Chekhov revisited

Alan Davies, stand-up comedian and actor, tells in The Times today how great an influence Chekhov was on him when he was studying to be an actor. He draws particular attention to the opening of "The Seagull": "I've always loved the play's opening where Medvedenko, the smitten but hapless teacher, asks the world-weary Masha why she always wears black. 'I'm in mourning for my life,' she replies. That tickled me the first time I read it and seems as good a test for an appreciation of Chekhov as any."
I agree with that but then he then goes into a rather heavy-handed description of why the line is so funny; I don't think that's needed - you either get it or you don't.
Chekhov doesn't go for the big laugh; you tend to chuckle at his lines and at the characters who say them. The characters are not comical but perfectly serious. The humour is there because they are so sad and do not understand how out of date they are: society is changing but they aren't changing with it. Another playwright would hate these people but Chekhov is too humane for that: he loves them but at the same time wishes they would prepare themselves for the new life that's ahead. The ageing actress in "The Seagull" says at one point when her son (?) is about to stage a modern-type avante garde play "I don't care what they do as long as they leave me out of it" which, I think, is as funny - and as tragic - as Masha's "in mourning for her life". But you either get it or you don't.

Eli Jenkins

First, thanks Gloria for your excellent comments on "Night of the Hunter" and the useful info you've given. I didn't know Agee wrote "The African Queen".

I was sitting in the Eli Jenkins pub, in Cardiff Bay, this morning with my wife who asked "who was Eli Jenkins?" I said the only Eli Jenkins I know of is a character in "Under Milk Wood", the Reverend Eli Jenkins who stands on the threshold of his home and prays:

Every morning when I wake,
Dear Lord, a little prayer I make,
O please do keep Thy lovely eye
On all poor creatures born to die.....

I always felt that Dylan Thomas was being rather cynical here in his depiction of this good hearted vicar, feeling that the hymn/prayer is a spoof of what a simple soul might say. The ironic thing about it is that it is probably the most liked and certainly most popular part of the play - put "Eli Jenkins' prayer" on Google and you get numerous choirs singing it, also Bryn Terfel is there somewhere doing his version.
In the Eli Jenkins pub (excellent beer by the way, and good, cheap, British style food in an old-fashioned style pub) I noticed a game machine which had Trivial Pursuit as one of the games. This surprised me because I thought the makers had withdrawn these machines because certain people had learned how to win. But maybe now the winnings are not big. I say this because about ten years ago I overheard a conversation in a sports centre where two young men were telling another how they travelled the country playing these machines and making a living that way.
Didn't dine in the Eli Jenkins since we had vouchers "2 for the Price of 1" in Strada, nearby. Excellent food and a very nice table red wine.

Film Noir

There are a series of programmes and films showing this weekend on BBC 4. I'm looking forward to seeing tonight's films, especially "Farewell My Lovely" which I saw many years ago. When it came out everybody was surprised that Dick Powell, song and dance man before that, was chosen to play Philip Marlowe - too soft, not tall enough, not a bruiser etc. He was astonishingly good. Maybe Bogart was the best of the Philip Marlowe's (though he was hardly big enough) but Dick Powell came a good second, in front of Robert Mitchum, Robert Montgomery and others.
They are also showing a documentary on Film Noir which is described in a part of The Times today as: "Dark city streets. Treacherous femme fatales. Fatally flawed heroes adrift in a cruelly amoral universe. Such are the essential ingredients of Film Noir."
They mention more modern versions of the genre: "L.A. Confidential"; "Chinatown"; "The Last Seduction"; "Basic Instinct". But they don't mention my favourite: "Red Rock West" with Nicholas Cage and that master of the art of "stealing a scene", Dennis Hopper. Also with J.T.Walsh, always good (alas, with us no more).
A friend of mine, Roger Ormorod, a writer of detective fiction who had 40 or so novels published which featured a male detective, Richard Patton, decided he would like to try his hand with a new novel featuring a female detective. This proved quite successful for a few books. The female detective's name? Phillipa Marlowe.

Critics

Who needs critics? Word of mouth works better. And I speak as a one-time critic who went to about three plays per week. I had the idea that I was doing something important, letting the general public know what was good in the theatre and what was bad. I'm not at all sure that many people read me, and those who did, I imagine, didn't take much notice of what I wrote. Though someone did say to me once "I'm glad you gave that show a bashing because I too thought it bad". She was looking for confirmation of her view of it from someone she believed would have the qualifications to make a sound judgement.
Qualifications? I didn't have any. When I enquired about doing some reviewing for a certain newspaper, the features editor who had read my letter saying that I had done some work for a local magazine and that I had written a couple of plays (unproduced), said "you seem to have the right qualifications" and tried me out.
I think I was pretty honest in my reviews. Too honest possibly since I got banned from one theatre in South Wales for being too critical (and probably too humorously cynical).
You can't trust critics to tell you which plays to go and see - especially with prices as they are, through the roof - because their views vary so much from paper to paper, mag to mag. Can you believe Charles Spencer of The Daily Telegraph when he says of "Faust": "though this often works as decadent spectacle, it seems a shabby way to treat one of the great masterpieces of world drama", and when Benedict Nightingale of The Times says of the same play: "(they) may be sacrificing narrative clarity for spectacle but O boy, what spectacle!"?
Nightingale gave the show 5 stars, Spencer gave it 2 stars.
Probably I'd lean towards Spencer since I once reviewed a play by Turgenev that Nightingale had given a tremendous boost to, yet I found it dull, poorly acted and tedious.
No, critics won't help you decide which play to see, all they can do is write a report of it from their point of view, which may be interesting or may be garbage.

Burma

Vera Lynn is apparently making a comeback at 92, not singing this time but giving talks about her life's experiences; and she's packing 'em in. She was interviewed on the TV today and when asked what was her most memorable experience when she was a singer during the second world war, she said "being in Burma, singing to the troops there; it was," she said, "the forgotten war and she felt the troups there needed support."
She was right: it was forgotten and a horrible war. My only knowledge of it was seeing the Laurence Olivier narrated documentary about WW2. But I do have a closer link to it in that my uncle Mick was there. He never talked about it much but I know he was there throughout the campaign. I don't know what rank he had or what he actually did in the forces and I can't now find that out since he died last year in Australia at the age of about 92 - the same age as Vera Lynn is now.
After the war he went to Yorkshire where he worked on a farm. I have the feeling that for some reason he had to move from there fairly quickly (something to do with a lady I believe - and maybe a shotgun too).
I used to go cycling with him when he was on leave after the war, pre-Yorkshire; we used to ride to a cousin's farm in Llandenny, near Raglan, when my relatives gave us marvellous food to eat: I recall having wood pigeon on one occasion - delicious, though you had to watch you didn't swallow the lead shot that had killed the birds.
Mick eventually emigrated to Australia where he became a sort of cowboy for a few years. He got married there (might have been married once or twice before) and settled there until his death last year.
He was great fun to be with. The ghastly Burma campaign had not appeared to affect him emotionally or mentally or psychologically..... but, you never know - might have made him that restless spirit who found it difficuklt to form long-term relationships.... But I'm guessing.
We spoke on the phone about four years ago and I remember him saying, about the Iraq war that we shouldn't try to change the way other countries do things by force. I said yes to that though, actually, at that time, I supported the war. Not so sure that I should have and have grave doubts about Afganistan now.

Da Vinci Code

Dan Brown's at it again: another book that will have to do with religion and mysteries surrounding it, problems to be solved and, of course, in writing the book, a heap of money to be made.
Best of luck to him I say.
Many others seem to resent his success pointing to his dreadful style. Not literature, old boy.
John Humphreys of Radio 4's Today fame had a go at him: "the literary equivalent of painting by numbers by an artist who can't even stay within the lines." And, naturally, Salmon Rushdie has put his two well shod boots in: "a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name."
I liked "The Da Vinci" code. But there, I'm someone who finds it difficult to get through two or three pages of any Ian Macewan novel.
What the novel has got, if it is without literary distinction or even merit at all, is speed; it's a real page-turner. And with page-turners you don't, in a sense, actually read them - you speed read them. You're not interested in and certainly not aware of any literary content - only the speed of the action is what you're after.
Probably the trouble with it getting such a bad press is that it is pretentious, or seems so: maybe Dan Brown wants to be taken seriously as a novelist and so the story is over complex, with people trying to solve problems which, because of their nature (religious stuff), have the veneer of something to be taken seriously.
I enjoyed the film too (except for the part with Ian Macellan in).
So here's looking forward to the new novel and, later no doubt, the 700 million dollar grossing film. With Tom Hanks.

War

Andrew Roberts has written a history of the second world war and from the reviews it's getting it looks like it's a good read. It doesn't break new ground - so many books about WW2 have been written that it must be difficult for a historian to find something new to say; but Roberts writes so well that whatever he sets his sights on becomes an exciting read. Not only that but he writes from a certain perspective which I think is "from the right" so that he is not only thorough but positive in his judgements; you may not agree with some of them but you can't help but take notice of them and admire the way he presents them.
Paul Johnson wrote a review of this book, "The Storm of War: a New History of The Second World War", and praised it highly. But at the end of the review he wrote: "Roberts's book is a powerful, well-documented sermon on these inhumanities. Engrossing to read. But will it do any good?"
I don't believe it will. I am not thinking of what Henry Ford said of history - "history is bunk" -I'm thinking that so much has already been written about war in general, so many plays and films and novels have been written about war, especially WW2, and many of them positively against it, yet nothing much has happened to cause people to take heed before embarking on yet another war. Alastair Cook, I recall, in his Letters from America, some time back said something to the effect that after WW2 the United Nations was set up with its purpose to prevent other wars occurring, but he went on to say that (then, 10 or 20 years ago) there had been over 200 conflicts in the world since then, some minor conflicts but most full-scale wars.
I recall a war play on TV some years back being discussed by a panel of critics on radio, and I remember one of the panel saying "they keep writing these plays damning war but no one seems to take any notice of them, they carry on fighting."
Will it do any good? I'm afraid not. But don't ask me what will.

Music Critics

One of the best music critics was Neville Cardus (who also wrote well about cricket). I am reading a book called "Conversations with Cardus", a fascinating read in which he covers his own work with The Manchester Guardian (as it then was) and The Sunday Times and other newspapers and journals, as well as mention other music critics of whom he was fond or whom he admired: Shaw, Ernest Newman, Beerbohm and particularly Samuel Langford (of whom I had never heard). What struck me most about these music critics (and others I have read) is that they all seem to have aversions, "blind spots", over one or a few composers. Ernest Newman for example did not much like Mozart; Cardus is quite amazed at Newman's tendency to boost the reputations of quite ordinary composers - Bantock for example. Newman once wrote that Bantock's "Omar Khayyam" could be "mentioned in the same breath as the B Minor Mass of Bach". Cardus just couldn't believe that his usually discerning friend could be so blinkered.
Cardus himself hated "progressive" music. He thought it an artistic reflection of a materialistic society. "Some aspects of this 'progress' are destructive to the human spirit and many avante garde composers are expressing these aspects in their music..... within 50 years there will be a series of reactions against the more ridiculous concepts of life today."
Bernard Shaw disliked Brahms, certainly despising his first symphony and saying about a mass he wrote that there are certain experiences in life one does not want to repeat and that applies to listening again to Brahms's mass - or words to that effect.
I can't get close to liking Mahler. I admire him but I can't enjoy him. He doesn't seem to have any of the joy of..... wait fior it..... Mozart.
I don't know how Ernest Newman felt about Mahler but he was very enthusiastic about "the greatest English songwriter" Frederick Nichols.
Who's he for heaven's sake? Not even Cardus had heard of him.

Love stories

When I was tutoring a class of creative writers I met two very old ladies who each told me a love story that, they said, was true. I had no reason to disbelieve them for they were delightful, honest human beings one of whom was from Ireland, the other was local Welsh.
The Irish woman told me a story that had the famous writer Frank O'Conner as the main character. He fell in love with a married woman whose husband was a military officer. She left her husband to go and live with O'Conner. They lived together for some time until Frank O'Conner died. Soon after, the woman's husband asked her to come back to him. She did and they continued living together as man and wife.
The other lady had been a nanny to a rich family in South Wales. One of the daughters of the family fell in love with one of the "cow men" (she used this expression if memory serves me right). The family instantly dismissed him and he went to work elsewhere. They forbad her to have anything more to do with him but she followed him, married him and they lived happily together. Of course, the family would have nothing to do with her after that. But the woman who told me the story said that she often visited them at their small holding. She told me they were very happily married with a few children.

Odds On

William Rees-Mogg writing in The Times recently tipped Lord Mandelson to be the next leader of the Labour party with, at his heels, Harriet Harmon making good running. Give me a break please Rees-Mogg - Mandelson leader with Harmon his deputy, or vice versa?..... the mind boggles.
I would like to know what the odds are on these two in the betting market. Now that Rees-Mogg has tipped them then maybe the odds will suddenly have risen; but as the time draws nearer when decisions have to be made by the National Executive or whoever, my bet is that they won't, either of them, be in the running.
Remember some time back when Margaret Thatcher was PM and people were speculating on a change up top? Who then was odds-on favourite? No, you can't remember because he has pretty well disappeared without trace; so I shall tell you: Kenneth Baker. Remember him?
He was tipped for the top but somehow I knew that he didn't have a snowballs. He was too decent, too nice, too much the intellectual. So he went - to the Lords.
But I must say that Kenneth Baker was responsible for introducing a bill that had the most far reaching effects on social life: the Dog Act. Now many people said it wouldn't work; others said it was a disgrace, an assault on the right of dogs to do whatever dogs do - like bite and shit and bark and kill little babies. I thought, and still think, that it was one of the best acts passed through parliament that have taken place in the past 50 or so years.
So, cheers to Kenneth Baker for that and though he is virtually forgotten he will always be remembered by me as a man who did the right thing - though it wasn't the most popular thing and maybe that's what eventually wrecked his ambition. If he really had any.
Mandelson, leader of the Labour Party? Don't make me laugh. Why not Elton John?