Basia Bulat, The Entertainer and a voice you could write a book about − Reviews #241

LIVE



The Entertainer (Garrick Theatre) − It makes sense that Kenneth Branagh would close his first season at the Garrick with this: a play synonymous with his hero, Laurence Olivier. Branagh is Archie Rice, the unhappy, dissolute and past-it music-hall star Archie Rice, whose fey, innuendo-laced stylings are playing to dwindling audiences in '50s Yorkshire.

John Osbourne's play is very much of its time, but director Rob Ashford does well to mine it for its modern relevancies: patriotism, racism and the pathos of an artform on its last legs, and plays Archie as a slight, sad figure, his bags of charisma obscuring a complete lack of moral character, or really any substance at all. He's fast, erudite and fills a room (if not a concert hall) with his bravado, and his rants are more lost than vitriolic. It's a reading of the character that convinces but doesn't always lend itself to emotional dynamism, and that's problematic in a play that has some serious longueurs. On a more prosaic note, I remember reading years ago that Branagh doesn't work himself up into a teary state, but aims for the same effect through simple acting shorthand, and that synthetic approach leaves me feeling rather detached and cheated.

After a stunningly modern opening that sees a silhouetted Branagh slowly tapdancing with his back to the audience, as he's joined by four young chorus girls, we're largely trapped in a room with his family. The first dialogue scene, with Branagh's daughter (Downton Abbey's Sophie McShera) and his father (Gawn Grainger) goes on forever and has little to offer but vast swathes of unpopulated space and an oppressive mundanity. As Greta Scacchi enters as Archie's wife, Phoebe, and the star breaks off for music hall routines pitched perfectly between the dated and the devilishly good, it does begin to work up some momentum, but the first half never really hits its stride until the final seconds.

Once that happens, it doesn't lose it: suddenly it seems to have a purpose and a theme, the characters crumbling like the edifices of the music halls, their viewpoints complex but apparent, and their relationships shifting like cogs in a rotting machine. I don't rate McShera as an actor, and she speaks increasingly throughout the play with that unbearably false intonation that convinces people they don't like theatre. The other principals are fine though: Grainger's comic timing, sentimentality and irascible detachment are a joy in themselves and lend the climax a real emotional heft, Scacchi is largely terrific as a woman drunk on her own hard-luck stories, and Jonah Hauer-King is tuneful and gently nuanced as Archie's lanky son, Frank.

It doesn't ever quite hit the heights I was anticipating − and one can only imagine what John Hurt might have made of Grainger's character if he hadn't been forced to drop out − but at its best it's a valuable, fascinating portrait of the Britain that was and perhaps still is, with a commanding, committed and often brilliant performance at its centre. (3)

***






Photos by me, can you tell?

Basia Bulat (Oslo Hackney) − Barnstorming power-pop princess Basia Bulat lit up London again last week, surely confirming her status as just about the best live act around. A knockout In the Name Of, a three-song autoharp solo spot comprising Heart of My Own, Gold Rush and In the Night, a heart-stopping, brokenhearted cover of Damaged by Primal Scream, and a dizzying version of her 2013 song The Wire that concluded with her screaming into a voice distorter, it often took the breath away. She never stands still; every time, every song sounds new, thanks to her restless imagination, a Sandy Denny-like gift for reworking melodies, and that notable fondness for odd gadgets. If you get the chance to see her, leap at it. (3.5)

See also: I've reviewed other Basia gigs, at the Slaughtered Lamb (my favourite show of 2015), Rough Trade East and − best of all − Hoxton Square Kitchen. ***

FILM



CINEMA: Born Yesterday (George Cukor, 1940) − I had a rough day on Thursday, then I went to the BFI to watch this, and my worries just floated away. It's a film I return to time and again, and it always has the same effect on me.

The movie is dominated by Judy Holliday's tour-de-force as ill-educated, complacent former chorine Billie Dawn, whose gangster fiancé (Broderick Crawford) decides that she needs her edges smoothing off, but doesn't bargain for what happens next. You could write a book about Holliday's voice alone: the working class accent, the seductive impediment, the cartoonishness that accentuates the comedy but is never broad or alienating as Billie transforms from an abused adornment to a self-possessed modern woman.

Garson Kanin's script pulls a punch or two to circumvent the censors (the rogue congressman who Crawford bribes is the exception, not a rule) and William Holden's columnist − the catalyst for Billie's change − comes off as a tad smug, but it's rare to find a mainstream movie that elides so succinctly with my own views: that anti-intellectualism is dangerous, that intellectual posturing is tiresome, and that a woman improving herself for her own sake is more beautiful than if she reforms for love.

Cukor's direction is curiously drab, but almost everything else about the film works, with Howard St. John superb as Crawford's refined, self-hating lawyer, two dozen big laughs, and some eloquent polemicising that's arguably more relevant in 2016 than it was in 1950, dealing as it does with crooked lobbyists, spineless legislators and rampant misogyny.

Its greatest strength, though, remains Holliday's astonishing characterisation: so hilarious, vital, heart-warming, nuanced and specific. She would give other truly great performances, but none as great as this. People who say women can't be funny should have their eyes stapled open and be made to this film. It'll improve their Thursday. (4)

See also: This movie is in my all-time top 100, which you can read about here.

***

Thanks for reading.

Basia Bulat, Sunset Blvd: The Musical, and confessions of a completist - Reviews #233

I've been out of the flat a bit. See:

LIVE:


Photo by me, can you tell?

Basia Bulat (Hoxton Square Kitchen) - Since I last saw her properly a year ago, giving my favourite live performance of 2015, Polish-Canadian singer-songwriter Basia Bulat has undergone a quite startling transformation. There were hints of it in the Rough Trade mini-gig she did in February: a strident, rocky performance of songs from her new record, Good Advice, somewhat removed from that earlier folksy set played chiefly on the autoharp. Nothing prepared for me this, though: the whispery, wispy, baby-faced Bulat reincarnated as a power-pop diva in a gold cape, charisma bursting from her, as she belted out crowd-pleasers from behind a keyboard, like some improbable, magnificent union between Janis Joplin and Carly Simon.

Across the 90-minute show, and backed by her Canadian band (comprising support act The Weather Station and a bonus lead guitarist) she played six instruments on songs from the past 11 years, her voice everything from a sweet seduction to a tortured wail, including a stomping dance version of Let Me In (first heard as a Leonard Cohen-esque ballad last year), Fool - with its smooth falsetto replaced by a new arrangement that allows her to vocalise over a full band) - and, best of all, a Springsteen-like version of Five, Four, last heard as a faintly neurotic folk song. Between, there were autoharp versions of four beloved Bulat standards, including In the Night and Heart of My Own, the pop explosion that is Tall, Tall Shadow (title song of her 2013 record) and persuasive renderings of the hopeful Someday Soon and the furious, self-mocking La La Lie, two of the best songs from her current album.

The only track that didn't quite land was Good Advice, partly because of some sound problems at the venue, and partly because it's the least interesting song on her current LP. The encore - It Can't Be You played on a ukulele - was familiar, but little else about this show was, aside from its sheer mindblowing quality. With Yasmine Hamdan, she must be the best and friendliest live act around. (She also had an adorable smear of lipstick on her cheek for the entire show - marry me now, Basia.) (4)

SUPPORT: The Weather Station were happily in that 5% of support acts who are really good, particularly singer and guitarist Tamara Lindeman (who sang backing vocals for Basia). They sound like a compact Canadian Fairport, though the songs I liked best were the stripped-down ones using Linderman's ethereal voice to full effect. Their less conventional elements are, unusually, also the less successful. (3)

***



Sunset Blvd. (London Coliseum) - A good first half gives way to a sensational second in this headline-grabbing revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical (based, of course, on Billy Wilder's seminal 1950 movie), which features Glenn Close in the role that won her a Tony and made her a musical star: Wilder's repulsive, tragic silent movie queen, Norma Desmond. Close is merely OK, struggling (literally) to hit the high notes or wring much of the implicit pathos from the role, but the 48-piece on-stage orchestra creates a sensational sound as it brings to life some of Lloyd Webber's most exquisite, affecting melodies, and both Michael Xavier (as Joe) and Siobhan Dillon (as Betty) are superb, Xavier articulating the character's inner conflict and broiling self-loathing in a way that I snobbishly thought might be beyond a West End musical star, while vocalising the numbers impeccably and looking terrific in a little pair of swimming shorts. There's a nice performance from Fred Johanson too, as Max, Desmond's imposing, unhappy butler.

Lonny Price's staging is imaginative, while relying on the imagination - consisting primarily of a metal gantry with two staircases and platforms - and I particularly liked both the use of archive LA footage (beamed onto a translucent screen) and, less obviously, the 'car chase' effect, which consisted of two people running down the steps in the semi-darkness, each holding torches in both hands (they never got around the second problem, though, which is that when they're 'parking' at the back of the stage, they just look like two men with their backs to the audience). A minor shortcoming of the musical adaptation is that Christopher Hampton's rhyming lyrics lack the bitter, sardonic poetry of Wilder's dialogue (some of which remains intact), while the recurring motif - while sumptuous - is perhaps ultimately overused. On the whole, though, I found the show hugely entertaining: a richly atmospheric evocation of Hollywood malaise, immersive, periodically exuberant and ultimately triumphant, if not quite for the reasons I expected. (3.5)

***



The Caretaker (The Old Vic) - I'm not a massive admirer of Harold Pinter's work: his way of writing (just start and you can figure out what it means later, or else not bother and just wait for critics to admiringly tell you) may have heralded a new type of theatre, but what if that type of theatre was a bit, you know, shit? Having said that, I can't watch The Servant - the 1962 Joseph Losey film written by Pinter - without being irredeemably sucked into its psycho-sexual confrontation of class politics, and much of that brilliance is to be found in the text, and between and underneath its abrasive lines.

I thought I'd see The Caretaker for my birthday though, as I like Timothy Spall, and his performance in Secrets & Lies (which I finally saw last year) has stayed with me like little else. Sadly this interminable production is one of the worst I've seen since I started regularly going to West End shows a couple of years ago. The second act provided its fair share of pathos and comic discomfort, thanks chiefly to George MacKay's barking, aggressive, leather-jacketed Pinter surrogate, though Daniel Mays' monologue at the close was extremely well received. Spall was dreadful, though, torpedoing the majority of the play with a single grating, borderline-unlistenable affectation of a line delivery that made me pray for the show to finish.

Three hours it lasts, including two intervals: that's a long time to be incredibly irritated. (1.5)

***

FILMS



What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich, 1962) - Two of Hollywood's greatest actresses together at last: Bette Davis and Anna Lee. Joan Crawford's in it too.

Robert Aldrich's deliriously nasty Gothic thriller has Hollywood in its bones, and Hollywood stars in their element. As film historians have observed before, Davis's persona was as the great sadist, Crawford's the great masochist, and their roles here are tailored perfectly to their mismatched talents: Bette as ghost-faced former child star, Baby Jane Hudson, who has recently gone mad and taken to persecuting her sister, crippled Golden Age legend, Blanche (Crawford). Lee - who gave three of my favourite performances, in Ford's How Green Was My Valley, Lewton's Bedlam and Fuller's Crimson Kimono - is rather underutilised, though perfectly fine, as their solidly suburban neighbour, while big-boned Victor Buono plays Bette's new musical collaborator with an agreeably repellent, sickly charm, though also quite a bad English accent.

After a masterful prologue (magnificently utilising footage from Davis's most loathed studio potboiler, Parachute Jumper), Aldrich tips us into a rotting mansion, where Davis proceeds to isolate, starve and generally terrify her big-browed nemesis - and if that manifestation of the stars' mutual dislike is rather fanciful, the animosity itself was genuine. No two stars ever took bigger lumps out of another than these two (except perhaps for Tom Neal when he kicked Franchot Tone's head in), with the mercurial, sometimes monstrous Davis memorably dubbing her bed-hopping rival, "The original good time that was had by all."

I'm not sure that Aldrich's celebrated, trendsetting and meticulously well-directed film necessarily delivers on all of its early promise, as its story settles into a slightly repetitive rhythm, but it has many passages of nerve-shredding tension, some big dollops of pitch black comedy and two stars in fantastic form. I'm not generally a fan of Crawford, but there's no faulting her work here - she had, as the meme goes, one job, and did it very well - while Bette, that little black love heart on her blanched face, is in simply rampaging form, playing the last word in difficult siblings, though not one without an extremely latent sentimental side. (3.5)

***



La peau douce (François Truffaut, 1964) - Frustrated author Jean Desailly, bored with wife Nelly Benedetti, begins an affair with an air-hostess (Françoise Dorléac), and - worried about being unmasked - proceeds to make some foolish decisions.

It's Brief Encounter meets The Third Man, with nouvelle vague flourishes, fragments of Truffaut's own philosophy and some Hitchcockian suspense: note how the director immediately pitches us into a heart-stopping sequence that we really shouldn't care about, just as he'd envisaged when he spoke to Hitchcock about this very subject in 1962.

The film, Truffaut's fourth, was a critical and commercial failure upon release, with him lamenting that it had been too cold and unsentimental, with a protagonist no-one could care for, but it's full of great details (like Dorléac distractingly examining her reflection in a table knife), fine location flavour (a break-up on a Parisian rooftop!) and intuitive, intelligent female characters.

I'd class myself as a big fan of the director, but I don't think he actually made that many great films: acclaimed movies like Jules et Jim, Anne and Muriel, and The Last Metro leave me cold. This one, though, is mature, intriguing and quite brilliantly directed, if not exactly likeable.

Does the end fit the rest of it? I'm not sure. It's bloody good, though. (3)

***



Kiss and Make-Up (Harlan Thompson, 1934) - This plays almost like a parody of 1930s cinema, with white art deco sets, stylish wipes and an abundance of slightly stilted chorine types with fixed smiles, singsong voices and few clothes. Those bit parts are played by the entire roster of the 1934 WAMPAS Baby Stars, but unlike Clara Bow and Dorothy Mackaill (1924), Mary Astor, Mary Brian, Joan Crawford, Janet Gaynor and Fay Wray (1926), and Joan Blondell, Constance Cummings, Frances Dee, Rochelle Hudson and Karen Morley (1931), none of this bunch would go on to major stardom: 1934 was the most fallow crop, and the last.

Kiss and Make-Up is a bit sexist, a bit racist and a bit silly, concluding with an idiotic, pointless slapstick chase. But it's also surprisingly funny and full of novelties: slick, mobile direction, Edward Everett Horton and Helen Mack singing a duet about cabbage, and a neat POV opening where you get to be Cary Grant.

The story is that old chestnut - done best in Capra's Platinum Blonde - about a professional (beautician Grant) who loves a boring, shallow woman (his Galatea, Genevieve Tobin), not realising that he should be with his doting, lovelorn secretary. It would be a bit less disingenuous if Hollywood itself didn't routinely prize beauty over character, and the secretary was relatively unattractive, rather than a brunette Helen Mack.

Cary Grant only really became Cary Grant with Leo McCarey's hysterical 1937 film, The Awful Truth, one of the funniest movies ever made, but this is probably the closest he came before that, and it's definitely among his best early performances, with an easy charm, an aloof, offhand wryness even when the joke is very much on him, and even a couple of tuneful performances of the song, Love Divided by Two.

The best thing about the film, though, even acknowledging its attractive look and above-average dialogue, is Horton, who is at the peak of his powers: the scene between him and Grant in Tobin's room is genuinely hilarious. (3)

***



Sherlock Holmes (Albert Parker, 1922) - Here's a novelty: a Sherlock Holmes film without a mystery in it. It's based on a play by William Gillette - who popularised some of the iconography we associate with the character - but it's more true to the incidentals of the character than his essence, the detective portrayed as a romantic sentimentalist who'll go to the wall for the woman he loves.

An extraordinarily handsome John Barrymore - about to embark on his legendary stage triumph as Hamlet - is Holmes, who comes to the aid of a foreign prince and fellow Cambridge University student (Reginald Denny), bringing him into conflict with a nefarious, hairy Limehouse resident by the name of Moriarty - who seems to have been taking style tips from Barrymore's own Mr Hyde (unleashed on an unsuspecting public the previous year).

As a fan of film history, it's fun to see Barrymore as Holmes, to see a debuting Roland Young (as Watson) and William Powell (as a thief in the detective's employ), to see Moriarty introduced in the centre of a spider's web, and the likes of Denny, future gossip columnist Hedda Hopper and D. W. Griffith's mistress and leading lady, Carol Dempster, playing off one another. I'm glad the film was rediscovered in the '70s after being thought lost, and that Hugh Hefner stumped up the money for the restoration (!).

It's not actually very good, though. There are trick walls and secret passages (in my experience, a fail-safe indicator that I'm watching a shit film), the Holmes-Watson relationship - so integral to a successful adaptation - has but a single moment of genuine warmth, and the story is just really boring, because there's no mystery and not really any suspense: it's just people squabbling over some letters for 85 minutes. I think so, anyway: I'm not sure if there are frames missing from the existing print, but it all gets quite confusing towards the end, before a completely incomprehensible climax.

Barrymore was a truly great actor, but a lot of the time he couldn't really be arsed, and with Hamlet on the horizon, you get the feeling that his thoughts were over Elsinore rather than at 221b Baker Street. (2)

***



The Human Stain (Robert Benton, 2003) - Philip Roth's magnificent novel about a professor with a deep, dark secret, becomes an extravagantly bad film starring Anthony Hopkins, who does at least bother to do some acting, which I know he regards as something of a chore nowadays.

The scenes in the '40s about the professor's past are actually rather effective, but square-jawed, long-faced Wentworth Miller - though fine - looks and sounds nothing like Hopkins (who is orange and Welsh) and Nicole Kidman's irritatingly shallow performance sinks the rest, the portentous, overrated actress playing a one-dimensional stock character, rather than the fascinating one Roth wrote.

Compounding the misery is Sinise's Nathan Zuckerman (a recurring figure in the author's work), who must be about the most nondescript character I've ever seen in a film. The source novel may well be unfilmable, but it could be filmed quite a lot better than this. (1.5)

***

TV



The Kingfisher (James Cellan James, 1983) - One of the loveliest things I've seen in ages: a magical, marvellously escapist made-for-TV drama with a cast of three and a tender score, as a lonely bachelor (Rex Harrison), living with his gay old butler (Cyril Cusack), who makes a move for the one that that got away a half-century ago (Wendy Hiller), following the death of her husband.

The material is good if imperfect - there's a touch of pointless slapstick and an ill-advised diversion about Harrison's fatal conquests that seems in rather bad taste given the actor's involvement in Carole Landis's suicide - while the direction is fairly standard and unimaginative, but the performances are an absolute joy, with Harrison and Hiller sparking as they had in Major Barbara (one of my favourite 10 films) 42 years earlier, and Cusack providing memorable though not exactly hilarious support.

Sexy Rexy plays the unrepentant but genuine, wistful old cove you'd expect, dialogue still like honey on his lips, while Hiller creates another of those impeccable, distinct characterisations she could turn out at will: a twinkly-eyed, joshing, witty, knowing and self-aware woman who's happy to get sloshed but blessed with tremendous emotional intelligence (a pensioned-off, very English version of Myrna Loy's character in Libeled Lady, perhaps).

The filmed legacy of this renowned stage actress is a strange and spotty thing: she made just 18 movies, along with 40-odd TV appearances, during a career that spanned from 1937 to 1992, but what remains is of inestimable value for anyone who admires the artistry of acting. Through the nuanced control of her incomparable face, a stage-honed understanding of gesture that she adapted for the all-seeing camera, and that deep, modulated and inimitable voice, she thought out loud, and what she thought was usually extraordinarily beautiful. I really do think she's the greatest sound actress of all time. And this TV drama that I supposed would be a mere footnote for this completist is a wonderful thing. (3.5)

***



All Passion Spent (Martyn Friend, 1986) - This three-part adaptation of Vita Sackville-West's most popular novel is quiet, contemplative and ultimately extremely rewarding: the story of an 85-year-old widow (Wendy Hiller) - previously wedded to the establishment - who finally gets to show her innate non-conformity.

It takes ages to get going (the first half of the mini-series is basically just her purchasing and redecorating a house), but the music's nice, the script is unusually classy and meditative, and the scenes between Hiller and her eccentric longtime admirer (Harry Andrews) are extraordinarily moving.

This portrait of a stoical, accepting and non-judgemental woman, blessed with a gentle power that comes from deep within, is among the great achievements of her incomparable career. What surrounds it isn't generally in the same league, but it's worth seeing for the central performance alone. (3)

***

BOOK



The Entertainer by Margaret Talbot (2012) - The story of 20th century America, told through the prism of the author's father, Lyle Talbot, whose career mirrored the transition from localised to mass market entertainment, as he went from tent-show star, carny performer and stage actor to Pre-Code leading man, Ed Wood alumnus and TV sitcom favourite. His daughter Margaret is a New York staff writer, and the book does often feel more like an extended magazine feature than a weighty non-fiction tome - it's wide-ranging, thoughtful and interesting, whether documenting the early 20th century paradigm from character to personality, or dissecting the shortcomings that prevented Lyle from becoming the star that Warner Bros expected him to be - but sometimes rather slight (its anecdotes range from the memorable to the truly mundane), increasingly shows its working, and occasionally branches off into pretentious speculation (as in a simply dire passage imagining the later life of the actor's first girlfriend).

His biographer is broadly a good writer, though, her occasional weird, mannered, nature-themed metaphors compensated for by her ability to be witty, psychologically insightful and often subtly and deeply affecting (the final paragraph of her introduction is wonderfully realised). Sometimes she goes off on a mystifying tangent about a minor character in Lyle's life, and at times takes us into territory probably only interesting to her immediate family, but she writes movingly about both of her parents, knowledgeably about her father's minor Pre-Code triumphs, and perceptively -about everything from sexual attraction to Nebraska to the appeal of the sitcom Lyle appeared in, Ozzie and Harriet, and about the America it played to. Lyle himself had a remarkable life, rather than being a particularly interesting person, but in this ambitious, readable and slightly flawed book, he plays a new role: a man through whose long and diverse career we can better understand America, and the American century. The cover is absolutely beautiful too: a perfect pastiche of 1932 movie credits. (3.5)

***

Thanks for reading.

Basia Bulat, Sunny Afternoon and some fillums - Reviews #226

I've been out and about. Read some books too.

FILMS



The League of Gentlemen (Basil Dearden, 1960) - A superior, extremely punchy British crime caper from the start of the ‘60s, with Jack Hawkins reacting to being kicked out of the army by recruiting a litany of dishonourable dischargees to rob a bank.

It’s weirdly – even poorly – paced, and only really achieves the desired air of fatalism in its final reel, but the cast is a who’s who of contemporary talent and the film is full of brilliant, stylised Bryan Forbes dialogue, including that famous, rather misogynistic gag about Hawkins’ wife (represented by a portrait of Deborah Kerr from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp).

Some may struggle to get on board with a movie in which the heroes include a flasher who likes pretending to be a priest (Roger Livesey), but the film’s anti-everything cynicism is actually gloriously refreshing and it all builds to a wonderfully satisfying climax – from the atmospheric, beautifully-photographed heist (Smoke! Gasmasks! Impressive economy!) to a farewell party and beyond. Nigel Patrick is particularly good as Race, a refined former blackmarketeer enlisted for his transport nous. (3.5)

***



20 Feet from Stardom (Morgan Neville, 2013) - Full disclaimer: I was having a bit of a chat while this was on, so I’m even less equipped than usual to offer an opinion.

It’s a heartfelt documentary about African-American backing singers from the ‘60s to the present day, focusing on the likes of Darlene Love, Lisa Fischer and Merry Clayton – all of whom I’d heard, but none of whom I could’ve named, since they’re rather better known for their contributions to other people’s work than on their own terms.

It seemed to me like a worthwhile film – with some great moments – that suffered a little from a jumbled structure and story threads varying in interest. There are many arresting moments and telling anecdotes, though, alongside a neat gimmick isolating the backing tracks to underline their sheer power, resonance and quality, as well as a handful of tall tales that have since been rather comprehensively debunked. I don’t necessarily understand why it won the Oscar, but then I rarely do. (3)

***



The Story of Adele H (Francois Truffaut, 1975) - Francois Truffaut’s passion for making period dramas seems to have completely outstripped his aptitude for them, as this is another prettily-photographed borefest along the lines of Anne and Muriel, with the same uncomfortable bilingual presentation and complete monotony of tone.

Isabelle Adjani is quite good as the title character, the daughter of Victor Hugo, who is driven to distraction and then insanity by her unrequited love for a caddish soldier (the future writer-director of Withnail & I, Bruce Robinson).

It sounds promising and Néstor Almendros’s cinematography is once more sumptuous, but the (true life) story itself is interminable: just the same thing over and over, without wit, respite or even any great insight, not helped by Truffaut’s perverse dedication to the idea that Adele’s meltdown is the only thing worth investigating, not her seduction and not any potential last-act catharsis.

Like Les quatre cents coups, it ends with a monochrome freeze-frame (of a sort), but whereas that film buzzed with life and invention - and bristled with hurt - right up until its final frame, this one just sort of sits there.

***

LIVE



THEATRE: Sunny Afternoon (The Harold Pinter Theatre) – An entertaining Kinks show that’s at its best when dealing with Ray Davies’ personal issues – artfully integrating his timeless songs into a nicely paraphrased story of sibling rivalry and crippling despondency – or giving us big, stompy musical numbers performed by on-stage musicians, at its worst when whining at length about greedy industry agents (they may have right on their side, but there’s little more tedious than rock stars moaning about money) or going for the purely cartoonish over the authentic or the intelligently heightened.

There’s some dialogue-writing-by-numbers (Ray's wife keeps saying "It's ahright") and musical-writing-by-numbers, as an outfitting results in the group singing Dedicated Follower of Fashion, but mostly it’s deftly done and the delightfully populist presentation of Sunny Afternoon – evoking the summer of ’66 – beautiful lead in to Waterloo Sunset (deftly mythologising its different, complementary, immaculately congealing parts) and crowd-pleasing encore are superbly handled.

The cast is mostly pretty good too, especially Danny Horn as the diffident, difficult but sympathetic Ray, and Oliver Hoare in a more obvious, showboating performance as the hellraising, whisky-swigging, cross-dressing Dave, and while the script sometimes gets lost in self-pity or trades lazily on jokes about events to come (Lennon ‘wouldn’t stay in bed for days’, McCartney ‘wouldn’t let his wife sing on his records’), the overall effect is rather lovely, lit by some conventional but exuberant staging and a frankly improbable number of brilliant songs: taking place chiefly from 1964-7, but integrating more obvious numbers from later on, we don’t even hear from the majestic but relatively idiosyncratic Village Green or Arthur eras. (3)

***



GIG: Basia Bulat (Rough Trade East) – An irresistible mini-gig from Canada’s best half-Polish folkie (and just about my favourite act of recent years), the mellifluous, extraordinarily distinctive Basia Bulat. Ditching her usual autoharp in favour of a guitar and a three-part backing band, she launched her new pop record, Good Advice, with a seven-song set comprising five new songs and two old ones (Heart of My Own and It Can’t Be You) – the oldies, as well as Someday Soon, performed solo. Highlights included an explosive version of the stunning Fool, her vocal modified into something harder from the trilling falsetto on the album due to the battle with the band, and two of the catchiest things Bulat has written – aside from which they could scarcely be more different – the knockabout, self-mocking La La Lie and the plaintive, exploratory In the Name Of. Her London show in September was the best show I saw last year; I’m back for another full-length concert in April, but until then this will do nicely. (4)

***

BOOKS



Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (1954) - Not a word is wasted in Kingsley Amis’s effortlessly brilliant debut novel, the pungent, uproarious and – for me – alarmingly relatable story of Jim Dixon, a lecturer at a red brick university who is caught between two very different women, and plagued by a litany of unspeakable men, as he attempts to hold on to his job and arrest a casual but definite decline brought on by booze, poor fortune, general confusion and a tragic inability to Play the Game. Barely a sentence goes by without Amis introducing some black, bleak or brilliant idea, revolving on some inspired turn of phrase, and the book’s blending of the cynical, romantic and inutterably, breathtakingly funny is just about perfect. A wonder. (4)

***



Election by Tom Perrotta (1998) – An absolutely exceptional story told from five vantage points, and prefaced with perfection by Irish novelist William Trevor's observation that "the world is the school gone mad". Mr M is a progressive, popular young teacher who becomes rather too involved in the election of the school president, a three-way fight between the high-achieving Tracy Flick, clever, warm-hearted Paul Warren and Mark’s sister: a sarcastic, malevolent, romantic lesbian whose campaign slogans include, “Vote for Tammy, she’s inexperienced and kind of lazy”. The story may be familiar from Alexander Payne’s excellent cinematic adaptation (with Reese Witherspoon a fitting Flick), but the book is rather different: not a vicious, misanthropic satire, but a sharp, dark, extremely and unexpectedly poignant work that cares for each of its characters, making you laugh out loud, rage and broil, then undercutting all of that with moments of desperate sadness. (4)

***

Thanks for reading.

Review of 2015: Part 2 - Live

I've been to quite a lot of stuff in That London this year: 16 plays, 21 gigs, 19 other bits and bobs, so I thought I'd tell you about some of my favourites. The first part of my review of the year, dealing with movies, is here.


That man I like.

Theatre:

I saw some big names in some big plays in 2015: Ralph Fiennes in Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman, Benedict Cumberbatch in the rather disappointing Hamlet, and Kevin Spacey in Clarence Darrow, but my favourite six productions were these:



6. Antigone (Barbican Theatre) - A frequently dazzling introduction to Greek tragedy, with Juliette Binoche a beautifully compromised heroine, and seamlessly modern staging. A few lulls, though also - surprisingly - a few lols.



5. The Elephant Man (Theatre Royal Haymarket) - The production feels too short by a good 20 minutes and has no real dramatic climax, though it's illuminated by a superlative, all-American cast, particularly screen star Bradley Cooper, who made it big in that abhorrent, detestable slice of Fratwank, The Hangover, before revealing he could actually act the pants of most people in Hollywood, and makes for a simply sublime John Merrick.



4. The Importance of Being Earnest (Vaudeville Theatre) - An unexpectedly hilarious, specific presentation of the Wilde play, with Suchet taking top billing, but a modern Algy (Philip Cumbus) and a vivacious Cecily (the superb Imogen Doel) taking top honours. Just a delight.



3. Gypsy (Savoy Theatre) - This is a fun, funny, intensely sad translation of Sondheim’s 1959 musical about the creation of striptease sensation Gypsy Rose Lee (Lara Pulver), focusing on her manager, Rose (Imelda Staunton), the ultimate stage mother. A work of real emotional heft, it starts off light and sweet and frothy, then takes us deep into the souls and psyches of its characters, peddling a little of Sondheim’s broad sordidness (which isn’t really my sort of thing but works alright), before flooring us with a succession of gut punches. Completely compelling even at two-and-a-half-hours, it’s a show shot through with wit, ugliness, angst, desperation, panache and pizzazz, from the stylised, skewed-perspective sets to a slew of stellar songs and Staunton’s sensational central performance, the best I've ever seen her give.



2. Hangmen (Royal Court Theatre) - In Bruges writer-director Martin McDonagh returned to the London stage with a killer new play about the country's second-best hangman (David Morrissey) - on the day that hanging is abolished. It's both perilously dark and astonishingly funny, McDonagh weaving together his comic and thriller-ish strands with utter majesty, as a mysterious blonde stranger appears in Morrissey's Oldham pub, setting in motion a truly grisly chain of events. After the partial misfire that was his Hollywood debut, Seven Psychopaths, this is a stunning, seamless return to form from one of the sharpest, wittiest and most interesting writers working today, a work so incredibly entertaining that it's only when the dust settles that you realise there was real meat on these bones.



1. A View from the Bridge (Wyndham's Theatre) - Arthur Miller followed up The Crucible with another play dealing allegorically with the communist witchhunts: A View from the Bridge, a story of Freud and informing in which longshoreman Eddie Carbone (Mark Strong) is tempted to turn in an illegal immigrant for daring to romance the niece he idolises (Phoebe Fox). Ivo von Hove's production opts for minimal staging but maximum power, with a small, square, boxed-off set, scenes bleeding one into the next through intelligently-paced entrances, and a finale in which no-one is left untainted. The shaven-headed Strong, facial muscles twitching, disappears into his character entirely, inhabiting this tortured, conflicted Sicilian, polemicising endlessly, though whether to convince himself or others isn't clear. As the nymph whose sexual blossoming has set tragedy in motion, Phoebe Fox is also exceptional, with impeccable delivery and a sensuality that's careless, studied and insecure. This gobsmacking production, powered by two performances of exquisite clarity, nails both its specifics and its wider resonances, leaving you feeling exhausted, destroyed and yet curiously euphoric.

***

Gigs/concerts:


(c) Paul Sanders/Royal Albert Hall

The best show I saw at work this year was Titanic Live, an experience that I wrote about here. Other highlights included Back to the Future - also a 'film and orchestra' presentation - gigs from Bob Dylan (twice), Van Morrison, The Who, Noel Gallagher, Art Garfunkel and particularly Dave Gilmour, and the Sherlock and Leonard Bernstein Proms. Because trying to put together a list of the best shows I've seen anywhere is either going to see me accused of bias or fired, I thought I'd tell you instead about my top SEVEN shows at other venues: a list so good that even a reformed Fleetwood Mac aren't in it.



7. Patti Smith (The Roundhouse) - She did Horses. In its glorious entirety. I sat on the floor of the balcony, as I had sciatica, but even up there she blew me away, her voice a time machine, the songs as groundbreaking, fresh and immediate as ever they were. I've rarely seen any on stage with such quicksilver charisma.



6. Ennio Morricone: A Life in Music (Rival Venue) - The good, the only slightly less good and the rather obscure, Morricone's greatest hits set was a joy to behold. And I met Elizabeth McGovern in the interval, shortly after hearing her theme from Once Upon a Time in America.



5. David Ford (Borderline) - This show converted me from a foolish sceptic to a die-hard fan (I was accompanied by wife, who thinks Ford is fantastic - which it turns out he is). His 'one man band' show, built on loops - with him playing every instrument - was powerful, poignant and eye-opening, revealing a songwriter and a performer of unusual potency.



4. Paul McCartney (Rival Venue) - It didn't really occur to me that seeing McCartney live was still a thing you could do, though I listened to Trippin' the Live Fantastic pretty much on repeat when I was a kid. I got around to it this year and had a ball, courtesy of a two-and-a-half hour show packed with just about everything you could have asked for, but lit especially by Blackbird, I'm Looking Through You and the immortal Golden Slumbers. I'll always prefer Dylan, but his apparent contempt for his audience is particularly noticeable when contrasted with the waves of affection apparently emanating from McCartney. Odd, when you consider that the audience's biggest cheer of the night was for the fireworks in Live and Let Die - if you like fireworks that much, they actually do fireworks shows.



3. Yasmine Hamdan (Scala) - Last year's gig at the Hall's Elgar Room was an absolute revelation, so a year on I had to see her again. Hamdan's seductive, uncompromising manner, superb songs and ethereal but full-barrelled vocals make her live shows a unique experience, and she even remembered me.



2. John Grant (Hammersmith Apollo) - This was a simply sensational show from one of this year's overriding obsessions, the incomparable John Grant. I've never known a run of songs at a show quite like Glacier/Queen of Denmark/GMF, while It Doesn't Matter to Him took the roof off the place: only now it's somehow triumphant, rather than blisteringly raw and acutely painful. His voice, his charm, his dancing - it was an extraordinary evening. He's at the Hall in June, actually, so hopefully I'll be seeing him again soon.



1. Basia Bulat (The Slaughtered Lamb) - An evening of perfectly vocalised folk from a distinctive and remarkable singer-songwriter: blissful and heartbreaking in turn, and exultant in its quiet majesty. I still don't know what the opening song was (it possesses the pressing, tempting refrain, "Won't you let me in?" and may be on her upcoming record). The audience wouldn't let her quit playing, so when she finally left, it was because she'd run out of songs. You have to see her live.

***

Miscellaneous:



I saw four comedy shows, of which Bridget Christie and Stewart Lee's were the undoubted pick, both fusing silliness, satire and social comment to astounding, uproarious effect. I saw Q&As with Al Pacino, Ryan Gosling, Steve Coogan and Armando Iannucci, the cast and crew of Vera Drake, and several key players in Sense and Sensibility - the latter was one of the best things I went to this year, and I learned a lot. The Spectre premiere, I've discussed already, but that was very special indeed. And my wife organised a knock-out event at Westminster's Central Hall to 'Bring Back the NHS', starring Ian McKellen and Charlotte Church.



At the Hall, I saw Sondheim's rarely-staged Follies in Concert, Cirque du Soleil's often jaw-dropping Kooza and a pre-show talk at Interstellar Live that featured Christopher Nolan, Hans Zimmer and Prof Brian Cox, and my nearest cinema - the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, north-west London - brought hit plays to the screen, including Maxine Peake as Hamlet (very good) and Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller in Frankenstein (not at all good). Compared to last year, when I went positively exhibition-crazy, I saw only the National Portrait Gallery's Audrey Hepburn one, and a Venetian drawing special at Oxford's Ashmolean.

The best of the grabbag of oddities enjoyed this year, though, was the superb Letters Live, which brought to life the seminal Letters of Note book. "Have you ever had a dream about a show and wished it could really have happened?" I asked. You can find out the answer here.

***

Thanks for reading.