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Susan’s Bookshelves: Dark Vineyard by Martin Walker

Martin Walker’s Bruno books are effectively a homage to Perigord in the Dordogne where the author lives. And I’m with him. I fell in love with the Dordogne when I first went there on a school trip in 1965 and have been back many times since. It never palls although it’s a lot more crowded these days.

Bruno is the Chief of Police in fictional St Denis where the community spirit is very strong. He knows everyone, is involved in local activities and has no wish to live anywhere else – ever, and that’s despite a very powerful love interest who’d like him to transfer to Paris.

Of course these are crime novels and Dark Vineyard is the second in the series. St Denis lies at the heart of a traditional wine growing area but there’s a research station where a field of crops is destroyed by arsonists. Then there are two deaths which seem coincidental but may be linked and/or not accidental. Max appears to have drowned in a vat of pressed grapes, which put me in mind of George, Duke of Clarence, brother of King Edward IV who is supposed to have been drowned in a vat of malmsey as a form of execution in 1478.

Inevitably there are twists and turns as Bruno eventually works out what happened and sees justice done. It’s unlikely but compelling as most good crime fiction is. And the characterisation is great. Even Bruno’s dog, Gigi seems real.

There’s a lot to like about Dark Vineyard. The descriptions of the scenery, rivers, bridges and valleys made me long to go back to Perigord. The writing is as sensuous and evocative as that of HE Bates in The Darling Buds of May or Peter Mayle in Tousjours Provence. It’s also very well informed about the wine industry and I learned a lot. Of course I knew that grapes are traditionally pressed by marching on them in bare feet but this novel’s description of the vendage  with locals gathering as if for a party, having their legs hosed down and climbing into the vat in turns is unforgettable. I can’t believe Walker made it up, He must have taken part in this ritual.

It’s an interesting take on local politics in France too in which the Mayor, Bruno’s direct boss, seems to have a lot of power.

As well as being an efficient but generally relaxed cop, Bruno is an accomplished cook. Walker has even written a book of Bruno’s recipes and I’m afraid food is the reason I shan’t be reading any more of this series.

It’s a personal thing but I have been a vegetarian for 45 years and found the detailed accounts of food and cooking  utterly nauseous. I really don’t want to read about people at a dinner party eating the heads of woodcock by holding their beaks or lambs strung up and stuffed. I didn’t care for the fatted goose livers being sold from under the counter in the market either. Yes, I know it’s a way of life but not for me, thanks.

BBC Symphony Orchestra

BBC Symphony Chorus

Sakari Oramo

Senja Rummukainen

Jess Dandy

Royal Albert Hall

 

Interestingly programmed, this concert ranged from one end of the 20th century to the other, working backwards, and sandwiched one of the most loved works in the repertoire between two much less familiar ones.

The opener was Jonathan Harvey’s Tranquil Abiding (1998) which is a meditative piece about meditation. It comprises a great deal of “breathing” with melodic fragments here and there. I admired the achievement of the very busy percussionist and reflected that the piece must be generally challenging to play. Hurrah for Sakari Oramo’s clear 4|4 beat. It was a pity that audience noise spoiled the mysterious, muted end.

Elgar’s lush, passionate, irresistible cello concerto (1918/19) was in good hands with Senja Rummukainen whose collaboration with fellow Finn, Oramo  seemed unusually intense. They took the  opening adagio very slowly and she really dug out the gentle angst in the first movement. There was  tenderness and sweetness of tone in the  lento section and she delivered Elgar’s “noblimente” melody in the final movement with such poignant beauty that it was almost painful. Overall, it was a fine account of a much loved work.

And so to Gustav Holst’s The Cloud Messenger (1909/10, revised 1912) which was completely new to me. It has never enjoyed popularity, flopped dismally at its first performance in 1913 and has never been performed at the Proms before.  A large scale choral work, it also requires six percussionists, a soloist whose contribution lasts about five minutes, double brass, two harps and organ so it must also be prohibitively expensive to stage.

It is a setting of the poem Meghaduta by 4th/5th century Sanskrit poet Kalidasa which Holst himself translated and adapted. He had, at this stage of his life, become very interested in India. The text – a love poem in which an exile asks a cloud to convey a message to his wife – is pretty dire but it seems to have inspired Holst to some rather lovely music, although it’s a patchy, rather disparate piece

The star in this performance was the BBC Symphony Chorus, superbly trained by chorus-master, Neil Ferris. From their very first note the sound was richly arresting. Their diction is exemplary and their sound clear in the unaccompanied section in section five – so exposed and yet so perfect. I also admired the end of section four in which they sang the chromatic notes with panache and then, after an orchestral interlude, nailed the grand declaration. And as for the last few minutes which consists of ever quieter reiterations at different pitches (shades of Neptune, in The Planets which came only five years later) it was stunning.

One section of The Cloud Messenger requires a soloist and Jess Dandy whose contralto voice is as dark as molasses, did the job well enough although it might have made sense to use her elsewhere in this concert as well.

The Promise

By Paul Unwin

Directed by Jonathan Kent

CFT Minerva Theatre

 

Star rating: 3

 

When this play was conceived, written and a decision to stage it at Chichester was made, nobody knew that when it opened a new labour government would have come to power, with a huge landslide majority just three weeks earlier. The parallels between 1945 and now are uncanny.

Paul Unwin’s play, initially fast-paced, but a bit patchy as it progresses, explores the politics of post-War Britain with a specific focus on the birth of the NHS. And given the anxiety about the NHS today, that’s another reason why the play often feels topical and fresh.

Clare Burt as Ellen Wilkinson the passionate far left politician who just wants “to make things better”, is outstanding from the moment she addresses the Labour Party at the beginning to her lonely death in 1947. Burt is very good at delivering funny but devastating put-downs especially in her character’s affair with the self interested, centrist Herbert Morrison (Reece Dinsdale).

There’s a fine performance from Clive Wood as the in-your-face Ernie Bevin and Andrew Woodall looks and sounds so much like Clement Atlee it’s almost unsettling. David Robb’s slimy, pragmatic Lord Moran is a delight and Richard Harrington plays Nye Bevan with steely, determined passion. It’s a big cast of  fourteen and, as a company, they play off each other engagingly,  partly because the dialogue flows so naturalistically.

Martyn Ellis is convincing as Winston Churchill but the scene in which he haunts the dying Wilkinson is far too long.

Peter Mumford’s video projection creates plenty of period atmosphere with black and white images of buildings and events and Deborah Andrews’s costume designs range from the sumptious (dressing gown worn by Allison Mackenzie as Jennie Lee) to the coats and scarves worn by the cabinet during the bitterly cold winter of 1946/7 when coal shortages were a major worry.

Confession: I never warmed to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass as a child. I think it’s because it’s surreal and I’ve only ever wanted to read fiction rooted in reality, or at least something close to it. My late husband, Nick, however was very fond of both books and could quote large chunks.

So can my old friend, Susie, who mentioned what a big influence Alice had been on her all her life, when she wrote recently to tell me how much she’d liked my All Booked Up.

Well, as a theatre critic, I’ve seen dozens of Alice stage adaptations over the years. Usually they combine both books always including set piece like The Mad Hatter’s tea party but it’s a very long time since I read either book. Susie’s letter made me realise that it was time I did, so I have now reread Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Published in 1865 by Oxford mathematician, Charles Dodgson, writing under the pseudonym, Lewis Carroll, it broke new ground in several ways. It’s not didactic as children’s books had formerly been. It’s meant to be funny and entertaining rather than telling children how to behave or what to think. And Alice is a girl – yes, I know that’s obvious, but children’s literature was much more likely to feature a boy protagonist at that date. Moreover, she’s a girl with a brain, She’s not just a pretty face.

It’s full of puns: the tortoise who taught us, the lessons which lessen every day, reeling and writhing as classroom subjects and all the others which are somehow now embedded in our national consciousness. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has never been out of print in 159 years so it must have been read, or consumed in adapted form, by hundreds of millions of people.

The poems are interesting. They are all irreverent parodies of very worthy and serious 19th century poems. The trouble is that apart from “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and “The Queen of Hearts”, stealer of tarts,  21st century readers don’t recognise them.   In fact they’ve become classics in their own right and, for example “You’re Old Father William” is included in most children’s anthologies although half the joke is now lost. It is even set as a comprehension exercise in schools and used to teach poetics. Dodgson would be astonished.  For the record, and for nerds, “You Are Old Father William is a send up of Robert Southey’s “The Old Man’s Comforts and How He Gained Them” which was a popular, preachy Victorian poem for children.

Alice uses logic in her attempts to make sense of what’s happening to her as she repeatedly shrinks or grows so she keeps seeing things, quite literally, from different points of view. She tries to be polite, as she’s been brought up to be, but she’s feisty and sometimes speaks her mind.

There are characters in there too who don’t make it into most adaptations. Bill the Lizard is rather engaging, for instance. And as for the famous animals and people, how many 21st century children have heard of the pretentious mock turtle soup and understand the joke that there’s no such thing as a mock turtle? The soup was a classic Victorian dish, invented in the eighteenth century, presumably when green turtles were in short supply. It was usually  made with calf’s head and sherry.

Yes, it’s quite fun although, personally, I’d  still rather read about something real than about crazy dreams. And I reckon that it’s probably a book every child should read because it is now so deep in our culture. The irony of that point of view is not lost on me, though. Dodgson wrote it to get children away from things adults said they “ought” to read. A century and a half later and  we’ve come full circle.

 

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Dark Vineyard by Martin Walker

 

Prom 14,  July 29 2024

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Paavo Jarvi

Yunchan Lim

Those of us who were lucky enough to be present at Yunchan Lim’s Proms debut are going to remember it fondly when he’s being celebrated on world stages in a year or two’s time. His performance of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto was breathtaking. Many a young pianist can produce the notes but few can bring this level of maturity, sensitivity and poise to it. Lim, who comes from South Korea, is just 20

Paavo Jarvi, who ensured the BBC Symphony Orchestra duetted with him with understated elegance, worked with his young soloist in palpable partnership, often turning to watch the keyboard closely. The dramatic soft passages in the first movement were exquisite and Lim’s Adagio was the slowest I’ve ever heard it with Jarvi, ever responsive to Lim’s rubato. Then came that transition into the finale, one of my favourite Beethoven moments. Lim did it with gentle tension until he made it dance off into happy sublimity of the final movement. No wonder there were so many whoops and cheers form his huge South Korean fan club in the audience. They are entitled to feel very proud of him. He responded to the rapturous applause by playing JS Bach’s Siciliano as his encore which felt gloriously intimate considering the size of the Royal Albert Hall.

The concert had opened with Aditus by Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tuur. It dates from 2000-2 but this was its first performance at a Proms concert and new, I suspect, to most of the audience, including me.  Jarvi allowed the arresting chromatic scales and glissandi ring out with tubular bells and bass drum to the fore. He also made the most of dramatic contrasts, tensions and general pauses. It’s an interesting piece.

And so to Bruckner’s weighty first symphony which formed the second half of the programme. Jarvi is good at detail and the punctuating trombone, solo cello and busy, but incisive, string underpinning were good moments in the first movement. I also liked the flute and bassoon work in the adagio and the neatly pointed contrast between the scherzo and the trio. Once we reached the finale, though, there were balance issues. If, as here, the brass players are seated several tiers up with their feet at a higher level than the heads of the string players, their sound will blast out, sometimes too prominently. In places the ensemble didn’t feel quite integrated although there were some pleasing lyrical moments.

Deptford Baby
Written and performed by Chukwudi Onwere
Jack Studio Theatre
Star rating: 3

Chukwudi Onwere is a highly talented actor. In what is effectively a one-man show, he multi-roles
and moves with both muscularity and delicacy. It’s very physical and I wasn’t surprised to learn that
he trained at East 15. The voice he uses for his main character is RP with a Deptford twang and it
contrasts well with an exaggerated Nigerian accent for the young man’s father and high pitched
gentle Scouse for the girl he fancies – among other colours and timbres. It’s convincing, well observed and
entertaining.

The narrative presents a British Nigerian, a loyal Deptford native, en route to hand in his degree
thesis at Goldsmiths and dreaming of being a successful novelist, when suddenly there’s rumbling,
flooding, a giant fish which temporarily swallows him like Jonah  and a massive serpent which has to
be slain. It’s quite literally an “overcoming the monster” story in which the monster seems to be a
symbol of gentrification and the threatened destruction of community. It is, one infers, meant to be
a parable and as such I didn’t warm to it much, although it’s very funny in places. “Shaking like a
dithering politician” is rather good, for example. Other audience members were chuckling at jokes
about yams and other stereotypes some of which passed me by probably because I was in an ethnic
minority. It’s also a bit obviously didactic in places, explaining to the audience what the Biafran War
was, for instance, or telling us that Christopher Marlowe was murdered in Deptford in 1593.

DJ Tommy Tappah who also designed the sound, acts as on-stage stage manager, sound controller
and occasional support actor and he’s very good at all that. His turn as the Deptford Cat which sees
off a Pit Bull attacking a little girl is masterly. I could have done, however, without his laboured
attempts to “warm up” the audience as we found our seats and sat down. Being encouraged to
shout back like a nursery class at a pantomime clearly appeals to some people but it isn’t my
theatrical cup of tea.

Oliver!

Book, Music and Lyrics by Lionel Bart

Reviser and producer Cameron Mackingtossh

Director and choreographer Matthew Bourne

Desiger Lez Brothertson

Chichester Festival Theatre in Association with Cameron Mackingtosh Ltd

 

Star rating 5

Photographs by Johan Persson

Well, with the dream team of Cameron Mackingtosh, Matthew Bourne and Lez Brotherston on board, this was always going to be pretty special Oliver! And I’m delighted to report that it lives up to every expectation.

From the moment the orchestra (unusually for musicals at Chichester, in a conventional pit in front of the stage) you feel excellence: terrific violin work from Thomas Leate, for example when he’s not on viola or mandolin. It’s a work full of musical colour and conductor Graham Hurman presents it like a gloriously, rich aural painting.

Then the orphans arrive moving to the musical rhythm with such  electrically incisive vibrance that you’d know Matthew Bourne was involved even if you didn’t have a programme or hadn’t read the posters. It’s astonishingly arresting both in the opening scene and every time the ensemble melts or bursts onto the stage, thereafter You may have seen Oliver! many times before (and I have) but you’ve never seen it done like this.

Brothertson’s design is integral to the magic. He has worked with Bourne for thirty years so the two strands of the show are impeccably synched. The multi-level set revolves repeatedly to evoke different places: the orphanage, Fagin’s den, The Three Cripples. Mr Brownlow’s home and more with a terrific climax with girders and bridges so that Bill Sikes (Aaron Sidwell – good) can be shot dramatically fifteen feet or so above the thrust stage. The action makes interesting use of the revolve too, for example when Oliver is running away from the undertaker he’s been sold to.

Of course there are no weak links in this cast. Every single actor – including many talented, skilfully trained children – puts in a fine performance. Among these is Simon Lipkin’s Fagin – I think, on reflection, the best I have ever seen in this role, including Ron Moody, whom I saw live in a 1980s revival.  He interacts with the audience.  He drops in pretend ad-libs, he times every note and word of “I’m Reviewing the Situation” with superb comic timing. This production, incidentally, really brings out the Klezmer (Jewish folk music) elements in almost everything Lionel Bart wrote for Fagin and that’s a treat too

Shanay Holmes gives us a magnificent Nancy, rather more glamorous and less seedy than some interpretations. Her account of “As Long as He Needs Me” is passionate, sustained and powerful. Oscar Conlon-Morrey, who has a rich chocolatey operatic bass voice is splendid as the self interested Mr Bumble who ultimately gets his well-deserved come uppance. And Katy Secombe matches him beautifully as the revolting but flirty Mrs Corney. It’s fun too that, Secombe is the daughter of the late Harry Secombe who played Mr Bumble in the famous 1968 Carol Reed film that we’ve all seen so many times.

Cian Eagle-Service (who shares the role with Raphael Korniets and Jack Philpott) is a charming Oliver, as long as you can go along with the coventional assumption in this show (and in Dickens’s Oliver Twist  on which it is based) that 11-year Oliver has somehow acquired RP and perfect manners despite having been in a very ropey Midlands orphanage from birth. Cian sings with fine intonation especially in the challenging “Where is Love?” and nails the right level of wronged innocence.

The Artful Dodger is great part for any young actor and Billy Jenkins exploits it fully. Not only does he do the drawling East End accent and arrogance to the manner born but he dances with very attractive lightness.

The real star of this show, though, is Lionel Bart. Nothing else he did achieved  the success of  melodious, touching, funny Oliver!  in which every number is a showstopper. And this outstanding production celebrates that brilliance and allows it to shine though

It is a cliché – and I don’t usually gush – but you really need to see this show, even if you have to steal a ticket. It is simply a fabulous night in the theatre and a wonderful achievement for Justin Audibert to have programmed this in his first year as artistic director at Chichester.

I recently gave a talk at Catford Library about my latest book, All Booked Up. It followed a meeting of the library’s book group and two of its members stayed for my event. They were full of, and passionate about,  the book they’d just read and had been discussing: The Lightless Sky. So I bought it.

Subtitled “An Afghan refugee boy’s journey of escape to a new life in Britain” this harrowing book should be compulsory reading for  Keir Starmer, Yvette Cooper and everyone in the cabinet.

Gulwali was 12 when his desperate mother paid “agents” to take him and his brother to safety in Britain because their father and grandfather had been murdered. It took over a year during which he almost drowned, was badly burned in a lorry carrying chemicals, was arrested several times, and became ill from malnutrition. Sometimes, like a hideous game of snakes and ladders he was forced to go back a stage.  He, and others like him were ruthlessly tossed about, literally and figuratively. Moreover he was separated from his brother almost from the first day so there’s ongoing anxiety about where he was.  It’s gut-wrenching stuff. Human beings should not be having to endure experiences like this in the 21st century and as for the squalid,  inhumane horror of the “Jungle” at Calais, only 22 miles from our shores, I am almost at a loss for words.

And yet … underpinning this narrative are two very positive things. First there’s Gulwali’s unshakeable Muslim faith. His version of it is humane, gentle. kind and he is scathing about Muslim extremism. Eventually he comes to recognise and respect other religions too because decent people of all faiths and none – and that’s most of us – all want the same peaceful things.

Second, he makes a number of very good friends on the way, often separated from them and then sometimes joyfully reunited. Most of them are older than him and try to support him even when the situation is terrifying. And there are several occasions when supremely good charity workers really help him although, his mental health is so poor that he makes repeated irrational decisions to run away. So there’s celebration of goodness in this story too.

Now, when you read a book like this – Waheed Arian’s In The Wars which I featured here last year is similar – you know that eventually there will be some sort of happy ending because the narrator has, literally, survived to tell the tale.

After repeated failed attempts over several weeks, Gulwali and two friends eventually get to Dover by stowing away in a lorry full of bananas. Many interrogations follow and he has great difficulty making British authorities accept that he is only 13 – he has had to do a great deal of growing up in a short time and seems to be older.

Eventually he is taken in by a foster family in Manchester, put through a rehabilitation programme, learns English, goes to school, passes A levels and gets a degree in politics.  And by an astonishing piece of co-incidental luck,  he is reunited with his brother.  Today, a happily married man of 29, Gulwali works as an advocate for refugees. He is an active influencer too, giving talks about refugee rights. Hw works hard to support causes in Britain because, he says, he wants to put back as much as he can in the country which has taken him in.

The Lightless Sky is uplifting as well as disturbing because, obviously, for every refugee success story there are hundreds who die on the way or get sent back to dangerous environments having endured almost unthinkable hardships. Please can we stop thinking about the refugee “problem” and start working out what we, who have so much, can do to help people in desperate need?

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll