Press ESC or click the X to close this window

Susan’s Bookshelves: Fyneshade by Kate Griffin

I knew nothing about Kate Griffin’s 2023 best seller although it had, apparently, a great deal of acclaim last year. I simply spotted it in a bookshop – it has recently gone into paperback – and thought it looked fun. And it is: whatever else I thought about it, Fyneshade is very compelling. What I hadn’t realised until I got to the acknowledgements at the end is that it is inspired by Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw which I have never read (nor seen Britten’s opera) because I don’t “do” ghosts. So I read it at face value.

We’re in an unspecified historical period in Derbyshire. It’s pre-industrial but I found the cigarettes an anachronistic irritant because they weren’t invented until 1842. Marta, a chillingly reliable narrator, is sent to be governess to a house called Fyneshade because she’s too “dangerous” and sexually alluring to be allowed to stay where she is. Her charge is an intriguing little girl named Grace who has – err – problems which revolt Marta who is anything but a nice person. She cares for nobody and is entirely focused on improving her lot irrespective of what she has to do to achieve that. There’s a strong strand of witchcraft running though this novel and Marta has a box of powerful tricks and lethal potions inherited from her grandmother which she isn’t afraid of using.

All the stock, governess novel characters are there except that most of them, in this case, aren’t what they seem. There’s a well meaning housekeeper, a couple of spiteful servants, a glamorous sexy man and, of course, a secret in the attic – sorry, North Wing. The debt to Jane Eyre and Rebecca is so clear that it’s effectively a pastiche although Griffin gives us a lot more sex. No prizes for guessing what eventually has to happen to the house. Bronte and Du Maurier fans will see it coming a mile off and it made me laugh aloud.

Because Marta is very much an anti-heroine the reader knows that, given the things she’s done, she has to get her just desserts in the end. And she does. Of course her dream isn’t going to come true and she has met her match in the sexy Vaughan  because he is as much as schemer as she is and of course, because he’s male and wealthy,  he gets what he wants and she doesn’t. All that is predictable too. I wasn’t expecting, though, the chilling scene in sleazy room in Deal at the end: suddenly we’re in a different sort of novel.

It’s a treat to have a child with special needs in a novel set in an age when, if they survived at all, such children would usually have been hidden from view in some ghastly institution. And this one has talents.  I also liked presentation of the carriages. Wasn’t the barouche always the vehicle of choice for a cad?  And, for anyone who likes historic houses, Griffin really pulls the stops out with the colourful depiction of Fyneshade.

It’s dark, gothic and entertaining for a casual read  – even if you haven’t read The Turn of the Screw.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Missing Rose by Linda Newbery

Show: The Night Alive

Society: Tower Theatre Company

Venue: Tower Theatre. 16 Northwold Road, Stoke Newington,London N16 7HR

Credits: By Conor Mcphereson

The Night Alive

3 stars

 

Photo: Pau Ros

It’s an interesting play with a lot of heart. First staged in 2013 at Donmar Warehouse, it presents five people in a Dublin suburb. Four of them are deeply troubled people with heartbreaking issues and problems. The fifth is a thoroughly nasty, dangerous thug named Kenneth (Elliot Archer – pleasing performance) with whom we feel no sympathy whatever.

Tommy (Kevin Furness) lives in squalor on the ground floor of a house belonging to his Uncle Morris (Peta Barker). He is surrounded by discarded drink tins, used mugs, traffic cone, discarded clothes and other random detritus. Set designer, Max Batty, who also gives us stained glass double doors at the back though which we infer time of day, has done a good job.

Tommy brings in Aimee (Laura Flemming), a stranger, from the street to tend to her damaged face. She is, we gradually realise, a part time prostitute and thief who has been punched by her boyfriend/pimp, Kenneth. Gradually Tommy and Aimee strike up a rapport – of sorts.  And eventually an incident – no spoilers – bonds them more tightly then perhaps either wants.  Both actors are convincing.

The best acting in this production, though, comes from Alan Maddrell as Doc, Tommy’s friend, workmate (they run a dubious general business with a van) and quasi dependent. Doc has mild learning difficulties and there’s a whiff of Of Mice and Men about the exasperated fraternity between them. Maddrell rarely smiles, pushes his point doggedly and says some unexpectedly profound things. It’s a nicely nuanced and pretty impressive performance.

Peta Barker is good too. Uncle Morris is bereaved, lonely and “respectable”. He wears a suit and berates Tommy for “living like this” and forgetting his aunt’s memorial mass. There’s a well observed drunk scene in which we feel both sorry for, and exasperated with, him.

There is, however, a problem with voice work in actors who haven’t benefited from drama school training. Fleming is a native Dubliner and well cast in this role but Furness works too hard at the accent and sometimes his words are lost – accomplished as he is in other ways. Both Maddrell and Barker go for a gentler version which doesn’t sound particularly Irish but which works well enough.

This production of The Night Alive is, however, decently directed and pretty watchable.

 

  • All photos: Pau Ros

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/the-night-alive-2/

 Subscribe 

The Odyssey continues at the Unicorn Theatre, London until 21 April 2024.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Effectively a retro pop opera for young audiences, this show is both lively and energetic.

It looks good too. Designer Rosie Elnile has done simple but effective shiny things with tin foil, one versatile moveable house open at one end and some memorable costumes – especially the furry cover-ups for Circe’s “beasts” and the silky colourful creation for Calypso.

This episodic story, adapted by Nina Segal, is about Telemachus’ quest to find his long-absent father Odysseus. And, of course, searching for a missing father is something many modern children and young people will identify with.

Telemachus (Shaka Kalokoh) goes to Troy from Ithaca and returns via the islands of Cyclops, Calypso and Circe, sirens, the Underworld and an encounter with a sea monster. Kalokoh finds all the bewilderment and vulnerability of a troubled adolescent on a “really really really long journey” to adulthood …

Read the rest of this review at Musical Theatre Review: https://musicaltheatrereview.com/the-odyssey-unicorn-theatre/

Bear Snores On at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, London until 21 April 2024.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

This show, written and directed by Cush Jumbo and Katy Sechiari, is one of the most original and imaginative entertainments for under-sevens that I’ve seen for a long time.

We start on the picnic lawn where Ashley D Gayle as the gardener (he later reappears as the eponymous Bear) potters about with rakes and brushes while regaling his excited young audience with his hatred of animals who, among other things, steal his lunch – popping up around him to the audience’s delight.

Then Mouse (Lauren Conroy), diminutive, nimble, frightened of both man and cat and homeless, leads us across the grass and the magic starts.

Designer Rebecca Brower has excelled herself ….

Read the rest of this review at Musical Theatre Review   https://musicaltheatrereview.com/bear-snores-on-regents-park-open-air-theatre/

Whenever I return to Dickens, I wonder why I don’t reread him more often. All that glittering irony, rich characterisation and accurate observation as if he were sitting with a sketchbook. Yes,  he probably is the greatest novelist in English and Dombey and Son (1848) is one of his best.

It’s the story of a London based shipping magnate whose whole life is focused on his thriving business and the acquisition of a son to work with and ensure the future. There is a son but he’s tubercular like his mother, who dies giving birth to him. An older child, Florence, who becomes effectively the novel’s central character, is ignored and despised for being both alive and female. Of course – and I don’t intend to give away too much plot here – Mr Dombey is eventually punished for his unthinking cruelty and then redeemed so that, after 900 or so pages, we get a satisfying happy ending. Like most of Dickens’s novels, Dombey and Son comes with moral underpinning.

When Philip Larkin produced the unforgettable line “They fuck you up, your mum and dad” in his profoundly pessimistic, 1971 poem This Be The Verse, he was writing nearly 130 years after Dombey and Son, but Dickens is making the same point. Parenting is a major theme. In addition to the dysfunctional Dombey family we get flawed Edith and her appalling “mutton dressed as lamb” mother, along with grasping Mrs Brown and her chilly daughter Alice who comes with a history which is, for a long time, mysterious. In contrast Dickens gives us the delightfully happy Toodles family, producing and nurturing lots of children, and Sol Gills, uncle to Walter who acts as a very loving father to his nephew. And when Florence meets Edith they bond immediately as mother and daughter although it does not end happily. By the end of the novel Florence has a child of her own who, of course, is getting all the affection he deserves. The happy parents and children highlight the unhappy ones.

James Carker, who is Mr Dombey’s right hand man in the office, is the villain of the piece. And we know that he’s up to no good from the moment he appears. His teeth are the giveaway. They are large, white, gleaming and predatory. And for hundreds of pages Dickens never mentions Mr Carker without a reference to his teeth – it’s witty in a sinister sort of way and clearly signals that a man with such teeth is not to be trusted. That’s why reading a book is always better than any TV version such as the BBC 1983 Dombey and Son.  Irony disappears in adaptation and you lose elements like those evocative teeth.

It is often said that Dickens was no good at virtuous women. And it is true that Florence (like Agnes in David Copperfield, Rose Maylie in Oliver Twist and  Harriet Carker in Dombey and Son) is a bit saccharine, although considering how badly she is treated by her father, we sympathise with her in horror. I’m not sure, though that it’s plausible, for someone so starved of paternal affection throughout her childhood to go on loving him unconditionally. She’s sad and puzzled – but never critical which somehow makes her too saintly to be believed. No teenage hormones in 1848?

What Dickens is utterly brilliant at are the individualists. Susan Nipper, Florence’s devoted maid and friend, is a gorgeous creation. She has flashing dark eyes, a forthright manner, will not suffer fools and would do anything for Florence. When something finally flips and she beards Mr Dombey in his study and forcibly tells him what she thinks of him, you want to cheer her on.

Captain Cuttle, is eccentric and sometimes misguided, but he’s very decent and most of us would be honoured to have him in our lives. And we’ve all met people like the irritating, pompous Major Bagstock, when we couldn’t find a way of avoiding them.

Dombey and Son is set in the 1840s as the railway lines north of Kings Cross were being developed. The detailed, graphic, colourful description of Camden Town under very disruptive reconstruction would have been very current in 1848 when the novel was published. Mr Toodles, who lives nearby, works on the building site and later becomes a soi-disant well-paid engine driver. It really conveys what an era of dramatic change this was when suddenly you could get from London to Birmingham in a couple of hours. Nothing equalled it until the commercial airlines were developed nearly a century later. In some ways railways are thematic in Dombey and Son. No prizes for guessing how a certain toothy gentleman gets his comeuppance.

As so often in a Dickens novel there is also an education theme although this time it doesn’t relate to cruelty and abuse. Doctor Blimber’s school in Brighton, where the ailing Paul Dombey is sent to board aged 6, is all about being crammed with the classics. The boys (including Toots – another quirky, loveable but troubled character who lasts the whole novel) are well fed, treated kindly and live quite comfortably but Dr Blimber, his daughter and the gloriously named Mr Feeder force feed Latin and Greek relentlessly. Dickens, of course, is jokily sceptical about the wisdom and usefulness of all this. Florence, meanwhile, is lodged with another whacky, self-interested character called Mrs Pipchin round the corner so that she can visit her beloved, but delicate, little brother at weekends.

As an artistic trait, the Dickensian coincidence is up there with the Rossini crescendo or the Reubens fleshy female. So of course there are lots of them in Dombey and Son when all those minor characters and subplots turn out to be linked and he ties up all the loose ends with a flourish and maybe a tear.

In short I loved it to bits and admired it – again. And I think this is the third time, or maybe the fourth, that I’ve read it. It improves with age like good claret. Warmly recommended.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Fyneshade by Kate Griffin.

Philharmonia Orchestra

Jakub Hrusa (conductor)

Stephen Isserlis (cello)

Royal Festival Hall

24 March 2024

This was an all-Russian concert which had you pretty much on the edge of your seat throughout. As soon as Jakub Hrusa started Mussorgksy’s Night on a Bare Mountain at an electifyingly fast tempo, it was clear this was going to be something quite special. No chance, or need, of a “warm up” for this orchestra in this fired-up mood.

One of the best things about the opener was the excellent double bass section, all eight of then leaping from pizzicato to arco so fast that one could barely see their right hands moving. It underpinned the excitement, as did the growling tuba counterpointed so deftly against the piccolo, the sensitively managed contrasts and the beautiful melody first introduced by the violas.

 Photo by Mark Allan

Now, I have to confess that Kabalevksy’s 1964 cello concerto was new to me but I now agree with soloist Stephen Isserlis who played the UK debut in 1981. He says in his programme interview that he can’t understand why it isn’t played more often and better known. It’s full of the sort of soulful anguish which dogged Russian artists in the 1960s and very reminiscent of Shostakovich. Isserlis played the startling opening pizzicato section with dramatic freshness and treated us to a great deal of passionate and energetic virtuoso playing thereafter – keeping  an occasional eye on his music stand, presumably because he doesn’t get the chance to play this intriguing, compelling piece all that often. It’s performed seamlessly without movement breaks so it felt pretty intense. Eventually, though Isserlis and Hrusa steered, through the anguish, towards the hesitant but beautiful melody at the end: a resolution of sorts.

Then, Isserlis told the audience that “ While we’re in Kabalevsky mode” he would play the composer’s Study in Major and Minor as his encore. It’s short, witty and good fun – and very different from the concerto.

Everyone who entered the hall via Door G stopped to look at the four huge, cathedral-size, cast bells at downstage left, each engraved with its provenance. This was clearly going to be Pictures at an Exhibition with a difference. Most of us are used to Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s piece so to hear Stokowskii’s exuberantly exhilarating arrangement, played with all the panache the Philharmonia can muster, was quite an experience.

The opening Promenade is, in this version, given to the strings who are then allowed to build to a lush American sound. There were really too many high spots to mention but I particularly liked the beautifully played bassoon in duet with the saxophone, the quality of horn and brass work in the Bydio section and the chickens sounding really avian – lots of glissandi –  in the Ballet of the Chickens in their Shells along with the arresting grotesqueness in Baba Yaga. And so, finally,  to the grandiloquence of The Great Gate of Kyiv, those evocatively sonorous bells and a hugely exaggerated rall which worked a treat in this context.

The orchestra required for this work was enormous: two piccolos, two harps, double brass, celeste, organ and big string sections. That’s probably why we don’t hear it very often in this arrangement. So all credit to the Philharmonia for pushing the boat out so powerfully.

 

 

Maidstone Symphony Orchestra

Brian Wright (conductor)

Iyad Sughayer (piano)

Mote Hall, Maidstone

Written late in Schubert’s tragically short life, his Symphony No 9 is “Great” in every sense. It is long, intense, hugely challenging and stunningly beautiful. And MSO delivered a very pleasing performance. The opening is every horn player’s nightmare but the performance soon settled into a warmly musical rendering.

I admired, among many other things, the precision of the string vamp in support of the woodwind melody in the andante. It is always good to hear string detail crisply articulated. There was delightful work from the trumpets and principal flautist Anna Binney excelled herself – as ever. Wright stressed the dynamic contrasts across the landler and the trio in the third movement and really brought out that exquisite little homage to Beethoven in the finale.

To perform a work of this scale and complexity as well as this must have taken a great deal of rehearsal and I’m not surprised that everyone looked tired at the end.

The first half of the concert comprised Mendelssohn’s attractive, programmatic overture The Fair Melusine which deserves to get more outings, followed by Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 3.

Pianist Iyad Sughayer is an exceptionally charismatic, communicative performer. He plays with his face as much as his hands, clearly adores the music and feels every note and nuance. The bright, opening allegro came with plenty of the brio the composer stipulated with Wright ably managing a businesslike accompaniment from the orchestra. Rarely have I heard the cadenza played with more electric drama which made for a real contrast with the ensuing andante with its muted strings and impassioned – but never mannered opening. It was played, palpably, with love. Sughayer’s infectious enthusiasm – and very evident communication with the orchestra – ensured rippling insouciance and joix-de-vivre in the final movement as he launched it out of the pregnant silence at the end of the andante.

Sughayer, who comes from Jordan and has Jordanian/Palestinian heritage, then played a very short lyrical Khachaturian piece as his encore: a complete contrast to the Beethoven. And I was, incidentally, delighted to see him in the interval chatting very naturally and engagingly but unassumingly to some admiring children.  Yes, the next generation needs to be encouraged and brought to concerts!

 

 

China Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra

 Daye Lin (conductor), Jiaoneg Nie (cello), Tamsin Waley Cohen (Violin)

 Fairfield Halls, Croydon 22 March 2024

Tan Dun has a long association with China Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra which was established in 1982. He is currently principal honorary conductor so it made sense to start this concert with what is probably his best known work. The highly atmospheric, vibrant theme music for the 2000 film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has been reworked by the composer as a three movement piece – effectively a cello concerto.

Jiapeng Nie is a passionate cellist who really leans on the glissandi. High spots included a fabulous percussion interlude in which the cello eventually joins – almost inaudibly. I also liked the delivery of the melody-rich, lyrical middle movement with all five percussionists playing different sorts of drums with bare hands and outstretched fingers, as if playing pianos. The passage in which string players play percussive pizzicato, stopping the sound with a tap of the hand came off effectively too.

Then came the arrival of most of the woodwind section (only flutes in the Tan Dun piece), the brass section and the departure of four fifths of the percussion because Poème by Ernest Chausson (1896) needs only timps. Tamsin Waley-Cohen is an accomplished soloist whose double stopping and poise is a masterclass in how to do it. It’s a difficult piece which requires a great deal of sensitive control which it got in this performance from both Waley-Cohen and conductor Daye Lin who packed it with high levels of both elegance and eloquence. Then, as her encore, Waley Cohen treated us to  Recitativo and Scherzo-Caprice by Fritz Kreisler: a showpiece which allowed us to enjoy more of that excellent double stopping.

But the real meat in this concert came after the interval in a glitteringly arresting performance of Mahler’s Symphony Number 1 (1889). The requisite huge forces assembled (including eight horns, three bassoons and a contra, double brass and so on), it was compelling almost from the first note with three off-stage trumpets in duet with the horn and I’m not quite sure how you make that first subject melody sound as mysterious as Chinese film music but that’s what Daye Lin does – his right hand more or less beating time while he signals with his extraordinarily expressive left hand, every finger conveying a message.

The second movement – based on an Austrian Landler – was very exciting with terrific oboe work and as for those sumptuous slides in the “trio”, players were clearly relishing them as much as I was. The third movement, which famously riffs on Frere Jacques in a  minor key as a funeral march, is always glorious and this performance more than did it justice with some unusually colourful tempo changes. Moreover, this was the first time I had ever noticed the Klezmer sound in the accelerating sexy brass section but it makes perfect sense. Although he later converted (expediently?) to Catholicism, Mahler’s parents were both Jewish.

The rousing finale packed  lots of drama and dynamic contrasts and it was a nice touch to bring the eight horns to their feet for their big moment just before the end. I suspect it will be long time before I hear this symphony played with such joyous energy. Mahler has to be played with feeling or it doesn’t work – and this certainly was. And if it was a bit exaggerated in places then it just added to the excitement.

It’s a pity, therefore, that this concert was so sparsely attended. Many people missed what turned out to be quite an experience, especially in the second half.