I wrote about John Agard’s new volume of poetry a few weeks ago and wouldn’t normally return to the same author so soon. But there was A Conversation.

My third granddaughter – aka GD3 – has just started secondary school. Obviously, because that’s the sort of tedious, tiresome grandmother I am, I asked her what she’s reading in English. And I was a bit taken aback, given my 36 years at the secondary chalk face, when she mentioned a book I’d never heard of. Because it is clearly different from anything she’s read before she was a bit guarded about how much she’s enjoying it. I, on the other hand, was immediately filled with curiosity and ordered it on my phone even while GD3 and I were still talking. And I think that pleased her because it showed that I’m not just time-filling with Granny-ish questions. I really am interested.

Published in 2014, My Name is Book is subtitled “An Autobiography as told to John Agard” and it does exactly what it says on the tin. Book recounts his/hers/its history from the days when stories were all oral before ways of recording words, thoughts, ideas and narratives evolved – perhaps among Sumerians or Egyptians – all the way down to screens and scrolling.

Agard has a delightfully insouciant knack (he’s a poet after all) of weaving together colourful stories and information. It had, for example, never occurred to me that scrolling is hardly new to readers – the Ancients read from scrolls and it’s what I do today on the Kindle App on my iPad. I didn’t know, either, that vellum was originally calfskin – note the etymological link with veal and, ultimately the Latin word vitula. I also discovered that the Greek word for papyrus was byblos – thus bibliophile etc. Gosh, I was in my element enjoying all this.

Often in books written for young readers (and this clearly was, because it’s published by Walker Books) the illustrations seem like a spurious add-on and contribute little or nothing. That is, emphatically, not the case with Neil Packer’s work here. His drawings, patterns, designs and diagrams are an essential part of My Name is Book from his silhouettes of various book-making plants down the millennia to his frames for quotes and evocative representation of a young lad in the first world war with a rifle in one hand and a book in the other.

It’s a fine choice for a year 7 class reader because it’s both entertaining and accessible, written in short chapters, sections, and standalone boxes. My favourite example of the latter is “If anyone steal this book, let him die the death. Let him be fried in the pan. Let the falling sickness and fever seize him.Let him be broken on the wheel and hanged. Amen” which is an inscription in a twelfth century Bible.

I used to love teaching Year 7 because they’re so fresh and keen. I’d have found something exciting and intriguing to discuss on every page of this book as I hope GD3’s teacher is – and joyfully leading her students into a lifelong love affair with books and writing.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen

Venue: Half Moon Theatre. 43 White Horse Road, Greater, London E1 0ND

Credits: By Elayne Ogbeta. Co-produced by Half Moon and Z-arts. Suitable for ages 4+

Type: Sardines

Grandad Anansi 4 stars

All photos: Lizzie Henshaw

Elayne Ogbeta’s warm, pleasing and thoughtful show for ages 4-9 manages to pack in more layers than a good strudel.

Predicated partly on Black History Month it presents Grandad (Marcus Hercules) and his primary school age granddaughter, Abi (Jazmine Wilkinson) in his garden. Like everything else in this show, the garden designed by Sorcha Corcoran, is beautiful with lots of colour, light and plants that Grandad knows by name and talks to. One of the many layers in this show is botanical with words like “perennial” casually thrown in.

Story telling, and its extraordinary power, is at the centre of the piece because Grandad and Abi, who really love each other, are bonded by the Anansi stories which they share and act out, improvising with items lying about in the garden – with lots of humour and pleasure. Another theme is migration because Grandad has come, originally, from Jamaica and hankers for its sound, sunshine, smells and colour. He is planning to return but struggles to tell Abi this so the play is also about loss, change and letting go.

Hercules brings a certain venerability to Grandad although he’s also lithe and lively especially when Abi is teaching him to dance. This is a good actor playing decades above his actual age but none of the children in the rapt school groups I saw it with will have noticed. And his colourful costume (designed by Zoey Barnes) is a delight.

Wilkinson’s performance is strong and convincing too. She has all the gestures, mannerisms and body language of a 9 year old but also segues effortlessly into Jamaican Patois for the telling of the Anansi stories which are verse so they flow along. There is also music by Tayo Akinbode and parts of the stories are sung.

And as for the title, the conceit is that Grandad is himself just like the clever, mischievous part-man, part-spider Anansi. He’s certainly charismatic in Hercules’s hands and of course Abi and her mum will be able to visit him in his new home. “It’s only a plane ride away” as he tells her.

This show is touring nationwide until 30 October

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/grandad-anansi/

Photos: Lizzie Henshaw

The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore

Venue: Charing Cross Theatre. The Arches, Villiers Street, London WC2N 6NL

Credits: By Tennessee Williams. Presented by Charing Cross Theatre Productions Limited

The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore

3 stars

Photo: Nick Haeffner

Tennessee Williams’ 1963 play about a difficult, wealthy, dying woman and a poet who makes a habit of visiting such women and “overseeing” their end, doesn’t get many outings. So this revival is an interesting project.

There are, however, problems. While there’s some faultless acting, of which more shortly, it’s a very wordy play and the pace is slow. Moreover, Director Robert Chevara and his team have elected to set this sixty-year-old play “in the present” so we get lots of mobile phones, and mentions of credit cards. On the other hand there are distracting inconsistencies such as much stage business with cigarettes and references to Truman Capote and Gore Vidal as though they were still alive. It feels like a play which can’t quite work out where it is.

We’re on the Amalfi Coast where insufferable Flora Goforth (Linda Marlowe), an American married four times, is writing her memoirs with the help of her long suffering but assertive secretary, Blackie (Lucie Shorthouse – excellent). After a slightly nervous start on press night Marlowe plays this huge role with plenty of flair packing in imperiousness, vulnerability, sexual longing, self delusion, self importance and many rapid mood changes.

As Chris Flanders, the poet who turns up, is attacked by her dogs and her body guard (Joe Ferrera) but eventually is invited to stay, Sanee Raval is convincing. It’s a nuanced interpretation of a complex character. He isn’t just looking for dying people to exploit. At some level he genuinely wants to help although he’s also an opportunist. Raval makes him charismatic enough to be credible.

Sara Kestelan, clad in floaty scarlet with a wonderful turban, is a show stealer as Mrs Goforth’s “friend”. Actually she’s a very bitchy manipululor. Kestelman, who has a good way with sneers and put-downs, makes her very funny – in a chilling sort of way.

There’s also some nice work from young actor, Matteo Johnson as Rudy – a sort of man-of-all-work in Mrs Goforth’s household, protesting in Italian while trying to keep on the right side of everyone.

The play is said to have been partly a response to the death of Williams’s long term lover, Frank Merlo. It certainly raises and discusses questions about death and acceptance or denial of its inevitability but there are some strange strands which don’t add much – such as the emphasis on the isolation of Mrs Goforth’s house up a mountain and the guarding of it by dogs. There are also subplots crying out to be developed. I’d dearly like to know more about Blackie’s back story, for instance.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/the-milk-train-doesnt-stop-here-anymore/

The best short stories are quirky and – in a volume which is new to my bookshelves – Stewart Ross’s lockdown project hits all the right notes.

These ten stories fit neither the ghost or the horror genre. They are, as the title suggests, simply sinister – left of field. Ross is too intelligent and knowledgeable a writer to have picked that adjective casually. And the stories owe much more to Roald Dahl, than to, say, MR James.

I loved Pixels, for instance, in which a man with “fingers like tinned asparagus” has probably murdered his wife. Comeuppance comes in strange forms and Ross has made a fine job, well observed job of the role of gossip and rumour in small town communities.

The title story The Hologram – very entertaining – takes us to a grand house being opened to the public with advanced, futuristic technology to present images of the past. Of course it doesn’t quite pan out as planned.

Or what about the orphaned boy who finds the sexual passion – overt lust – of his grandparents utterly repugnant or the church warden with a DSO writing to his bishop about pyromania – which may be connected with the installation of a new heat pump? On the other hand the grave of Lucie Fernandez is in the churchyard and the first three syllables of her name could be significant.

Ross is an experienced writer of fiction and non fiction for young readers but this book is strictly for adults. The stories are tightly told and satisfyingly full of people getting their just deserts – you just know that the irreverent young archeologist who urinates on the face of Beelzebub in Egypt won’t last much longer, for instance.

Buy a digital download and take it on a boring train journey.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: My Name is Book by John Agard

Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra Brighton Dome 2 October 2022

Posted on October 3, 2022

Featuring a programme of American classics, the first concert of the new Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra season was pretty lively. Each half began, for instance with a fanfare – Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man at the beginning and Joan Tower’s witty 1986 response, Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, after the interval. Both were played with panache and drama and allowed brass and percussion sections a few minutes of glory.

Then came a fine performance of Copland’s Appalachian Spring which, under Sian Edwards’s no-nonsense baton, really pointed up the contrasts in this colourfully orchestrated piece with Ruth Rogers’s violin solo being a high spot. And Edwards really ran with that rather magical moment when the Shaker tune breaks through with a delightful trombone solo from William Brown who, incidentally, drew my attention several times during this concert to which he contributed lots of excellent work.

The high spot of the afternoon, though was an exceptionally joyful performance of Rhapsody in Blue (the Grofe version) with BPO’s artistic director, Joanna MacGregor at the keyboard. I’m not usually a fan of being talked at during concerts but MacGregor and Edwards are such personable, informative communicators, even when they’re not making music, that it was a bonus to hear their thoughts during the moving of the piano to front stage.

Fiona Cross’s opening trill was as sexily played – with lots of rubato – as I’ve ever heard it. And MacGregor delivered what she had just told the audience was really a series of cadenzas which otherwise required her to retreat into the big orchestra texture, with palpable enjoyment and incisive warmth. For most of the piece she seemed to be almost literally dancing on her piano stool. Then, as if that weren’t enough she gave us a high speed, show-piece arrangement of I’ve Got Rhythm as an encore – great fun and her technical ability leaves you breathless.

In Copland’s much less familiar Quiet City, in the second half, there was sensitive duetting from solists John Ellwood on Trumpet and Clare Hoskins on cor anglais. Notheless, it’s a dull-ish piece, scored for strings and horns only and felt like a filler before the grand finale: Catfish Row: Symphonic Suite from Porgy and Bess.

Of course the latter was dramatic. It’s effectively a five movement symphony telling the entire story of Porgy and Bess – with a gloriously big orchestral sound. MacGregor was, this time, tucked away on piano at the back next to percussionist Donna-Maria Landowski who worked hard and with terrific precision throughout this concert – The piece is characterisied by quirky solos, including a lovely louche introduction to the Summertime tune from Ruth Rogers, Peter Adams with an eloquent cello solo and – joy of quirky joys – a deliciously tuneful banjo solo from Martin Wheatley.

Definitely a concert which sent you away with a spring in your step and a head full of earworms. I was pleased to see a fuller house than sometimes and glad to spot a number of children in the audience. Two boys behind me, around seven and five. brought by their parents who were clearly musicians, seemed to be at their first concert – lots of explaining beforehand about how it all works. They sat quietly engrossed. Hurrah.

https://www.larkreviews.co.uk/?p=6941

The King of Nothing – Little Angel Theatre

by Admin on Monday, 3 October, 2022 in Onstage, Review

Picture: Ellie Kurttz

The King of Nothing continues at the Little Angel Theatre, London.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Ben Glasstone’s account of The Emperor Who Has No Clothes is full of charm and wit. And it works well for two main reasons. First it is one of the most perceptive stories ever written, dealing as it does with vanity, self delusion, conformity and truth. It’s both topical and timeless.

Second, we have a cost of living crisis and the gap between rich and poor is neatly pointed up in this show. Funny and entertaining as it is, there are some serious points just below the surface which some children will go away reflecting on …

Read the rest of this review at Musical Theatre Review: https://musicaltheatrereview.com/the-king-of-nothing-little-angel-theatre/

Show: Candlesticks

Society: London (professional shows)

Venue: The White Bear Theatre. 138 Kennington Park Road, London SE11 4DJ

Credits: By Deborah Freeman

Candlesticks

3 stars

Deborah Freeman’s four-hander play is an interesting exploration of what it means to be Jewish or Christian in 21st Century Britain and it sits quite happily in the White Bear’s intimate square space with audience on two sides.

Jenny (Sophie McMahon) has come home for Seder and it’s the first time she’s seen her mother (Mary Tillett) for several years. Her announcement that she’s become a Christian is a bombshell. Her mother Louise, it transpires, has very little doctrinal belief although she’s a political supporter of her fellow Jews and enjoys the traditional celebrations. Her daughter’s heartfelt, Christian evangelism and enthusiasm for forgiveness is therefore hard to take.

Next door is the non-Jewish Julia (Kathryn Worth) who doesn’t believe in anything. She’s a single mother and her son Ian (James Duddy). Ian and Jenny have been friends since infancy and the relationship shows signs of developing into something else – until Ian drops his own bombshell and the dynamic shifts.

And we’re left pondering the difference between cultural alignment and religious conviction especially when two young people want, in the opinion of their parents “to put the clock back a hundred years”. Meanwhile, these same young people argue that we live in “a world where we’re all mixed up” which means there’s no need for all this friction.

So it’s a play of ideas. And for the most part it takes the audience along with it without too much didactic information sharing. In places the plot creaks with unanswered questions though. What exactly did Ian do in his teens to worry his mother so much? Louise’s job is a bit vague too. She gives every sign that she’s a teacher and then announces she’s a social worker. And although Jenny’s father is clearly around he is mentioned oddly little. There are a couple of soliloquies which seem jarringly false too.

Possibly because there were press night nerves the first act was a bit wooden and often unconvincingly acted. It warmed up after the interval, however, when we see real distress and tension and there’s a fine scene with Jenny and Ian in which she finally accepts that her life isn’t going to be quite what she’s hoped.

All photos: Lidia Crisafulli

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

Venue: Chichester Festival Theatre. Oaklands Way, Chichester PO19 6AP

Credits: Alan Ayckbourn

Type: Sardines

Woman in Mind 4 stars

We tend to associate Alan Ayckbourn with comedy but, as every reader of Sardines knows, his work is much more nuanced than that. Woman in Mind, which he wrote in 1985, as a young playwright, is actually a searing tragedy whose many comic moments only highlight the plight of the central character.

Susan (Jenna Russell) is a middle class, middle-aged vicar’s wife losing her mind. Perhaps it’s the result of a knock on the head. Or it may be a severe menopause or early onset Alzheimer’s. The reason doesn’t matter much. What we’re watching is a mind being taken over by dementia.

Her delusions take the form of re-enactions of the life she, at some level, wishes she’d had: a grand country home, maybe even an estate, a loving daughter (Flora Higgins) a dishy very caring husband (Marc Elliott), a dashing younger brother (Orlando James) and a glittering career in her own right.

What she actually has – and Mark Henderson’s lighting and Simon Barker’s video design complete with flying birds make us acutely aware of the difference – is an overbearing, boorish, boring, bossy sexless husband (Nigel Lindsay in excellent form) and a small garden. Their son Rick (Will Attenborough) has attached himself to a silent sect in Hemel Hempstead but comes home and upsets his mother still further during the course of the play.

Russell finds a lot of eloquent silence as Susan gazing into the distance, clearly desperately unhappy and barking cynical remarks at those around her – between her delusional episodes. It’s a challenging but very meaty role and Russell is good at switching mood as suddenly she sees her other life or aspects of it. Her final scenes when, soaked to the skin by rain, she falls apart completely – and, in a bizarre muddled-mind sequence – conjures up entwined, distorted versions of both her lives are almost unbearably moving. Anyone who has lived with loss of mind at close quarters, as I have, will identify with the horror of watching someone disappear into a world of their own while onlookers, rooted in their own version of reality, have no idea what is going on.

Matthew Cottle turns in a fine performance as Bill, the kindly but slightly dotty local doctor who tries to help Susan but is out of his depth. And there’s lovely work from Stephanie Jacob as the lumpy sister-in-law galumphing round the stage and producing inedible food and undrinkable beverages.

Yes, this is a production which will make you laugh. A lot. It is also likely to make you cry.