Review of Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench

 

Review Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench

What do you require to for a successful theatrical reminiscence? Do you look for inside show business stories, heartfelt emotion, laughter, literary comments, wise notes on the craft, etc.? Judi Dench’s latest book with Brendan O’Hea has all of that and more. Dench is in turn earthy, eloquent, wise, revealing, funny, and sentimental. She breathes an exuberance toward life into every chapter. I have seen a good deal of Shakespeare in England as well as in Canada and across the USA. I have directed six of his plays, acted in two, and worked on a few others. My only caveat here is that in order to truly enjoy the book, you had better bring some familiarity with the Bard’s works. It is organized around the Shakespearean parts Dench has played over her long career and each chapter takes up a role she has played. Her interviewer sets up the questions and then she goes off on the director’s concept, the staging, her own approach, speaking the verse, or her interactions with fellow actors. Even if you are not familiar with the script (say Measure for Measure or Cymbeline), there is still plenty of enjoyment in her often funny and endearing commentary.   

Did you know that Peter Hall, used to stand at a lectern beating out the rhythm of Shakespeare’s verse while she and her fellow actors spoke their lines. Or did you know she loves Stratford Upon Avon, not because she has played there so often, but because so many Shakespeare references can be seen in the countryside around the town. Or do you need some line reading tips like the significance of what she calls “a pick-up line.”  It is a complete iambic pentameter line which is shared between two actors, as when in Macbeth a servant speaks to Lady Macbeth.  

“Servant:  The King comes here tonight

Lady Macbeth:                                          Thou’rt  mad to say it.”

That, according to Judi, is “Shakespeare’s way of telling you to pick up your cue.”

 And finally, she hates The Merchant of Venice with scatological fervor, but the inscription on her beloved husband, Michael Williams, gravestone comes from a line in that play. She played Portia to “Mikey’s” Bassanio and it is spoken just after Portia’s famous quality of mercy speech when Bassanio says, “You have bereft me of all words.”   Has there ever been a more moving epitaph for an actor?

I could go on for a long time, but it is better for you to look for a copy of the book and see for yourself the pleasures it contains. If you have treasured the reruns of ‘As Time Goes’, know know a little bit about the Bard, or just plain love the theatre, Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent is the book for you.   

I give it a five out of five.

 

I Only Read Murder by Ian and Will Ferguson

 

Review of I Only Read Murder by Ian and Will Ferguson

Two brothers have teamed up to write this comic cozy mystery. The title refers to a bookshop that sells only murder mysteries, but the real action (other than the conclusion) takes place in a community theatre on the Oregon coast.  A washed-up TV star (How’s that for comedy?) named Miranda Abbott, who had been a star playing a clerical detective named Pastor Fran, is down on her luck and takes off to Happy Rock to see if her husband (the main writer on her long defunct TV series) will take her back.  The town theatre just happens to be producing their yearly murder mystery and Miranda ends up at auditions.  There she finds a motely group of theatre types that are drawn from the stereotypes more expertly portrayed in plays such as The Play That Goes Wrong or Noises Off.  We have a weird director, a Prima Donna actress, a mousy stage manager, an over-dedicated set builder, and on and on. Miranda ends up with a small part in the show, but the big event is the death of the star on stage on opening night. It takes an excruciatingly long time in the book to get to the murder and once we do get there, it becomes a pretty much traditional figuring out who in the company did the deed. Some of the jacket comments claim the characters are funny and lovable. I found them mostly over the top caricatures and uninteresting. I prove this contention by telling you when I reached the last chapters, I chose to turn off the light and go to sleep rather than spending ten more minutes to find out who the culprit was. 

I give it a 2 out of 5    

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Review of Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz

 

Once again Anthony Horowitz retreats into a narrative quagmire by telling us the story of an author (himself) struggling to meet a publication deadline and finding his detective, Daniel Hawthorne,  dribbling out bits of an old murder case that took place in a Thames-side enclosed housing area in Richmond. Every occupant is a suspect and the past, the sort of past, the present, and the author’s attempts to write about the case makes for more frustration than I want to keep track of. The ultimate solution reminded me of one of those orchestral pieces that seems to have ten conclusions before the real one arrives. The-long winded back-story takes forever to reveal and the coincidences needed to support the brilliance of Hawthorne’s detecting just didn’t convince me that it might happen.  

Yes, it kept me turning the pages, but my tolerance for Horowitz has gone sour. He is getting to be too cute by half.    

Give it a 2 out of 5

 

Comments on CRT production of Fairview

 

Fairview by Jackie Sibblies Drury is the 2019 winner of the Pulitizer Prize for drama.  It is a play that starts out like “The Jeffersons” and then morphs into a page from “Marat-Sade.” To be more specific we begin with a black family preparing a birthday dinner for Mama. The mood is light, music is playing, dancing is going on.  Then the lights go zap and the young daughter of the family steps out of the scene and addresses the audience with some serious concerns.  As all of the preceding action begins to move backward in time, two white folks appear at the picture window that dominates the back of the set. They peer in and as they watch they begin a dialogue about race and privilege. Their observations become more intrusive as they literally move in and out of the house through sliding cubby doors covered by pictures. Throughout the remainder of the show the judgements get harsher, the stereotypes bolder, the volume louder, and the string of four-letter words more frequent.  To go beyond this is to become a spoiler for the emotionally charged ending that comes right out of the 1970’s and 80’s when “make the audience feel attacked” was the avant-garde finish of choice.    

Fairview is a wonderfully rich title.  It might just be a nice name for a middle-class suburb for whites and upwardly mobile blacks.  But is it “fair” for whites to continue to watch, pressure, and judge African Americans over the long haul of history? What has been the cost and for whom and to whom? Keisha, the young daughter, clearly wants more than she can get from her bizarre family. She feels suffocated in her current environment and pleads in her final monologue, “Will I ever be free?” This put me thinking about other famous dramatic exits and how long they continue to echo or be re-interpreted. I find myself now somewhere between the slamming of the door in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and the end of Waiting for Godot when once again the long-awaited savior does not appear.   

Mr. Boseman, the director, has a long list of credits and I can only wonder why he keeps his actors looking to the front so much when he is operating in this tiny three-quarter round space.  His positioning left audience members in the far corners not able to see the face of or hear some critical lines from both Keisha and Suze. The costumes were delightful, but you’ll have to see the show to find out why the prop department had the toughest role.   

 

 

Book Review: The Proof of the Pudding by Rhys Bowen

 

The Proof of the Pudding is the 17^th book in the Lady Georgie mystery series written by prolific authoress Rhys Bowen.  It is a perfect choice when you are looking for something frothy and funny. Lady Georgiana Rannoch and her husband Darcy are two cash strapped royals in the 1930’s. Her Ladyship is a long way down the succession ladder, but royal she is and that does give her a cachet, a bunch of relatives, and a lot of wannabe friends. 

Georgie is now expecting her first child and the couple is living in a country house belonging to her Godfather. A klutzy servant called Queenie is doing what passes for the cooking, but her husband thinks they need a decent chef and she finally decides to hire a French waiter she met in a Parisian Café. His cooking turns out to be so impressive that a neighboring author who dresses like Dracula and lives in a ghastly old mansion hires him out to cook for a special dinner party he is giving. The highlight of the party is a tour of the author’s garden of poisonous plants.  You can guess where that leads. Although the dinner goes well, some of the guests start to feel unwell after they depart and when one of them expires, a police investigation points to the new French cook.

For added spice the guest list at the party just happens to include the mystery writer Agatha Christie and her husband and the young Laurence Olivier and his first wife Jill Edmonds. Given that Mrs. Christie is already a recognized authority on poisons, the two women team up to help solve the case.

Bowen writes with the accurate air of someone born to the Brit gentry and her gentle satire is present throughout the book. Take this description of one of the characters.  His accent was “so frightfully clipped and posh it makes the royal family sound like barrow boys.”  You also need not worry about recommending Bowen’s work to just about anybody. The most vociferous language used is in phrases like  “Oh Golly” or “How jolly.”  What more is there to say?  It is a sentimental and funny mystery by an accomplished author set in the colorful world of Downton Abbey and Noel Coward.   

A good solid four out of five.       

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