Artsmonkey Blog

I first came across ‘Larkrise to Candleford’ when my mother got a part as the feisty field worker Lizzy in a community production at the local arts centre. It was in the early eighties and directed by Steve Addison a fore-runner of a community education director and was produced as a ‘promenade production’* featuring local people either volunteering at the Arts Centre or keen amateur theatre folk who had responded to an ‘Ad’ for an open audition in the local paper. The Arts Centre, which was little more than a de-consecrated church that had been stripped of its pews and altar etc. and lights hung from a single scaffold frame in the centre, made an evocative setting. It was magical; the story, the production, the cast, the whole thing.

Years later, I discovered an uncle kept a framed copy of a national review in their loo, such was their delight to discover a pre-production publicity shot of the whole cast, including my mother dressed in rural ‘labourer’ garb sporting scythes and ancient farming implements. I went away, read all the books by Flora Thompson I could get my hands on and bribed my mate Ian who had also been in it and was destined for RADA to take me on a field trip in his Ford Cortina to the flat, but rich, earthy plains of Oxfordshire – the setting for the stories Larkrise and Candleford. We walked from Juniper Hill after reading the tombstones in the churchyard to Fringford, the inspiration for Candleford and the memories stay with me (despite the fact that Ian was also teaching me photography and I took dozens of black and white photos which I learnt how to develop myself and subsequently have lost somewhere, somehow). And all this is why I would have been reluctant to watch any TV production, wary of having the warm happiness of memory spoilt by miscasting or poor production values and unsympathetic scripting. As it was, I came across the first episode by chance and was mesmerised, not at first even realising, I was watching part of the Larkrise to Candleford story. I haven’t missed an episode since. Great cast, a visual feast and wonderful adaptation. I particularly enjoyed the ‘ghost’ episode, haunting and beautifully gentle – a rare achievement for a TV production – well done Team Larkrise – excellent effort. More please.

*where the audience and actors mingle, moving round the performance space.

Starting a new year with so much uncertainty also brings with it a possibility of excitement, the thrill of the unknown as well as the fear of it.

I know 2009 will involve a wedding, travel across the South East of England again including some forays back to Kent where I ’saw in’ the New Year and I’m certainly going to make an effort to get back to Folkestone where we stopped off before returning home and Begbury Forest and the very glamourous Tenterden with it’s avenue of trees festooned with twinkling christmas lights (yes, I know they’ll be gone soon but the memory will linger on). I also know that 2009 will see me changing my ways as I strive, much harder to keep in touch with nearly ‘lost’ friends who have proved much better than me at re-establishing communications and greatly enhanced my Christmas as a result. Good to know that although I can’t remember what day of the week it is, I still retain minute details of past teenage adventures and daring do’s, which I think is a good thing?

Otherwise it’s a case of “he who hath the steerage of my course, sail on…” except that of course, if I’ve learnt one thing in 2008 it’s that we’re masters of our own destiny, if only we have the courage and the drive, or the vision.

Roll on 2009, I’m ready (and so’s my hypnotherapist, my fitness instructor and my psychologist – I wish!)

Caught the penultimate performance of Oscar Wilde’s ‘Ideal Husband’ at Bath Theatre Royal. Another Peter Hall production sent about the country courtesy of Bill Kenright before being gently retired to make way for Panto season. We sat second row back in the stalls and what an amazing sight the whole thing was from there. The cast featured TV glory girls from the seventies and before; Carol Royle, Kate O’Mara, Fenella Fielding and it was quite something to witness these ladies close up, almost a show in itself. Their various styles of delivery all something to behold against their male counterparts more naturalistic, or in Robert Duncans case, more ‘music hall’ style. Comforting to see that big performances can still hold the audiences attention and hypnotically so in places – watching Fenella Fielding artfully fishing for her lines with a sweep of her gloved hand or inclination of her fantastically bewigged and hatted head was gripping.

The fact that commercial theatre makes money by wheeling out casts of TV favourites i.e. Tony Britton – remember ‘Father Dear Father?’ and then there’s Michael Praed (a sensitive Lord Chiltern) and Robert Duncan (charming, witty but miscast) surely means people are entertained by and therefore willing to pay to see classics performed by casts that seem to have been thrown together by virtue of the fact they will be recognised from the tele, to some extent or another. I know it’s unfair, they’ve usually got a bulky CV behind them but what a mixed bag when you see them altogether onstage.

I’m being churlish, I didn’t go for an acting masterclass and Oscar Wilde’s writing is brilliant when a light is shone on it. I’m grateful that apart from one or two lost lines the story was clear and the actors audible so I could appreciate Wilde’s wry and sharp observations of society. Bonus entertainment to see grande dames giving it their all, and to be able to sit and guess what the other members of the large cast who were all onstage at the beginning could possibly have been doing during the other two acts? It was good to see veteran rep actor Robert Aldous butlering away with aplomb right up to the fall of the curtain (or the coin, in this case) and I enjoyed James Dinsmore as the French Ambassador (I’m sure I’ll enjoy him for longer though when we see him in Jack & The Beanstalk at The Camberley Theatre later this year) and Isla Carter as a bouncy Miss Mabel (surely she is Harriet Walters daughter or niece?) although not perhaps her final wig (split ends – yuk! Must have been a long tour)

I know that the impracticalities of touring mean that ones belief must be suspended so as not to notice that Lord Chiltern and Lord Goring both have the same furniture and that the art of onstage letter writing has clearly been lost when a long note only takes up three lines on the page (picky old me, yes I know!) but when the average age of the performers means that delivery of lines is weighted and veering on ponderous there is unfortunately time to notice these things.

I’m torn, I missed the energy of pace and the sting of a more biting delivery and, if I’m honest more appropriate casting but I sort of enjoyed the whole spectacle of watching the older actors trumpet their foibles onstage. Never mind, it’s over now. What a unique experience, not my ideal theatre experience by any means– I had very strange dreams about Madame Tussauds and Carry On Films when I finally got to sleep that night. Roll on Panto.

@ the Rootstein Hopkins Space, London College of Fashion last week for own-it and Stellar Networks seminar starring the very patient and extremely well-phrased lawyer Harry Karaolou from LG Legal. The event, ‘The Writer/Producer/Director Triangle - a guide to good practice of collaboration in Theatre’ didn’t disappoint. A rare event indeed when the panel has as many questions as the audience but ever since, my head has been full of ‘creative commons, trademarks, originators, copyright, performers’ rights’, and phrases such as, “asserting your moral rights”.

What can I pass on in a creative universe where more and more people are creating bodies of work through collaboration and shared experience? That it’s important to know your intellectual property from your development or design rights? You don’t want to make the same mistakes that members of the audience have done in the past, so at the get-go agree who does what and what is whose. Get an agreement, get i-p savvy.

I remember reading an article in a newspaper a few years ago, asking what our lives would be like if there was no television, if we all switched them off for a day, a week? At several points in my life I have lived without TV. When I was born and up to the age of about four, then later when my father suffered a major injury and our TV died and my mother couldn’t afford to replace it whilst he was in hospital, even later during a tour of Scotland when I wasn’t interested in anything other than ‘Taggart’.

In the eighties my uncle moved in to our flat in Streatham with his portable TV. I had been living in poverty without a TV, feeding myself and baby on £10 a week whilst my partner was up north in a seventies revival musical - then it was a novelty being Tv-less. Now I switch it off , at will, for days at a time because who ever the programmers are, they only seem focussed on young audiences and the kind of stuff I like watching is clearly in the non-commercial bracket or maybe it’s because I’m not a robot but a human with eclectic tastes. I like to dip in and out of genres, prefer quality to quantity and genuinely enjoy good acting and performers who prefer to entertain rather than to shock (although I can cope with that in small doses).

In fact, I am in danger of becoming a ‘new audience’ there is so little for me to watch on the tele despite the variety of channels. I read that young people are switching off from mainstream TV - really?  As a parent this is great news, but as a parent I know it’s because they’re glued to their computer screens having their brains sucked out by msn, bebo, myspace, deviant art, my yearbook, IM, etc., downloading i-films to watch in the privacy of their bedrooms.

 ”New method sought to measure audiences”, no let’s have A NEW MEASURE TO STOP APPLYING METHOD TO broadcasting ?

Having taken a solemn vow to watch every forthcoming episode of ‘Midsomer Murders’ since Jason Hughes aka ‘DS Ben Jones’ agreed to run a masterclass for our Arts Award launch - which was, frankly, everything we wished for and more - what do ITV think they’re doing. I had MM withdrawal symptoms over Christmas and had to content myself with old repeats and Poirot re-runs and then we get an episode in February and then that’s it! Back to re-runs. What is going on Mr Programmer (it has to be a man as a woman would know better than this). Get your act together - I want Midsomer Murders and I want it now! I don’t want to be interrupted by Grand Designs Live (although I love Kevin McCloud - I’m all Grand Designed out mister!) I’ve made a vow and i want to stick to it on a regular basis - the ante has been upped - Messrs Hughes & Nettles make a fab team - they can act! What a bonus! I don’t appreciate the current trend for ‘Make a grab at fame/tear your intestines out on TV’ so we can watch you publicly humiliate yourself’. I think I might respect Ruth Jones & Co., but it’s comedy and I don’t need it. I want Murder Mystery (quite frankly). I’ve been raised on Wycliffe, Christie, Rendell, PD James, Reginald Hill, Highsmith, Inspector Linley et al. Read the books watched the series - and I want more! Regularly, not one Sunday on, and then another two Sundays after or more.

ITV this isn’t good enough - I am not alone and you are not respecting your target audience (do you even know who we are). You can’t give us better actors, better plot-lines and then not deliver the goods. It’s not fair, it’s not right, it’s not on. GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER or I’ll have to take up knitting and turn the useless TV off altogether.