Reviewers

I cannot believe that two well known London theatre critics can have two diametrically opposite views of the same show. O yes I can: it happens all the time.
Take Charles Spencer of The Daily Telegraph on "Anthony and Cleopatra" at Stratford: "Michael Boyd directs a fast, gripping and amusing modern-dress production..... and there is a fizzing chemistry in her (Cleo) relationship with him (Tony)." Now take Patrick Carnegy writing in The Spectator: "In this deplorable new production it is not just Anthony who's taken leave of his senses but Michael Boyd, its director.... What madness can have overcome the brilliant director of the "Histories" sequence? This show is worthy neither of him nor of Stratford."
Then we have two other critics with a different show called "A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky". Tim Walker in The Sunday Telegraph has nothing but praise for the play: "I am delighted to be able to say that my least favourite theatre (Lyric Hammersmith) has finally put on a play that I find admirable in every respect." Whereas Lloyd Evans in The Spectator has an entirely different view: "Unable to find a good playwright, it has commissioned three bad ones to show their talentlessness in a single work....The characters are a collection of self-pitying autists and soup-brained posers.... One wonders what the Lyric is up to. They hire a trio of halfwits to scribble a plotless muddle. They load it with a cast of 11 underused actors..... this cascade of lexical trivialities written by a panel of inadequates...." Etc etc etc.
Maybe he had the flu when he saw it like I did once a long time ago when I reviewed a play in Cardiff called "Fanshen" after it had been given rave reviews in London. I thought it just dreadful. It was about workers in a commune in China, if memory serves me right; it was gruelling stuff, not a chuckle within throwing distance. Not even a smile! OK so I had the flu; that might have helped to make it one of the worst theatrical experiences of my life. I'm afraid that reviews do sometimes depend on the mood you're in when you get there. But the reviews quoted above seem genuine takes on the plays that were seen and it's hard to see how they could be so contrary to each other.
I made "Fanshen" my marker against which I judged other rotten productions e.g. "this play was dreadful but not as dreadful as 'Fanshen' ".

Critics

"Enron", the play that was so successful here, first in Chichester then in the West End, has flopped in New York. Why? Two reasons: the critics didn't like it; the American public didn't take to the idea that a British playwright could successfully write a play about the collapse of an American institution. Maybe this second reason had some connection with the first: maybe the critics too thought this but, without saying so, used other criticisms to bring the play down. In short there was something smelling of patriotism here and you know what Johnson said of the patriot: "patriotism is the last resort of the scoundrel".
New York critics, unlike our critics, have the power to close shows. Theatre-goers there read the reviews before attending shows and don't go if the shows are panned. One show I recall didn't last long when everyone this side of the Atlantic thought it would run and run: "Under Milk Wood" by Dylan Thomas. Thomas was popular in America; with some people he was/is revered. You'd have thought that play would go. But no. It closed after a week or so after it had received scathing reviews. Here in London it had received rave reviews. Donald Houston led the cast as the narrator and I heard that his disappointment was deeply felt. I wonder if he ever recovered from the shock he experienced; he seemed to disappear from the film and theatre world until he died some years ago.
Critics, especially the New York variety, can indirectly hurt writers and actors and directors to such an extent sometimes that tragedy results. Tennessee Williams tells in his autobiography of a playwright committing suicide after a play of his was "taken apart" by the critics.
In the film "Theatre of Blood" Vincent Price, in one of his best roles, plays an actor who has received so many bad reviews from critics, he sets out to murder them one by one. You New York critics, look out; there may lurk out there some deranged actor who wishes to seek revenge for calling his performance "the worst piece of acting I have ever seen".
When Noel Coward had a stinker from Kenneth Tynan, the author passed Tynan by in a restaurant close by where the play was running; he leaned over towards Tynan and called him a very naughty name. It began with the letter C.

Neil Simon

Many writers want to be considered great and when they are not recognised as great they wonder why. Haven't they written serious books? Don't they write good quality prose (or poetry)? Don't they deal with important matters - with issues? Yes, yes and yes in some cases. But the thing is they don't have that - what-de-yer call it? - they don't have that extra spark of something or other. Who knows what? The fact is that no one knows what it is until it is seen. You can say so-and-so has it but you can't say why; but you can say the other so-and-so hasn't and you know why. You know why but you still can't explain why.
Why is Beethoven's Emperor concerto a great piece of music while Saint-Sean's 2nd Piano concerto, for all its brilliance, is not?
In a recent article in The New Yorker, John Lahr argues that Neil Simon, playwright extraordinaire, should be regarded as "an artist" though he evidently is not.
He writes: "Simon told me recently that he doesn't feel honoured in his time. 'Only from show to show,' he said. But what do you call someone who, over half a century, has brought millions of people together to tell them bittersweet stories that shed light and laughter on the follies of his small corner of the universe? I say you call him an artist, and the hell with it."
And I call him a popular playwright.
The last five words of Lahr's give it all away. Even John Lahr doesn't believe it.
Is J.K.Rowling an artist? No. Never. Popular writer, yes, but that's it. Is Noel Coward an artist? No. A clever wordsmith yes but with nothing to say about the human condition.
Why do they fret so much over whether they qualify to be recognised by the literati as artists when they do what they do well, please a lot of people, make a lot of money sometimes? Because they don't just want to be liked or even loved, they want to be revered.

The Junior Apprentice

I was determined not to watch it, Juniou Apprentice, but I sneaked a view and couldn't turn it off. Of course it's the same format as the adult version though Sir Alan has now become Lord Sugar; and of course the teams are given difficult tasks to perform which, true to form, they do badly; and of course Lord Sugar at the end sends one the group packing with his index finger pointing at the trembling-with-fright individual while he says "You're fired". Of course, of course, of course: but that's one of the pleasures of the show: it's satisfyingly familiar. This time though Lord Sugar is not quite so nasty to these young would-be apprentices as Sir Alan was to their adult counterparts.
There is, of course (again), always the bitch amoung the group and there is the cryer and the one who likes to take over.... but this time they have an artiste in the shape of Adam.
He has proved himself already to be a distinctive personality since he is already charged with being a mysoginist: "men are better at business because of their physical capabilities". I don't think that's mysoginistic; it is illogical - what have physical capabilities got to do with business? Unless you're in the business, say, of selling sacks of coal. But I don't think he meant that sort of business.
The fact is that, mysoginist or not, he's a genius. He doesn't know he is but he is. The reason? He managed to talk his way out of being fired by a speech that was almost Chekovian. There he was having led his team to a no-sales-at-all disaster, about to be fired - and should have been at that point - when he made a speech that was - no not Chekovian, Becketian. "Why should I not fire you Adam?" Lord Sugar asked him expecting (I could read his expression) a trite reply which would have sealed his fate. Not any triteness from our Adam but a sort of action replay of his life until then: how he had left school with his parents wishing him not to, how he set up his own business and how he had a turnover in 6 months of £25000 (or whatever), how he'd work his fingers to the bone to become Lord Sugar's apprentice and so on. It was masterly. He'd saved himself from what seemed evident firing. The girl at his side, quite a capable young woman, unfairly went. Lord Sugar had, I think, seen something of himself in this young Cicero.
The scene reminded me a bit of the last speech in Uncle Vanya, but moreso of a real-life meeting of a nurse with a slightly deranged man who had been waiting hours to be seen in a documentary film, famous a few decades back, called I believe "Hospital". The man approached the nurse and told her what he thought of his being there, left to fend for himself..... I can't recall the details but it was, like Adam's, an example of a person desperate to communicate with someone "out there" but failing. Except that Adam didn't fail. He won't last long; it doesn't matter, he's already had his moment of glory.

Alun Watkins

I am sure it was Alan Watkins, the journalist, who wrote of a very humorous incident involving a casket containing the remains of a fellow jourmalist - when you write "I am sure" it usually means you are not so sure. But I think it was by him. Anyway it was the sort of thing that would have happened to him and his ilk: drinkers/journalists. They had to bring the remains of this man from somewhere up north to his home down south, but on the way they stopped off for a few drinks, then more drinks, then more, forgot about the casket, left it in a pub and never saw it again. Good tale. Make a good story. But if I were to write it I'd end it with them buying another casket, filling it with ashes from the pub fireplace and bringing that back. Worthy of Joe Orton.
According to Ferdinand Mount in this week's Spectator, Watkins and he and a few other fellow jouranlists used to enjoy going to political party gatherings because they went by train and drank most of the way: they once cleared a train canteen of all its drinks - beer, wine and spirits, all gone. But Watkins noticed that on the top shelf there were a line of miniature bottles; so they downed them as well.
Alan Watkins wrote a piece about Meacher the labour MP asserting that he was not as working class as he maintained; that, on the contrary, Meacher was brought up in a fairly middle class home. Meacher took him to court and lost (never liked Meacher much anyway).
Another "case" which Watkins won - I am sure of this (meaning I may not be) - concerned Mrs Thatcher's Press Officer (what is his name?). Watkins said he had overheard the PO say something derogatory about French cheese, that a certain cheese carried dangerous bacteria - or some such thing. The PO denied he had said it but was proved a liar because he had been overheard by others saying the same thing.
I always enjoyed Alan Watkins's articles and may now read one of his books; the fall of Mrs Thatcher is supposed to be one of his best.
What I find difficult to believe is Mount saying that Watkins was often in the company of Auberon Waugh: Watkins was on the left and Waugh was on the right politically. But there, after all, they both liked a drop of the good stuff. Maybe Waugh drunk was bareable and maybe even good company. I used to know an actress who said she knew Waugh well. "Lovely man, Bron," she said.

Side-kicks

The other night I was sitting in St David's Hall, Cardiff, listening to Rimsky-Korsakov's "Schererezade" when a thought struck me: wasn't this part of the work, a rousing section of loud music, that which was, many years ago, used as the opening theme of Francis Durbridge's.... er.... er.... I just couldn't remember the name of the detective. I knew the name of his side-kick: Steve but I could not for the life of me think of his name, the smooth, very English sleth. One of the troubles is that you start not listening to the concert while your mind is trying to discover the detective's name. As soon I got home, onto the internet - Francis Durbridge -and there it was: Paul Temple.
Which made me think of other side-kicks, detective's helpers, often stooges. What's their purpose? I suppose it is a character on which the ace detective can test his theories, someone who sometimes offers advice (rarely taken), someone who is there to persuade you, the listener or viewer or reader, that the eccentricities of the ace private eye (they usually are not policemen) are balanced by the normality of his assistant.
I miss Paul Temple and Steve. I liked their unfalappable smoothness and unfailing politeness, their Englishness maybe, probably a fiction itself but likeable, comforting.
Sherlock Holmes and Watson are, of course, the best known and loved of them all, though Holmes himself is not at all a loveable character. He's a highly eccentric, intelligent drug addict and violinist, never a bore but never a polite guy like Temple; while Doctor Watson is an intelligent helper often at odds with Holmes's methods but forever constant in his admiration for the man.
My father was fond of Sexton Blake and his side-kick - Snowy? I, as a child, enjoyed the films of Bulldog Drummond but can't recall him having an assistant. The Saint was a loner I believe. So was Mr Moto (played in the series of films by Peter Lorre).
In modern times there's Morse and Lewis and now Lewis and the young, bright, educated copper who helps him.
After a series or two they stopped playing the Schererazade piece as intro and used a less classical work "Coronation something or other" by Vivian Ellis. Probably it was more suitable,lighter, more English. But whenever I hear the Russian music, this is the piece that always brings to mind Francis Durbridge's.... er.... er.... what's his name?.... and Steve.

Green Zone

"Green Zone" is a film from the hand-held-and-maybe-rattling-trolley-carrying camera of director Paul Greengrass. And, my God, what a bone-rattling experience it is; you feel as if you're on a roller-coaster with the sound of gunfire, shell fire and mortar bombs bursting around and about you. I'm afraid it is not an experience I enjoyed, though the film's story held me a bit, and I must say I won't be going to another Greengrass film again. Unless, of course, he gets to put the camera on proper stable bases and uses the usual techniques to create atmosphere and tension.
I recall reading an article on film-making a long time ago in which the writer said that the use of the zoom should be forbidden. He explained why but I can't remember the reasons he gave. It might have had to do with a sudden feeling in the audience jarring them away from their "willing suspension of disbelief" to the knowledge that they are watching only an unreal film. I can only remember one occasion in which John Ford used a zoom effect and that was in "The Searchers" when John Wayne's character evinces deep and sudden hatred at the sight of a woman gone mad (having been abducted by Indians years before); the camera, from a long shot, zoomed up to Wayne's bitter face now in close-up. It worked at the time but having seen it a few times since I can't say I'm fond of it now. Itis making a point, essential to an understanding of his character but you are too aware of the trick of the zoom for the point to be made with any depth.
Greengrass uses the zoom all the time. And if he's not zooming in on everything that moves, then he's panning and swinging in arcs and rattling the camera up and down.
I know what he's trying to do: he's trying to make the audience feel the experience of actually being there at the front line of the battle. It doesn't. It makes me feel that I'm watching a documentary while at the same time knowing that it isn't a documentary.
I suggest a dose of a month or so of films by Ozu who hardly moves the camera at all, certainly never zooms, never pans, rarely even cuts.
I recall Paulene Kael's remarks when her film-reviewing career came to an end with The New Yorker: she said she would miss Bill Murray but she was pleased that she wouldn't have to sit through another Oliver Stone film again. I'd feel the same about Paul Greengrass if I was retiring from reviewing of films.

Films

When I was a kid I went to the cinema a few evenings a week and again on Saturday morning when it was full of kids of all ages up to about 13; they showed a cartoon or two, a "main feature" - usually one of the B pictures shown in the week (which I had already seen!) - and a serial: Flash Gordon or Buck Jones or The Lone Ranger. We never knew who had directed these films. I doubt in those days if anyone knew. Directors' names were not known. Maybe you'd see the name on the screen at the start of the film but you took no notice of it. When you went to see a film you went because you liked the actor or because someone had told you it was good. The newspapers' reviews, if there were any, weren't read. I doubt if most people knew the name Alfred Hitchcock.
Then something happened. In France. The New Wave of critics and film makers came along and began talking and writing about directors as creative artists. Indeed it was in France that Hitchcock became revered first. Then gangster films were glorified - "Film Noire" became the descriptive term for them, surely coming from the New Wave gang.
I'm not sure the same sort of trend is relevant today because there are so many directors out there who are technically brilliant. I have seen four or five excellent films over the past decade or so which are brilliant in most respects for their scripts. Get a good script, maybe, and anyone with any feeling could direct it.
That's a bit of a simplicity maybe but directors these days don't seem to have a particular style about which you can say that his second or third films are examples of it. Good directors like Ridley Scott do such variable work. The director of "The Usual Suspects" has not made a better film yet (he had a superb script for that film).
But against this I have to say that Roman Polanski's latest film "The Ghost" shows he hasn't lost his touch.

Cuckoo

There have been a few letters in The Times recently about cuckoos. Someone heard his first cuckoo in spring sounding off not on two notes but on four. Someone else, writing later, put forward the idea that if the first three notes were in a certain key and the last sound was in some lower key then the song might well have been the bird equivalwent of the opening bars of Beethoven's fifth symphony. Someone today mentioned the cuckoo singing in a minor key and another said his sang in a minor third on arrival but "slipping to a perfect fourth before departing to Southern climes".
Until a few years back, I had always had good thoughts about the cuckoo and his song: it brings certain romantic notions of Spring to mind and, of course, the music associated with the bird - Delius's "On Hearing the first Cuckoo in Spring", Mahler's First Symphony, Haydn's Toy Symphony and isn't there a passage in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony?
Ah yes, the beautiful sound of the cuckoo heralding the birth of a new Spring - and all that!
I even recall being told in Primary school when I was about 8 years old how the young cuckoo managed to get rid of the other bird's eggs by booting them out of the nest it had been laid in. Fascinating, I thought. We all smiled at the thought.
Then, a couple of years ago, I saw a nature film on TV and witnessed how the adult cuckoo laid her eggs in other bird's nests, some of them quite small birds, and buggered off leaving them to be fed by the other birds. It was a horror film as I watched how the adult birds had to feed this interloper until they practically dropped off their perches, how this big monster of a bird pushed the others out so that only he was being fed. Indeed it truly was a horror film ranking with "Psycho" or "The Chainsaw Massacre" (?). They were just stories, this was real. And, folks, it's happening while we sit and listen with rapture to Delius or Mahler. What's the RSPCA doing about it I want to know?

Badminton

I used to play Badminton with "The Over Fifties". Most were over sixty, some over seventy, a few over eighty and one over ninety. He had been a good sportsman all his life: cricket, tennis, squash and now badminton.
The last game I played we (we only played doubles) won 15 - Love. My partner was a very good player; I was OK. One of our opponents was a very good player, the other was about standard. It was nice to think that the last game I ever played I won 15 to zero. But something happened in the game that sealed my fate as a player: when we reached 14 I realised I couldn't lift my foot - I had somehow got "drop-foot" or "foot-drop". But my partner was able to finish the game successfully while I staggered about on one foot, sort of thing.
Some of the games were more like battles than games. These old men - and some women - quarrelled over every little thing. "It was in." "It was out". "I said it was was in." "And I said it was way out here" - indicating with his racket a spot well outside the border line. By this time they were confronting each at the net, nose to nose over it from each side. "You are the biggest cheat I have ever known". A sour laugh from the other side of the net: "who's a cheat? Not me. By the way, I thought you were a Christian." What being a Christian had to do with it I don't know.
One day someone from a magazine or newspaper or whatever came to photograph us ("You too can become healthy and fit if only you try. Look at this lot of crocks...."). He took photos from the side, from behind us and then he decided to take an elaborate kind of photo of a group (who were always argueing) from the floor. He placed himself on the floor at the edge of the netpole, angled his camera with great exactitude at a player or two, took ages to get it all right and was about to take the first shot when he found that there was no one on court - an argument had taken place in which someone had called someone something, probably a cheat, and one walked off followed by the rest. The photographer lay there awhile hoping perhaps they'd return. But no, they were still "at it" on the sidelines. I read a word on his lips which summed up his feelings I think. It began with an F and had four letters.
The ninety-year old told me a joke just before I left: four old men used to play tennis regularly but they were always argueing over whether the ball was in or out of court. Then one of them died so they had to seek another tennis player. They found an old bloke who could play so asked him to play to which he replied yes he would. Came the first game and someone said "It was out". An opponent said "it was in". They decided to consult the newcomer. "Did you see it?" "Yes," he replied. "Well was it in or out?" "I can't remember," he said.
In case you are wondering what happed to my foot - it got better. But no more badminton thanks.