Jane Eyre at the Rosemary Branch

Fri 3 May 2013

Why bother? Why would you even try to adapt Jane Eyre into a dramatic production? The novel is an almost perfect period piece preserving the architecture of a specific moment in English prose, whose effect largely depends on the possibilities of the first person narrator’s voice and the unimaginable ugliness of its two central characters. You may as well adapt it into a milkshake.But still directors try, drawn in by the sheer gravitational force of the plot and the protagonists. You can see their point, on a basic level: the core of Jane Eyre is powerfully theatrical. For those who have not read the book, here is a brief, teasing summary: a young, orphaned governess is engaged to look after a French child at a sulking hall somewhere in the north Midlands. She is “plain”, a typically rubescent Victorian euphemism for “ugly”. So, fortunately, is the master of Thornfield Hall, Edward Rochester, “more remarkable for character than beauty”. They get along famously, exce ...

It's a Bloody Drum

Tue 16 Apr 2013

The hang is not a drum. It is a hang. Do not call it a drum. This misnomer creates "a ripple effect of misinformation that leads to damaged instruments, physical injury and mental and emotional turbulence," according to the Hangbauhaus of Berne. It might look to your untutored eyes like a steel drum with a semi-sentient dustbin somewhere in its recent genealogy, but this could not be less accurate. The hang, plural hanghang , was born with the 21st century in Switzerland, and derives its name from a dialect word for "hand". It is not made of steel, but rather of a special rarefaction of steel called pang, which has healing properties. Hanghang are not really instruments at all, but "sound sculptures", "eluding the conventional definition of the musical instrument", and hence they are rare, almost impossible to replicate, and you can only buy them through handwritten letters to their sculptors. In fact the makers of the hang, Felix Rohner and Sa ...

A world where theatre has died

Sun 16 Dec 2012

- “Do you not realise that you too could create all these things in a sense?" - “And what sense is that?” he said. - “It’s not difficult,” I said. “You could do it anywhere you like and as quickly as you like – quickest, I suppose, if you took a looking-glass and held it up all around you. You could make the sun in an instant, and everything in the sky; the earth in an instant, yourself in an instant, and all the other animals and tools and plants and all the other things we were just talking about.” - “Oh, sure,” he said, “as they appear – but not as they really are.” Plato, Republic X 596d-e The best insults come back as banners. “Tory” originally meant outlaw or rebel – coined from the Irish word for “pursue” – until it became a badge of honour for the Royalist faction in Parliament under Charles II. The “Impressionist” movement took its name from a sneer by the art critic and satirist Louis Leroy, who lambasted Monet’s Impre ...

Mephedrone and Murakami - An Interview with Ben Brooks

Fri 4 Nov 2011

I’m meeting 19 year old author Ben Brooks to talk about his most recent novel Grow Up . He’s pretty camera- and interview-shy it seems, preferring to promote himself through interviews with publications like web-based lit-journal HTMLGIANT. All I know of Brooks in the flesh is that he’s ‘a heartthrob’ ( Dazed and Confused ) and ‘has a killer fringe’ ( Don’t Panic ). I’m also told he’s “fucking righteous” ( HTMLG ) When he arrives he’s quiet. He has an intricate tattoo of a rose on his right bicep, half obscured by a the sleeve of a denim jacket. His fringe is confirmed as totally killer. For the last week I’ve been reading and re-reading Grow Up in prep. I can’t help but compliment him on various lines that have gotten stuck in my head. The new best description of a hangover ever: “I have built a train-wreck in my head from cheap wine and horrible sex”.The book that Brooks says started him writing came out of the American scene; The Human W ...

Indifference and dirty hearts

Wed 5 Oct 2011

“Nobody knows all the wounds of our national tragedy... This trouble will drive us mad” These words of Gomidas in his final moments of lucidity are chillingly prophetic. Perhaps the original tortured artist, his pithy and disarmingly titled songs, such as I Cannot Dance and Oh, What a Delight echo the wry melancholy of The Smiths more than a peasant folk tradition of almost a century earlier. Yet both irony and incongruity were so poignant in the life and works of this Armenian priest and musician - or, to give him his lofty official title, ‘doctor of musicology’.He wrenched the remnants of Armenian peasant culture into the 20th century, painstakingly putting rural folk songs he came across to manuscript paper. His aim was to resurrect the cultural heritage of his homeland. Yet this was not a self-promoting scheme reminiscent of patronising narodniks attempting to incite passion in indifferent Russian serfs. It was an entirely selfless, and ultimately masochistic, task, ...

Education or Indoctrination?

Sat 18 Jun 2011

What a week for A. C. Grayling. Since his announcement that he will be opening a New College of the Humanities, he has been subject to attack from students, media, and fellow academics alike; rallied against on Facebook and smoke-bombed out of Foyles. In an interview with Shiv Malik for The Guardian , he commented; “[This issue] has become this sort of lightning conductor for the whole dissatisfaction that everybody feels about what’s happening in higher education ... which is really bad, so they pick on something to have a real go at.” But is it simply a case of jumping on the bandwagon of persecution, or is there a more reasoned argument for the amount of vitriol aimed at Grayling for his decision? In truth it has exposed an important, underlying issue that has been caused by the current government’s policy on higher education; as Grayling noted in an interview with The Times , “The Government’s higher education policy is in such a disarray that I don’t think they ...

Publicity is Key

Sun 29 May 2011

I recently went to see a production of Aida at the Royal Opera House which was being recorded for broadcast on Radio 3; there was a reverent silence as the strings opened the opera until, in the silence, an elderly woman’s voice rang out: “Is this my seat?”, earning a few fervent hushes from other audience members. Another silence and then: “Um...I don’t quite know where I am”, this time provoking both laughter and anger from those around her. So much for the flawless performance that we expect from modern recordings. But it is this unexpected element that forms the most quirky and intriguing part of music: that which comes with live performance. The performance is, after all, the very essence of music itself, which seems to have been forgotten in the almost clinical age of the record. This aim to eliminate the live aspect of music almost entirely from the musical experience is indicative of the internet age, where recordings are available on demand, often for free, but i ...

Senior Citizen Kane

Sun 27 Feb 2011

As we pass through another season of Oscar exposure, the star-powered glamour of Hollywood’s Golden Age is resurrected in its brightest glory, at least for one shining burst each year. Tinseltown’s great clichés are here once more: endless red carpets, tawdry lachrymose speeches, marketing lobbies that covet those mythic statuettes as if they were Michelangelo’s David himself. It’s all grossly, grotesquely engaging, a circus of heroes, villains and clowns, a singular jamboree of legends and pretenders and outcasts and flashes-in-the-pan, of wannabes and shouldabeens. But, amid such a festive carnival (however absorbing its terminal theatricality might be), can the serious cinephile really approach this hyped period with anything other than wary ambivalence? I don’t think he can. You must excuse an essay that so aggressively champions an individual film, and feel free to challenge its author (on any point discussed) in the comments space below. After all, it’s that time ...