I prepared this talk for Bromley u3a Theatre Group in February 2022. A number of people seemed interested when I mentioned it on Twitter etc so I’m sharing the text here for general interest. Of course, I’m willing to do talks for other groups too. Message me if you want to follow that up.

Susan

The Merchant of Venice: An anti-Semitic play or a play about anti-Semitism?

We think that The Merchant of Venice was written between 1596 and 1599 – in the twilight years of Elizabeth’s reign. It was printed in 1600 and so had, one assumes, already been performed by then. The first performance of which reliable records survive was at the Court of King James in the spring of 1605 by which time the new king had arrived from Scotland and been on the throne for two stormy years – the Gunpowder Plot came close to undoing him in the November of 1605. So we are talking about a period of great change as the 16^th century gave way to the 17^th and Tudors gave way to the Stuarts.

So let’s remind ourselves what happens in this play for anyone who hasn’t read or seen it lately. Antonio, the titular Merchant, borrows 3,000 ducats from a Jewish money lender, Shylock, in order to bankroll a friend in need. The (arguably jokey) deal is that if he defaults, Shylock will be able to claim a pound of Antonio’s flesh. Inevitably Antonio’s ships, and the fortune which depends on them, do not come in on time and Shylock gets his knife out. Then follows the famous court scene which ends in Shylock’s downfall. All this is closely bound up with Antonio’s friend Bassanio who needs money to marry a wealthy heiress (yes – that’s always seemed odd to me too) and the elopement of Shylock’s daughter, Jessica with a Christian.

Every character in this play, except Shylock’s friend Tubal and even he doesn’t come out of it well, is what we would now call strongly anti-Semitic. They all – even his own daughter – loathe Shylock for what he is. The big – and most interesting question – is does Shakespeare loathe him too? I think not.

Our greatest playwright was a lot more nuanced than that. After all he makes Shylock say:

`Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us shall we not laugh? If you poison us shall we not die?”

… which is a pretty strong plea for what we would now call racial equality.

On the other hand Shakespeare probably didn’t know many – or any – Jews personally. The 2000 or so Jews who were living in England in the 13^th century were exiled by Royal Decree issued by Edward 1 in 1290. Not until Oliver Cromwell changed the law in 1656 were Jews permitted to live, and freely practise their faith in England – and that was 40 years after Shakespeare’s death.

As far as we know, Shakespeare never went abroad either but there’s always the mystery of the 7 lost years. Shakespeare’s presence is recorded at the baptism of his twins in Stratford in 1585. He then disappears from all forms of historical record until he turns up in London as a jobbing playwright in 1592. Where did he go and what was he doing? We shall probably never know. Some scholars argue that he might have gone abroad and served as a mercenary- which would explain his in-depth understanding of soldiers, armies and battles. Perhaps he passed through Venice – where the original Jewish ghetto was. Maybe he met some Jews. Or maybe he was just holed up quietly in some garret in, say, Staines or Chelmsford – or Bromley! – reading books about all the places and situations he later wrote about.

Of course, Shylock is no paragon but I think like another of Shakepeare’s tragic figures, King Lear, Shylock is more sinned against than sinning. I’ll return to that shortly.

“Racist” is very much a 20^th/21^st century term but there are plenty of them in this play and Shakespeare makes absolutely sure you notice their behaviour – with disdain.

Take Portia who’s obliged to marry a man of her late father’s choice through a fairy-tale like lottery of choosing the right one of three caskets. The Prince of Morocco knows what he’s up against. The first thing he says is “Mislike me not for my complexion”. When he, inevitably, picks the “wrong” one. Portia comments “A gentle riddance – draw the curtains, go / Let all of his complexion choose me so”. So much for tolerance and acceptance. It’s so stark I can’t believe thoughtful, perceptive Shakespeare actually approved of such an attitude. He would have certainly have encountered people of colour of the streets of London – by 1600 there were more of them around than many people now realise.

Then there’s Antonio’s anti-Semitism which is astonishing under the circumstances, He’s asking Shylock for a favour. Shylock quite mildly lists some of the insults he has received from Antonio in the past. “You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog / And spet upon my Jewish gabardine/And all for the use of that which is mine own” he says. You’d expect Antonio to back down and mutter something conciliatory. Instead he snarls : “I am like to call thee so again/To spet on thee again. To spurn thee too.” The sense of overbearing superiority is revolting and I know which of these two men I’d rather have a cup of tea with … Incidentally, notice too how Shakespeare subtly reinforces that point. Antonio is using the familiar “thou” pronoun ( a leftover from the French which merged with English after the Norman Conquest) Here it’s patronising overfamiliarity. Shylock uses the more formal “you” when he speaks to Antonio.

New production opening at Shakespeare’s Globe in March 2022

Or what about Jessica who is, I would argue, one of the most unpleasant people in this play. She clearly has no love, loyalty or respect for her father and his Judaism at all. She has, somehow, met Lorenzo before the play opens and decided he is the ticket to the freedom she clearly craves. She abuses her father’s trust – when he leaves her in charge of his keys – steals jewels and money and leaves. Lorenzo is, apparently, delighted with the loot. What happened to the eighth commandment “Thou shalt not steal” which applies to both Jews and Christians? One of the most heartbreaking lines in the play comes when Shylock is told that Jessica is racing round Europe throwing his money about. She has apparently exchanged a ring for a monkey. “It was my turquoise. I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys” weeps her anguished father. Did Jessica actually know this was her father’s engagement ring and treasured for its great sentimental value? One hopes not but I’m not holding my breath. Arguably Jessica is a worse anti-Semite than most of the others despite having been born into and brought up in Jewish family.

So how do you interpret this on stage because there’s much about Shylock to dislike too? The pound of flesh proposal is repugnant by any standards, irrespective of race and/or religion, although one wonders how serious it is when it’s first proposed. Antonio is a prosperous man and the chance of all his ships miscarrying at once is very slight. It is only when the ships do not come in (actually they do eventually but it looks as if they’re all lost when the money is needed critically) that Shylock realises he’s on to something. And he’s goaded into revengeful madness by the desertion of Jessica and the sense that the whole world is now against him. Even his servant Lancelot has waltzed off to work for the newly enriched Bassanio because the uniform and conditions of service look better. Shylock is alone, bitter, hurt, outraged and doesn’t Judaism teach “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”? Revenge is about the only thing this beleaguered man has left – and by the time Portia has finished with him in court he has absolutely nothing. He is penniless and stripped of his religious and racial identity- to the glee of everyone else.

The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare engraving 1870

When you teach this play to young people, as I have done many times, there is a problem with the word Christian. It’s a slippery word. In Shakespeare’s day and play it means anyone who is not Jewish, Muslim or anyone else who is not signed up to the Church. Note the unequivocal language. “But who comes here? Lorenzo and his infidel” says Gratiano cheerfully when he and Nerrisa have just announced their engagement. The Book of Common Prayer used in the reformed Anglican churches included a Collect for Good Friday which prayed for “Jews, Turks and Infidels”. Christianity was a cultural assumption. Atheism was heresy. So everyone in The Merchant of Venice is “Christian” except Shylock, Tubal and Jessica until she converts and marries Lorenzo. That’s a very far cry from the kindness, humility and deep seated conviction about the divinity of Christ which modern teenagers – and to an extent the rest of us – associate with Christianity today.

Traditionally Jewishness was symbolised by circumcision and Christianity by baptism. Just what and where is Shylock proposing to cut when he brandishes and sharpens that knife in court? For decades, from when I first read the play in school at about age 12, I assumed it was Antonio’s heart as Shylock hints in the court scene. In recent years I’ve realised that it might not be. There are several references in the play to “flesh” which in Elizabethan English – and in Shakespeare – was often a euphemism for penis. And the worst part of Shylock’s punishment and downfall is that he is “condemned” to be baptised. In other words his Jewish identity is to be erased – another tricky thing to explain to 21^st century young people who can’t quite see how you can be baptised against your will.

As in most of Shakespeare’s plays the plot is not, for the most part, original. A lot of it came from Silvayn’s The Orator and other contemporary or earlier texts – written during eras when Jews were either outlawed or ghettoised in most of Europe. The most famous ghetto – the one from which we derive the word – was in Venice which we assume Shakespeare knew about. Not that the setting is very Italian – apart from careful references to the Rialto and one of two other things, we could just as easily be in London although – as we’ve seen, Shylock would not have been able to work openly as a money lender in London at this date.

It used to be all too easy – given the cultural disapproval – to stereotype Jews throughout the centuries. Mendelssohn’s father converted with his family in 1822 and his son Felix was baptised at age 7 – this so that they’d have better opportunities. And it’s worth rereading Oliver Twist published in 1838. Fagin, thief, exploiter of children and maybe paedophile is a relentlessly foul character. Look at the original illustrations by George Cruikshank which depict him as a hook-nosed villain. Do not be distracted by Lionel Blair’s musical and film Oliver! which is a distinctly sanitised and saccharine 1968 take on it.

Gradually actors – especially Charles Macready (1793-1873) – began to soften the edges of Shylock, reading the text for its ambiguities. And, this continued during the 20^th century particularly after 1945 for obvious reasons

The key point is that The Merchant of Venice is a play not a novel. In a sense it doesn’t exist at all until a director and group of actors bring it to life. Like all plays it’s meant to be interpreted – unlike novels which communicate via hotline from say, the Dickens brain to the Elkin brain. So the honest answer to the question I used to title this talk is actually: That depends entirely in how the director and actors choose to present it. And of course, there are many ways of doing it. Bear in mind too that it’s very rare to see an uncut Shakespeare play these days. Most directors cut quite substantially – which means they can cut the bits which don’t quite suit their interpretation. And they often alter the order of scenes as well as choosing a setting which is, more often than not, a very long way from Elizabethan England or even Venice. I have no problem with any of that. I’m merely pointing out that a production’s emphasis depends on many directorial decisions.

I’ve seen many productions of The Merchant of Venice over the years and I’ve never seen one which didn’t make me loathe most of the non-Jews and feel a lot of sympathy for Shylock. As far back as 1970 for example, Jonathan Miller directed it at The Old Vic with Laurence Olivier as Shylock. Talking of cuts, Old Gobbo’s comic moment was omitted. Presumably Miller thought it trivialised the seriousness of the play which is certainly no comedy in the modern sense. That production was later filmed. At the end we see Jessica – maybe feeling remorse – as the Jewish mourning prayer The Kaddish sounds compellingly over the soundtrack.

The BBC filmed every Shakespeare play in the 1980s – not always successfully – but I’ve long been haunted by the memory of Warren Mitchell as Shylock, helpless and forced to his knees by hideously, gleefully violent Christians. Henry Goodman played Shylock (directed by Trevor Nunn) at National Theatre in 1999 (that too was later filmed). This time the setting was a 20^th century office block where Shylock endured a very moving unseating. And Antony Sher, for RSC in 1987/8 was rivetingly charismatic. Dustin Hoffman did it very sympathetically in The Peter Hall Company at Phoenix Theatre in London in 1989 as did Al Pacino in Michael Radford’s 2004 film.

Al Palcino as Shylock

But oddly, the most interesting and most moving take on The Merchant of Venice I’ve seen in recent years was an unassuming amateur production at Tower Theatre in Stoke Newington last autumn. Set firmly in 1930s Italy it opened with Fascist soldiers marching menacingly, had all the gossipy minor characters sipping espressos and staged wealthy Portia’s opening scene with Nerissa in a spa. At the very end, after the trial scene, and the gentle waltzing of three happy couples off to bed and a glimpse of Antonio as a solitary, lonely figure there was a very brief blackout. Then – lights up and we saw Shylock sitting on a suitcase with the sound of a train. Wow! I thought it was an extraordinarily powerful ending which told another complete story in just a few seconds. It got the production a fourth star in my review.

Just as I was adding my final notes to this talk actor Juliet Stephenson said in an interview that she thought some Shakespeare plays should be laid to rest because they deal with topics which are no longer acceptable. She was actually talking about the misogyny in The Taming of the Shrew but mentioned the anti-Semitism in The Merchant of Venice in passing. Well, sorry, Juliet but I think you’re completely wrong. Art can and does explore unpleasant things and expose them for what they are – and that’s what, I think a good production of The Merchant of Venice does. After all I don’t approve, obviously, of murder, kidnapping and extortion but it doesn’t stop me watching and enjoying TV crime dramas. If you took Ms Stephenson’s view to its logical extent you wouldn’t do most of Shakespeare actually: A Midsummer Night’s Dream features drugging people against their will, Macbeth is about regicide, King Lear includes torturers and Othello a lot of racism … and so on.

Judi Dench is on record as saying that she dislikes The Merchant of Venice because all there are no fully likeable characters. And I can see where she’s coming from. They are all on the make – except poor Old Gobbo, whose son gulls him in a scene which is often cut. But, in my view that’s no reason for ignoring them.

Shockingly, anti-Semitism has never gone away – look at the problems in the Labour party a couple of years ago. So we must resist it and we won’t do that unless we confront it. And The Merchant of Venice is not a bad place to start.

It’s one of those novels in which the setting broodingly, atmospherically underpins the action to such an extent that it almost becomes a character in its own right. In that sense it reminds me of Wuthering Heights and Of Mice and Men – the former played out over a few miles of Yorkshire moorland and the latter on a blisteringly hot Californian farm.

Hardy’s novel, which could just as easily have been called Egdon Heath, fictionally evokes the ancient heathland of Dorset which was always environmentally special. Today the National Trust and other organisations are working hard to conserve the small stretches which are left. In Hardy’s version – no doubt how he observed it in 19^th century Dorset – the heath teams with amphibians, snakes (one character is bitten by an adder) birds and plants. Furze (gorse) cutting is the main rural occupation of the few people who live there.

Coming back to The Return of the Native now – it’s probably 40 years since I last read it – I was instantly absorbed by the tight plotting and by Egdon Heath itself. Three men and three women – all socially a little above the furze cutters who form a sort of chorus – live a few miles from each other on the heath in four houses, one of which is an inn. They are Mrs Yeobright, her son Clym (the titular returner – from Paris) and her niece Thomasin. Then there’s Eustacia Vye, a mesmerizingly but disconcertingly attractive girl who longs to escape the heath. Damon Wildeve is a weak willed, easily swayed and therefore dangerous chap and Diggory Venn, the reddleman sells red sheep dye to farmers from his mobile horsedrawn van and lurks helpfully and benignly on the heath. Don’t you just love the names Hardy finds for his characters? Not a Joe or Mary in sight.

The lives of these six people intersect and change through two ill-judged marriages, three deaths and one birth. There’s a great deal of fancying the “wrong” person. Even Eustacia’s servant Charley is at it. Eventually the survivors settle to lives which are liveable and the sun comes out. And it’s all played out on the heath – the first 84 pages take place on a dark November 5^th with bonfires and there’s a lot of rain later in the novel. John Ruskin called paralleling outside forces such as the weather with the emotions of characters “pathetic fallacy” and Hardy does a great deal of that.

Of course Hardy is challenging Victorian moral attitudes in this 1878 novel. Why is it such a disgrace for Thomasin to return home unmarried because Wildeve has, apparently, made a mistake with the licence? Not her fault at all. I remember being annoyed on her behalf even back in the 1960s when I first read it.

Hardy went on knocking at the doors of moral unreasonableness. Twelve years later in 1895 his Jude the Obscure offended people so much that he wrote no more novels for the remaining 33 years of his life, sticking to poetry instead. He was thus, as I used to point out to my students, a rather unusual figure: a nineteenth century novelist but a twentieth century poet. Hardy died in 1928.

Composer Gustav Holst (1874-1934) was a generation younger than Hardy who was born in 1840. His tone poem Egdon Heath, first performed in 1927 is subtitled “A Homage to Thomas Hardy”. The music captures all the darkness of the heath along with the lurking sexual desire and natural beauty.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles

Show: Hamlet

Society: Shakespeare’s Globe (professional productions)

Venue: Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare’s Globe. 21 New Globe Walk, Bankside, London SE1 9DT

Credits: William Shakespeare

Hamlet

3 stars

Photo: Johan Persson

This is a very wet Hamlet. A circular, shallow, well centre stage leads to a lot of paddling, wet clothes and mopping up by stage management – no spoilers but it also serves as a neat device for getting round the potential farce of four dead bodies on stage at the end.

There is plenty to admire in this mixed-bag of a show. Although the use-your-own accent decision grated at the beginning, once I got used to George Fouracres as Hamlet speaking in a strong West Midlands accent I found his performance mesmerizingly natural. He makes the great soliloquies sound like slow, jerky thinking aloud – sometimes almost too much so. He is at times deliciously sardonic and that sits well.

The chandeliers swinging tensely like pendula in the closet scene are a fine touch as Polly Frame as Gertrude (good) slogs it out with Fouracres below – and the death of Polonius (Peter Bourke – well judged performance) is imaginatively done. Ophelia’s (Rachel Hannah Clarke) first mad scene in which she sings a risqué song – not the one assigned her by Shakespeare – is suitably disturbing and I really like the decision to drop in the odd modern line. Claudius (Irfan Shamji) shouting angrily “Fuck Fortinbras!” and Hamlet calling Laertes a “dickhead” during the fencing scene are good moments.

Ed Gaughan does a lovely job as on stage musician and MD – sometimes on floor level and at others on the balcony. He plays filmic guitar music and creates evocative sound effects. Moreover, this production includes the funniest gravedigger’s scene I’ve ever seen. Like the Porter in Macbeth the chances are that this scene was meant to be a few moments of ad-libbed “light relief” and that the version we know is just one which happens to have survived. Director, Sean Holmes has entertainingly embedded that idea here with a climax which reminded me, oddly, of the end of Act 1 in The Mikado – before we return to the serious business of Hamlet’s reappearance in Denmark.

On the other hand, this leisurely 3 hour 15 minute show is occasionally self-indulgent with some strange decisions. The water, for example, is a distraction rather than contributing anything much. And the costuming initially seems to be elaborately 1600 – except that Hamlet, after his first appearance in black wears a 1970s hippy-ish holiday shirt. Once she’s lost her sanity Ophelia sports baggy shorts and a hoody and one of the players looks as if she’s been dressed by Mary Quant. If it’s meant to feel timeless it doesn’t.

And, of course there’s no good reason why you can’t cast a woman as Laertes but Nadi Kemp-Sayfi is too much like a pantomime principal boy to be seriously convincing even when she momentarily leaves the text and bellows “Where the fuck is my father?” and gets a well deserved laugh. Also very odd is Peter Bourke’s take on Horatio. He is far too staid and not youthful enough. Think Richard Briers in The Good Life – fine but he doesn’t belong in Hamlet.

I have problems too with the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia. We surely need to understand that there is, or has been, some chemistry between them. Here we don’t – we just see a rather stiff, troubled girl with a bullying boyfriend. Even when late in the play he declares in anguish “I loved Ophelia” he isn’t believable.

The candlelit Sam Wanamaker playhouse is exquisite but it’s very cramped and there are “authentic” sight line issues. The word “audience” derives from the Latin verb for to hear because people traditionally went to hear a play rather than see it. Seated in the gallery (seat A6) I did, perforce, a great deal of hearing because I could see only one half of the stage.

First published by Sardines:https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/hamlet-6/

: All Photos: Johan Persson

: click to enlarge…

Maidstone Symphony Orchestra Mote Hall, Maidstone 5th February 2022

Posted on February 6, 2022 by Lark Reviews.

There was an upbeat atmosphere of new year/new optimism for this well attended first concert of 2022 spiced with a strong sense of the worst being behind us. And the overture to Mozart’s last opera, The Magic Flute (1791) was an aptly chosen opener. The orchestra made it sound bright, chirpy and celebratory especially in the fugato quaver passages which were delightfully crisp.

And so to Beethoven – and, arguably, the loveliest violin concerto ever written, premiered only 15 years after The Magic Flute. Benjamin Baker is an unshowy soloist who breathes the music like a singer – often with an impish half smile. He and Brian Wright made sure we heard every detail of the orchestral parts as well as the solo line and I loved the way they moved, as a team into the spirited rondo.

Two things, however really distinguished this performance. First, Baker chose to play the Christian Tetslaff candenzas, adapted from the ones Beethoven wrote for the piano version of the concerto and using a timpani accompaniment in the first one. I’m familiar with recordings of this but had never heard it live. Keith Price on timps, Brian Wright on the podium and Baker out front gave us a very arresting – if quirky rendering. No wonder the audience applauded – unusually at an MSO concert – at the end of the first movement. Second, Baker’s encore, a movement from Bach’s A Minor sonata presented double stopping, so breathtakingly skilled that it sounded like two instruments.

It was, intentionally or not, a chronological concert which shifted forward a further 137 years after the interval with Ralph Vaughan Williams’s fifth symphony: a work which has four movements all of them slow, and full of key changes and different time signatures so it was real contrast to the classicism of the first half.

Wright dug out plenty of lyrical passion as he delivered that characteristically RVW “wafty” quality – always with fluidity and sometimes with an evocatively clenched left fist. There was fine work from Simon Phillips as principal horn sailing over the textrure especially in the first movement. The muted strings patterning with the wind in the second movement created the required “misterioso” and, not withstanding one or two earlier ragged entries, I liked the way Wright controlled the magical dying away ending in three movements.

Show: The Spiral Path

Society: OVO

Venue: The Maltings Theatre. Level 2, Maltings Shopping Centre, 28 Victoria Street, St Albans, Hertfordshire AL1 3HL

Credits: By Andrew Sharpe. Produced by Katalyst and Mad Stallion

The Spiral Path 3 stars

The intimacy of the Maltings Theatre, St Albans – now configured in the round – lends itself very well to this tight, tense story of troubled family relationships in which two young women are married to two brothers who have an appalling, cold, manipulative mother. We shift back and forth through time in what are usually two person scenes as the truth is very gradually revealed.

Claire Jared’s small, blonde, feisty and impassioned Georgina is married to James but it’s failing and James has met someone else even as Georgina’s second child is born. And she is fond of her widowed, troubled brother-in-law, Edward (Jonny D’Spena – finely nuanced, sensitive work). Edward, however, is haunted – physically so in the play – by his dead wife Kirsty (Georgina Bennett) who floats about the playing area with a whiff of Blythe Spirit but this is definitely not a comedy. It’s a serious love triangle which is why the play opens with some symbolic mime.

Amidst all this is Jill Priest’s Edie, one of the least attractive characters I’ve seen in a play for some time. She is icily self centred and very unkind both “now” and in the things she’s done in the past. There is, for example, a backstory about Edward’s childhood friendship with a boy called Pete from whom we eventually hear some letters (voice over by Matthew Philip Harris). Priest gives a compelling, convincing account of this deeply unpleasant – but hideously plausible – woman.

It all hangs together pretty coherently. As the man sitting next to me commented. “The good thing about theatre is that you have to engage with it and apply your own intelligence – unlike a lot of film when it’s all spelled out for you”. Nonetheless I was a bit puzzled by the play’s opening scene which doesn’t sit quite right with the rest of it. Harry, a smart, plummy voiced man with the beginnings of dementia is waiting for his wife in a Mayfair café where he meets Kirsty and confuses her with his wife. Paul Manuel gives a spot-on performance as Harry. I’ve seen, and lived with dementia at very close quarters in my own family and Manuel has it perfectly. He also gives a wonderfully moving account of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 at the end which, in a sense, sums up the whole play. On balance though, I’d like to see Harry in a different play and keep The Spiral Path entirely focused on its central plot.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/the-spiral-path/

Show: Jarman

Society: Greenwich Theatre (professional)

Venue: Greenwich Theatre. Crooms Hill, London SE10 8ES

Credits: By Mark Farrelly

Jarman

4 stars

31 January 2022 would have been his eightieth birthday and this celebration should really been called “An Evening with Derek Jarman”.

The first half gave us Mark Farrelly’s one man, one act play, Jarman. I reviewed this for Sardines in November when it began its current tour at Bridge House Theatre, Penge and happily gave it four stars. It has now bedded down well, become more assured. It presents the life story of this artist, film maker, gardener, gay rights activist and Aids victim with vivid passion – and, it seems, real accuracy. After the interval there were speeches from a group of people who had all known and worked with Jarman in real life. Several said that they felt – through Farelly’s play and acting talent – that Derek Jarman was definitely present at this, the birthday party he didn’t live to attend.

It is interesting to see Jarman a second time in a completely different sort of setting. No longer are we in a basic, sittingroom-sized black box. Now we’re in a traditional, middle-sized theatre theatre with rows of raked seating (about two thirds full – very gratifying) and the action takes place on a big thrust stage playing area. That means much more space for Farrelly to occupy – and he does, still with his simple props: one chair, a roll of brown paper, a torch and a gauzy sheet. There is scope here for the lighting to be more sophisticated too and I loved the way his figure was sometimes shadowed and huge on the back wall.

Farrelly is a remarkable actor. I’ve now seen him in action on four occasions and recently interviewed him face to face. He brings an extraordinary, glittering edge and sense of danger to everything he does. And the subtlety of his voice work is terrific. Jarman, for example, gets a resonant, middle class, public school-educated voice without being plummy. To borrow a term often used by actors, it’s utterly “truthful”.

The second half of Mr Jarman’s birthday party was uplifting and celebratory. David Mansell, writer, producer and director, whom Jarman called “Ginger Bits”, for example, remembered Jarman coming to the University of Kent to give a talk and later inviting him to Prospect Cottage which led to Mansell working with Jarman on two films and cutting his professional teeth. Almost every speaker mentioned Jarman’s generosity and kindness which sat along with his glee, impatience and polymathy. Then there was David Meyer who played Ferdinand in Jarman’s film The Tempest opposite Toyah Willcox as Miranda. He was very funny about Jarman’s insistence that he should walk naked out of the North Sea. Speaker after speaker talked of Jarman’s commitment to fighting for gay rights and for the grace with which he accepted his terminal illness. Jarman was the first national figure to admit openly that he had HIV/Aids which helped and supported thousands of others.

Peter Tatchell remembered the 1992 Outrage! March which led to Jarman’s arrest under a centuries old law which meant it was illegal to demonstrate within half a mile of the Houses of Parliament. Jarman, he told us, refused to accept a caution because that would have been an admission of guilt. Instead he told the police to do their work. In the end he was released without charge.

The whole audience sang Happy Birthday and I’m pretty sure many lumps had to be swallowed in many throats.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/jarman-2/

IN OUR TIME: Continuing the story of the Leicester Drama Society (The Book Guild)

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Leicester Drama Society, which celebrates its centenary this year, is a fine example of just how significant a contribution well-managed amateur theatre can make to community life.

A hundred years ago three friends met in a Leicester café to discuss the formation of a drama society. The aims were high: they wanted to improve artistic standards of theatre in the city and to educate public taste.

Well, they clearly did just that because they are still here, a century later, with an impressive track record. Every show since 1922 is tabulated in the final pages of this book.

Since 1932 LDS has owned and occupied The Little Theatre in Grove Street, often affectionately known as “The Little”. The company also eventually acquired additional premises nearby which provide rehearsal space and other facilities …

Read the rest od this book review at Musical Theatre Reviews: https://musicaltheatrereview.com/book-review-in-our-time-continuing-the-story-of-the-leicester-drama-society/

I’ve never made any secret of my view that my CertEd teacher training course at Bishop Otter College, Chichester (1965-8) was not fit for purpose. But it did have its moments – occasionally. One of these fell in my second year when they invited in three Sussex-based writers of children’s books in to talk to us about literature for children. The three were Rosemary Sutcliffe, Brian Wildsmith and Ian Serrallier. I was riveted. Soon after, a group of us who were musically inclined were asked to go weekly for half a term to Singleton Primary School to help teach the children a cantata written for them by Ian Serraillier who lived in the village.

A year later found me floundering in a Deptford boys secondary school (see my memoir Please Miss We’re Boys, Book Guild, 2019) which was a bit – ahem – different from rural Sussex. But in the English Department stock cupboard I found a familiar name: Ian Serraillier. I seized upon The Silver Sword to read with my own first year (year 7) English classes. From that point on I probably read it twenty or thirty times because, a popular text, it was in other schools I taught in later too.

At Christmas just gone my niece, who teaches Year 5, told me that she was about to embark on a World War 2 project. She’d been recommended to The Silver Sword. Did I know it? It led to a bit of a brainstorming session between her and me about what else she might also use and left me yearning to reread my old favourite – which I have now done.

The new copy I bought includes an afterword from Ian Serraillier’s daughter, Jane Serraillier Grossfeld from which I learned several things I didn’t know. For example, he was a pacifist and an officially registered conscientious object during the war who did Air Raid Precautions work, lent his car to the Friends Ambulance Unit and went on teaching English. As a student he had travelled and camped along the route which features in The Silver Sword so he knew the area well.

Written in 1956, The Silver Sword is a gentle book of its time – the background issues are horrific but Serraillier focuses for the most part on kindness and decency. A family in Nazi-occupied Warsaw is split up in the middle of the war: the teacher father is sent to prison for refusing to have Hitler’s face on his classroom wall and the mother is arrested and sent to Germany as a land slave. The three children avoid being blown up in the house by escaping over the roofs. Later they team up with Jan who, by chance, has met their father. The Russian army liberates Warsaw and, after a couple of years of living in the cellar of a bombsite, they set off to Switzerland where they believe they might be reunited with their parents. Thereafter it’s a quest story with episodes en route such as meeting a friendly English Officer in Berlin and a kindly farmer named Wolff in Bavaria. The titular silver sword is a paper knife which once belonged to the children’s mother. Found by Janin the rubble, it becomes a symbol of hope.

The tension is tautly done – at one point they have to negotiate a river with rapids in canoes and they very nearly don’t make it across Lake Constance. And of course, not everyone they meet is sympathetic. The Burgomaster, for example, is tasked with the job of rounding up Polish refugees and sending them back to Poland, regardless of their stories. And the middle child, Edek who – captured by the Nazis, spent two years in Germany slaving on the land while his sisters lived in the Warsaw cellar – has tuberculosis and is seriously ill so his condition is, in a sense, another enemy.

But the best thing is the characterisation. Jan is a ragamuffin, parentless thief who has a gift with animals. Until he gradually learns to trust and respect Ruth and begins very slowly to trust her, he is a loose cannon but oh such fun and so likeable. Ruth is fifteen when she becomes the family’s quasi mother and for a very long time shoulders the responsibility with extraordinary maturity – driven by the Christian values instilled by her parents.

Modern children might be puzzled about where everyone went to the loo in a crowded train truck on a nine day journey to Berlin – and a 21^st century novelist would probably tell them. It’s a bit odd that the older ones can and do sometimes still carry Bronia when she’s six years old. Nobody ever swears. And there are other details which now seem a bit quaint but they matter very little. This is still a very heart warming tale from which today’s children will learn much about what happened in Europe during and after the war. It’s still topical too. In 2022 there are unaccompanied child refugees travelling in dangerous conditions across Europe in search of a better life. And yes I could never read the last few pages aloud in class without an audible lump in my throat. Even reading it now alone and silently I got something in my eye which is good going for a book now 66 years old – and as familiar as a favourite old coat.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy

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