Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice, romantic comedy for the erudite, has been adapted for theatre by Simon Reade for Theatre Royal Bath and is currently touring. This week it has been in Birmingham, where I went to see it last night. I’m often sceptical about adaptations of books, but (as countless BBC adaptations have shown) Austen’s social comedies with their light touch and sparkling wit, not to mention romance, tend to lend themselves to good adaptation. There is no point in being a purist about it; no book will be the same once it’s adapted for a different medium, but as a play Pride and Prejudice works well on many levels.

Susan Hampshire, of course, is an ideal Mrs Bennett; she demonstrates the avarice and foolishness we know to expect of the character, but manages to do so with a twinkle in her eye and apparent delight with the goings-on of her daughters that is utterly convincing and quite infectious. Her daughters, meanwhile, are well-differentiated despite the speed at which the plot must move to fit the novel into less than two and a half hours; Jane’s quiet dignity, Lizzie’s vivacity and Lydia’s headstrong flirtatiousness come across particularly well.

The production plays well to the innate comedy of the book, though the flipside is that some 0f the more serious and more detailed elements are necessarily omitted. Mr and Mrs Bennett are hilarious in their interaction; the obsequious Mr Collins is deliciously smarmy; and yet Elizabeth and Darcy seem to generate real affection and warmth for each other. The play is a thistledown confection, light, humorous and appealing, which may not be quite as Austen intended, but it’s a play that can hardly fail to appeal; even if Austen is not your thing, there’s still enough here to raise a laugh and warm the heart. That said, one might dare to venture the suggestion that it is occasionally a little cheesy – all the period dances grate on me after a while – but with its minimal set and toned-down costumes, it’s not too predictable. I hardly see how it could have been done better.

The Page 56 Meme

I am unashamed to say that I copied this from the Victorian Geek blog, who in turn purloined it from someone else. That’s why it’s a meme, I suppose.

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open it to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the sentence along with these instructions.

Don’t dig for your favourite book, the coolest book, or the most intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

Well, for me that would be the wonderful line:

“The bridge to platform 4 is to me less interesting than Bifrost guarded by Heimdell with the Gjallarhorn.”

I doubt many people would guess what that’s from!  I read this when I was writing my chapter on children’s literature, and found it fascinating; it contains Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-stories”, as well as one of his early short stories, “Leaf by Niggle”.

Turner as you’ve never seen him

On Saturday I went to see “Turner and the Masters” at Tate Britain, which seems to have unanimously glowing reviews so far, and I am completely in agreement with them. I took pages of notes so will attempt to condense them here! The premise of the exhibition is that Turner engaged publicly with other “masters”, learning from them, building upon their work, testing the conventions of art and even competing with his contemporaries. His paintings are displayed alongside those of other artists including Rembrandt, Poussin, Claude and Constable, to name but a few, and the effect is remarkably enlightening.

Where Turner paints intentionally from a similar subject as another artist, such as Dutch Boats in a Gale, a companion piece for van d Velde’s 1672 Ships in a Stormy Sea, he demonstrates a modern-seeming boldness of light and colour which gives the picture not only its appeal but also a unique appearance of Turner-ness. Not that he always improves on the original; his companion piece to de Loutherbourg’s Glorious First of June, The Battle of Trafalgar, whilst emanating a sombre tone appropriate to the loss of life of the battle, also contains less life and movement than the original.

Even when actually copying a painting (the traditional Royal Academy method of learning) Turner’s versions remain entirely Turner’s. The exhibition is arranged so that one can see the effect of, for example, Rembrandt’s use of lit areas in gloom, in Turner’s works, and I was particularly struck by the pairing of Rembrandt’s The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (right) with Turner’s Moonlight: A study at Millbank (top left).

The exhibition shows, more than anything, Turner’s development as an artist, something which would not be possible without the inclusion of the picutres which influenced him. From Piranesi he learned perspective, we see; from Claude, classical structuring of his work, and from his contemporaries, he learned the importance of colour and simplicity. Turner was well-known for use the “varnishing days” at the RA to slightly alter his paintings, which is clear from the pairing here of Turner’s Helvoetsluys (left) with Constable’s The Opening of Waterloo Bridge, exhibited together in 1832 and reunited here for the first time, where it becomes obvious that Turner’s restrained use of colour (including the red spot in the foreground added at the last minute) and clean lines triumph over Constable’s detail. As he said himself, “atmosphere is my style”.

Conscious of the art of past masters, the work of his contemporaries, and even of his legacy, this is an exhibition which shows Turner the working artist in a new light. As John Ruskin, possibly his biggest fan, wrote, “consider for yourself whether there was ever any other painter who could strike such an octave. Whether there has been or not, in other walks of art, this power of sympathy is unquestionably in landscape unrivalled….”

 

The Grapes of Wrath

Frank Galati’s adaptation of Steinbeck’s mammoth novel The Grapes of Wrath is currently on at Birmingham Rep. I have to say I was intrigued to see how a lengthy novel which covers so much ground (literally and metaphorically) could be adapted into a play, but I was impressed with how it worked.

The plot is outlined on the Rep website thus: “The Joads, a family of impoverished Oklahoman sharecroppers, lose everything when their farm is repossessed after a devastating drought and are driven from their home to make the monumental trek Westward to California. Seduced by the prospect of opportunity and dignity, they invest everything they have in the journey. When forced to face the possibility that California may not after all be the promised land, they have no choice but to go on; nothing is left for them in Oklahoma.”

As you can see, it’s quite a challenge, but one that was met with aplomb. Galati keeps the essence of the novel in his script, using some direct quotations from the novel, and is helped enormously by the fantastic set, which gave the impression of covering great spaces even on a small stage, and adding some irony by featuring contemporary advertising hoardings about “the American Dream”. Set in the Depression of the Thirties, this play is a harsh lesson about the economics of recession, from the issues of strikes to the value of workers when there are thousands too many looking for work.

As the Joads journey on, their loss of faith is evident – faith in God, in America, and even in humanity – in many ways the play was nearly 3 hours of unrelenting misery, and yet the faintly shocking but absolutely redemptive act of humanity at the end allows the play (and the book) to offer a genuinely cathartic experience in the tradition of classical tragedy. I was afraid that the play would have so much to cover that the audience would fail to be properly engaged with the characters, but I shouldn’t have worried – this is an adaptation well worth seeing.

On historical fiction

This year’s National Academy of Writing lecture, in conjunction with Birmingham Book Festival, was given by popular author Robert Goddard. His lecture was entitled “What History Does Not Tell Us” – an intriguing title, and one of which he made good use. He talked widely about his own writing of historical fiction, proving to be an entertaining and lively as well as an informative speaker. He pointed out that historical novels tend to overstate the influence of historical events on their characters in a way which novels written in any given period do not, taking such things as read – as he rightly says, a writer doesn’t think s/he is living in the past, at the time of writing! He is clearly well-read and enthusiastic about a wide range of literature, proving most amusing on Sherlock Holmes (for example, discussing why Holmes cannot be found in the records of Cambridge University, though the novels say he went there; of course, this is because his arch-enemy Moriarty removed his name…)

His own novels he describes as “historical thrillers”, and suggested many reasons why plots are better set in the past: the old staples of nineteenth century fiction such as entails and disinheritance, now rendered obsolete by UK law, and the existence of capital punishment, are great plot devices. Modern writers, however, have escaped the problems of serialisation which led to inconsistencies in many Victorian works. Moreover, the modern police investigation requires a great understanding of science, which can cause problems for the unscientific writer.

Plots are tricky things, he says, which have to present a kind of toned-down reality; critics are keen to complain about use of coincidence in novels, yet coincidences happen all the time in life (as he said, no one ever says, “I’m sorry, it’s a coincidence” in real life!) – but if it is  reality, there’s no point in arguing with it – perhaps as good a reason as any to draw plots from history.

Goddard is keen to point out that he never alters established historical facts in his novels, which is perfectly possible because of what history “does not tell us” – the unknowns open up a vast array of plot possibilities. As he rightly says, historians speculate, necessarily, and this begins to blur the line between history and fiction even before a novelist gets involved. Speculation can be as valid in fiction as in the history books – and, he added, historians don’t get it right all the time anyway. The question, perhaps, is what is historical truth – a debate that could go on forever.

Samuel Johnson: Now and in Time

This week, Birmingham City University in conjunction with Birmingham Book Festival celebrated the tercentenary of the life of Samuel Johnson with an event entitled Now and in Time. Johnson, born in Lichfield in 1709, wrote extensively on a huge range of subjects, which were well-reflected by Professor Philip Smallwood’s discussions of Johnson, and in the readings from Johnson’s works. It is difficult not to be delighted by Johnson’s aphorisms, such as “A man of genius has been seldom ruined, but by himself” – there are plenty more here - you’ll be surprised how many are familiar to you, such as that second marriages are “the triumph of hope over experience”. This event, though, demonstrated how much more there is to Johnson than his pithy soundbites; Professor Smallwood highlighted the modern resonance of “Late Transactions Concerning Falkland’s Islands”, in which Johnson asks: “what continuance of happiness can be expected, when the whole system of European empire can be in danger of a new concussion, by a contention for a few spots of earth, which, in the deserts of the ocean, had almost escaped human notice, and which, if they had not happened to make a seamark, had, perhaps, never had a name!”

Other pieces, such as “The Life of Richard Savage”, show Johnson as shrewd observer of character, painting such a picture of his friend that one cannot fail to feel one knows the man; “To Mrs Thrale, On Completing her Thirty-Fifth Year” is both touching and (mostly) hilarious – as well as written extempore, which shows the genius as well as the humanity of Johnson:

  Oft in danger, yet alive,
  We are come to thirty-five;
  Long may better years arrive,
  Better years than thirty-five.
  Could philosophers contrive
  Life to stop at thirty-five,
  Time his hours should never drive
  O’er the bounds of thirty-five.
  High to soar, and deep to dive,
  Nature gives at thirty-five;                                10
  Ladies, stock and tend your hive,
  Trifle not at thirty-five;
  For, howe’er we boast and strive,
  Life declines from thirty-five;
  He that ever hopes to thrive,
  Must begin by thirty-five;
  And all who wisely wish to wive
  Must look on Thrale at thirty-five.

For those who, like myself, spend much time commenting on other people’s artistic endeavours, Johnson has some salutory words in The Idler No. 60 – which show, perhaps, just how much he is the writer’s writer:

“Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at a very small expence. The power of invention has been conferred by Nature upon few, and the labour of learning those sciences which may, by mere labour, be obtained, is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can exert such judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom Nature has made weak, and Idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a Critic.”

Knit wit!

The Poetry Society organised a mass knitting of a poem this year, with people all over the UK (and possibly beyond) knitting letters and blank squares to be sewn together into a poem, which was revealed (after much sewing together) at the British Library earlier this month. I am pleased to say that one square of it was mine. It’s an interesting idea in so many ways – about bringing together art (poetry) and craft (knitting); about breaking up a poem into lots of tiny elements – letters, punctuation, even spaces – with none of the knitters knowing what the end result would be. I liked that on the back of each poem, we could add a tag saying which poem you were thinking about whilst knitting (mine was Rossetti’s “Monna Innominata”). Anyway, there are now pictures of the end result here, – do have a look, it’s amazing, and huge! There’s also a great “knitted poem” game on the Poetry Society’s site here. The poem, appropriately, was Dylan Thomas’s lovely “In my Craft or Sullen Art”:

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

A visit to “The Idiot Colony”

Last week I went to see RedCape Theatre’s The Idiot Colony, which was at Birmingham Rep for two nights on its tour. I didn’t know what to expect, but I’m so glad I went. The play, which features three performers of RedCape Theatre, moves between a hairdressing salon in the 1980s and a mental hospital in the 1940s. The play is based on true events, although is only representative of them rather than literally being biographical, but the events are shocking, moving and intriguing all at once. The play is predicated on the fact that until the 1950s, the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913 meant that someone could be incarcerated for what was seen as moral weakness, resulting in women’s imprisonment in institutions for bearing an illegitimate child or being a lesbian, for example. Most shocking of all, though, is that some of these women weren’t released until the 1990 Care in the Community Act came into force.

Such are the bare bones of the story, and it is told well, with details gradually revealed, both of the reasons for the women’s incarceration, and of their lives in the institution. Of course, though not really in need of psychiatric care, they become institutionalised, one eagerly taking all tablets, another being forced to undergo a lobotomy. The play is short, but packed with emotion, and played out like a ballet; movement and music are every bit as important as words here, and the three actors move like dancers across the stage in a mad/sane dance.

RedCape should certainly win some kind of award for the most innovative use of props I have ever seen. Though the stage is plain and bare – three chairs, three towels and one or two other accoutrements of a hairdresser’s, they create a wonderful bath from a towel, for example, and with the use of lighting their simulation of being in a cinema is fascinating. It is rare to see a play where everything – not just words, music, movement, but also props, lighting and an indefinable atmosphere, work together to create something so moving and gripping. If it’s coming to a theatre near you, see it!

Buried Treasure

In July, Terry Herbert, a man with a metal detector (which he bought at a car boot sale for £2.50 – a nice touch, that) discovered a cache of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver items in a field in Staffordshire. Since then, there has been increasing excitement about this amazing find, which is now on display at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, though only for a few weeks. The find consists of sword hilts, crosses and parts of helmets, and is apparently thought to be the spoils of war. A bigger cache than Sutton Hoo, this is a tremendously important find; one archaelogist said that “My first reaction on seeing the scale and nature of the beast is very much as yours – this is going to alter our perceptions of Anglo-Saxon England in the seventh and early eighth century”.

Today, I decided to brave the queues and go to see it at BMAG. The queues were already fierce at 10am, but it was worth it – and I’m delighted to see that it’s generated so much excitement and that so many people want to see it. Not much of the hoard’s 1500 artefacts were on display, but enough to give a good idea of the scale of the find. In a few unassuming cases lay what one might, at a casual glance, dismiss as bits of tarnished scrap metal; but a closer look reveals their significance. The gold may be tarnished but the garnets in many of the pieces shine through, and the craftsmanship is beautiful – staggering in its minute detail. Some pieces have engravings of animals – tiny birds, or fish; others a delicate filigree design. There is a cross which has been folded up, and another which was worn as a necklace.

It is impossible to look at these artefacts and not feel a great sense of awe for the weight of the past behind us; everyone I spoke to at the exhibition is filled with a reverence for the past and a thirst for more information. What we want, I think, is a human story, such as emerged with Sutton Hoo. Instead, we have a mystery which may never be unravelled, and people quoting Beowulf by way of context and humanity:

“They let the ground keep that ancestral treasure, gold under gravel, gone to earth and as useless to men now as it ever was.”

There’s a great video on The Guardian website, here, which shows Mr Herbert telling of his discovery but, perhaps more excitingly, shows archaeologists at work digging up more pieces in the field. For more information, the Staffordshire Hoard now has its own website, which is very informative.

The Little Stranger

Sarah Waters’ latest novel, The Little Stranger, is a considerable departure from her earlier novels, and in its simplified structure (compared to The Night Watch, for example) and its fast-moving but considered prose, it feels like a more mature work. The plot is deceptively straightforward: set in 1947, a crumbling stately home is haunted, and the family doctor becomes increasingly involved with the mother, son and daughter who live there as he tries to decipher whether there is really a ghost, or a form of delusion. Waters tells the story in a mostly sombre tone; her descriptions are remarkably evocative and detailed, although there is nothing fanciful about her prose; the (male) doctor narrates, and does so in a matter-of-fact tone which makes the events of the book appear all the more chilling. 

The novel is, in fact, remarkably Victorian in style, which is perhaps appropriate as it is a novel which is, as ghost stories always are, about the past returning to haunt the living. In its linear tale, its concentration on the domestic home, the characters’ concern with traditional values, and in its measured prose-style, this appears to be a somewhat traditional, even old-fashioned, ghost story.

However, it is much more than that. The “ghost” or “little stranger” is, it seems, more likely to be a poltergeist, a projection of the unhappiness of one of the characters – if it has not been simply imagined by the family. As the events unfold, Waters ensures that the reader is kept guessing whilst providing enough information to draw one in, and become sufficiently involved to be genuine spine-chilled. Moreover, there are layers and possible interpretations to this novel which give it depth: for example, the class-tension between the gentry, the doctor and the people of the village is carefully explored, and may, one suspects, be a possible cause of the psychic disturbances. The house itself, so Gothic in its crumbling state, represents the beleaguered state of the aristocracy after the wars, and also the crumbling family, struggling to keep going but mentally cracking under the strain. The concluding chapter opens up a different interpretation as to the source of the ghost; it is a novel which makes one think.

Waters has clearly done some considerable research into this novel, and it presents an utterly convincing tale which contrasts the dark and the light of human characters against a grand and terrible sweep of British history.