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Susan’s Bookshelves: Sold! by Charlie Ross with Stewart Ross

I am normally chary about agreeing to read self-published books especially if they’re by people I know, however peripherally. I’ve come unstuck too often when they’re embarrassingly bad – either because the unedited text is dreadful or because of amateurish presentation.

I agreed to read this one, and didn’t regret it, because it has Stewart Ross’s name on the cover as ghost writer. I’ve known Stewart and admired his work and enthusiasm for decades. He and I used to sit together on a committee at Society of Authors or which first he was Chair and then I was. He is a respected,  prize winning author who has written many excellent books for children and adults.

What I didn’t realise until recently, is that he and Charlie Ross, the TV auctioneer and antiques dealer are brothers. Perhaps I should have done. They look so much alike they could be twins. So here is Sold!,  Charlie’s witty, self-deprecating life story (just how DO you get to be an auctioneer, let alone one on national TV?) written, I suspect mostly by Stewart. It is published by Blean Books, the Kent based publishing house Stewart has set up to publish a few titles of his own which haven’t gone to his usual publishers. Stewart is mentioned so often in Charlie’s story that it is clear that the two men are very close, anyway.

They were the sons of a touchingly snobbish mother and well-meaning but unworldly father (eventually separated) who got into disastrous debt to send them to boarding school. There Charlie, a good talker, quick thinker and reasonable singer, failed his A levels so he couldn’t follow his successful uncle into dentistry. Instead he went to work for an estate agent which meant auctions. Very gradually, with lots of serendipity because he had no life plan, he worked his way into antique dealing and auctioneering. For many years he  and a business partner ran their  own auction house, Downer Ross in Woburn. Along the way he played a lot of rugby and cricket, acquired a wife and  two children and played The Pirate King in an amateur production of The Pirates of Penzance. His ebullient personality sustained all his activities.

Then came a call from the BBC inviting  Downer Ross to feature  in the programme Flog It!. He’s funny about later participation in The Antiques Road Show for which he wasn’t always serious enough but says that working in STV’s Antiques Road Trip and Celebrity Antiques Road Trip have given him some of the most enjoyable moments of his broadcasting career. Today (long story) as well as charity auctions and lots of other jobs he regularly auctions very high value vintage cars in America – a dream job if those sorts of vehicles are your thing. He has no plans to retire.

Charlie Ross is good company, although I confess I switched off a bit during a whole chapter about cricket. He has been professionally very successful but he’s no show off and that works well in this rather entertaining book which has lots of lovely photographs at its centre.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: The Lightless Sky by Gulwali Passarlay with Nadene Ghouri

 

 

The Gondoliers

WS Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

Illyria

Directed by Oliver Gray

Fowlmere Village Hall, Cambs and touring

 Star rating: 3.5

 

Yes, you really can mount a G&S opera with a cast of only six and make it vibrant for an audience who are mostly new to the piece. Oliver Gray, who founded Illyria 32 years ago, knows exactly how to cast multi-talented  performers able to hop in and out of roles and costumes at high speed. He is also very good indeed making the best possible use of a bijoux playing space the size of a mediaeval cart carrying strolling players.

The open space around Fowlmere Village Hall, it has to be said, is not an ideal venue (although there’s plenty of parking and good loos)  because it’s the village recreation ground and the show had to share it with a noisy mini skate board park and other distractions. The cast, however, as Illyria casts always do, rose to the challenge and maintained energetic momentum to the last.

If you play, G&S on a small scale you can hear every word – and WS Gilbert is very funny – along with every delicious harmony in the choruses, quartets, trios and duets, Bravo to all especially to Richard Healey for some imaginative arranging.

Casting a female (Naomi Halliday who also doubles as a spectacularly slimy Grand Inquisitor) to play Luiz, the drummer who turns out to be the lost king, means that you have to do nifty things with keys to make the duets with Casilda (Emma Clare) work. Most of it comes off although Clare misses some of her highest notes.

The satirical story of two Republican Gondoliers who find that one of them, – but no one knows which –  is the King of Barataria,  is as topical as it ever was. And Oliver Gray’s topical updates for 2024 are fun especially in “A Regular Royal Queen”.

Alex Layfield, in his first professional acting role, excels as Guiseppe, singing impeccably and playing well off Ben Osland who plays Marco. The handstand moment in their second act duet is quite something. Sarah Pugh sings exceptionally well as Tessa too.  And Rosie Zeidler brings lovely physicality to the cowardly, self-important Duke of Plaza Toro as well as finding feisty sweetness in Gianetta. And every one of them has projectile ability to light up the stage.

I wasn’t keen on Healey’s decision to rework the music fairground style although that’s probably just personal taste. Sullivan’s music  has long been a popular choice for carousels, after all.  Moreover I appreciate the tight succinctness of this show given the mixed audience (and, at the performance I saw, rain with more threatening). I was sorry, though, that cuts include “My Papa, he has two horses”, “I am a courtier grave and serious” and “Small titles and orders”. On the other hand, Healey has ingeniously created/included a few extra bits of music to accommodate role changes and that is seamlessly slick.

 

 

The Hundred Year Old Letter

Johnny Handscombe

Bridge House Theatre, Penge

Good Wolf

Star rating 3

In 2021 a letter was delivered to an address in Sydenham – to a house which is now ten flats but which was once a gracious family residence. Christabel Mennell, who is in Bath, is apologising to Katie Marsh. The  letter was written in 1916.  Once the story hit the news it led to worldwide, fascinated speculation.

That is the basis for Johnny Handscombe’s quirky little 60 minute play which sits rather well at the Bridge House because it’s a local story.  He gives us four characters – the couple who found the letter in the building’s entrance hall among the pizza and curry hunk mail and two other women. All multi-role effectively as they discuss the letter and try out different scenarios.

There’s a lot of information tucked into this play as, for example one tells the others who the Quakers were, or sums up a century of Irish history. It just stops short of being didactic – but only just. Gradually we learn from their research (in real life a lot of this was the work of the Norwood Society) who these two women were, what they did later and when they died.

There is a lot of emphasis on what the ‘circle’, in which Charlotte said something she later regretted, might have been. Was it a séance? Or could it have been a Quaker meeting? Or something else?

It’s a decent enough piece of  community theatre by a newish local company although I don’t think much is gained from the mini-prologue and epilogue which explore the nature of rhythm and seem to belong in a different play.

This show also has a run on the Edinburgh Fringe next month.

Many decades ago, when I was teaching in the English department of a small town Kent secondary school for girls, we were relentlessly harassed by a parent whom I’m going to call Mr Misguided. He had it in for our library which contained, he said, filthy, blasphemous books as did some of our English lessons. He was (and still is) a well known local “do-gooder” who thrived on publicity. So our literary endeavours to corrupt the youth of the town were soon all over the local press and other media. Mr M seemed to object to anything which featured boys and girls communicating with other or which mentioned religion however obliquely. Well that actually covered just about everything in our library and department stock cupboard. For several months it was both stressful and funny. He backed off once his daughter was selected for transfer to the local grammar school at age 13, which was – we concluded – his purpose all along. And we were too weary by then to point out that the grammar school would  have all the same books.

I thought a lot about Mr M while I was reading Lula Dean’s Library of Banned Books (2024)  We’re in Troy, a small town in Georgia where fanatical citizen Lula Dean has set up the Concerned Parents Committee and managed to get a lot of books banned in the local school. She has also set up a mini library at her gate containing bland books about crochet, baking and etiquette – except that someone has swapped dust covers and people are actually borrowing the banned titles. On Lula’s hit list are Beloved by Toni Morrison, A Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl and “Are you there God? It’s me Margaret” by Judy Blume, all of which have actually been banned somewhere in the US –  along with other titles some of which Kirsten Miller has invented.  Of course Lula’s agenda is extreme right, anti-gay, misogynistic, “pro-family”, fundamentalist,  and anti-woke.

At the same time there’s a statue in the centre of the town which some people want pulled down. Wainwright was a slave owner who “built” the town  – or rather his enslaved minions did. It gradually transpires through 21st century DNA testing, that he is ancestor to half the town. Like many in his position he took sex from several of the women he controlled. There are now demands to remove the statue but of course there are many shades of opinion and Lula roundly supports its retention.

Miller depicts a whole community in this novel so there are lots of intersecting characters and story lines. The novel is actually too long and more complicated than it need be but it makes its point pretty well and the ending is neat. Some of the characters are delightful: Mr Minter, the gay head of music at the high school, for example. So is the doctor from Queens, whose ancestors came from India. And the style is upbeat and witty.  I laughed aloud when Lula’s estranged children return and “out” her publicly by listing the books they remember on her night stand. We often wondered what titles Mr M had on his bedside table because, of course, the more fanatical people are the more likely it is that they’ve something to hide or suppress. We need novels like this one to highlight their hypocrisy.

Moreover anyone who wants books banned is immediately hoist with his or her own petar because they are stressing just how influential books can be. And that’s exactly what those of us who think everyone should be free, encouraged even, to read anything and everything have always argued.

Next week on Susan’s Book Shelves Sold! By Charlie Ross with Stewart Ross.

Your Lie in April

Based on Manga by Naoshi Arakawa

Music by Frank Wildhorn

Directed by Nick Winston

Harold Pinter Theatre

Star rating: 5

When I saw this show in a semi-staged concert version at Theatre Royal Drury Lane earlier this year, I predicted that – with work – it had a promising future. I was right. It’s now full of warmth, cohesiveness and stunning talent. Moreover it’s even tuneful. It’s rare for a new musical to be memorably melodious but I sang “One Hundred Thousand Million Stars” all the way home.

Your Lie in April began life as a serial in a Japanese magazine which evolved into a TV series before debuting as a stage show, with music in 2017. Then Covid-19 interrupted further development. The musical theatre version with Frank Wildhorn’s music premiered in Tokyo in 2022 and now here it is in London, with book in English by Rinne B Groff – the first West End show featuring a cast, all of whom have South Asian heritage.

The plot is terrific and very moving. We’re in a high school. Former piano prodigy Kosei (Zheng Xi Yong)  now refuses to play at all because he is traumatised and haunted by the bitter-sweet memory of his perfectionist, dying mother. Then Kaori (Mia Kobayashi), a promising, but frail, violinist arrives at the school because she wants Kosei to accompany her. Cue for much angst, yearning and many refusals although we all know, even as Kaori gets sicker, where this will end. The young woman sitting next to me (not my plus one) cried though most of the second half.

Zheng Xi Yong trained at Royal Academy of Music and has a piano diploma (although goodness why he doesn’t mention the latter in his programme biog). He therefore plays the piano throughout this show and it’s riveting show-stopping stuff especially when he gets to the Rachmaninov prelude. He’s also a fine actor, pretty decent singer and not bad as a dancer. You could call it the quadruple threat.  I’ve no idea whether he wears glasses in real life but he has a wonderful way with them as an expression of emotion.

Kobayashi, who graduates from Arts Ed this summer and is in her first professional job, is extraordinarily good. She has a terrific full belt, a lovely wistful mode and lights the stage every moment she’s on it. I predict a very successful future. She is not a violinist but that’s another coup de theatre. Akiko Ishikawa emerges from the upstage shadows with her violin and plays magnificently standing behind Kobayashi who mimes with a bow (getting all the up and down bows correct – they must have practised this very carefully). The grand piano is centre stage on a revolve and at one point it moves round as Zheng Xi Yong and Ishikawa play together behind Kobayshi. How on earth the two who are actually playing do this without music and without looking at each other is another marvel.

There’s a sparky ensemble, working in a challengingly small space (that piano takes up a lot of room). I loved the girls’ pastel dresses and the choreography with violin bows. Rachel Clare Chan and Dean John-Wilson excel as Kosei’s friends, supporting and urging him. Like everyone else in this cast, they work well together.

Above the stage, behind the gauzy semi-projected back screen, is a nine piece band doing a grand job under the baton of musical director, Chris Poon. There’s some eloquent cello work from Hsiao Ling Huang and, obviously, Akiko Ishikawa is part of the band when she’s not on stage.

In short everything delights in this touching, accomplished, happy show. Even the cherry blossom within Justin Williams’s set and around the proscenium adds to the charm.

 

Edgar

Giacomo Puccini

Directed by Ruth Knight

Conducted by Naomi Woo

Star rating: 2.5

No one, not even the writer of the Opera Holland Park programme note, is pretending that Puccni’s 1889 opera is any good. It flopped dismally after its Milan debut and did so again again in its re-written form in Buenos Aires in 1905. Puccini compared the latter with “warmed up soup” and admitted that he had made a “blunder” in agreeing to set Montana’s libretto. So all credit to Opera Holland Park’s whacky courage in producing it (alongside Tosca) even if it’s semi-staged and for just three performances to mark the centenary of Puccini’s death.

The plot is laughable. And yes, there were some incredulous chuckles at the performance I saw. Edgar (Peter Auty)  is supposed to marry an insipid, wistful but persistent beauty named Fidelia (ha ha) sung by Anne Sophie Duprels.  But he’s actually drawn to Tigrana, (Gweneth Ann Rand)  a childhood friend who has grown up to be prostitute. He goes off to live with the latter, falls out of love with her, joins the army, fakes his own death and then tricks Tigrana into telling lies about him which triggers (not a metaphor) her revenge. Even by the standards of nineteenth century opera it’s melodramatically silly.

Yet, underneath all this shallow nonsense there is some pleasing music, well played by City of London Sinfonia and impeccably conducted and led by Naomi Woo who has to look in all directions. Opera Holland Park’s annular stage which puts the orchestra in the centre and brings some of the action  forward seems now to have become a fixed feature. In this instance it means that the chorus, which represents a judgmental church congregation dressed in black with white gloves, seems very remote although director Ruth Knight makes generally imaginative use of a huge space in which entries and exits have to be very carefully timed. She incorporates the auditorium aisles effectively too. Sadly in the performance I saw, Woo and the chorus parted company a couple of times in Act 1, possibly because of the distance. I was delighted, however to see the inclusion of the Children’s Chorus which comprises singers from the Pimlico Music Foundation and the Tiffin Choirs.

Puccini is good at “mood music” and although you can hear the occasional hint of what is to come later in his career, it’s often crudely obvious in this piece.  And the military marches are pretty corney. He was only 30 when he wrote it after all. There are, though, some beautiful melodies at, for example, the opening of Act 2 and I loved the woven in cello solo behind the voices in Act 3. All four principals (including Julien Van Mellaerts as the sanctimonious Frank) do a good job. Rand, whose character is far more sinned against than sinning, sings magnificently and is the only character with any depth and for whom one feels any sympathy.

The best one can say about this in sum is that it’s an interesting curiosity. I’m not sure Puccini would have welcomed the revival, though.

 

 

The Voice of the Turtle

John Van Druten

Directed by Philip Wilson

Jermyn Street Theatre

 

Star rating: 3

 

This play gently explores female desire and sexuality which may have been risqué in 1943 when it made its debut in New York but certainly isn’t now. It hasn’t been seen in London since 1951 and there’s a reason for that. It’s very sweet, life-affirming and positive but there simply isn’t enough grit to sustain 135 minutes (with interval) although the little satirical digs at theatre itself are fun.

Sally Middleton (Imogen Elliott)  is a young actor who has just moved into her own New York apartment. She’s recently finished a job. had an affair with the director and is now waiting for something to turn up. It’s Friday night and her pushy, passionate, possibly promiscuous friend Olive (Skye Hallam) visits and tells her that her current beau is due to meet her at Sally’s flat. When it turns out that she’s got a better offer and abandons him there, it is immediately obvious that Bill (Nathan Ives-Moiba) and Sally will develop feelings for each other although we’re only ten minutes into the piece. After a few hiccoughs, including some histrionics from Olive, by Sunday afternoon, Bill and Sally are a happy couple and that is the plot – such as it is.

The acting, however, is excellent. Elliot, in her first professional job, finds a huge range of emotions in Sally. She has sexual longings, professional ambition and lots of quiet practicality – bustling about with toast and glasses of milk. She watches and reacts impeccably when other characters are speaking. It’s an elegantly nuanced performance from a young actor of whom I hope we see a lot more very soon.

Ives-Moiba, whose character is an army sergeant about to go back to the war,  gives us a well mannered, gentle man with oodles of sexual charisma but without flirtatiousness. It’s both effective and affective. I’d defy any girl who has him in her flat for the weekend not to fall for him.

And Hallam provides a contrast to the others by being overblown, mildly hysterical and busy playing her lovers off against each other. Philip Wilson directs in such a way as to exploit the best in  all three actors and to make their dialogue plausibly convincing.

Ruari Murchison’s set is nice too. It’s raining outside (which is partly why Bill stays) and there are windows onto blurry New York streets along with an authentic looking 1940s kitchen. I wonder how long he had to spend combing E-bay to find that toaster?

Despite its innate blandness, this show is well enough done but it isn’t one that will make many waves. The title, by the way, dervives from the Song of Solomon and refers to the yearning of turtle doves –  you’re welcome.

 

My knowledge and understanding of Sri Lankan history and its long, devastating civil war is very sketchy. In fact it’s informed by only two things. First, back in 2001, I remember being astonished, horrified and gripped by Karen Roberts’s novel July which told the story of  two neighbouring families “both alike in dignity” except that  one is Tamil and the other Sinhalese. So they are ripped apart by the civil war and, of course, there’s a cross-divide couple in love at the heart of it.

Second, I have become friends with my Sri Lankan neighbour whose parents moved to London when she was 10 in 1963. She chats to me a lot about Sri Lanka, then and now because she visits cousins there regularly. Of course, some branches of her family were seriously affected by the war. One of her uncles had to watch while the army shot the Tamil workers on his farm. A family home. in Columbo was commandeered by the army. And those are just examples.

Then along came Brotherless Night which has, I gather, taken VV Ganeshananthan – who now, like her narrator, lives in America – 18 years to write. It won the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction which was why I noticed it.

Sashi,who narrates, is a young Tamil living comfortably in 1980s Columbo where education is top of the agenda. She has four brothers, and like most of them, her sights are firmly set on medical school and a career as a doctor. There’s also a friend called K with whom she and one of her brothers walk to school and there’s chemistry between him and Sashi.

This exposition is brief because very soon, horrors set in. It’s a political power struggle between Tamils who want independence in Jaffna, a peninsula in the North close to the Palk Strait and India, and the army. Of course the government wants to suppress the Tamils. There are resistance groups, of which the most extreme is the famous Tamil Tigers. Gradually Sashi’s brothers, apart from the youngest, disappear, one way or another,  along with K – hence the title of this arresting novel. Sashi and her mother escape to Jaffna.  Later the Indian army turns up to “relieve” Jaffna but of course it’s not exactly benign. None of it is straightforward. My oversimplified summary is exactly that. There are factions within factions and Ganeshananthan is very good indeed at exploring divided loyalties.

Spoilers would not be appropriate here but let me cite just a couple of things which now haunt me. One of the characters undergoes a very public hunger strike and the tension is heart-in-mouth stuff. And I was pretty horrified by the open kidnapping of Sashi’s youngest brother, aged 14, by the army – my neighbour told me quite casually over the fence yesterday about a family she knows where exactly this happened. All this, therefore, suddenly feels very immediate.

She is now reading Brotherless Night. So should you be if you want to come anywhere near understanding the plight of ordinary families when a nation is seized by political and racial bigotry and violence. People talk rather oddly of “war crimes”. Isn’t all war a crime?