Happy New Year!

Happy 2014 to everybody and special thanks to my lovely friends and family for this splendorous new pile of reading material.

I'm looking forward to reading and reviewing them all very soon, although I'm already imagining that The Wretched (Les Miserables) could take some time...

I'm also excited about more theatre watching and reviewing in 2014. So far I have Donmar Warehouse's Coriolanus (via satellite) and Bristol Old Vic's Jane Eyre in the diary but there will be more, hopefully much more. I plan to continue working my way through my Shakespeare bucket list as well as seeing more literary adaptations and new theatre in the South West and beyond.

Wishing you all a healthy, prosperous book-filled and theatre-going New Year!

The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing

I haven't posted a book review recently, as I've been watching and writing quite a bit about theatre, not to mention the endless distraction of preparing for a family Christmas! This doesn't mean I haven't read anything, though; a teetering tower of books has accumulated, ready to review during this lovely interlude when the mad pre-Christmas dash is over, but a return to work in January seems deceptively far away.

I'm beginning with The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing because, of all my recent reads, this is the one that made a lasting impression. I don't know about you, but the announcement of Lessing's death last November jolted me into the realisation I have no opinion about her writing, for the simple reason I haven't read any of it. Simon at Savidge Reads felt much the same and launched a #DorisinDecember initiative. My book club settled on The Grass Is Singing, mainly because at only 206 pages long, it appeared the least daunting of her works.

The Grass is Singing, set in 1940s Southern Rhodesia, is Lessing's first novel and it may be short, but it sure knows how to pack a punch. The story opens with an announcement in the newspaper of a death on a remote farm; Mary Turner has been murdered by her 'native' houseboy Moses.

The Turners, Mary in particular, are widely regarded as misfits by neighbours like Charlie Slatter, first to arrive on the murder scene. For years they've shunned social engagements and struggled to make a profit from their crops, living like the 'poor white' Afrikaners who are despised almost as much as natives by the British colonial community. It's only the viewpoint of newcomer Tony Marston, that brings a sense of the establishment being more intent on closing down a potentially scandalous situation, than on seeing that justice is done.

Having given us the circumstances of the murder, Lessing then reaches back in time to tell the story leading up to it. This is Mary's story, beginning with her unhappy childhood in a remote South African dorp, an ugly cluster of buildings at the centre of a farming community hundreds of miles wide. Lessing's descriptions of Mary's surroundings evoke feelings of powerful oppression, such as the horrors a local store holds for a child:

It is always a low single-storeyed building divided into segments like a strip of chocolate, with grocery, butchery and bottle-store under one corrugated iron roof. It has a high dark wooden counter, and behind the counter shelves hold anything from distemper mixture to toothbrushes all mixed together. There are a couple of racks holding cheap cotton dresses in brilliant colours, and perhaps a stack of shoe-boxes, or a glass case for cosmetics or sweets. There is the unmistakable smell, a smell compounded of varnish, dried blood from the killing yards behind, dried hides, dried fruit and strong yellow soap.

This is no idyllic, all-purpose hub reminiscent of Ike Godsey's General Merchandise in The Waltons, but a hateful backdrop to Mary's poor and miserable childhood, with a drunken father and mother who 'literally pined to death'. But Mary does find happiness when she takes an office job in town and lives an unfettered, single life in a boarding house. Then, past the age of thirty, she overhears a friend's unkind remark which makes her feel she must marry:

Then she met Dick Turner. It might have been anybody. Or rather, it would have been the first man she met who treated her as if she were wonderful and unique.

Dick is a poor indebted farmer in need of a wife:

He began to like her, because it was essential for him to love somebody; he had not realised how very lonely he had been. 

There's a sense of foreboding as we journey into the emotional heart of this novel, knowing the outcome as we do. Dick's farmhouse is so basic there aren't any ceilings and the corrugated iron roof makes it unbearably hot. Again, Lessing's description brings home the overwhelming claustrophobia of heat in such a vast land 

...she went out to look at the sky. There were no clouds at all. It was a low dome of sonorous blue with an undertone of sultry sulphur colour because of the smoke that filled the air. The pale sandy soil in front of the house dazzled up waves of light and out of it curved the gleaming stems of the poinsettia bushes, bursting into irregular slashes of crimson.

Dick is a decent man with a visceral bond to his land. He treats his workers fairly by the standards of the day, but devotes any surplus cash to ill-fated money-making schemes, rather than installing the ceilings which would make Mary's life bearable. 

One of the many tragedies in this book is that Mary and Dick could have made a great team; their skills are complementary if only they'd managed to work together, rather than strip-by-strip tearing each other apart. Mary begins enthusiastically enough, making soft-furnishings and keeping chickens, but soon rebuffs the Slatters' attempts to socialise and treats her native workers with chilling savagery. The cycle of crop failures, the heat and noise of the cicadas and the grinding poverty all combine to wear her down:

Five years earlier she would have drugged herself by the reading of romantic novels. In towns women like her live vicariously in the lives of the film stars.

Her life changes again with the arrival of Moses, the latest in her long line of houseboys and one who has a strange hold on her:

...although he was never disrespectful, he forced her now to treat him as a human being; it was impossible for her to thrust him out of her mind like something unclean as she had done with all the others in the past.

Doris Lessing was born in Persia (now Iran) in 1919 but her family moved to Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) when she was five years old. The autobiographical nature of her writing has often been discussed, especially the way she draws on childhood experiences and her social and political concerns. Although she was first married and divorced at a young age, it's still remarkable that she wrote this forensic dissection of the disintegration of a marriage at the tender age of twenty-five. Lessing moved to London in 1949 to pursue her writing career and The Grass is Singing was published in 1950.

As well as an examination of loneliness, this book is a stark portrayal of racial tensions and the harrowing inequality at the heart of 1940s Southern Rhodesia, a society where those with black skin were regarded as lower than cattle. The Grass is Singing is a compact yet complex novel, combining intense individual scrutiny with bleak social comment, about a way of life which may now be largely reviled but was widely accepted the time.

Not always the easiest of reads, this book is so searingly written that it's spilling over with quotable paragraphs. It also has the rare ability to make you care about the fate of superficially unsympathetic characters. The Grass is Singing left me reeling, full of admiration for the power of Doris Lessing's writing and looking forward to a lively discussion with my book club.

The Little Mermaid at Bristol Old Vic

Mention The Little Mermaid in my family and we immediately think of the Disney video still lurking in a cupboard somewhere, the one watched so often when my daughters were little that the case is broken and the tape stretched thin. But Bristol Old Vic's latest family-friendly Christmas show reaches further back to the Hans Christian Andersen original - the one I read as a child - to bring a fresh new interpretation of this much-loved fairy tale to the stage.

Bristol Old Vic has a strong tradition of creating spell-binding theatre based on children's classics such as Peter Pan and Swallows and Amazons, and this year's production is no exception. The Little Mermaid lives under the sea with her father and sisters, using her beautiful voice to do 'songing' by order of the villainous Sea Witch. She's full of curiosity and dreams of visiting the surface and meeting the 'who-mans' who live there, but this will only be allowed for one brief day on her seventeenth birthday. When that day finally arrives, she sets off in great excitement, little realising that it will lead her into sacrificing her most prized possession and change the course of her life forever.

This show resonates with inventive fishiness, particularly in the first half, as our heroine bides her time in her shell garden and alarms her father with her desire to break away from the constraints of underwater life. The Little Mermaid swims with the support of the rest of the cast, who transport her above their heads and use clever movement of fins and tails to introduce a sense of restlessness in an ever-shifting sea. Katie Moore is convincing in the title role and there are strong performances too from Beverly Rudd as the Sea Witch and Tristan Sturrock as the father who is never able to express his true emotions while watching his youngest daughter grow away from him. The dialogue, which sparkles with wit, is also on occasion tinged with sadness and regret as the versatile ensemble switches effortlessly between roles; tackling narration, song, musical instruments, physicality and audience participation all with great flair.

Jon Bausor's set has a structural beauty and simplicity with the sculptural shape of the waves far above transforming into the surface of the sea as the Little Mermaid swims towards it. The atmospheric lighting, particularly in the storm which greets her as she first sets eyes on the Prince, emphasizes the differences between the two worlds and the original songs composed by Shlomo and DJ Walde, although at first in danger of being too saccharine for my teenage daughter, grow stronger as the story unfolds.

The version of The Little Mermaid on my dusty old video tape is aimed fairly and squarely at young children but, in many ways, Bristol Old Vic's tale with its themes of setting out in the world, transformation and finally finding your own voice, is equally well suited to teenagers. Although the idea of living happily-ever-after seems anachronistic in these days of striving for gender equality, realisation dawns that the Prince has as much to lose as the Little Mermaid if he doesn't find his true love and get married by a pre-ordained deadline. Bristol Old Vic's magical retelling of The Little Mermaid, encompassing all the wonder of daring to dream no matter what the sacrifice, is at its heart a warm and uplifting adventure and one which should enchant audiences of all ages this Christmas.


You can watch The Little Mermaid at Bristol Old Vic until 18th January 2014. All photos reproduced here and my tickets are courtesy of Bristol Old Vic.

The Bard in my Bucket - One Year On

You can't find the meaning and rhythm in Shakespeare's prose by seeing it written down; those words need reading aloud or better still to be performed on a stage. So, a year ago, I decided that Item Number One on my bucket list was to watch all of Shakespeare's plays - preferably live. To be honest, it is the only item on my bucket list so far - not sure I'm getting the hang of this mortality thing. But then, as items go, it's quite a biggie; a list within a list, you could say.

Looking back to a year ago, I'd seen a mere 12 of his canon of 38 plays - although many more than once. How have I fared (I hear you ask) since making the conscious decision to try and see them all?

In February, there was The Winter's Tale at the RSC, seen as an understudy run, which was fun.  It was also my first theatrical review for clairethinking and an epiphany in terms of realising how much I enjoy writing about, as well as watching, theatre.

Next came A Midsummer Night's Dream at Bristol Old Vic in March, with some inspirational puppetry from Handspring and a truly remarkable Bottom. This didn't really count as I'd seen it already many moons ago as a school play, but I felt as though I was beginning to hit my reviewing stride a little here.

Third up was Two Gentlemen of Verona at the Tobacco Factory in May. I wasn't at all familiar with this early play of Shakespeare's and found it utterly charming and beautifully played. It goes without saying that Lollio stole the show...

Then I snuck in Hamlet at the RSC with Jonathan Slinger. This production came in for a fair bit of (mainly justified) stick, but Slinger rose above it, giving a nuanced and spirited portrayal of the Danish prince. Again, this doesn't officially count as I've seen Hamlet before and, for some forgotten reason, didn't quite manage to review it.

And finally for 2013 came King Lear at the Theatre Royal Bath in August. David Haig's Lear was transformed into an east end gangster in Lucy Bailey's envisioning of 1960s London. We sat in the front row, had an eyeful of blood and gore and loved it.

Until then it was going pretty well, but with nothing ticked off between September and now, I'm losing momentum. Here's the still somewhat daunting list to go at in 2014:

• Henry VI Part I
• Henry VI Part II
• Henry VI Part III
• Richard III
• Titus Andronicus 
• The Taming of the Shrew 
• Love’s Labour’s Lost
• King John 
• The Merchant of Venice 
• Henry IV Part I
• Henry IV Part II
• Henry V
• The Merry Wives of Windsor 
• Troilus and Cressida 
• All’s Well That Ends Well
• Othello
• Macbeth
• Antony and Cleopatra
• Coriolanus
• Pericles 
• Cymbeline
• Henry VIII
• The Two Noble Kinsmen

Full of early resolutions for the New Year, I've booked to see Donmar Warehouse and NT Live's Coriolanus in January, beamed by satellite to the lovely Little Theatre Cinema in Bath. Mark Gatiss, Tom Hiddleston and Birgitte Hjort Sorensen (from Borgen) - what's not to like?

Only twenty-two more to go. Bring it on...

Pictures courtesy of the RSC, Bristol Old Vic, Tobacco Factory, Theatre Royal Bath and Donmar Warehouse.

Henry Walker and the Wheel of Death at the Rondo Theatre

I haven't yet read Mr Sebastian and the Negro Magician by Daniel Wallace, but I'm guessing it might not be the most straightforward of books to adapt. If the renamed play Henry Walker and the Wheel of Death is anything to go by, the novel is a multi-faceted blurring of truth and fantasy, exploring the raw edges where magic ceases to be a sleight of hand and becomes something darker and more mysterious.

So, Shane Morgan certainly didn't give himself the easiest task in transferring this story to the stage, and it's to his credit he retained the approval and involvement of its author. This is actually a rather unusual and engaging tale, but not always an easy one to explain - hence the heavy reliance on narration from the start. On its own, this might not be a problem, but when combined with an onslaught of microphoned voices, initially the overall effect is one of confusion. The main characters are yet to be established and there are too many focal points all at once; the actors to the side, the assertive narration of private detective Carson and Henry centre-stage performing his tricks in barefoot isolation.

The story really begins to kick in when the initial narration fades and we reach its emotional heart; the relationship between Henry and his sister Hannah, brilliantly played by Dan Gaisford and Madelaine Ryan.They don't adopt the vocals of children and yet from their expressions and demeanor we realise we're being allowed into their childhood. We are able to witness their sibling bonds of complicity, their withholding and sharing of secrets.

Although once wealthy, the children's father lost his livelihood in the 1930s crash and he now works as a hotel porter, widowed and drowning his sorrows in gin. The children are often left to make their own entertainment; Hannah with a dog she calls Joan Crawford and Henry in the company of the shadowy magician he knows as Mr Sebastian, who occupies Room 702. Mr Sebastian gives Henry a new pack of cards to practice magic with, but as their relationship develops it becomes clear that this enigmatic stranger has some very big demands to make in return. For Henry, it seems the price of becoming a successful magician may ultimately prove more than he can bear.

This play explores themes of love and identity, perception and reality; what may be gained in pursuit of success, but also what is lost along the way. In between the action and exposition lurk some touchingly poignant moments and, in the interval, my daughter and I were abuzz with excitement as to what had just happened and how the story might end.

Overall, there is much to commend this production by Roughhouse Theatre; the circus-themed set is striking and fully explored by the actors and there's excellent use of physicality and puppetry with some enchanting set-pieces. The company switches roles well between characters with good use of props and their reading from scripts emphasizes Henry's isolation in an increasingly sinister world. Music adds atmosphere throughout and, on balance, although overused, the microphones prove to be effective.

Towards the end, the adaptation loses its way a little again, with too many threads of alternative realities to draw together and a few inevitably remaining undone. Although the ending itself is satisfyingly circular, some simplification of the introduction and conclusion would provide a clearer framework for what is otherwise an enthralling and thought-provoking play.


Henry Walker and the Wheel of Death is at the Rondo Theatre from 13th-16th November 2013.

Photographs courtesy of Matt Collins at Crush Images and Roughhouse Theatre. We watched this play at the Rondo on 15th November, courtesy of Roughhouse Theatre.

Harvest by Jim Crace

Continuing my theme of writing about the 2013 Man Booker shortlist after judging has taken place, I read Harvest by Jim Crace recently. It's been parked on my desk for a while, waiting to be reviewed.

Harvest is set in a small, rural community, ostensibly in the years of the English enclosures, although there's a feeling of timelessness that means it could equally well be taking place in our dystopian future. The barley has just been gathered in, usually a time of rejoicing for the villagers, who all have their part to play in the harvest and its ensuing rituals of celebration. But this year, beginning with the arrival of three strangers in the nearby woodland, a series of unsettling events takes place. Over the course of the next seven days, the very fabric which has bound this isolated community together begins to unravel.

The narrator of this story is Walter Thirsk, also an outsider, who came to the village some years ago as the manservant of the present landowner, Master Kent. Slowly he's settled in, marrying a local lass and setting up home, but with his different looks and ways, he's still considered a newcomer. Now his wife has died, he considers leaving with 'Mr Quill', an educated visitor who's come to map the land. Walter befriends him, helping him to prepare his inks and vellum, only to find when trouble arrives it's easy for suspicion to fall, not just on Mr Quill, but also on Walter himself.

This is a beautifully written allegory of what happens when a community finds itself under threat from external forces, be they the arrival of strangers or technological advances, which mean its deeply traditional way of life is no longer sustainable.

This year the first warm rains were late. The field was slow to blush with green, and what early shoots dared show themselves were shy and flimsy. We watched the barley with anxiety, first fearing drought and then, once our plants reached knee-height, praying that the sky would spare us gales. 

That is our custom. 

There's a hypnotic beat to Crace's writing, a spare usage of words and pleasing measurement of tone which draws the reader in. For the first half of the book, I was engrossed; Walter is an engaging narrator and the events as they unfold are true-to-life, intriguing and often brutal.

I didn't review this novel immediately, because I puzzled over why it lost its hold on me in the final chapters. The prose is as measured as before and the characters for the most part fully formed. Without giving the plot away, I found myself increasingly worried by the lack of any overt spirituality in a community so imbued with ritual. I also struggled to understand the actions of two of the characters once reunited, and thought the events surrounding such a central character as Mr Quill were not adequately explained.

Jim Crace has announced Harvest is to be his last novel and on The Review Show, John Mullan said he didn't think it was his best. On the strength of this, I would happily turn to one of his earlier works to immerse myself in his delicious prose. Of Harvest, I would say there's a great deal to admire in this book and I'd recommend reading it, but ultimately, for me at least, it lacks a satisfying conclusion.

Have you read this novel? What did you think of the ending?


Images courtesy of Picador Books and The Independent.
Harvest by Jim Crace is published by Picador.

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

We all know the outcome of the 2013 Man Booker judging by now, who the winner was and, more pertinent to this post, who it wasn't. It only takes a glance back at winning books over the years to realise just how arbitrary the whole process can be, with previous judges often reflecting how they made the 'wrong' choice, now they can see which of their shortlist has matured into (that most elusive of genres) a classic. Many prominent authors have been passed over for the ultimate prize altogether (think Beryl Bainbridge or Martin Amis), while others have won it for a lesser novel (Margaret Atwood and The Blind Assassin) simply to make up for having missed out with a greater one (A Handmaid's Tale, Alias Grace).

It's an achievement even to make it to the longlist, of course, never mind the shortlist. But, doubtless this is of little comfort to all the other shortlisted authors this year, as they switch from having their novels scrutinised before the award ceremony on every review show going, to being frozen out of the spotlight as the winner Eleanor Catton is feted for only her second book The Luminaries. So, in defiance of the unwritten embargo on discussing any of the novels that didn't win after the event, I'm going to review the one I've just finished reading; Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being.

This is a novel of ambitious scope, beginning with Nao, a sixteen-year-old Japanese girl, writing from her table in a French maid cafe in Tokyo. She writes to make a connection with her reader, which could be you or me but turns out to be Ruth, a writer who finds Nao's diary inside a Hello Kitty lunchbox on the shoreline near her remote home in British Columbia. Ruth speculates with her husband Oliver that it could have been washed up there as a result of Japan's earthquake and tsunami in 2011 and the more she reads, the more concerned she becomes for Nao's well-being. She scours the internet for names and references, trying to find a tangible reality for Nao, her programmer father Haruki, who lost his job in California and was forced to move his family back to Japan, and Jiko, her ancient Zen Buddhist great-grandmother. What Ruth uncovers and experiences as she comes close to finishing the diary, leads her to question not only her sanity, but also her own fundamental perceptions of existence.

Ozeki is dealing with some big philosophical themes here, using both Zen Buddhism and quantum mechanics to examine the nature of time itself and the ways in which we are all inter-connected. She questions the relationship between the writer and the reader; linking Nao and Ruth brings together two very different women and their cultures. Initially, I found Nao's voice to be the more compelling one - she writes in the first person as an angst-ridden teenager who finds herself an outsider in her own country, suffers the most brutal bullying at school and copes with a loss of status as well as her father's suicidal tendencies. Yet, she is also an amusing and charismatic narrator who can laugh at her own predicament and finds solace in her great-grandmother Jiko's beliefs.

Initially, Ruth seems something of a cipher - there as an instrument to comment on and clarify Nao's diary, supplemented by the chunks of information supplied by her super-knowledgeable husband. Slowly, though, her story begins to grow; there are nuances lurking below the surface of her marriage, a sense of being trapped in her own existence as a writer who has no words. Over the course of this novel, Ruth develops her own narrative, both in response to her immediate environment and through reading Nao's revelations.

I devoured this story for its sweeping breadth, combined with the very up close and personal examination of the interwoven lives of these two very different women. Having said that, though, it isn't without its flaws; ever since Bobby Ewing stepped out of the shower in Dallas all those years ago, I've had a dislike of any form of resolution achieved through dream sequences. As a plot device, it's nearly always a cop out, even though it's perhaps a little more acceptable in this book because of the feeling that reality is already being stretched taut.

A Tale for the Time Being is generally very well-written, but, because Ozeki is bringing so many strands together, it does occasionally feel a little lacking in fluency. Overall though, this is a major achievement by Ozeki; a book of multiple facets I simply didn't want to end. At the moment, I can't think the other novels on the Man Booker shortlist are more thought-provoking and absorbing than this one, but I really should tackle The Luminaries and judge for myself.

A Tale for the Time Being is published in paperback in the UK by Canongate Books. More information about the book and its author is available here