Cinema: Review of 'The Last Station'

I was hoping to begin this review with a celebration of Helen Mirren's Oscar winning performance as Countess Sofya Tolstaya in 'The Last Station'. The Hollywood machine being what it is, I can't even give you the consolation that  Carey Mulligan picked up the award for her charming lead in 'An Education'. Instead, the Hollywood Machine gave us Sandra Bullock  who has appeared in forty odd movies, none of which I've seen, and I catch a film most weeks, sometimes two. Make of that what you will.

Instead, I'll start by telling you that Helen Mirren was born Ilyena Vasilievna Mironov, the granddaughter of a Russian tsarist nobleman. So for those of you who consider the Dame quintessentially English, think again - blue vodka runs through her veins. Her father changed his name to Basil and was a cab driver, driving test examiner and civil servant in the Ministry of Transport and her mother was the thirteenth daughter of a West Ham butcher, so her cockney credentials are also strong.

As is her performance in this depiction of Leo Tolstoy's last year, told through the eyes of his male secretary played by James McAvoy who made 'The Last King of Scotland' but despite screen time, is peripheral here when up against Mirren, whose performance is operatic in scope and emotion -  and Christopher Plummer - 90% Lear, 10% Fool as Tolstoy himself. Next to the grand passion of these two old timers, the love of the young is  an occasional distraction.


The birch woods and long grass of a Russian summer  make a fine setting for the drama whose three acts focus on a Tolstoyan commune, the family estate and the station where he dies on the way from there to who knows where, escaping his wife and the conflict at the heart of the movie - the obligations of family, property and marriage against those of community, principle and fraternity. Tolstoy wants to leave the royalties from his books to his anarchist, christian, pacifist, communitarian movement. His wife wants it for herself and family, to keep them in the lifestyle to which she's like to become accustomed, and given she hand wrote 'War and Peace' six times and bore the old goat thirteen children, you might say she deserved a say in the matter.

Stay for the credits to catch snippets of Tolstoy himself filmed in 1910 and think for a few moments on what a long hundred years it's been, for since we've had two world wars, the rise and fall of Soviet communism, and the slow decline of the novel since it reached its height around the turn of the century. 

Music: March show playlist

With March 7th 2010 being International Women's Day eve and celebrations in the Phoenix scheduled for the afternoon and evening, I focused my selection on female artists. Naturally, this drew complaints from our listener, who especially objected to the 'warbling' of Joan Baez. I have sympathy - I can't listen to an entire Baez album without yowling back like a tom cat - but Baez also provided one of the finest nights in my concert going life at the Paradiso in Amsterdam and the recent documentary film of her life and work is well worth a viewing. Onto the playlist, or what I can remember of it...

1. 'Redemption Day' by Johnny Cash

We began our first show with a late Johnny Cash cut and with the release of his posthumous album 'American VI: Ain't No Grave' there was no better way in which to start this one - written by Sheryl Crow, this is now a Johnny Cash song, just like all the other American recordings he made his own during the last prolific phase of his career. I own all eleven CDs recorded during the last decade of his life and suggest you should too.

2. 'Sensual World' by Kate Bush

Our introduction to the sensual world of Ann Gray's poetry - one of Devon's great female eccentrics. That's Kate Bush who lives in the South Hams near Start Point - Ann Gray is one of Cornwall's great female eccentrics.

3. 'Lady Midnight' by Leonard Cohen

Ann was concerned her first choice might be too miserable. In Furniss Towers, we consider early Cohen party music.

4. 'Clothes Line Saga' by Suzy and Maggie Roche

It being Women's Day eve and all, I forgot to play any Bob Dylan. This is especially uncharacteristic as Dylan's European tour plans are just coming through and with his only UK date being the Hop Farm Festival in Kent, men of a certain age and disposition are considering another jaunt to the continent. Ann's choice was  a Dylan cover by the Roche sisters  which I thought I hadn't heard before  until I checked the archive and found it amongst my hoard of covers. It ain't on youtube though, so I've linked to the Genuine Basement Tapes version.

5. 'Brown Eyed Handsome Man' by Buddy Holly

Apparently not inspired by her genial host but her own father telling her she'd never marry a brown eyed boy, this was Ann's next selection. Who was at Buddy Holly's Duluth concert three days before he died on February 3rd 1959? Bob Dylan.

6. 'To Ohio' by The Low Anthem

Ann and I share the view that The Low Anthem's debut was the best album of last year. But Ann goes one better - she has seen them live. They are playing The End of the Road Festival at Larmer Tree Gardens in September. See you there?

7. 'Hasta Siempre' by Sexteto Kamaraco

That Che Guevara song I've played before in a different version. I saw this band on the roof terrace of the Hotel Inglaterra. The link is to the Buena Vista Social Club version. Postings of this song tend to attract those more interesting in the 'Che Guevara, murderer or martyr?' debate. Neither and both, if you must know.

8. 'To Be Lonely' by Joan As Police Woman'

One of those who aspire to wear Kate Bush's red shoes. I prefer he in quiet melancholia mode, naturally.

9. 'Silent All These Years' by Tori Amos

I was a fan of Tori Amos, but lost track of her around the time she started suckling piglets. The version linked to incorporates a Leonard Cohen recital.

10. 'Diamonds and Rust' by Joan Baez

It must irritate Joany no end that not only did Bob write the songs she's best known for, he also inspired the only song she wrote that has a life beyond her.

If you object to the Baez warble, try the Judas Priest version...


11. 'Madame George' by Marianne Faithfull

The Marianne Faithfull version is nowhere to be found - I played the single version released off the Van Morrison tribute album 'No Prima Donna' produced by Van Morrison... I've linked to the Brian Kennedy version instead. Not only does he sound like a girl, the B-sides on the single feature his versions of 'Queen of the Slipstream' and 'Irish Heartbeat.'

March guest: poet Ann Gray, author of 'At the Gate', 'The Man I Was Promised', 'Gronw's Stone' and 'Painting Skin'

Poet Ann Gray is our guest on The Blah Blah Blah Show on Phonic FM on March 7th 2010 from noon until two.

Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy recently featured a poem of Ann's in her Daily Mirror column:

One night you’ll come back and I’ll wake
to see you moving noiselessly in your socks,
you’ll look bewildered, nothing’s quite the same.
You’ll be hunting through the drawers,
wondering where your clothes are.
I won’t move or speak, I’ll try not to breathe.
I’ll want to say, look in the wardrobe,
I saved your Levi boots and leather jacket.
I’ll watch you lift photos in their frames,
take them to the window. Some faces
you won’t know. You’ll guess at Beth.
I’ll watch you sink to your knees,
cover your head with your hands.
I’ll hear you whisper, Nick. Nick got married.
I’ll watch you disappear to the bathroom,
hear you brush your teeth, hear you pee,
see you reappear with a glass of whisky.
You’ll sit on the edge of the bed for ages,
until you turn and lift my hair, touch my neck,
then hold your mouth there.
Then you’ll say, so what happened?
and I’ll say, how long have you got?

Carol Ann says: "This comes from the Cornwall-based poet Ann Gray’s new collection At The Gate (Headland, 2008) a powerfully moving sequence of elegies to her partner, who was killed in a car accident. In this poem, the grief of bereavement re-imagines the lover as a Lazarus figure, returning from the dead, puzzled and disconcerted at the small changes in the bedroom and the changing, ongoing lives of the living. The closing question is unbearably poignant, holding a deeper, tragic meaning beneath its colloquial surface." 

Ann is published by Headland.

Ann Gray's collections include 'At the Gate' (2008), 'The Man I Was Promised' (2004), 'Gronw's Stone: Voices from the Mabinogion, co-authored with Edmund Cusick (1997) and 'Painting Skin' (1995). She co-edited 'Having Your Cake and Eating It' (1997), an anthology celebrating food.

"Ann Gray's poetry is a measured but sumptuous revelation, like the sun coming up a few inches at a time."      Clive James

"Ann Gray writes a sensuous poetry... spans a whole range of emotions from the ethereal to the earthy."      Patricia Oxley

"This poet treads the precipice of language gracefully. The unexpected occurs throughout the book... Each poem is an individual insight."      Penelope Shuttle

The cover images of both 'The Man I Was Promised' and 'At the Gate' were painted by Michael Scott (1946-2006).

An exhibition of Michael's work will open at the Billcliffe gallery, Glasgow on October 1st with a book of his work due to be published this year.

Cinema: Review - 'A Single Man'

'A Single Man'

Regular readers of my cinema reviews will know I like to judge a film by its audience. I realise that a first weekend crowd says more about the marketing of a film than the film itself, but it gives me something to do while the adverts are on and the house lights are up. I'm deeply suspicious of any movie that attracts people in groups of more than two. The movie theatre is not a social setting, but one for quiet contemplation. 'A Single Man' suffered no groups. Even better, although the cinema was unusually full for an early afternoon showing, the singletons and couples in attendance spaced themselves out by a geometric formula that meant three never had to sit together.

I was pleasantly surprised by the number of grey haired couples in attendance. This is a movie with a resolutely queer aesthetic and the fact that it appeals to the middle-aged and middle-class demographic of middle England shows how far society has come in the last ten or fifteen years in its tolerance of, and interest in,  difference, sexual or otherwise. Those alone were of both genders and various persuasions, judging by visual cues alone. Tom Ford also drew his own crowd. I am largely ignorant of fashion designers and who they appeal to but from the elderly ladies tottering around in furs and elegant young men in polo necks and cashmere overcoats, I'd say his customers are well-heeled if somewhat ditzy (female) or metropolitan homosexuals of the Cameroonian persuasion (male).

Anyway, my companions in darkness kept me entertained until the trailers were run and beyond. When the film started, I thought maybe they'd made an error in the projection room and reeled an episode of 'Mad Men' by mistake. Not that I'd have minded - I'm a 'Mad Men' fan and would love to see it on the big screen, it is probably the best designed and costumed TV show ever. I've since found out that programme and film share a design team as well as location in time (early sixties) and space (America), the difference being 'Mad Men' is east coast, 'A Single Man' west. 'Mad Men' has actually made me rethink my attitude to the sixties which I now consider to have been spoilt by The Beatles, not made by them. Were it nor for those Liverpudlian half-wits, the music of the decade would have been jazz, the look skinny suits and skinny ties for the men, cocktail dresses for the girls, and everyone would have lived in modernist houses of wood and glass, their drugs of choice being scotch and cigarettes and their favoured cars built like airplanes and usually found parked outside country clubs. 

'A Single Man' is an adaptation of the novel by Christopher Isherwood in which an English college professor relocated to California is living his last day on earth. In mourning for his younger lover, prohibited from even attending his funeral by a family in denial, George Falconer (played by Colin Firth) has decided on a meticulously planned exit strategy. Whether you empathise with his predicament will most likely define your response to the film. He is a man nostalgic about the past, honourable in the present but with no interest in the future. If he was a creative, that is no longer apparent. Even his teaching has lost its sense of purpose, most of the students aping beatnik disinterest. His only friend is a louche female lush also in exile from London society, played with indeterminate accent but charming zest by Julianne Moore. 

He retains a fatal attraction to the adolescent male, and if this trait of the middle-aged loner disturbs, you'd best stay away. A brief encounter with a Hispanic hustler is never consummated , but the scenario is clearly familiar to him. The one student who is drawn into his orbit and ultimately - however briefly - saves his life is played by Nicholas Hoult, best known in this country for his role as Tony Stonem in the first two series of Skins, the one actor from that car-chase-come-car-crash of youth TV you can tip for an acting career. (I commend Kaya Scodelario - who plays his sister Effy, and is the key character in the fourth more-miss-than-hit season - to a future as a model, but that's another story.) If this were a contemporary campus drama and the scenario was straight rather than gay, I suspect we'd have been served up with a feast of tabloid shock and broadsheet moral analysis, but boy love is okay so long as its contained in costume drama, which the movie undoubtedly is, albeit of an era some of its viewers have lived through. Christopher Isherwood was renowned for his taste in pretty youths - first in the decadent Weimar Republic, then liberal California - and it is to Colin Firth's credit that his portrayal incorporates the peccadillo into a rounded study of a complex character.

Tom Ford is new to film direction and this credible and creditable debut hangs on Firth's performance who you stay with ultimately because of his English decency, exemplified by the thoughtfulness expressed in his preparations for end-of-life and the genuine care and interest he shows in the futures of others even as he gives up on his own. It won't appeal to a family audience - family life is portrayed as banal, children curious monsters, heterosexual attraction almost incomprehensible and generally for show - but it has already broken out of the niche of gay cinema and found a wider public, and makes thoughts of suicide seem almost life-affirming, coming-to-terms-with-life being a prelude to coming-to-terms-with-death.

Theatre: Review - 'The Distance', Particular Theatre Company, Bike Shed Theatre

In our February show on Sunday we previewed the Particular Theatre Company's production of 'The Distance', a dystopian drama of the near-future written by Craig Norman and directed by David Lockwood. Yesterday I went to the first night of a three week run (8th to 27th February) in the newly opened The Bike Shed Theatre situated in the heart of Exeter between Fore Street and Mary Arches Street.

Particular's autumn production of 'Forsaken' was put on in the cellar of the Hour Glass Inn and featured in my piece on pub theatre. The new, semi-permanent venue is better described as pop-up theatre - a former basement restaurant taken initially on a four-month lease makes an ideal seventy seat theatre space complete with a well-stocked bar - you can take a glass to your seat and replenish it during the interval - that looks like it's been imaginatively furnished from a funky junk shop because it has.

Otto Retro are one of several local companies who deserve credit for part-funding the project in cash or kind. Other Fore Street shops Electric Gypsy and Bunyip contributed costumes. The Bike Shed have lent their name to the theatre and their money to get it up and running while The Fat Pig on John Street not only put on special meal-and-a-drink deal for theatre goers but also support the venture.

Exeter Arts Council have likewise contributed - and if Particular Theatre Company are to survive on more than good will, no doubt they'll need more public money in future from a diminishing pot - but I think it important to mention sponsors when times are hard to encourage well matched local partnerships such as this.

Also to mutual credit and advantage is the  involvement of the Cygnet Training Theatre - for those who don't know The New Theatre at Friar's Gate in Exeter, keep an eye on its programme - Exeter College and Exeter University. Students will be involved in the front-of-house team and some of the 10 o'clock shows (one act plays free to all-comers), while the cast of the main production is both trained and experienced, an excellent way to introduce young drama and arts management students to professional theatre.

On to the review... On Sunday's The Blah Blah Blah Show Rachel McCarthy and I discussed the cinema of the post-apocalypse when reviewing 'The Road', wondering if end-of-the-world art reemerges at times of tension - the early sixties after the Cuban missile crisis, the early eighties at the height of the cold war and the turn of the current decade as the left worry about climate change while the right focus on the threat of terrorists and rogue nations.

'The Distance' might be described as theatre of the pre-apocalypse, and that to me is more interesting. How we'd react in a world that is broken - really broken, as it is in 'The Road' - would be a matter of brute survival. But how we respond as a society is breaking asks more immediate and interesting questions, the situation being much easier to project ourselves into, the scenario of the play one that might not be so far away - once the dominoes of civilisation start falling, perhaps we are so interdependent, they'll all come tumbling down.

So the world of 'The Distance' is wholly recognisable to us, and the four characters that occupy it are ones we can empathise with - a husband and wife, a mother and son, a daughter and her father - and so their reactions to breakdown, personal and societal, are ones we can understand. Madness begins to seem like a sane reaction. And if escapism is not the answer, at least it avoids the question, as does intoxication - and I'll drink to that.

Or do we hang onto the trappings of civilisation, fiddle while Rome burn? Would you bring a child into this world? And if you did, would you want it to live, when it could never be safe from harm? These are the sorts of questions Craig Norman wrestles with in his script, and if the play doesn't provide any easy answers, the same uncertainties will be nagging away at you 24 hours later - and that is the mark of a worthwhile piece of art, it shadows your lungs.

We react to tragedy in different ways: some couples it brings closer together, others it drives apart. We look to others for protection, only to discover they can't even defend themselves. That is where the young couple, whose relationship is the hinge the play swings on, are at when the play begins on a stage that takes up almost half of the auditorium, lives lived in three dimensions from the outset, not squashed into a corner as in some boutique theatres. That gives the set and sound designers a space to work with and they do a good job, painting in a palette of whites and greys, conjuring up a soundscape of millenarian tension.

The first act is a single scene; the second alternates between double headers either side of the stage, bisected by two metal pillars the direction makes use of rather than denying; the third, almost a coda, is an intimate conversation on the lip of the stage that hints at reconciliation, but whether with the future or in the past we are left unsure. We are always inside private domains, but there are enough references for us to know what ever is going on outside, we don't want to be there; that if it comes bursting through the door, it won't be a welcome guest. David Lockwood has to negotiate us through an emotional landscape in which the characters are never quite connecting, despite all the connections between them, and must fill that surprisingly large stage with a small cast, succeeding on both counts.

Charlie Coldfield as Darby impressed with a deceptive lightness of being that didn't mask the desperation behind his eyes. Alison Collinge as Alex has the most demanding role, taking her character to the edge of madness without ever quite tumbling over into the abyss, and brings us back to her with a vulnerability that was perhaps always tat he root of their attraction. The words 'husband' and 'wife' are used over again, reminding you that some relationships sustain almost as a matter of fact against the furies. 'Mother' and 'father' are, even more so, archetypes that cannot be denied. Jane Bennett as Nora brings her experience to bear on a role that has to combine maternal grit with a sense of imminent surrender. David Watkinson as Peter is hollow-eyed and half-absent, having left his better self behind on the front of some unspecified conflict, his daughter relating to him almost wholly as her protector of the past, a role he didn't always fulfill. 

A first night is never perfect and rarely fully realised. This is a demanding play that requires is cast to portray - and audience believe in - some extreme situations and then deal with the emotional fallout. The way in which they do so is very English - and that switchback between confrontation and restraint is the heartbeat of the piece that relies on both full-on and nuanced dramatisation. I'm tempted to return for the last night of the run to see how the performance and its staging have progressed, and it is a play that will benefit from a second sitting.

Particular Theatre is taking risks with this project. They aren't presenting populist theatre. There are no names involved sufficient to draw an audience. This is a play for a bleak February evening, leaving us with a slight chill, a longing for something warm. The Company will rely initially on goodwill and then word of mouth and intrigue in the kind of evening Exeter usually lacks, a dare for the city to respond with its feet and put some bums on seats.

They have already committed to two further productions which I for one look forward to. 'Still' by Steve Lambert from 12th April to 1st May will be previewed in excerpt at the 10 o'clock show on 26th February while a scene from 'Beanfield' by Shaun McCarthy, forthcoming in June, will feature on 27th February.

In between, another eight short dramas will be premiered, all written by south-west writers and free of charge to the audience of the main show and passersby. Last night and tonight featured 'Good Morning', a ten minute two-handed skit on suicide, by Isley Lynn. Check the website for the roster over the remainder of the three week run.

If the venue intrigues you, two evenings of music, poetry, stand-up, drama and sketches - 'Antidote / Anecdote' - are scheduled for Sundays 14th and 21st of February from 6pm to 10pm. We are promised tables with candles and both frivolous and thought provoking entertainment.

Why not spend your weekend getting behind the Bike Shed and combine a variety Sunday with a Saturday night of serious drama?