Author: Bouquets & Brickbats

The Merry Wives

TheMerryWivesimage

15/03/16

The Lowry, Salford Quays

The Merry Wives of Windsor must be one of Shakespeare’s most rumbustious comedies. Northern Broadsides, as the name might suggest, have their own unique take on the play. Set somewhere in the north of England, complete with regional accents (not a spot of RP in sight) and with a delightful 20s setting, this is like the immortal bard crossed with a Brian Rix farce. It’s fast, furious and laugh-out-loud funny – indeed, as an object lesson in making Shakespeare accessible to a contemporary audience, it’s hard to imagine how it could be bettered.

There’s surely little need to explain the plot. Suffice to say that lascivious blowhard, Sir John Falstaff, sets his amorous gaze on a couple of married ladies and they decide to exact a complicated revenge on him. There are a few small adjustments to the script. The fat woman of Brentford becomes the fat woman of Ilkley and I swear I heard mention of a marriage in Skipton, but otherwise this is pretty much the text, as written.

Broadsides veteran Barrie Rutter takes on the role of Falstaff with great relish, managing to make him a buffoon, but also evoking sympathy for his ultimate humiliation. As the wives themselves, Beckly Hindley and Nicola Sanderson are delightfully mischievous, while as Mistress Quickly, Helen Sheals seems to be channelling the late, great Hylda Baker. A word too about Jos Vantyler, who manages to portray feckless ninny, Abraham Slender in a style that would have made Rix suitably envious.

But it’s important to note that there are no weak links here. The eighteen strong cast are rock solid as they move smoothly from scene to scene and the play’s running time seems to just fly by. In what is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, here is a cracking example of why his work still speaks so eloquently across the ages. If you think you’ve seen every possible variation on Shakespearian comedy, think again.

This really is an absolute delight.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

Virgilio’s Pizzeria and Portuguese Grill

10245296_719117134807206_8570537672274469860_n

Colwyn Bay, North Wales

12/03/16

We were invited to a family birthday and the chosen location was Virgilio’s, which is tucked away on a quiet street in Colwyn Bay, where it has been a popular venue for many years. It features a pleasant, trattoria-style dining area, lively and bustling on the Saturday evening we attended and serviced by attentive staff. Though Portuguese in origin (the family originally came from Madeira) there’s also a wide selection of Italian dishes and Gluten-free food is available on request.

For starters, I chose some Spare Ribs, a generously sized portion swimming in a piquant sticky barbecue sauce. I made very short work of it and there was much licking of fingers in the process. (Try not to do it, it’s hard!) Susan chose a bowl of Mussels, seasoned in garlic and coriander and offered with a choice of cream or tomato sauces (she opted for the latter). The mussels were cooked perfectly, light, zesty, a splendid appetiser.

For the main course, I went for Spaghetti Carbonara, something of a default order for me whenever pasta is on offer. I love a good carbonara and they can be surprisingly hard to find, but this one was particularly satisfying, thick and gloopy, with crisp crunchy bacon and plenty of parmesan cheese sprinkled on top. Susan decided on another Italian classic, Lasagna Al Forno. This too was delicious, cooked with a white wine sauce and topped with a thick layer of mozzarella, it came accompanied by a couple of slices of garlic bread. Glancing around the other diners, I saw that a couple of people had selected Espetada Carne, long skewers of cubed rump steak, marinated with rock salt, bay leaves and garlic. It looked great but sadly, nobody was offering me a taste! Up at the top of the table there was a whole Sea Bream, which appeared to be very well cooked and presented and the vegetarians among the party had chosen a Fungi Stroganoff and various types of Pizza, all of which looked pretty good. One point that I particularly liked was that everything that came to the table arrived piping hot, which isn’t always the case in trattoria dining.

The wine and beer flowed and spirits were high. Susan had baked a rather fancy cake, so there was no need to order dessert, but I enjoyed my visit to Virgilio’s and would go again, like a shot.

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney

 

Anomalisa

1401x788-068-ANOMALISA-008Ranomalisa-xlarge

13/03/16

Writer/director Charlie Kaufman has been responsible for some of the most original and intriguing films of recent years – Inside John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Synechdoche New York, to name but three. When I tell you that Anomalisa is created using stop frame animation, you may have preconceptions of what it’s going to be like, but I’d advise you to go along with an open mind, because in my humble opinion, there’s never been another film quite like this one. To begin with, the animation techniques employed here are extraordinary, pushing the medium to its very limits. Sometimes, particularly in close up, it’s hard to believe that you’re not actually watching real actors. And there’s something about seeing such human tragedy enacted by puppets that somehow serves to amplify the reality of the situation.

Michael Stone (voiced by David Thewlis) is going through a long dark night of the soul. He feels alienated from his wife and young son and stumbles through a world where everyone seems to have the same face. This is doubly unfortunate, because he’s a motivational speaker and the author of a critically acclaimed self-help book aimed at business people, intended to teach them how to deal more effectively with their customers. Michael embarks on a trip to Cincinnati where he is to deliver a keynote speech and his journey unfolds in more-or-less real time, capturing the alienating experience perfectly – the meaningless chatter of a taxi driver, the disturbingly beatific gaze of a hotel receptionist, the disconcerting anonymity of a hotel room. Michael contacts an old flame, who he hasn’t seen for years, in the hope that he’ll rekindle some passion with her, but it ends badly. She clearly still harbours a grudge. Shortly afterwards, he chances upon Lisa (voiced by Jennifer Jason Leigh) an avid fan who has come all the way from Akron, Ohio to catch his speech. Sensing an opportunity, Michael embarks on a clumsy seduction…

There are only three voice artists at work here – Tom Noonan handles all the other roles, male and female, a move which at first seems like an affectation, but as the story moves increasingly  into a Kafkaesque meditation on identity and the bleak condition of human interaction, it all begins to make a lot more sense. A fumbling and protracted sex scene between Michael and Lisa may perversely be the most realistic coupling ever committed to the big screen, and the bleak tragedy of the film’s conclusion is particularly resonant. I sat there mesmerised throughout.

Mind you, it’s not to everyone’s taste. A woman in the row behind us loudly proclaimed that it was ‘the worst movie she’d ever seen.’ Well, she’s entitled to her opinion, of course, but I have to disagree most vehemently. Anomalisa (co-directed with Duke Johnson) may just be Kaufman’s masterpiece and much as I liked Inside Out, I can’t help feeling that this was a more worthy contender for that animation Oscar. Go see what you think, but whatever you feel about the merits of Kaufman’s work, I think you’ll have to agree that this is a film like no other.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

The Crucible

The-Crucible-Production-Image-3-Ensemble-Photo-credit-Drew-Farrell-700x455

08/03/16

Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh

Arthur Miller’s classic play is deservedly acclaimed and because it’s such a popular production, over the years I’ve seen it in many guises: decked out in Armani suits and set in an open plan office, dressed 50s style to mirror the McCarthy anticommunist blacklists that Miller’s play so cunningly alludes to…. and, most recently,  at Manchester’s Royal Exchange, where some of the events were startlingly framed in the midst of a pool of rising water. So it’s oddly refreshing to witness the Lyceum’s no-gimmicks production, the simple set and period costumes supporting rather than overwhelming Miller’s dazzling text.

And it does dazzle, despite its familiarity, taking off with an incisive, urgent tone that never loses pace as it motors along to its tragic conclusion. The ensemble cast, some twenty actors in total, never put a foot wrong. It’s hard to single out individuals, but Meghan Tyler shines as Abigail Williams, Philip Cairns is perfectly cast as John Proctor and Irene Allan is utterly convincing as poor, doomed Elizabeth Proctor. I liked the simplicity of Michael Taylor’s set with the grey outlines of a forest forever in the background, hinting at the pagan world that surrounds this little outpost of Christianity; and I got chills, exactly as I should, when John Proctor finally refuses to give his name to the document that will save him from hanging.

If you think you’ve already seen everything The Crucible has to offer, think again. When it’s performed with this much panache it’s almost like seeing if for the first time.

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney

Hail Caesar

MV5BMjQyODc3MTI2NF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNDMxMjU2NzE@._V1_UX182_CR0,0,182,268_AL_Unknown

05/03/16

Ah, the Coen Brothers! The directorial duo who dollar-for-dollar have given me more great cinematic viewing that just about anyone else currently working in Hollywood. When they are fully on the button – Fargo, Blood Simple, True Grit, they are pretty much unbeatable; and even their rare misfires – The Ladykillers, Intolerable Cruelty, have more wit and invention about them than most of the competition.

If Hail Caesar isn’t quite up there with their very finest work, it nevertheless comes pretty damned close. Set in 1951 when the movie industry was bracing itself for the impact of the burgeoning medium of television, this film is an affectionate look at the tail end of the ‘dream factory,’ complete with whip smart parodies of the kind of cheesy entertainment that was popular at that time.

Josh Brolin stars as Eddie Mannix, a Hollywood ‘fixer.’ His chief concern at the moment is the titular biblical epic, starring Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) as a Roman centurion who encounters the true Christ and is transformed by the event. A bit further down the priority list, Mannix is charged with the task of finding a husband for DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johannsson) an Esther Williams-style bathing beauty-cum-movie star who has inconveniently got herself pregnant and is now failing to fit into her mermaid’s tail. Meanwhile, amiable cowboy-star, Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) is struggling with an unsuitable role in an upper class romance directed by Laurence Lorentz (Ralph Fiennes) – (the line ‘Would that it t’were so simple’ is something that’s going to stay with you long after the credits have rolled) and to cap everything, all-singing, all-dancing Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum) is actually… well, that would be telling.

Matters come to a head when Whitlock is kidnapped and held to ransom for reasons that are much more complicated than you might reasonably expect. As is so often the case, the Coens have gleefully cast Clooney as another in a long line of handsome dullards, a role he delivers with conviction, but much of the pleasure here is derived from spotting big stars in cameo roles, giving their all in scenes from imaginary period movies. You’ll smile, mostly because though there’s evidently a touch of lampoonery in the telling, it’s so artfully done, the parodies could almost pass muster as the real McCoy.

Hail Caesar is a constant delight and perhaps more significantly, here is a film that simply could not have come from any other American film-makers. The Cohens, having spent some time now on much more serious scripts, are cutting loose and having a bit of fun. The result is a hoot.

4.6 stars

Philip Caveney

Janis: Little Girl Blue

Unknown

31/02/16

Decades before Amy Winehouse travelled a similarly doomed trajectory, there was Janis Joplin. Like Winehouse, she showed a precocious talent in her teens and also like Winehouse, she achieved success quite suddenly, after an incendiary performance at the Monterey pop festival in 1967 kicked her career into the stratosphere; and almost inevitably, she succumbed to the allure of hard drugs and died of an overdose just as her career seemed to be getting back on track after a temporary lull.

As a youngster, I adored Joplin. Something about the layers of pain that bled through that extraordinary voice entranced me. I had the Cheap Thrills album which she recorded with Big Brother and the Holding Company and I played it a lot, back in the day, the volume cranked up to the max. It’s undeniable that Joplin was one of the first white women to make her mark in the male-dominated world of rock ‘n’ roll but more than that, hers was a career that was based almost entirely on the evocation of sorrow and loneliness. Janis: Little Girl Blue is a powerful biopic that looks back at her career from its first stirrings to its tragic conclusion and despite the inherent sadness, there’s much here to relish: her extraordinary performance of Ball and Chain at Monterey, her super-charged appearance at Woodstock and, perhaps most presciently, her toe-curling press conference at her ten-year high school reunion, where she returned to her home town to flaunt her fame in the faces of the people who had voted her ‘ugliest man in college,’ only to look about as comfortable as a goldfish on a hot grill.

Of course, you don’t really have to be a Joplin fan to enjoy this film, but it certainly helps. For many, her voice is a grating screech that they’ll simply never warm to. For me, it’s one of the greatest voices in rock history. It’s interesting to note that towards the end of her career, she was learning to control that voice, to experiment with the many different facets it contained and this film leaves you with the conviction that there were great things to come. But fame is always most impressive when it burns fierce and hot and is prematurely extinguished by mortality. In a way, Joplin set a tragic example that would be followed by countless others over the decades.

As biopics of musicians go, this is a good one. But be warned, if you’re a big softie like me, it might be advisable to take a pack of tissues. You’ll need them.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney

 

In The Vice Like Grip Of It

Unknown

27/02/16

Lowry Studio Theatre

This two-hander created by Ivo in conjunction with Routes North, takes a long, paranoia-drenched look at the subject of surveillance and the ways in which it can infiltrate contemporary life. ‘Him’ (Leigh Kelly) and ‘Her’ (Jo Tyabji) move into a new apartment and set out their furniture. They talk about some unspecified ordeal they have been through (there are allusions to the London bombings, but it’s never really pinned down). Electronic music creates an atmosphere of tension throughout, though it occasionally overpowers the dialogue in some of the early scenes. There are several slo-mo/fast forward sequences, matched to pulsing light and projection effects, which, though initially appealing, are somewhat overused.

As the couple’s life together progresses, ‘he’ becomes increasingly proprietal, watching ‘her,’ recording her, asking questions about how she’s spent her day, becoming ever more intimidating. This clearly refers to those recent cases of undercover police officers becoming intimate with the women they have been assigned to watch, but once again, it’s never clearly pinned down and in the end, I felt this was the main problem with In the Vice Like Grip Of It – it’s a play that deals in generalisations, rather than actualities. It alludes to real life happenings but never fully identifies them and the result is an unevenness of tone that prevents the story from fully gripping the viewer.

In the end, I was left wanting more information than I actually received. There were some nice moments here but not enough to hold my attention throughout and ultimately, what is the play’s central message? That surveillance can be bad? That for a relationship to succeed there needs to be mutual trust? Surely these are universal truths, already widely known – and this play doesn’t really offer any new insights to aid our understanding.

2.8 stars

Philip Caveney

Endgame

Endgame - pic 14 (0499)Endgame - pic 03 (0126)

26/02/16

HOME, Manchester

Endgame is a bleak play – by any standards. “The end is in the beginning – and yet you go on,” says Hamm, with a fatalistic, morbid acceptance of his looming demise. The script is deft, funny and thought-provoking – of course it is; it’s Beckett; his place in the theatrical canon is patently deserved – and the acting and direction here are pretty top-notch too.

Let’s deal with the elephants in the auditorium: Roy Cropper and Peter Barlow. It’s true – actors David Neilson and Chris Gascoyne are both well-known for their parts in Coronation Street. And it’s a fame that the promoters have been keen to exploit: on the publicity posters for this play, the men are instantly identifiable as their TV counterparts; on stage, however, they are barely recognizable. I’ve never really understood why people are confounded by an actor’s ability to perform a different role; it’s kind of in the job description, isn’t it? And these two are very good indeed.

If anything, it’s Beckett who feels over-familiar, not the actors performing him. The audacity of his ideas has been diluted – by time as well as exposure. And yet this production is still well worth seeing: it’s a masterclass in precision and control. Chris Gascoyne’s Clov is a perfect clown, a physical embodiment of futility and despair. There is humour here too, in the repeated movements and the spiteful asides, and comic timing of the very best. David Neilson is equally skillful: his Hamm is a raging, wasted, tragedy of a man, whose cruelty is wrought from desperation; I felt a glimmer of sympathy for Hamm tonight, and I never have before. Peter Kelly and Barbara Rafferty (as Nagg and Nell) give strong performances too; indeed, the saddest moment in the play is theirs, I think: roused briefly from the dustbins where they are living out their final years, they reminisce, recalling the April afternoon they went out rowing on Lake Como. “We had got engaged the day before!” “You were in such fits that we capsized.” The dreadful contrast between this happy memory and their current circumstances encapsulates the agony that underpins Endgame. They are us, aren’t they? And still we go on.

4.6 stars

Susan Singfield

20/01/20

Please note this superb show is now showing at the Old Vic theatre in London. Tickets can be booked here.

https://seatplan.com/london/old-vic-theatre/.

Husbands and Sons

Unknown-1

23/02/16

Royal Exchange, Manchester

Welcome to the world of DH Lawrence – a world of coal and sweat, where every husband is a drunken, boorish tyrant, where every wife is a much put-upon angel, and where every mother secretly harbours an unhealthy regard for her own son.

Husbands and Sons is a curious concoction, a mingling of three early plays by Lawrence – The Daughter-In-Law, A Collier’s Night Out and The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd – all of which take place in the same village, which has allowed adapter Ben Power to overlay them, so that one piece of action appears to comment on the next. The protagonists are onstage most of the time, while the script cuts nimbly back and forth between the three households involved – the Lamberts, the Gascoignes and the Holroyds. At first, this technique is disorienting; it takes a while to settle into the rhythm, but eventually you do and things pick up.

The Exchange is famous for its sets and this one is remarkable in its ingenuity. The three households are delineated by ranks of cast iron cooking ranges, sculleries and dining tables, all balanced precariously on top of the colliery, represented by heaps of coal and a grilled floor, lit from below. It looks fantastic.

But there seems to be a lack of consistency in the style. Why, for instance, go to the trouble of creating plumbed-in taps that spout real water and cooking ranges that belch real flame, and then oblige the actors to perform a mime every time they enter a house: opening and closing invisible doors, removing and hanging up imaginary coats and hats? It just looks odd amidst all the naturalistic clutter. Another puzzling detail – two bread tins, complete with knives, are used to prise out… fresh air. In her programme notes, director Marianne Elliott claims that she wanted the audience to ‘concentrate on the people and not get bogged down in the detail of the bread or the stew or sweeping the floor,’ but the absence of these things made no sense when so many other fripperies were included. If we’re meant to concentrate on the actors, why surround them with so much paraphernalia? Or, if this level of detail is required, why not see it through consistently?

There’s no doubting the quality of the performances here. Anne Marie Duff, making her debut at the Exchange, has little to do in the first half, but really comes into her own in the second as the tragic Lizzie Holdroyd, obliged to deal with the sudden death of her boorish husband, Charles (Martin Marquez), killed in a colliery accident. Meanwhile, Lydia Lambert (Julia Ford) is trying not to feel jealous of her son’s new flame and over at the Gascoigne house, Luther (Joe Armstong) has been unfaithful to his wife, Minnie (Louise Brealy), and has got one of the neighbours in the family way. Reparation must be made, it seems but what does Minnie have to say about it?

What you feel about this production will probably depend upon how you regard the writing of D H Lawrence. There are many who think of him as a genius, a man before his time. Others simply see him as a sex-obsessed neurotic with a large chip on his shoulder. Husbands and Sons is an interesting piece that takes time to build in intensity, but we feel it is somewhat compromised by unnecessary complications, that have nothing to do with the performances or, indeed, the script.

3.5 stars

Philip Caveney & Susan Singfield

 

 

The Finest Hours

MV5BNTY1MDU1NzYzN15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwOTA0MDQyNzE@._V1_UX182_CR0,0,182,268_AL_

21/02/16

A rare Disney vehicle that doesn’t involve animation or slapstick humour, The Finest Hours (forgettable title) is based on a true story and depicts a daring rescue mission carried out in the heart of a terrible storm off Cape Cod in 1952. In terrifying conditions, a huge oil tanker is not so much battered by the storm as actually ripped in two, drowning its captain and most of the crew, but leaving the rear section still afloat with thirty two men on board. It’s down to quietly spoken engine-room man, Ray Sybert (Casey Afflick) to take control of the situation and devise a way of keeping what’s left of the tanker above the waterline until help gets there – but in the days before GPS location existed, how is anybody ever going to find them?

Help eventually comes in the shape of handsome coastguard officer, Bernie Weber (the angel-faced Chris Pine)  who has recently become engaged to the feisty Miriam (Holliday Grainger). Having failed to save some local seamen in a recent maritime tragedy, Weber has something to prove, so despite being warned by all and sundry that he’s embarking on a suicide mission, he selects three plucky crewmen and sets off into the heart of the storm, trusting on good luck and previous experience to guide him.This would seem unlikely if it didn’t hap[pen to be true.

The Finest Hours is a handsomely mounted film, that has much to recommend it. The period detail is convincingly evoked, there are nice performances from the ensemble cast and the storm at sea sequences are suitably immersive, occasionally downright thrilling. If in the end it’s all a bit reminiscent of The Perfect Storm, it matters not one jot, because if the aims of this film were to entertain and enthral then it achieves them with ease. In what’s becoming an increasingly popular trope, the end credits show images of the real life heroes alongside their screen counterparts, allowing us to see just how faithful the filmmakers have been to their source material.

A word of warning though. Anyone planning a cruise in the near future may want to give this one a miss.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney