"Sweeney Todd," starring Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton, at the Adelphi Theatre (8th September 2012)

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Warning: there is a bit of rudeness in this post again.

At the end of last year I heard about the new production of "Sweeney Todd" that cast Michael Ball in the title role.  I unwisely made a couple of comments on Twitter - I can't remember exactly what now - disagreeing with the casting.  I was, quite rightly, picked up on this by a Michael Ball fan, subsequently felt guilty, and wrote this.  Despite being sceptical about the casting, as a huge Sondheim fan I took the opportunity to see the production with my parents (but without Mark, who is musicals adverse).

I think my parents were relieved that I liked it, because I did warn them that I would get very ranty if I thought that the production was badly done.  I knew it was going to be good when I wanted to leave during the opening piece of music.  I know how odd that sounds.  I love the opening of "Sweeney Todd," and I think it should be full-on and powerful - if it doesn't make me feel a bit claustrophobic and oppressed, then they aren't doing it right.  In this particular production I almost felt close to tears with its intensity but, in honesty, PMT at the time might have had some bearing on this.  If you don't know the musical, its themes take in the evils of industrialisation and the opening piece of of music has a sudden, piercing factory whistle (or, in one production that I saw years ago, a scream). On my first hearing of the production - courtesy of the OBC recording - the factory whistle scared the hell out of me, which I loved.  I used to miss the fact that the factory whistle no longer made me jump as it did that very first time.  However, because I had fallen from the path of true enlightenment and not listened to any Sondheim for a while, I forgot exactly when it came in so still had a bit of a jump.  It was nice to get that feeling back again.

I am pleased to say that I was wrong to doubt the casting of Michael Ball as Sweeney.  He looked almost unrecognisable (someone told me afterwards that when it first opened there were people who wanted a refund because they thought they had seen it on a night Michael Ball wasn't on) and sounded very different to the tone and timbre that I associate with his singing style.  Apart from the occasional slightly more lyrical parts - like his love song to his razors - his voice was rougher and harsher than I usually think of him sounding.  He has a particularly effective glower.  I think Sweeney should obviously be intense and scary - I still think of Len Cariou as my idea of Sweeney from the OBC - but this was the first time I thought of it as a problem.  Anyone in their right mind would take one look at him and decide that there was no way he would be coming near their neck with a cut-throat (the clue's in the name) razor.  It's also - and explain this to me if you can, because I don't understand it - the sexiest I have seen him.  If anything, my one issue with his performance might be that he takes it too seriously - "A Little Priest" seemed a little bit heavy, whereas I personally think it should have a lighter touch and bring out a bit more of the humour and devilish merriment in their verbal sparring.

Imelda Staunton was great, but I never doubted that she would be.  While I still rate Len Cariou as my most effective Sweeney, I have issues with Angela Lansbury's accent in the OBC.  I possibly prefer Imelda Staunton's Mrs Lovett.  The character should provide the warmth and humour to counterpoint Sweeney's violence - twisted and amoral though she may be - and Imelda Staunton is perfectly cast to provide this leavening.  Yet there is also pathos, sadness and desperation in her portrayal, particularly in her performance of "By the Sea" - Mrs Lovett's fantasy of keeping a boarding house by the sea with Sweeney where "now and then [he] can do a guest in" - in which her hopes and wishes are blatantly ignored by the monomaniacal Sweeney.

This was a production that kept in Judge Turpin's song "Johanna," in which he whips himself while fantasising about his young ward.  There is an effective ambiguity to this song in whether his self-flagellation is the punishment it ostensibly is (mea culpa) or is integral to his sexual excitement.  I normally admire this song because I think it is artistically quite brave and risky, as well as saying a lot about Turpin's sexual perversion.  However, this time, sitting between my parents while watching a middle-aged man whip himself to orgasm, the social discomfort made me wish for the first time that they had cut it out (I'm being facetious - really I'm pleased that they had the nerve to include it).  I'm also glad we weren't sitting near the front, as the actor (John Bowe) really seemed to be going for it and sweat seemed to be flying.  When I go to the theatre I personally prefer not to end up covered with someone else's sweat.  He didn't get a round of applause after this number, which is understandable as somehow it seems deeply inappropriate to clap after a number with a middle-aged man self-flagellating while fantasising about - if you do the maths - a 16 year old girl.

Judge Turpin was my main issue with the production, and it would be unfair to blame the actor for this as he was presumably directed to play the role in that way that he did.  He seemed to be particularly over-the top, almost syphilitically randy.  I'm not surprised that Johanna didn't want to marry him, since he seemed to be groping himself whilst suggesting himself as a possible husband.  I personally feel that this part is more effective if played as outwardly respectable while concealing a heart of darkness.  This judge seemed to be wearing his dark heart on his sleeve a little too obviously.

I have to say that my mother liked the production less than my father and I did; I think she was a bit squeamish about the throat cutting (which wasn't too graphic except, probably for emphasis, Judge Turpin was a bit blood-spurty).  I was actually more surprised that this production is probably the most graphic I have seen in bringing out the sexual violence and madness in the story.  The dumb show of the forced seduction of Benjamin Barker's wife by Turpin was particularly unambiguous.  The beggarwoman  - Lucy - is clearly sexualised in approaching men, but so were the inmates of Fogg's asylum.  One mad woman very clearly had a hand busy under her skirts. I felt that this aspect of the production - with the possible exception of the overly-priapic judge - was very effective.

This was an excellent production which, despite my initial doubts, I am very glad that I saw (I am writing this on 22nd September which, by coincidence, I think might be the closing night of the production).  I bought the cast recording as a memento, which serves as a fine reminder of the show (although, oddly, omits the Judge's whipping song - OK, maybe not that oddly - and the shaving contest with Pirelli, which were both in the stage production).

See, you have to give me some credit, at least I admit when I am wrong: Michael Ball was great after all...

"An Inspector Calls," starring Tom Mannion, at the Plymouth Theatre Royal (December 10th 2011)

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

This is going to be less a review of a play, and more a review of a set.  I ended up feeling quite conflicted about this production, which was originally directed by Stephen Daldry, and the set was my main reason for feeling so.  When you read this review you might come out of it thinking that I hated the show, which is far from the case; I enjoyed it, but with some reservations.  It is a production that has engaged my thoughts and made me question my opinions, and that dialogue between the play and the audience member is surely a good thing.  I would rather have strong feelings and ideas about something than be left feeling uninvolved and ambivalent about what I have seen or read.

My misgivings are by no means the fault of the actors, all of whom were very good.  I have seen J.B. Priestley's play before, so I knew what to expect and I know that this is a play that, in my opinion, stands or falls according to the casting of the part of Inspector Goole.  When Tom Mannion first entered, I found my eye drawn to him - which is entirely as it should be.  The part needs to be played by an actor with a commanding, dominant presence and he was more than equal to that.  The rest of the cast were also extremely strong, with Karen Archer in particular excelling at the steely hauteur needed for the part of the matriarch Sybil Birling.

The opening is atmospheric, as the curtain opens onto fog and rain onstage (they really should warn people that if you sit in the front row, as we did, you might get a little damp).  The play starts with a family party being held by the Birling family to celebrate the engagement of their daughter, Sheila, to Gerald Croft.  Arthur Birling is an industrialist with pretentions to influence in society - aspiring to a seemingly imminent knighthood - and Gerald Croft is the son of a fellow businessman.  The set is difficult to describe, and it seems to me that it must be quite hard for the actors to work.  The set shows the exterior of the Birling house, raised up above stage level, and the audience watches the engagement party as an outsider looking in through the windows.  When Inspector Goole visits the house to tell them of the suicide of a young woman, the exterior walls are opened out to show the inside of the home as their lives are laid bare to scrutiny.  The Birling family speak down to the inspector at ground level, or variously descend an ironwork staircase to come down to his level but, to the best of my memory, Inspector Goole is never permitted to forget his lowly status and ascend into the inner sanctum of the house.

This is all very symbolic; the raised house is the pinnacle from which the complacent Birlings are dragged.  Inspector Goole's questioning breaks down the facade of the perfect, happy, family and, once this has been destroyed, the raised level of their house breaks, tilts, and electric lights explode.  For me, however, the most effective thing wasn't the gimmicky tilting and exploding set: it was the human stage business of the elder Birlings picking up their scattered silverware from street level and trying to clean it off as they also try to reconstruct their lives.

My problem is that I'm not sure that it isn't all too symbolic.  The entrance of Inspector Goole was accompanied by ominous, bass-laden, music that whacks you over the head with the character's significance.  The programme notes seem to be suggesting that this staging has rescued the play from its hide-bound, repertory reputation, and supplanted more traditional stagings.  I don't think that this is a good thing.  A staging that is this, well, stagey, and gimmicky seems to me to imply either a) the suspicion the Priestley's play isn't strong enough to put across its own message or b) a patronising suggestion that a modern audience might not "get it."  I would have liked to have felt this production had more faith in both the author and the audience.

Perhaps I am being too harsh and traditional in my tastes; this is a highly successful production that is well regarded, so I might be alone in my criticism of the staging.  However, when I saw Priestley's play first - probably in my early teens - in a traditional production, I was so impressed by it that I pestered my parents into buying me a copy of the script in the theatre shop after the show.  I still believe that it is a powerful, deeply moral play and this production reminded me of that - but I am not sure that the gimmicks of the production didn't, for me anyway, detract from the strength of Priestley's dialogue.  The problem with the production for me was summed up by the directorial decision to have Inspector Goole's powerful, final speech delivered direct to the audience.  I found this jarring and lacking in subtlety: I think the production should have shown more faith in its audience to understand Priestley's intent in the play without such obvious grandstanding.  Priestley's play is rather like being repeatedly prodded, but this production is more like being whacked around the back of the head with a plank of wood.

"Much Ado About Nothing," starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate, at the Wyndhams Theatre (July 22nd 2011)

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

The tickets to go to see this play were my birthday present from my lovely, tolerant husband.  We took the opportunity to have a couple of days in London (he dragged me to "The Doctor Who Experience" -  which I probably won't write a post on, as I expect he will - and I dragged him to some culture).

To start this post, I feel the urge to state my intellectual high ground and differentiate myself from the girl next to me, who was screaming David Tennant's name during the curtain calls.  I have long standing fan credentials, as I discovered him long before he was in "Doctor Who" when I saw him in a BBC series called "Takin' Over the Asylum," which was also the foundation for my admiration for his fellow Scottish actor Ken Stott.  David Tennant is a very talented actor whose career since then I have followed with interest, and I was happy when his career intersected with my husband's "Doctor Who" obsession.  However, I won't deny that it helps a lot that David Tennant is very attractive, funny and intelligent, and I have a predilection for men with Scottish accents.  As "Much Ado About Nothing" has been one of my favourite Shakespeare plays - if not my favourite - since studying it at 6th form, the combination of one of my favourite actors in one of my favourite plays was irresistible.

I'm going to take a risk and and not start with a plot synopsis of "Much Ado About Nothing."  I'm assuming that my key readership are, like me, literary geeks who already know the plot and characters.  If anyone does need a reminder, they can find a plot synopsis here.  If you are lucky enough to be going to see this play, and don't want spoilers on how they interpret certain moments it would be as well to avoid this review for a while at least, as I am going to be quite specific about some matters of staging and interpretation.  As I am working on the assumption that the plot is commonly known, I am not worrying about plot spoilers.

I was looking forward to this production, although I will admit to some trepidation when I heard that it had been updated.  I do have a tendency to be quite traditional in my Shakespeare preferences, and I get worried when I hear a production has been updated.  There are some strange textual decisions and staging decisions made in this production - some work, some don't - but, largely, the updating of the action to 1980s Gibraltar is successful and not jarring.  The programme notes explain Gibraltar's military links and party reputation - which makes it an apt location for the returning heroes of Shakespeare's play to celebrate.  The modern timeframe allows for fun with costume - a masked party in which David Tennant is in 80s Madonna drag (for a very attractive man, he makes a rough looking woman) and a pig snout, and Catherine Tate as Beatrice is a Blues Brother - and props (David Tennant makes a grand entrance on a golf buggy).

This is probably the funniest production of "Much Ado" that I have seen, with a strong emphasis on physical comedy and slapstick.  I knew that David Tennant would be an excellent Benedick because one of the frequently listened to files on my ipod is the BBC recording of "Much Ado" in which he had already played the role.  He seems blessed with being able to do the comedy - which he seems to enjoy, particularly in the scene where he is in hiding to eavesdrop on Leonato, Claudio and Don Pedro and ends up covered in white paint - as well as portraying his earnest challenge to Claudio following Hero's "death."  He also has a very natural delivery of Shakespeare's lines, which looks effortless but I'm sure has taken years of hard work and experience.  I took longer to warm to Catherine Tate as Beatrice, but this is not surprising given the facts that I covet both the role of Beatrice and the person of David Tennant (I'm joking, Mark, I'm joking!).  Her delivery and inflection has echoes both of Donna Noble and the teenage girl character from her show, and this portrayal of Beatrice took me longer to accept - although it is testament to her skill and her chemistry with David as Benedick that accept it, I did.

However, this might be a very funny production, but I felt that it is less effective at portraying the darkness that emerges later in the play.  For me, this hinges on the scene in which Benedick declares himself to Beatrice and she challenges him to kill Claudio.  This might be one of the instances in which I have a clear idea of how I would play it, and in my mind the scene is more subdued and a more mature admission of love.  The staging and direction of this scene brings out more of the comedy - Benedick and Beatrice have more of a spark of teenage merriment and excitement at finding that the person you have had a crush on for ages fancies you as well.  This works well until the moment that Beatrice asks Benedick to "Kill Claudio," and then the shift in tone is too abrupt.  Their merriment at acknowledging love, charming and funny though it is, is awkwardly sandwiched between the disastrous aborted wedding and Beatrice's anger and desire for justice for her cousin.  Skilled though Catherine Tate is as an actress, I'm not sure that she quite succeeds with this difficult shift in tone.  I know from other things that I have seen her in that she can do pathos and be very moving, but somehow this moment misfires (for me, at least).

Some of the staging decisions are very effective.  One thing that I felt worked particularly well, and went some way to solving some of the problems with the play, was the staging of hen and stag nights prior to the non-wedding of Hero and Claudio.  While I love the Beatrice and Benedick dynamic (which I have already written a little about in The Long and the Short of it), I take some of the Hero/Claudio plot on sufferance.  I don't see how Claudio can mistake Margaret for Hero so readily - and in this production they have differing hair colour - and I don't understand why Margaret doesn't tell Borachio to bugger off when he is shagging her and shouting out Hero's name.  But this production goes some way to make this more credible by throwing alcohol into the fray.  Hero, as bride to be on a hen night, wears a veil.  This gets discarded during the revels, and Borachio picks this up and places it on the drunken Margaret, which makes her superficially recognisable as the putative bride and disguises her hair colour.  Margaret, being drunk, is more likely to go too far with Borachio and, at a stretch, is possibly too out of it to object to him shouting Hero's name in the throes of passion (hmm, still dubious).  Don John plies Claudio with drink while telling him of Hero's unfaithfulness which, in turn, makes his gullibility more possible because his judgment is impaired (and he still seems queasy, hungover, and maybe even still a bit drunk when he denounces Hero at the wedding).

Less convincing is the staging of Claudio's grief, and I don't think that this is the fault of Tom Bateman, who makes a decent job of playing what is, after all, quite a dull character (and he was on the same tube train, same carriage, as us after the play).  Claudio is required to play rock music on a ghettoblaster to Hero's bones, while bouncing off pillars and getting raving drunk swigging from a bottle.  He then gets out a gun and is about to shoot himself before being stayed by an apparition of Hero.  This very nearly makes the play into "Romeo and Juliet" - always be wary of taking advice from a Friar in a Shakespeare play - and seems gratuitous and incongruous.

There was one textual element in this version which, as a lover of the play, left me wondering if I was cracking up, or if maybe I didn't know the play as well as I thought I did.  This was the character of Innogen, Leonato's wife, and this bugged me so much that one of the first things that I did when I got home was google it.  I didn't remember that Leonato had a wife, and many of her lines I remembered as being spoken by Antonio.  I found entries that say that she is a ghost character, and a remnant from an earlier version of the script - so I assume from her presence and from occasional slight variations in wording that they have used an earlier variant of the play.  I don't quite understand why this choice has been made, as she adds nothing to the plot and, when Hero is denounced, sits in dumb shock with no lines at all instead of reacting to the slander of her daughter.  When she does show some gumption in standing up to Claudio and Don Pedro, it is with words more normally assigned to Antonio and I didn't feel that it added any extra significance that they came from Hero's mother.  However, this might just be a rant of mine and might not seem disconcerting to someone less familiar with the play.

Despite some of my caveats, David Tennant and Catherine Tate work well together and they make an entertaining, sparky pairing.  The rest of the cast, many of whom I had not heard of before, were also excellent and I didn't feel that there was a weak performance in the show.  Particularly outstanding also were the Dons.  Adam James as Don Pedro (another recognisable face to me, as he has been in the "Doctor Who" episode "Planet of the Dead" and an episode of "Hustle," amongst other things), had a strong stage presence that might have made him a credible lover for Beatrice had Benedick not been in contention.  In all honesty he is not an actor who had previously made a big impression on me in his television performances but, having seen what he can do on stage, I am now more inclined to take note of his future projects.  Elliot Levey played the villain, Don John, like an evil Kenneth Williams via Michael Sheen, and made his machinations credible as a man who seems uncomfortable in his own skin.  Far from being a dominant manipulator, his henchmen, Borachio and Conrade, seem more in control and even rather dismissive of his villainy.  Even Mike Grady and John Ramm as Dogberry and Verges, normally very unfunny and often irritating characters as Shakespeare's now archaic malapropisms have not aged well, succeed in being funny.

This feelgood production ends with a dance that closes the production on a high.  I loved the show, and I was very glad that I had the chance to see one of my favourite actors on stage (we were only 6 rows back in the stalls, so I have been within a few metres of David Tennant and still don't have a restraining order) and I will be joining the petition to have it released on DVD because I would love to have that record of seeing the production.  But I can't deny that I miss the bit of darkness that a great production of "Much Ado" should have as a counterpoint to the humour.  The play is shadowed by the overhanging prospect of Don John's punishment, deferred in favour of wedding revelry.  Like "Twelfth Night" with Malvolio's threats of revenge, it shouldn't unequivocally have a feelgood ending; instead it should have a feelslightlyuneasy ending.  However, as the audience gave the production a standing ovation, I might be alone in wanting it to be a little less feelgood.....

My forty books. Part 1: plays

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

I found that I couldn't get off to sleep last night. Partly because my brain was already trying to decide my 40 books, partly because Mark was listening to a radio comedy that somehow managed to simultaneously bore me and keep me awake.

I had initially thought that I would word process my list of 40 books and present it as a complete list on here when I had decided what to choose. But I have been thinking that a list of 40 books would be terminally dull, whereas if I rationalise my choices on here, while deciding, then it might be marginally interesting to other book obsessives. It's a bit like the literary equivalent of having to show your workings in a maths exam.

I decided to start with plays, because in some ways they are my easiest choices.

As a provisional figure, I thought maybe to aim for 5 out of the 40 as plays. Plays are intended to be watched, not read, so to read as a play as text is to divorce it from its proper context and authorial intention. But I love theatre, so I think I would need a few plays to remind me of productions I have enjoyed. Also, as a frustrated but talentless actress, there are some plays with female roles that I would covet, had I talent. I like to read plays and play the part in my head - so this gives them worth as a text among my choices. Only in my head am I ever likely to be cast against someone like Jeremy Northam or David Tennant.

I have 3 definites:
Tennessee Williams "A Streetcar Named Desire"
I love Tennessee Williams and, of his plays, this is probably still my favourite. I had to study "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" at A-level, which I enjoyed, but I love Streetcar. As a repressed English woman, I am drawn to the torrid sexuality and overwrought melodrama of Tennessee Williams as cathartic release (this is probably true of my 2nd choice too). In my head I play Stella rather than Blanche. I'm not sure who is my Stanley - if I am brutally honest, that changes with whatever actor I have an immature schoolgirl obsession about at the time.

Edward Albee "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf"
Martha is another brilliant female character, and I think that this is a cathartic choice again. If I think I have hurt anyone's feelings, I agonise about it for ages. I think it might be quite a release to be bitter and twisted for a couple of hours with no consequences. It's a cruel and emotionally raw play, but also a very funny play. Although Martha is a monster, Albee shows the frustrations that have twisted her and, in doing so, manages to pull off the difficult trick of drawing the audience in to feel sympathy for her.

I'm not sure that I have the reserves of bile and venom needed to do Martha justice though. That's a bad thing for any acting ambition I might have, but probably a very good thing in terms of my private life.

Terry Johnson "Dead Funny"
My most contemporary choice, and the only one of the three where I wouldn't have to attempt an abysmal American accent. Terry Johnson has written a few really good parts for women, but Eleanor in "Dead Funny" is probably his best. In the midst of characters who think that they are funny, she is the only character who actually is genuinely funny in a mordant and bitter way. It has only just occurred to me that she is a little bit like a younger Martha in some ways. I'd never realised this until writing this post.

That leaves me 2 Shakespeare choices, which is quite hard. I'm shallow, so on purely entertainment grounds - and if I can have only 40 books, I want to make sure that they are ones that I like - I would probably exclude the histories and tragedies.

My shortlist would be:
"Midsummer Night's Dream"
I love this play, and I love the character of Helena. However, I would be more likely to be saddled with being Hermia who gets short jokes made about her (I'm about 4 foot 11 ish). I think that Shakespeare was heightist - his wet characters like Hermia or Hero are short. I don't think it makes one of my 40, but it's on my reserve list in case I change my mind about something.

"Twelfth Night"
Partly for Maria, but mainly as a sentimental choice. My husband proposed to me in the interval of a production of "Twelfth Night." I had looked over at him in the first half and thought that he was bored. I only found out later that it was nerves.

"The Tempest"
I'm not sure that I can analyse why I love this play. I first read it having seen Frank Langella in a play, knowing that he had played Prospero on stage. He has a very strong stage presence, and I have never seen a Prospero that matched in dominance the imaginary Frank Langella performance in my head. This is a strong possibility for my list of 40. I also think that it was Shakespeare's last play, if I remember right, and it fascinates me to wonder if Shakespeare had consciously decided this when he wrote Prospero's "This rough magic I here abjure" speech. This might be an exceptional choice, in that it is solely for the play as a whole and not because there is a female role in it that I have my eye on.

"Much Ado About Nothing"
I think I probably can't do without this one. Susan Hill decided not to have "Hamlet" on her list, because she felt that she knew it so well that she had it almost off by heart. Beatrice is my favourite Shakespeare woman but, although I could probably quote a fair amount of it, it would be really annoying to half remember a speech and not be able to look it up. And I'm probably Beatrice opposite David Tennant as Benedick - though annoyingly Catherine Tate is beating me to this one. I also studied this at 6th form, so it has a nostalgic appeal.

"A Winter's Tale"
Again a nostalgic choice, as this play was probably my best experience in the theatre. I won't write too much about this here, though, as I have already done so in a post about theatre in February last year. I don't think that I would pick this one, but it's up there as a possibility.

I don't think that I will change my mind about Williams, Albee and Johnson. My Shakespeare choice might change, but at the moment I am leaning towards "Much Ado" and either "Twelfth Night" or "The Tempest."

So I'm roughly an eighth of the way to deciding my 40.

More on Helene Hanff

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

I'm having a bit of an Helene Hanff obsession, and have googled her today to find out what else she has written that I have not yet read. I am quite excited to find that there is an omnibus in the stacks of our local library that contains a couple of books that I have not read yet (it also includes "Apple of my Eye," and I am hoping that this will be the revised edition).

Today I also finished re-reading "Underfoot in Show Business." This, like Helene's book on New York, is a lively, entertaining read. When Helene first moved to New York, it was as an aspiring playwright with a promising future. However, in accordance with Flanagan's Law ("No matter what happens to you, it's unexpected) her playwriting career was a bit of a bust. However, she does find what seemed to be an enduring friendship with an also aspiring actress called Maxine, and edges her way into a writing career.

In writing about "Apple of my Eye," I wrote that her easy, natural writing style was probably quite hard to cultivate. This book demonstrates how hard working she was as a writer, and how dedicated she was to getting it right (she undertakes to learn Greek and Latin in the belief that she would only be able to select the precisely right English word by understanding the Greek or Latin root of the word). That said, some of the most entertaining elements of the book come when she spectacularly gets it wrong (such as writing a television script about Rhodope for a television show - The Hallmark Hall of Fame - with a highly moral sponsor, only to find on the morning of transmission that the source of her inspiration had misrepresented Rhodope as an innocent slave girl when she had actually been an infamous prostitute).

I think it is quite entertaining to note something that Helene herself pointed out.

When she first moved to New York from Philadelphia, it was under the auspices of winning a fellowship from the Bureau on New Plays. They had offered $1500 to a couple of deserving new playwrights each year.

The year Helene won, the Theatre Guild decided that it was not in the playwrights' best interests to award them money, but then leave them to go their own way in the hard world of show business. They decided that in addition to the money from the Bureau of New Plays, they would also offer some training - so the year Helene won a fellowship, they were also treated to seminars from eminent theatre professionals. They were also given the chance to sit in on the preparations for a selection of Theatre Guild productions.

Of the twelve lucky hopefuls given this training (including Helene), a couple went on to become screen and television writers, but none of them became playwrights. The Theatre Guild productions they were privileged to have an insight into, all flopped.

The year previously, the two hopefuls who were awarded the money but received no training, and were left to their own devices, were Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams.

A theatrical interlude

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

I'm feeling quite sad this week. It has been announced in the news that our local theatre has gone into administration and is in danger of closure.

The idea of living in a city that does not have a professional theatre leaves me feeling bereft.

I just looked over the last sentence, and my mind is telling me that the word bereft is too strong. My heart feels the word is exactly the right strength.

Anyone who knows me - or even anyone who has just read my first posts - will have realised by now that I love books. One of the few things that rivals the strength of this passion is my love of the theatre. I like films a lot as well, but I love going to the theatre.

Just writing this blog about theatre means that I am being swamped by memories of plays that I have seen. A big part of writing this blog is trying to train myself to write and think again; to find discipline and structure in what I am writing. I am aware that I have probably been guilty of lack of focus in the couple of entries I have already written. But in this blog I am probably even more likely to be drawn into unfocussed rambling. When I think of how important the theatre feels to me, my mind starts to be overwhelmed by a wealth of images and memories.

My first memory of the theatre is going to a pantomime (this is possibly most people's first memory of going to a theatre). The villain scared me so much that my father had to take me out of the theatre to calm down. Instead of staying in the theatre, he drove me around town to look at the Christmas lights.

After that, my main memory of the theatre is going to see Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. My birthday was always around the time that our local amateur G&S company staged their shows, and this would be my birthday treat.

As an adult, I love going to the theatre with others or on my own, but I hate going to the cinema on my own. For me, going to the cinema is a social experience. On the couple of occasions I have gone to the cinema alone, it has been a rather cold and lonely experience - just you, and the flat, unresponsive, images on the screen. But in the theatre you have the flesh and intellect of the actor in front of you - it is never lonely. It is a very intimate, revealing experience - and I love to sit in the front row to try and maximise my connection with the events on stage.

The theatre has a huge capacity to confound expectations. Years ago I saw a production of Tennessee Williams' "Camino Real." I went mostly because I love Tennessee Williams - as a repressed Briton, I feel drawn to the catharsis of his over-wrought melodrama and torrid sexuality - and also because Leslie Phillips had been cast, and I was interested to see him on stage. However, I felt Leslie Phillips was miscast as Gutman, the sinister owner of the Siete Mares (or it is equally possible that I was unable to get past my own preconceptions of him as an actor). But I was deeply impressed by another actor in the cast - Peter Egan, as a vulnerable, ageing Casanova. I had only seen Peter Egan on TV before and didn't really have any preconceptions of him - and now I have an abiding memory of his performance being the best thing in that play. In fact, I think my copy of the script for "Camino Real" still has a promotional postcard of him as Casanova, which I used as a book mark.

Theatre is mutable and can always surprise you.

The theatre is also potentially incredibly powerful. I remember seeing a production of "A Winter's Tale." I went knowing little about the play, or about the cast (John Nettles as Leontes, Samantha Bond as Hermione, Richard McCabe as Autolycus and Alan Cox as Florizel). It is probably the most intense theatrical experience I have ever had. This was one of only two occasions when I have been part of the audience for a standing ovation (and this even more remarkable because it was at a matinee - in my experience matinee audiences tend to be small and apathetic). I can't conceive what it must feel like to be an actor receiving a standing ovation, as it is overwhelming enough to be part of the shared euphoria in an audience. I remember walking up the road to catch my bus in a trance afterwards. I think I even walked into a couple of people in a daze.

On a rather more frivolous note, the theatre has also indirectly given me another unique experience. I went to see Terry Johnson's play "Dead Funny." This is one of my favourite plays, with a strong female role which I would covet if I had any acting talent (I've tried and I don't). It is a play I know very well. So, when I walked past the actor who I knew had been cast as the leading man, only an hour before the play was due to start, I was in the position of walking past a complete stranger and knowing with total certainty that I would get to see him totally naked in an hour's time. I should explain that I knew the play had full-frontal male nudity in its first few minutes. You might walk past someone cute in the street and fantasise, maybe even proposition them if you are brave enough (I never was), but I knew.

I now feel even sadder after writing this. If our local theatre closes then I would fewer opportunities to make more memories like these. And, even worse, children who grow up here won't have the opportunites to discover the pleasures of the theatre.