Giant Lemons in Greece

Dr Marina Murphy as Saint Marina of Antioch

Before I left I delivered my painting to Marina. Here is the finished article, 500mm x 750mm, mixed media on canvas. Detail below.

Ayios Nikolaos

A mile down the cost from Stoupa is the little fishing village of Ayios Nikolaos and Sean suggested we walk there on the Wednesday. The scenery was lovely and I was really glad I took my camera. I never really thought of Greece as being a mountainous country but I was soon proved wrong.

Greece Is The Word

Ok, so 2010 wasn’t exactly holiday light what with trips to Sydney, Besancon, Somerset and Cornwall. It’s also true that I have only just come back from NYC but in all fairness, I did work for part of that break. The important thing about this holiday was that I was going away with Sean for the first time – properly. I mean, longer than a weekend and just the two of us. A little bit scary, a lot exciting.

Sean had been to Stoupa before a few times and he chose this particular villa both for its views and its ease. It had its own pool – small but perfectly formed – three bedrooms, a pretty garden and a delightful cocktail terrace, which Sean and I made great use of.

The week was spent sunbathing, swimming and eating either simple breakfasts next to the pool or lunches and dinners in one of the many tavernas in the village. The food was good, if a little predictable and the wine was particularly to our tastes. The natives were very friendly and the area is pretty unspoiled by tourism, although there were moments when Sean and I felt as if we were on a Saga holiday.

All in all, it was a beautiful week to relax and spend some quality time with Sean away from work of any kind. I even took some paper and pencils with me and on a couple of afternoons did some drawing – scribbles, really just trying to free myself up a little before my next project.

Sean and I had a fabulous time but I managed to wrench something in my shoulder whilst doing some, ummm….excercises. I have no idea how or why but I managed to impinge my scapula (Doctor speak) and have been on pain killers, ever since. I go back in a weeks time for a check-up. To the doctors that is, sadly not Greece.

Sympathetic Characters

There is no subject that can't be adapted successfully for musical theatre. Murder, infidelity, insanity, prostitution have all featured at some point or another in a back catalogue of hit musicals.

It really depends on the writers approach to the material and how an audience is supposed to find empathy with it's characters. Essentially, your leading characters have to be presented sympathetically or the audience will loose interest. To quote Richard Andrews, from his wonderful book Writing A Musical, "Unsympathetic characters in an unattractive situation will only provoke disinterest".

The thing is, we don't go to the theatre to watch the characters on stage laugh, cry, fall in love or battle evil. We go to the theatre because WE want to experience those things for ourselves. Theatre - and indeed film - is a matter of emotional transference and people will want to relate to the hero, understand his problems and make his journey with him.

There is also of course, the zeigeist to take into consideration. Proof in point being Chicago, a musical that premiered in 1975 and it's nihilistic, cynical style had no place in Jimmy Carter's USA. Even after it's successful revival in 1996, the movie version of Chicago in 2002 would not allow Roxie Hart (Rene Zellweger) to commit a cold-blooded murder, they had to show Fred Casely (Dominic West) roughing her up first. This doesn't happen in the original stage production.

Musical theatre certainly doesn't have to be trite or simplistic to succeed but difficult subjects require very careful handling.

Just Off The Tottenham Court Road

Glen Chandler is an amiable and undoubtedly talented gentleman with a BAFTA to prove it. I had been hearing about Cleveland Street for quite some time as his next project, a musical based on the infamous Cleveland Street scandal of Victorian England, where it was discovered that telegram boys were being recruited to work in a male brothel. I must say that the concept of a musical doesn’t particularly spring to mind when thinking of brothels. Let’s face it, Best Little Whorehouse In Texas was hardly a great idea.

Quite rightly, Chandler chooses to examine the scandal at several levels particularly the hypocrisy of Victorian values and due to the important names amongst the clientele, the ensuing cover-up of all involved. There is also emotional engagement as we witness a complex web of relationships flounder at the exposure of this disorderly house.

Devereaux’s score rarely rises above fairly predictable music-hall pastiche – a default style for any new musical set between 1814 and 1914 - but many of Chandler’s lyrics are lost to the elision of an enthusiastic cast. There is very little light and shade present in the music and song-points are washed over or completely ignored.

Fiona Russell’s design is a huge improvement on My Beautiful Launderette but could still do with some tweaking and for some reason all the wigs used in the courtroom seen are worn backwards!? Tim McArthur’s direction is perfunctory and the choreography grates against both the period and the space. Unfortunately little of it is achieved with any level of finesse and the lowest common denominator appears to flourish in every scene. Arses are slapped; crotches grabbed and groped; cocks are flashed with gratuitous reliability but the whole thing is boring rather than bawdy.

Less Than Thrilled

Thrill Me was an intriguing prospect for a musical, detailing the life of Leopold and Loeb, a couple of rich-kids in the 1920’s who had committed the most notorious crime of the 20th Century. There have been many interpretations of the case on film but here, Stephen Dolginoff opens a musical two-hander with Nathan Leopold explaining his motives to a parole board.

I had several problems with this show and I shall endeavour to explain. Firstly the music, whilst being accomplished if not in the least bit memorable, at no point attempted to reference the period. Secondly, the subject matter is overbearingly distasteful. Essentially this is a musical that attempts to put understanding behind a woefully bleak crime, with two teenagers killing a 14 year old for kicks. I could understand a play attempting to examine their motives but somehow the handling didn’t suit the subject matter.

In terms of Offie nominations, it has achieved five including Best Actor for both Jye Frasca and George McGuire who play the pair of killers.

Personally I was intrigued by the voice-over recordings of the parole board, credited as Patricia Quinn, Lady Stephens, Les Dennis and Lee Mead. I have a feeling favours were being pulled in from somewhere but what a strange mix of performers?! What a fascinating play a dramatization - fictional or otherwise - of that recording session would make!

Little Shop of Invention

Whilst official reviews have been relatively thin on the ground at the moment, I have been trying to keep up with the wealth of shows being put forward for Off West End nominations. Certainly one show I was looking forward to seeing was Little Shop Of Horrors taking place at the White Bear in Kennington. Billed as an ‘all-male’ production although this was not actually the case, Paul Taylor-Mills production was a revelation in terms of invention. Both the design and choreography suffered from a lack of budget and imagination but this was a production that really worked in this tiny venue.

Taylor-Mills had previously spent some time working with Cameron Mackintosh and he brought a little inventive spark to this much-loved musical by getting the girl-group trio – Chiffon, Ronette and Crystal to also play Audrey II. Taylor-Mills had pulled together a strong cast, with lots of swings for most of the roles and this girl-group played alternate nights with men in drag.

Whilst Taylor-Mills was frantic that I should see the boys playing the role I could not actually make that night. I was however more than happy to see the girls playing the plant, which certainly adds an extra frisson to the idea of a man-hungry vegetable.

This production of Little Shop of Horrors deserved a much longer life and for a moment it had the opportunity at the Landor, although this has since been quashed. Certainly there were many things to recommend this production particularly an endearing central performance by Ceris Hine as Audrey, subtle undertones of comedy from Paul Christalos as Mr Mushnik and brilliant MD and keyboard work from Huw Evans.

Keeping Up

Loads has been happening lately, not least the Easter and Royal Wedding holidays, which gave Britain a vast swathe of time-off at the end of April. Canny office workers realised that if they got in quickly, they were able to get 11 consecutive days off with only taking 3 days holiday. Personally I wasn’t really into having such a stretch off work, especially as for me, this period is practically bookended with holiday overseas anyway. What with NYC and these public holidays, I think I actually spent more time at work in February last year – when I went to OZ – than I have in April this year.

The blessing about hanging out with Ralph is that he lives in Brooklyn. Historically, the borough is pure Nouveau, with vast brownstone mansions, built to house the new, wealthy middle-classes as the moved away from the crowded city to the developing, spacious borough. It is difficult to put into words the studied opulence of these buildings, many of which retain their single-home status. Oddly, their virtuosity reminds me a great deal of the Crystal Palace, which also gained it’s popularity at about the same time for much the same reasons.
If I won the lottery – I mean a big win, not the £6.40 I have won 3 times this year – then I would buy a home here and move myself (and Sean, natch!) into a five-storey brownstone. He would make hats for vastly rich ladies on the Upper East Side and then come home to me in the evening for a Cosmo and a home cooked meal. Failing that, I will just have to wait for Ralph & Tyron to buy one and we will move in. Honestly, they are so big, they probably wouldn't even notice I was there!