The Grapes of Wrath

Mercury Theatre. Act I 95m. Act II 75m.

A Oklahoma dust bowl family escapes to California to find work, but once there things are even worse.
Long but engrossing production with many innovative and epic moments, a powerful story put across with some powerful performances. Not as brilliant as John Ford's searing black-and-white film masterpiece from 1940, but pretty good in its own right.

w: Frank Galati, from the novel by John Steinbeck
d: Timothy Casement
s: Gary Shelford, Nicky Goldie, Roger Delves-Broughton, Tim Treslove, Adrian Stokes, Ignatius Anthony, Gillian Cally, Keith Dunphy, Emily Woodward, Ian Harris, Jim Kitson, Christopher Staines, Holly Knowles
lighting: Ben Payne

The Hurricane and the poodle

Watching the fascinating and entertaining tribute documentary Alex Higgins: The People's Champion just reminded me how much of a force of nature he was. The nickname "Hurricane" was well chosen - arrogant, erratic, brilliant, self-destructively alcoholic - it's all there.

I was at an Alex Higgins snooker match at the Wembley Conference Centre in 1987, where he came from behind to beat Terry Griffiths 5-4 in true determined Higgins fashion, but the end of the match was marred by an overbearing fan who leapt onto the stage to congratulate his hero.

That sort of entourage often dogged and characterised Higgins: if he was the People's Champion then I would liked him to have behaved more like one of them than the self-destructive rebel without a cause he often seemed. Nonetheless, he comes across as a very genuine human being, unlike Tony Blair, whose much anticipated biography was accompanied by a BBC1 interview with Andrew Marr yesterday. I found it a depressing example of how the transition from leader of the opposition to Prime Minister can become sadly coercive to establishment views and dangerously subversive to political bias across the Atlantic in America.

On the television today I noticed was also an old classic 1950's political drama on BBC2, All the King's Men starring Broderick Crawford as an ambitious politician who works his way up to Governor but gradually betrays all his principles to get there. The same could well apply to Tony Blair.

"They've been cheating us for years..."

So said Tom Graveney during the controversial England tour of Pakistan in 1987 when Mike Gatting had angry words with umpire Shakoor Rana.

Now the old trouble has returned again with Pakistan players accepting bribes for betting purposes (the phrase "allegedly" doesn't really enter the equation.)

So this all comes as no surprise.

I can't understand nowadays why anyone should paint such a rose-tinted view of cricket being a gentlemen's game anymore, when corruption and commercialism in sport are so rife at every level. Pakistan is going through a torrid time at the moment: the country is devastated by the worst flooding since the 2004 tsunami, the Taliban is a menace to every level of its society, and many Pakistanis are fighting for their survival: you can understand a few of them thinking it was every man for himself, to try and make what they could out of it.

But lessons are going to have to be learned. Heads will roll. I wish they would throw out sports betting and instigate laws to prosecute undercover journalism from creating scandal rather than reporting it.

UK Film Council - the legacy

These are just some of the good films that would never have been made had it not been for the participation of the UK Film Council, so disgracefully axed by the Government this week:

The Parole Officer (2001)

Bright Young Things (2003)

Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003)

Touching the Void (2003)

Ladies in Lavender (2004)

Creep (2004)

My Summer of Love (2004)

Enduring Love (2004)

Bride and Prejudice (2004)

The Magic Roundabout (2005)

The Proposition (2005)

Shooting Dogs (2005)

Festival (2005)

The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006)

The Last King of Scotland (2006)

Venus (2006)

Deep Water (2006)

This is England (2006)

The History Boys (2006)

Miss Potter (2006)

Notes on a Scandal (2006)

Becoming Jane (2007)

Sunshine (2007)

And When Did You Last See Your Father? (2007)

Brick Lane (2007)

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (2008)

Creation (2009)

Nowhere Boy (2009)


with thanks to the Internet Movie Database

Angel's Advocate - Jonathan Ross

So it came to pass, for better and not for worse, that Jonathan Ross ceased his lucrative BBC chat show. His Radio 2 slot (a station from which he has gained most notoriety) also finishes this morning. I've mentioned before in this blog about his crassness, paid at such outrageously lucrative sums, but on the other hand such talent shouldn't be suffocated altogether.

Reading an article in the Radio Times heralding the event, two TV critics argued the case for his impact on British television, and although I sided more with the anti than the pro view, I still couldn't share the opinion that his humour was juvenile and way below his actual age, when this is undoubtedly Jonathan's secret, and the reason he has been able to tap into the youff culture so much.

I could count the number of times Ross has made me laugh on the fingers of one hand, but he's a comedy survivor, a Court Jester for the 21st century. And let's face it, court jesters were never that funny, and always had their work cut out trying to entertain their hardened audience.

Colder Than Here

Colchester Theatre Group. 90m.

A dying mother tries to organise her funeral with her dysfunctional family.
On the surface a rather morbid 90 minutes, but done in a very commendably understated manner, where the naturalism slightly goes too far and undermines intonation among the younger actors, but there are plenty of laughs to be had, and the inevitable grimness is omnipresent but never overbearing. I've rarely seen a piece of theatre that captures a genuine household atmosphere so successfully.

d: Lorraine Dunt
s: Helen Bridge, Chloe Spencer-Campbell, Rhiannon Arnold, Gary Huggins

England expects.....too much

The sad demise of England's football team to Germany was ill-fated but hardly surprising. Germany played their game in their usual industrious, no-nonsense manner, whilst England and the English still cling to their delusions of nostalgia for 1966 and their pretensions to be the chosen World Cup winners.

Such a mania has to lessen, but has become so endemic within the culture and now even the economy of this country, that I fear it will be a long time before the English get off their high horses (and let's try not to forget the Scots, the Welsh and especially the Irish who failed to qualify) especially if the 2018 World Cup bid is successful.

When they all realise that it is a sport - no more, no less - then England will have a far better chance of winning if we start behaving like true Brits with a little more humility and sporting spirit, rather than so much bulldog patriotism.

Such nationalistic zeal is, to put it frankly, not very British.

This article sums it up pretty well too.