema haven’t missed the opportunity, scheduling a short season of supernatural tales, under the title of A Warning To The Curious; and for me, the unmissable event this year was a showing of Hideo Nakata’s 2002 ghost story, Dark Water. Nakata is, of course, better known for his Ring films, but for my money, this is his masterpiece – a deceptively simple ghost story that exerts an incredibly powerful grip on the viewer.

Yoshimi (Hitomi Kuroki) is a young woman going through a messy divorce from her overbearing husband whilst desperately trying to hold on to custody of their six year old daughter, Ikuko (an adorable performance from Rio Kanno). Badly in need of a home for them to share, Yoshimi rashly accepts the lease on a dilapidated riverside apartment and enroles Ikuko at the local kindergarten. But from the moment mother and daughter arrive, things start to go awry – a huge stain appears on the bedroom ceiling and begins to leak water, Ikuko has an unsettling experience at the kindergarten and a mysterious red shoulder bag keeps turning up in the strangest places. Meanwhile, torrential rain falls on an almost daily basis, making even the simplest journey intolerable. Bit by bit, Yoshimi begins to pick up information about the mysterious disappearance of a little girl, one year earlier – a girl called Mitsuko who lived in the apartment on the floor above Yoshimi and her daughter.

More subtle than the Ring movies, here is Nakata proving what every would-be horror director would do well to remind themselves; what we only glimpse is far more affecting than what we see in perfect detail. Nakata racks up the suspense with great skill, scene-by-scene, creating an atmosphere of steadily mounting dread, until events finally hurtle headlong into a terrifying conclusion – and then, just when we think it’s all over, there’s a heartbreaking coda which takes place ten years after the main events of the movie, in which a teenage Ikuko finally learns the truth about what happened to her mother…

Of course, I cannot urge you to go and see this 2002 movie on the big screen, because showings are rare, but it’s widely available on DVD and download, and is intimate enough to come across well as a home movie. (It received the almost obligatory American remake in 2005, but that was a misfire – make sure you seek out the original).

Meanwhile, the Warning To The Curious season continues at the Cameo tonight (December 21st) with a double bill of The Signalman and Whistle and I’ll Come To You. Be there, be scared. After all, isn’t this what Christmas is really about?

5 stars

Philip Caveney

Life, Animated

18/12/16

Owen Suskind is autistic. He’s also a huge fan of Disney animations – and this passion has saved him from an isolated life.

This documentary, based on a book by Owen’s newspaper journalist father, is beautifully directed by Roger Ross Williams, with a lightness of touch that allows Owen to shine. And shine he does.

This could have been a tragic tale. Owen’s parents, Cordelia and Ron, tell of their despair when they realised that Owen, aged three, was regressing; their fear that their son was lost somewhere inside himself, losing both his physical and cognitive skills, losing his ability to communicate. Like all parents would, they did their best to help him, taking him to a range of specialists and learning all they could about his condition. But nothing seemed to work. The only thing that kept him calm, kept him happy, was watching Disney animations. And so he watched a lot of them.

And then, one day, Ron realised that Owen could communicate if he used the language of the cartoons, that he’d been using the films to make sense of the world. And this was the breakthrough they needed to help Owen access society again.

Of course it’s not all plain sailing; Owen still faces huge obstacles, and the documentary does not gloss over these. But he’s out there, growing up, learning to live independently, and experiencing all the highs and lows of a human life. And yeah, he’s lucky: his family is wealthy, intelligent, stable and well-connected, so he has an awful lot of the right kind of support. And thank goodness for that. Because Owen Suskind has a lot to offer the world and it would have been a tragedy if he’d stayed locked inside himself.

Funny, heartbreaking, uplifting and educational. Really, this is a must-see film, and a late contender for one of our favourites of the year.

5 stars

Susan Singfield