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Susan’s Bookshelves: The Spire by William Golding

A friend of mine often mentions William Golding (1911-1993) because he taught her late husband English at Bishop Wordsworth’s School in Salisbury. Then came the enormous success of Lord of the Flies (1954) which allowed Golding to quit the classroom in 1956.

One presumes that the Salisbury years led to much reflection on the cathedral’s 404 foot spire. It’s been the tallest church spire in Britain since 1561 when the spire of Old St Pauls fell in a fire (to be followed by the rest of the building in the Great Fire of 1666) which was said to be 489 feet tall. For comparison and context, the Shard in London today stands at 1004 feet.

Salisbury Cathedral’s spire was added in 1320 to a building dating from a century earlier.  And it’s the logistics of that grandiose extension which form the starting point for Golding’s 1964 novel The Spire, although we’re in an unnamed city rather than Salisbury specifically.

Jocelin is Dean of the Cathedral and hell-bent (literally – he’s deeply troubled) on an absurdly high spire – against the practical advice of the masterbuilder Roger Mason who argues that the foundations, such as they are, will not take the weight.

Golding was a visionary and so is Jocelin who sees “his” spire as a monument to his life and to God. He hallucinates and has erotic dreams as he shifts between everyday life including mundane interaction with others and intense other-worldly experience. He’s a monk, of course, and in 1320 the church was still Catholic. At one point he faces a formal Visitor from Rome to question his actions in a quasi-trial.  Eventually we realise that Jocelin is ill – with, one presumes, some sort of agonising spinal cancer. It is eventually described as “a consumption of the spine and back”. “Holy Mother of God. Look at his back!” one onlooker cries when he collapses helpless in the street towards the end of the novel and his robe flaps up. He believes there is an angel on his back, mostly benignly protective but who eventually beats him with a flail – as he tries, racked with guilt, to interpret his pain.

Golding was among many other things a symbolist and, like Lord of the Flies, this novel is full of symbolism. The spire itself, as it grows and thrusts upwards, is clearly phallic and represents Jocelin’s thwarted, convoluted, complex desires. Golding himself, who drafted this novel in an astonishing fourteen days, joked that he was going to call it “An Erection at Barchester.”  The young woman, Goody Pangall (her very name is significant)  who dies in childbirth has oft-mentioned red hair. Then there’s the “singing” of the stones and pillars in the wind as the building gains height.

It’s a densely, intensely written novel with much metaphysical meandering. It’s also strong on the physical level. Golding has extraordinary powers of observation and description: “Presently ropes began to hang down from the broken vault over the crossways, and stayed there swinging, as it the building sweating now with damp, inside as well as out, had began to grown some sort of gigantic moss” or “Her eyes were two black patches in her winter pallor.” It’s written in the third person but presented from Jocelin’s point of view.

He has a highly informed and very impressive grasp of architectural principles and mechanics too. From my first reading of this book back at college in the 1960s to revisiting it now, I emerged understanding a lot more than when I started, about structural octagons, capstones, supporting steel bands, wind resistance and the like. I also had to manage my own fear of heights because some of the description of experience at the top of the spire is vertiginously graphic.

And of course Jocelin, who believes passionately in miracles, gets the one he wanted. Salisbury Cathedral’s  spire is still pointing proudly (reverently?)  to the sky 700 years after it was built.

William Golding, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983. Although it was an honour conferred on, among others, Rudyard Kipling (1907) John Galsworthy (1932) and TS Eliot (1948) it is surprising just how few British writers have achieved this.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: The Faber Book of Christmas edited  by Simon Rae

 

Symphony Orchestra of India

Conductor Richard Farnes

Soloist Marat Bisengaliev

Fairfield Halls, Croydon

05 December 2023

John Williams’s The Imperial March from Star Wars is a good concert opener/warm up. Richard Farnes ensured that we got the measure of this fine orchestra immediately with all heavy down bow work and grand statements from the brass.

SOI was founded in 2006 by its chairman Khushroo N Suntook and tonight’s soloist violinist Marat Bisengaliev. Based in Mubai, it recruits from all over the world.  I went to the concert largely out of curiosity and I’m very glad I did because the quality was outstanding. And it’s interesting to see and hear, a band whose players are predominantly Indian, playing with a British conductor.

The Khachaturian Violin Concerto in D minor, written for David Oistrakh in 1940 was an intriguing choice and if there’s a stereotypical look for a violin virtuoso then Bisengaliev confounds it. Hunched and bespectacled in a comfy overshirt, he doesn’t go in for showy gestures. He just plays every note – and there are a lot of them – with insouciant accuracy and warmth. I particularly admired the bassoon and whispering violas in the second movement and the way the first violins shaped their notes at their entry before the solo muted line from Bisengaliev which was evocative and richly mysterious.

For his encore, Bisengaliev was joined at the front by a flautist from the orchestra with a wooden flute. Accompanied by the orchestra they played the very pretty The Wooing of Etain by Karl Jenkins – complete with elegantly delivered legato notes from the flute and gentle double stopped glissandi from the violin.

But the best bit came after the interval in the form of Tchaikovsky’s 6th symphony “The Pathetique”.  I have known and loved this most anguished of symphonies since I was a geeky teenager borrowing LPs from the library, but it’s a while since I heard a live performance. It is isn’t quite such a popular programme choice as it once was and I was faintly surprised that SOI chose it rather than something closer to home, but I’m delighted that they did because their performance was a sumptuous, rewarding treat. I suspect Richard Farnes loves it as much as I do because he certainly dug out the passion.

Highlights included the perfect balance between the pizzicato descending scales in the strings and the trombones at the end of the first movement. Then we lilted lovingly (beautiful playing from violas and cellos at every stage of this concert, by the way) into that strange 5|4 “waltz”  whose lopsided oddness, tuneful as it is still conveys unease.

The huge, manic Allegro molto vivace, which always fools half the audience into thinking it’s the end of the symphony, was played with an attractive combination of delicacy and strength. The rapid string sections were crisp and the cymbal clashes, perhaps my favourite moments in the whole work, suitably dramatic.

And so to that brooding, introspective concluding adagio into which Farnes moved swiftly to curtail the intrusive applause. The bassoon solo was arresting, the heart breaking main melody delivered with compelling emotion and Farnes really leaned on the general pauses which was effective. Happily, too, he managed to hold the silence at the end as the sound of the very quiet ending died away.

It is a great pity – and presumably disappointing for the orchestra – that the hall was barely a quarter full for this impressive and enjoyable concert. A lot of people missed something really quite special.

Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra

Sian Edwards, Joanna McGreggor, Ruth Rogers

Brighton Dome

03 December 2023

It was good to see the Dome fuller than usual for this concert and although it was a grown-up, not particularly crowd-pulling, programme, there were a number of families there with children.

It’s an interesting decision to put Arvo Pӓrt alongside Sibelius. Estonia, Pӓrt’s homeland, was part of the Soviet Union so he faced all the artistic problems of trying to keep on the right side of the regime – or not. Finland, struggled for independence earlier in the century with Sibelius as one of its most famous nationalists. So there are big differences and parallels. And yet, Helsinki and Tallin are only 55 miles apart across the Gulf of Finland.

The concert opened with Pӓrt’s Spiegel in Spiegel. It’s a duet played on radio so often that it’s very familiar but I hadn’t heard it live before. Ruth Rogers, MSO’s very competent and charismatic leader, gave us all those spell-binding, deceptively simple long legato notes while Joanna McGreggor played the bell-like piano part. The performance was both moving and attractive.

Arvo Part

Then Sian Edwards emerged from where she’d been seated behind the piano to conduct Lamentate also by Pӓrt. Dating from 2002 it’s a homage to Anish Kapoor and his sculpture Marsyas. Although it’s scored for piano and orchestra, it’s not in any sense a concerto. Rather, the piano is used as an additional pitch percussion  instrument (along with xylophone and glockenspiel)  across the piece’s ten short episodes.

There’s much wistful simplicity in the piece. I admired the silky string sound which BPO produced along with some excellent wind work. Edwards’s conducting style is, in some ways, reminiscent of Adrian Boult whom I saw live several times in my youth (although her baton is a lot shorter).  She beats time with impeccable clarity and steadiness while at the same time coaxing plenty of drama and colour from her players.

And so to Sibelius’s second symphony, lots of D major and reduced forces. The score requires no percussion except timps. Edwards gave us all the quivering intensity the opening needs and some nicely asserted brass statements. The string work was very clearly articulated and I really liked the control in the pianissimo ending. Then came the brooding angst of the andante with plenty of the rubato the composer stipulated. The third movement is a terrifying race but Edwards kept it under control. It’s hard to know what to do with the fourth movement. All those rits and returns to the nationalistic “big tune” can become cheesy. Edwards side-stepped that neatly by running with the climaxes but highlighting the dynamic contrasts and that worked well. Moreover I admired the woodwind work – especially bassoons and flutes – in the final pages and the crunchy chords from the brass at the end were a treat.

Jean Sibelius

Charlie Cook’s Favourite Book

3 stars

Little Angel Theatre

Co-produced by Little Angel Theatre and Lowry

Photo: Ellie Kurttz

This thoughtful musical adaptation of Julia Donaldson’s 2016 book is a homage to reading, stories and imaginative play. Inevitably most of its audience will be the converted who don’t need preaching to. I saw it with a reception class from a local school along with a handful of parents with their own children. What a pity we can’t drag everyone in the Department for Education in to see it not to mention the entire Cabinet – oh, and the Shadow Cabinet, while we’re about it.

Charlie (Pierre Hanson-Johnson) is a bookworm. His younger sister Izzy (Freya Stephenson) has decided reading is boring and is trying to drag him out of his chair to play. In the end he agrees to start with a story and with their sparky Mum (Georgie Samuels) they play a whole series of book-inspired, make believe games including pirates, ghosts, birds, bears, dragons and more. Puppets pop out of books and there’s a gorgeous full-sized crocodile who eats books and then pops apart so we can see all the titles inside him like a washing line. He also, almost literally, swallows an encyclopaedia.

Nearly all the puppetry is artfully devised from household goods – they row with soup ladles and a pair of blown-up rubber gloves become fish – and many of the “books” on the shelf have hidden mysteries within and that’s all part of the subliminal message.

Hanson-Johnson is playfully lithe and Stephenson gets wide-eyed child-like wonder and petulance perfectly. Samuels provides a contrast and convinces us she is old enough to be their mother and glad of a sit down and a snooze while her children play on. She has a striking, wide-ranging singing voice which comes out especially well when she’s puppeting an owl judging a birds’ nest competition.

Barb Jungr is, as always, very good at coming up with singable little melodies, usually based on simple triads which fit Donaldson’s words and/or the concepts in this play like jigsaw pieces.

This is, in short, a decent and worthwhile 55 minutes of colourful theatre for almost anyone under 8.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/charlie-cooks-favourite-book/

Aladdin

3 stars

Hackney Empire

Photo: Steve Gregson.

This competent show, bespoke for Hackney, ticks all the boxes for its local community. It takes us to a familiar place called Hack-ne-lah. And Clive Rowe has done so much panto in Hackney that he gets a welcoming round of applause he cycles on at his first entry preceded by his “cooeee” trademark.

The show is clean as a clothes peg. It’s billed as being true family entertainment and that’s what it delivers. There isn’t a remotely smutty line or a leer or a smirk and we’re even spared the otherwise ubiquitous, but very tedious, fart joke(s). Most of traditional elements are in but both slosh scene and ghost scenes are understated with a sense of something to be got through,

The orchestration is unusually generous. There’s a fine five-piece band, led by Alex Maynard, in the pit area which includes some saxophone work from Flick Isaac-Chiton. Winds are rare in a panto score and it adds some good depth to the overall sound.

Rowe, of course, is the star attraction, closely followed by the glittering, rubber-bodied Kat B, another Hackney regular, as the Genie of the Lamp. Rowe’s performance is admirably sharp especially when he’s ad-libbing. His comic timing is masterly, as is his knack for knowingly eyeing the audience. He isn’t much of a dancer, despite his neat feet, but he’s a strong singer – his high tenor, often soaring above the texture to pleasing dramatic effect.

 

 

Natasha Lewis does all the traditional cackling and mock-threatening as the dastardly Abby-na-zaaar!  However, she is an accomplished trombonist and much more could have been made of this rather than constantly joking about it and then giving us just one spot in Act 2 where she plays. The show misses a trick by underusing Lewis’s talent.

Amongst the rest of the cast – all doing decent enough jobs – Ruth Lynch stands out as the Fairy of the Ring. She gives us a faintly soppy fairy with a confidence problem – but a real talent for singing and dancing. It’s a nicely nuanced performance.

This show – on press night at least – is a jolly party for the people of Hackney with lots of audience participation and dance-from-your-seat at the end. It succeeds well on its own terms.

 

  • Photos: Steve Gregson

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/aladdin-19/

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Maidstone Symphony Orchestra

Brian Wright (Conductor)

Benjamin Baker (Violin)

Saturday 02 December 2023, Mote Hall, Maidstone

An all English programme with three works likely to be unfamiliar to most of the audience is a brave undertaking  but on the whole Brian Wright and the MSO carried it off with their usual aplomb.

At the heart of the evening was Lark Ascending, regularly voted by the British public its favourite piece of classical music. Violinist Baker presented Ralph Vaughan Williams’s evocative masterpiece as a substantial post-interval encore and he played it – his hands small and his fingers fascinatingly neat – with immaculate musical control. Yes, he, and we, really did soar and hover with the eponymous bird.

Baker’s pre-interval work was Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s G minor violin concerto – an unusual key for a violin concerto – and it was a warmly business-like performance starting with the grandiloquence of the opening movement with its flamboyant melodies. I admired the gentle lyricism in the andante, It’s very hard to achieve but Baker gave us a passionate song-like quality carefully supported by Wright delivering the instrumental detail in the muted accompaniment. The legato violin over the short wind notes in third movement was another rather lovely moment.

The concert had begun with Holst’s ballet music for The Perfect Fool and ended with Elgar’s Falstaff so theatrical reference was, in effect, a theme.

The Holst piece, which came  soon after The Planets, enjoys similar quirky orchestratation so there was plenty of opportunity for MSO players so show just how good they are from the trombone opening, to the bassoons grunting at the very bottom of their register. In the second dance, The Spirits of Water, the harp and flute moment was attractively balanced.

Elgar’s Falstaff is a musical exploration of the character of Shakespeare’s “Fat Jack” as he appears in the two Henry IV plays and Henry V in which he dies off stage. It’s a colourful episodic piece which required the return of full forces, including five percussionists. Those of us who know the plays well – from the bawdy comedy, to the cruel trickery and ultimately to the devastating rejection – can appreciate Elgar’s imaginative contrasts including whispering strings and wind interjection. It was all pretty accurately played here, with some delightful bassoon work although it’s a very challenging piece – Elgar is never straightforward –  and there was a feeling in places that the strings were working at the far edge of their ability. Nonetheless it was quite what an achievement for a community orchestra – another feather in MSO’s cap.

Photographs by Kaupo Kikkas

Show: The Toymaker’s Child

Society: Chickenshed

Venue: Rayne Theatre, Chickenshed, Chase Side, Southgate, London N14 4PE

Credits: Dave Carey and devised by Chickenshed Directed by Michael Bossisse, Bethany Hamlin, Cara McInanny & Jonny Morton.

The Toymaker’s Child

4 stars

 

Photo: Caz Dyer

Written Dave Carey and devised by Chickenshed. Directed by Michael Bossisse, Bethany Hamlin, Cara McInanny & Jonny Morton

Vibrance, energy, slickness, inclusion, passion and epic scale are just six of the components of Chickenshed’s distinctive style. And this new show is true to form  with four rotating ensemble casts of around 200 in each. I saw the Green Rota on press night with Beatrice Afhim as the eponymous child, Katy.

A very ingenious 2023 take on the Pinocchio story gives us the lonely daughter of a toymaker wishing for company. So, using an old computer chip he finds in a bin he creates a doll/toy/robot who has everything but feelings – so there’s a dramatic, colourful quest for them bringing in versions of  Carlo Collodi’s original tales such as the con-(wo)men cats, the fairground and the near drowning. And to make it feel even more current there’s continual intercutting of news flashes from Mike’s News in a box above and his reporter on the ground. Clever stuff, indeed.

Courtney Dayes is convincing as PIN:OCCh10, moving with robotic precision and speaking mechanically but relaxing into joyful humanity at the end. Beatrice finds a very plausible girlish knowing innocence in Katy, ricocheting from frightened child to sensible young adult and back as adolescents do. Cara McInanny and Demar Lambert have a ball as the absurdly excessive but highly entertaining feline villains and Will Lawrence delights as the Fun Fair MC, expert on roller skates. Ashley Driver, meanwhile is admirably slimy as the news anchor, Mike and Lauren Cambridge, whose character seems to be modelled on Janet Street Porter, gives a well observed and witty performance.

Best of all, though is the ensemble work – small children, some who are unconventionally “abled” and in need of discreet support, young adults and staff members work together in extraordinarily complex and well disciplined routines. And several members of the ensemble emerge to sing short solos.

One of the things I admire most about Chickenshed productions is the use of signing. It takes the concept of “integral” to a new level. In the first scene in the toymaker’s workshop, for example, there are wooden dolls lying about who sit up to sign what the speaking characters are saying. Every word spoken or sung is signed by one of the eight expertly fluent “augmentors” (as the programme calls them) who are also part of the action, dancing or interacting with each other. They are all good to watch but Shiloh Maersk is in a class of his own. He has unusual physical eloquence – watching him is like listening to an actor with an exceptionally beautiful voice.

Above stage left, and occasionally partly visible,  is the youth band, directed  by Phil Haines and the sound is terrific – rich, imaginative and accurate.

These shows always feature large sections of the ensemble forming different groups because they can be rehearsed in their specific scenes. At the end, though,  we see the entire cast on stage at once and, in The Toymaker’s Child, that’s the best moment of all. As always I walked back to Cockfosters station swallowing a lump in my throat.

People usually join Chickenshed in childhood because they want to do youth theatre. It is a huge testament to the unique Chickenshed ethos that so many of them then come to do their further and or higher education there. The staff, moreover, have predominantly come up through this route. So it really is like a family – a very warm and welcoming one. You sense it the moment you walk though the door of this one-off theatre company’s building.  Congratulations to all concerned on yet another powerful production.

 

  • Photos: Caz Dyer

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/the-toymakers-child/
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Odyssey: A Heroic Pantomime continues at the Jermyn Street Theatre, London until 31 December 2023.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Take five talented women, the best-known epic in European literature and two surreally inspired writers and it makes for a pretty good evening’s seasonal theatre although it’s a mystery to me why performers need radio mics in a space the size of Jermyn Street Theatre.

Odysseus has disappeared on his way home from Troy and the gods on Olympus want to help. So far, so Homer. Then we dance off into pantoland with lots (and lots) of Hermes delivery jokes, a gloriously inebriated Dionysus and a seafarer-type Poseidon.

It’s a gently feminist take on the Odyssey so Penelope (Emily Cairns, also good as a Barbie-style gor-blimey Aphrodite) proactively goes off to look for him, accompanied by her husband’s horse Trojan, who has an oft-mentioned gut problem.

Directed by co-writer John Savourin, this  …

Read the rest of this review at Musical Theatre Reivew: https://musicaltheatrereview.com/odyssey-a-heroic-pantomime-jermyn-street-theatre/