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Susan’s Bookshelves: Unofficial Britain by Gareth E Rees

One of my self-imposed Susan’s Bookshelves briefs is to keep it as eclectic as possible. So if something a bit quirky comes my way, I’m delighted. And this book is certainly original. Gareth E Rees makes a fascinating quasi-touristic exploration of functional things we normally write off, or don’t notice: road junctions, car parks, motorways, retail parks, hospitals and the M6, among other things.

I’ve driven through Gravelly Hill (“Spaghetti Junction”) many times but have never thought about what might lie at the bottom of it – possibly because I’m concentrating on being in the right lane for the bit of the intersection I need. Rees has been down there to explore and likens it to a mythical underworld. The detritus, the canal, the homeless people and the dog walkers create a sort of alternative world to the pounding noise of the cars above.

One of his main arguments is that history is ongoing. Any site we look at now has had different usage in the past so it’s a  historical interweaving when, for instance, a retail park is built on the site of a factory which replaced another factory on the site of an old monastery. No wonder so many of these places have strong ghost traditions attached to them and Rees is good at ferreting out these stories and evoking  creepy uncertainty. “The past” he observes, “is never absolutely destroyed but recycled into mutant strains. It seeps into the atmosphere of a place and takes on new guises to give us goose-bumps and chills.”

For myself I’m a bit chary of almost empty multi-storey car parks at night when I’ve been to a show and mine is the only car in sight. I just hope there won’t be a mugger lurking behind a pillar. Rees regards them as concrete castles full of mystery, ghosts or sometimes squatters. The atmosphere is distinctive. It isn’t surprising, he says, that they so often form the backdrop for violence in crime drama. Sometimes, though, they can be repurposed when no longer needed. He mentions, for instance the one in Peckham which has been developed into a performing arts space.

Or what about hospitals? We associate them with birth, death and illness and only experience them when we, or someone close to us, needs hospital services. How does a hospital look and feel if you go there and look at it objectively without any emotional baggage? That’s what Gareth does and manages to avoid being accosted for unauthorised corridor wandering.

It’s a warmly reflective book which has certainly made me think afresh about the harsher aspects of our built environment. And his prose is to die for. Take this definition: “A motorway is a channel of repressed rage, jealousy and social politics, expressed in a ballet of metal machines moving at lethal speeds.”

Dating from 2020, Unofficial Britain whose title continues ”journeys through unexplored places” is effectively a travel book. Rees has been all over the UK with his notebook and it’s a treat to read something so unlike anything else. I shall see those service stations on the M6 very differently now.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Wifedom by Anna Funder

Venue: Jack Studio Theatre. 410 Brockley Road, London SE4 2DH

Credits: By Aimee Walker-Reid. Presented by Kefi Theatre. Directed by George Rowland.

KINDRED

3 stars

This 65-minute two-hander is, among other things, a study of family relationships (the clue is in the title) and, more centrally, an exposition of the severe mental health problems which can ensue when kinship doesn’t go well.

Matt (Finlay Vane Last) has, and has always had, a  difficult relationship with his family, especially his mother, which has left him agoraphobic and prone to panic attacks. Now that his father has died, things are worse – not least when he discovers that he has been cut out of the will on grounds of mental instability.

The funeral is at the beginning of the week in which he is to marry his live-in girl friend, Lois (Aimee Walker-Reid) so tensions are running high. We see two strong performances with actors playing well off each other in all moods. There’s some pretty powerful abuse shouting towards the end.

Living with Matt is difficult. He isn’t working. The flat is “shit” (they say) and that’s rather neatly connoted in Tamara Walker-Reid’s set which includes randomly suspended objects such as a toaster, an ironing board and a spilled pot plant. He is meant to be taking pills to ease his condition but is in denial about his need for them. And, we realise towards the end of the play that he is irrationally hiding things as well as drinking too much. He is, moreover, unhealthily obsessed with news and newspapers.

Lois tries hard to be patient with him and ricochets between sympathetic kindness and relentless fury. In general it’s a well observed bit of relationship dynamics as we work through her having to speak at her sister’s divorce party and a wedding rehearsal dinner during the week which also includes Lois going to her regular art class and out to work.

The device of having a wall calendar from which they tear sheets to mark the passing days as the week progresses is simple but effective until  it includes flashbacks to their first meeting and then it becomes confusing.

The play itself is bumpy, mixing as it does funeral blues, pre-wedding nerves and implausible off-stage violence. Is it really likely that a mother would punch her own son in the face at his father’s funeral? These purport to be sensible, educated people, not drunken thugs.

Moreover, I was expecting Lois to lose patience and call the wedding off but maybe that would have been too obvious. As it is the ending is unsatisfactorily obfuscatory – in short a bit of a cop out.

 

First published by Sardines https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/kindred/

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THE GOOD JOHN PROCTOR
3 stars

Part of Jermyn Street’s Footprints season, The Good John Proctor is a thoughtful, powerfully acted and imaginatively directed (Anna Ryder) prequel to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. It did well in New York and this is the first time Monahon’s play has been seen in the UK.

It’s an interesting idea but my reservation is that if you don’t know The Crucible  – or haven’t read up on the well documented history of the late 17th century Salem witch hunts and executions –  you won’t have a clue what was going on. It was all right for me. I used to teach The Crucible to GCSE classes but otherwise …

Abigail Williams (Anna Fordham) and her younger cousin Betty Parris (Sabina Wu) are at the heart of this story, living as they do with Betty’s parents. Mercy Lewis (Amber Sylvia Edwards) , a bit older and a real stirrer, often drops in and later Mary Warren who at 18 is the oldest of the four, moves to Salem and gets to know the others.

There’s much giggling and frightening each other with stories of witches and possession along with Abigail’s first period and much fear, naivity and egging each other on  – all accompanied by Bella Kear’s rather effective, creepy sound track which seems to be all round Jermyn Street’s tiny auditorium.  Then Abigail gets a job and we can see that she’s rapidly developing an inappropriate relationship with her boss – this, of course, is the titular John Proctor but you need to know your Arthur Miller to realise that. Eventually the girls swim naked or partly so in the wood and are spotted indulging in “Satanic” behaviour.  And Abigail has been sacked by Proctor’s wife so she gets her own back by testifying against them – but you have to infer that. The prologue in which Betty, Mercy and Mary look back years later is a good narrative idea but you still have to do a lot of deducing.

Fordham’s Abigail is domineering yet vulnerable and you can almost see the adolescent hormones kicking in. It’s a strong performance. The hint that Abigail is pregnant is not satisfactorily developed, though. Wu is delightful as Betty – childish but sometimes knowing. She has a real talent for visible listening and reacting too. Edwards makes Mercy a knowing – but ignorant – young woman who uses language that would get her whipped if grown ups heard her and her acting is totally convincing. Mary is an otherworldly woman who has fits and long dreamy thoughts. Larson is well cast in the role. And the four actors work pleasingly together.

It’s an entertaining 100 minutes of uninterrupted theatre but it doesn’t work as a standalone so it’s not exactly inclusive.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/the-good-john-proctor/

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I read eclectically. And I always told my students that and advised them to do likewise. We all need variety and we all read at different levels. There is nothing wrong with “accessible”. No one can (or should) read, say, Henry Fielding or Wordsworth to exclusion of all else. On the other hand a literary diet restricted to, say,  Jilly Cooper (congratulations Dame Jilly) or Wilbur Smith wouldn’t be good for one’s brain either.   So I dot about, although as regular readers will have long since noticed, personal taste generally keeps me away from horror, fantasy and ghosts.

The Widows’ Wine Club (2023) is about three women who’ve husbands have recently died – and of course I can personally identify with that “Now what?” feeling. Been there. Done that. They are different sorts but, having met more or less by chance, they become firm friends. It’s engaging and entertaining. All three women, Viv, Zelda and Janet are nicely drawn people that one would be glad to have in one’s own friendship circle as we gradually learn more about their marriages, families and outlook.

This is Julia Jarman’s first adult novel although she has written many titles for children of all ages which is why her name was familiar to me. I suspect she dislikes categorisation and labels as much as I do so I refuse to describe this book as “rom com” or “chick lit”. And as for the publisher describing (condemning?) it as “golden years women’s fiction” –  ugh.  Rather, it’s a rich celebration of friendship, often quite funny and a good choice to curl up on the sofa with on a winter’s afternoon.

When Zelda – a mixed race hairdresser whose unknown father was a wartime GI – meets an online date in a pub, Viv creeps in to rescue her if necessary. Viv is a professional landscape and jobbing gardener living in a lovely arty house that she can’t afford to stay in.  Janet, on the other hand, is the crisp widow of a standoffish bank manager who was also a womaniser, although she doesn’t discover that until after his death.

The big question is do they want new relationships? Zelda definitely does. The others are less sure – until Janet gets close to a wealthy and gallantly fancy-able widow from church and Viv, while she’s away on a course, sees a man in a museum who reminds her of someone … Into this mix are blended many misunderstandings, uncomprehending adult children, very elderly manipulative parents, illness, a bit of gentle sex, some far-fetched coincidences and  lots of wine.

I enjoyed spending time with these women and I like Jarman’s slightly quirky style. It’s a third person novel from three viewpoints so that we get chapter headings each with one of their names and then spend time seeing/experiencing/doing thing with whichever one it is and of course, at times, it overlaps.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Unofficial Britain by Gareth E Rees  

Alan Turing: A Musical Biography – Riverside Studios

Picture: Gabriel Bush

Alan Turing: A Musical Biography continues at the Riverside Studios, London.

Star rating: two stars ★ ★ ✩ ✩ ✩

We all know what happened to Alan Turing. He cracked the Enigma Code during the Second World War, invented the computer, was shamefully treated by the British Government because of his homosexuality and died by suicide in 1954. And sadly, this rather lacklustre, very predictable, little two-hander musical doesn’t add much to that.

The music (Joel Goodman and Jan Osborne) is unmemorable and because it’s not live Joe Bishop (Turing) and Zara Cooke (all the female roles) aren’t always accurate in their entries. There is, however, some pleasing harmony singing.

Bishop is suitably serious and troubled as Turing although I was unconvinced by the ongoing Snow White/poisoned apple theme which …

To read the rest of this review go to: https://musicaltheatrereview.com/alan-turing-a-musical-biography-riverside-studios/

Show: Lucky Stiff

Society: Festival Players

Venue: ADC Theatre, Park Street, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB5 8AS

Credits: Book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens .Music by Stephen Flaherty. Directed by Matt Wilkinson. Performed by Festival Players

Lucky Stiff

4 stars

I knew nothing whatever about this show which opened off-Broadway in 1988. It’s an absurdist musical comedy which is part-farce, part-whodunnit and very funny in the hands of this accomplished cast of ten and their imaginative director, Matt Wilkinson. But it’s not just a romp. Comedy only works if it’s underpinned by emotional truth and that’s there too.

Harry (Oliver Oxley) is a shoe salesman in East Grinsted and life is pretty banal. Then an American uncle he’s never met dies in the US and leaves him $6 million – but the condition is that he take the dead man’s corpse on an adventurous holiday in Europe and elsewhere. Otherwise the money goes to a dog charity in Brooklyn. Did I mention absurdism? It’s one of those narratives which mean that by the interval one has no idea where it could possibly go apart from the growing chemistry between Harry and the dog charity rep (Catriona Clarke) who’s only ever a few steps behind him.  In the event there’s an enjoyably unexpected plot twist in the second half.

The ensemble numbers are spikily slick with a lot of very neatly coordinated movement work. This is Frances Sayer’s debut as a choreographer and she has done an excellent job with a cast who are evidently very receptive.

Oxley, whose character is on a richly developmental journey, is a convincing actor and his singing is good especially in his second half, very lyrical duet in harmony with Clarke whose intense, humourless Annabel Glick is a delight. Everyone in this cast is strong and there’s a powerful sense of team work but Tony Hendon who mostly plays a corpse in a wheelchair which flops at apposite (or inapposite) moments does particularly well.

The diction in this show is outstanding. Yes, there are a lot of silly accents (Harry takes the titular “stiff”to Monte Carlo) but every one of Ahrens’s words, whether sung or spoken, is enunciated with clarity and that’s rare, even in a professional show. These people have day jobs and do this for love, so the quality of their voice work is especially impressive.

All this takes place on a simple set comprising three narrow revolving screens behind which James Harvey’s excellent five piece band sits upstage. The screens are swivelled manually by the cast who also push on and off other set items such as a hotel bed. It works seamlessly as it must if a farce is to come off.

I was seated next to the Noda rep.  I hope he enjoyed and admired this show as much as I did and that it gets an appropriate commendation.

First published by Sardines https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/lucky-stiff-4/

 

Show: The Sex Life of Puppets

Society: London (professional shows)

Venue: Southwark Playhouse. 77-85 Newington Causeway, London SE1 6BD

Credits: Written and directed by Mark Down and Ben Keaton. Presented by Blind Summit Theatre

Type: Sardines

Author: Susan Elkin

Performance Date: 05/01/2024

The Sex Life of Puppets

Susan Elkin | 08 Jan 2024 00:21am

Photo: Nigel Bewley

Take four fine puppeteers, wonderfully evocative puppets by Russell Dean and some of the most wittily astute writing I’ve heard in a while (Mark Down and Ben Keaton) and you’re in for a bit of treat.

The backbone of this show is a series of interviews with people – sorry, puppets – sitting on he edge of a table and talking. And it’s sex they’re talking about, mostly with a well observed witty poignancy. There’s the middle class pair who are having a Wednesday affair in which everything is “fun”, a rather more gor-blimey pair of lesbians whose vaginas are like mirrors talking to one another, the elderly gay men in a care home where blow jobs are the best they’ve ever known because you can take your teeth out and the older woman who’s tired of her husband’s “pumping and pumping” on top of her on Friday nights and longs for single beds – and her vibrator. And those are just examples. There are more. The show consists of a series of scenes.

The joke, of course, is that these things – even in 2024 – tend not to be chatted casually about in ordinary conversation and all these characters talk without inhibition. Moreover they are situations we all recognise. Eventually one couple actually have se

x in full view and it’s very funny indeed especially when the puppet barks at the puppeteer “get my legs” because they’re hanging off the table.

The four puppeteers – three men and a woman – provide fabulous, versatile voice work for the puppets with beautifully judged timing. Part of the skill is to let the puppets talk through movement so there are gaps in the speech and these operators are very good at that. Of course they’re exaggerated for comic effect but every one of these characters and types is recognisable.

Less successful is a shadow puppet sequence at the end of the first half which graphically shows every possible sort of penetration. It’s ingenious but nothing like as interesting as the interviews. I’m not sure what the naked puppet orgy to Widor’s Toccata and Fugue adds at the very end either. It’s amusing because it’s manic and unlikely but it goes on too long. I can see though that you need some sort of dramatic ending to a show like this but this solution did nothing for me. Neither of these scenes detracted much from the overall effectiveness of the show, though

A few years ago, Little Angel Theatre, which specialises in puppetry and children’s shows, ran a festival of work for adults. The shows I saw then were obscure and dull and I concluded that maybe puppetry doesn’t work for adults. The Sex Life of Puppets proves that I was wrong. It can work very well.

This is a refreshingly original, very funny show.

First published by Sardines https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/the-sex-life-of-puppets/

 

  • Photos: Nigel Bewley

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Michael Faber’s 2014 novel was recommended to me by a relation who is both a deeply committed Christian and an academic theologian. He is also a keen reader and he and I often talk about books. Dystopia is more his thing than mine but we have a fair amount of common ground.

I have read Michael Faber before but he is impossible to categorise. The Crimson Petal and the White (2002)  and Under the Skin (2000)  are very different from The Book of Strange New Things.

Peter Leigh is Christian pastor who is sent to a remote planet called Oasis with a brief to bring Christianity to the inhabitants. It means being parted from his beloved wife Bea who is also an evangelical Christian. On arrival he finds himself living in a reasonably comfortable base (think life on an oil rig or a working arctic camp except that it’s invasively humid) and spending blocks of time with the Oasans who are an hour’s drive away in a quasi reserve. They don’t actually need converting because a mysterious man named Kurtzberg has done the spadework before disappearing. Yes, we’re in Heart of Darkness territory, with a whiff, maybe, of CS Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet.

Meanwhile, despite being able to communicate via a satellite system called “the shoot” – and whole sections of ths novel are epistolary – the relationship between Peter and Bea begins to fray and then to unravel. Terrible things including natural disasters, war, political corruption and rapidly deteriorating infrastructure, are happening on earth. Peter is billions of miles away trying to build a church, learn a new language, help troubled people and, crucially, deal with his own sexual yearning. Neither is able to empathise with the other.

The Christianity in this novel is presented in such detailed accuracy that for some time I assumed that Faber must be a fervent believer. So I researched him. He is, to my surprise, a self-avowed atheist but he grew up in an evangelical Christian environment. Well yes, this is certainly a writer who fully understands the Christian mindset from the inside. Peter quotes the Bible continually and is creating an abridged version for the Oasan’s who struggle to proounce ‘s’ and ‘t’.

It’s a strong, thought provoking read although I couldn’t quite believe decent, mild-mannered Peter’s back story. Still only 33 he is a convert from a dreadful life of drugs, alcoholism and crime which doesn’t ring true to me. He hasn’t had time for all that dissolute living followed by a massive turnaround which has led to his appointment as a pastor, now with several years of experience under his belt.

The Book of Strange New Things (the title is the Oasans’ name for The Bible) is a long novel. For most of the 550 pages I wondered how on earth (or Oasis) he was going to end it. In fact Faber has clearly wondered that too because the ending is a rather disappointing, open-ended cop out.

The decision to use an invented character system (at a glance a bit like reduced Chinese) system for Oasan pronunciation and language is probably a Marmite issue. When the book was first published some critics thought this a clever idea. I simply found it irritating although it does serve to remind us that the Oasans are certainly not speaking standard English.

Nonetheless I liked it over all. There’s some fine characterisation such as Grainger, the pharmacist with horrors in her earthly background, who provides medication to all who need it and fascinates Peter, for example. Even the beloved cat Joshua, left with Bea and a mini tragedy in his own right, is delightfully depicted.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves The Widows’ Wine Club by Julia Jarman