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.
Posted by Serena Trowbridge
Don’t dig for your favourite book, the coolest book, or the most intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
Posted by Serena Trowbridge
On Saturday I went to see “Turner and the Masters” at
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).
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”.
Posted by Serena Trowbridge
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.
This year’s
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.
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
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
Last week I went to see
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”.
rap 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.
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.