Shakespeare Matters by Geoff Spiteri.

Geoff Spiteri begins this Shakespeare miscellany with the first of many questions. Does Shakespeare matter? He’s asking if the bard’s work is still relevant today and then offers three reasons why it must be. Firstly, because in reading Shakespeare, you’re joining the many millions who enjoy the plays which makes him inclusive. Secondly that he has a lot to teach us about how to deal with the emotional push and tug of our lives and thirdly because the language is so damn entertaining.

All of which are true. But why I think Shakespeare matters, what draws me to the plays, is that they’re unfathomable. No matter how many times you see them, read them, read about them, there are still mysteries that can never be uncovered, fundamentals for which we have no answers forcing us to usher our brains into action, employ our imaginations, fill in the gaps, develop the fantasy. These four hundred year old plays, written by a genius, require us to become co-authors in the great western literary achievement in order to make sense of it.

Spiteri’s work here helps considerably in what is a useful companion volume to Liz Evers’s similar gift book To Be Or Not To Be... But whereas Evers was more interested in the bald facts of the plays, predominantly the words, Spiteri playfully, delving into the pop culture afterlife of the canon, authorship and not to put too finer point on it has a pleasingly unhealthy interest in the seedier aspects of the plays, the sex and death. This is effectively the Channel 5 to Evers’s BBC Four.

Passages about binge drinking and obscene gestures, racism and gore, poisonings and failed suicides weave in-between acres of coverage about the euphemisms Shakespeare employs. Having explained that “nothing” means vagina (or unmentionables as the author has it here) completely changing the implications of Much Ado About Nothing, Spiteri quotes the pre-Mousetrap scene from Hamlet changing the meaning of:

Hamlet: Do you think I mean country matters?
Ophelia: I think nothing, my lord.

Which makes Ophelia somewhat complicit in the flirting no matter how uncomfortably its usually played. No wonder the BBCFC gave the RSC’s Tennant’s starring production a 12 for that passage.

Speaking of whom there’s also a welcome and high detailed four page section just detailing the references in Doctor Who including a plot synopsis for The Shakespeare Code. I’m not sure the Hamlet reference is enough to make me want to sit through The Two Doctors again unless I have to. Star Trek gets three similar pages and Babylon 5 a paragraph, which proportionally is probably about right though he fails to note just how tied in The Conscience of the King really is.

Overall though it’s the dark underbelly of the plays which gains the most illumination as we’re reminded that for all the magic of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the reason Shakespeare survives is because he wasn’t afraid to evoke the horrible realism that humanity usually has to offer, hold a mirror up to our faces and in most excellent poetry point at our flaws. If nothing else it’s the first book I’ve seen which baldy asks “Is Cleopatra the best shag in Shakespeare?” and concludes she might well be.

Shakespeare Matters by Geoff Spiteri is published by Portico. £6.99. ISBN: 9-781-9060-3245-6. Review copy supplied.

and Babylon 5 a paragraph

Geoff Spiteri begins this Shakespeare miscellany with the first of many questions. Does Shakespeare matter? He’s asking if the bard’s work is still relevant today and then offers three reasons why it must be. Firstly, because in reading Shakespeare, you’re joining the many millions who enjoy the plays which makes him inclusive. Secondly that he has a lot to teach us about how to deal with the emotional push and tug of our lives and thirdly because the language is so damn entertaining.

All of which are true. But why I think Shakespeare matters, what draws me to the plays, is that they’re unfathomable. No matter how many times you see them, read them, read about them, there are still mysteries that can never be uncovered, fundamentals for which we have no answers forcing us to usher our brains into action, employ our imaginations, fill in the gaps, develop the fantasy. These four hundred year old plays, written by a genius, require us to become co-authors in the great western literary achievement in order to make sense of it.

Spiteri’s work here helps considerably in what is a useful companion volume to Liz Evers’s similar gift book To Be Or Not To Be... But whereas Evers was more interested in the bald facts of the plays, predominantly the words, Spiteri playfully, delving into the pop culture afterlife of the canon, authorship and not to put too finer point on it has a pleasingly unhealthy interest in the seedier aspects of the plays, the sex and death. This is effectively the Channel 5 to Evers’s BBC Four.

Passages about binge drinking and obscene gestures, racism and gore, poisonings and failed suicides weave in-between acres of coverage about the euphemisms Shakespeare employs. Having explained that “nothing” means vagina (or unmentionables as the author has it here) completely changing the implications of Much Ado About Nothing, Spiteri quotes the pre-Mousetrap scene from Hamlet changing the meaning of:

Hamlet: Do you think I mean country matters?
Ophelia: I think nothing, my lord.

Which makes Ophelia somewhat complicit in the flirting no matter how uncomfortably its usually played. No wonder the BBCFC gave the RSC’s Tennant’s starring production a 12 for that passage.

Speaking of whom there’s also a welcome and high detailed four page section just detailing the references in Doctor Who including a plot synopsis for The Shakespeare Code. I’m not sure the Hamlet reference is enough to make me want to sit through The Two Doctors again unless I have to. Star Trek gets three similar pages and Babylon 5 a paragraph, which proportionally is probably about right though he fails to note just how tied in The Conscience of the King really is.

Overall though it’s the dark underbelly of the plays which gains the most illumination as we’re reminded that for all the magic of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the reason Shakespeare survives is because he wasn’t afraid to evoke the horrible realism that humanity usually has to offer, hold a mirror up to our faces and in most excellent poetry point at our flaws. If nothing else it’s the first book I’ve seen which baldy asks “Is Cleopatra the best shag in Shakespeare?” and concludes she might well be.

Shakespeare Matters By Geoff Spiteri is published by Portico. £6.99. ISBN: 9-781-9060-3245-6. Review copy supplied.

"London's more bogus claims"

Geography Julian Barnes reviews Paris as some people might review a restaurant or piece of literature. The result is fascinating:

"The wisdom and efficiency with which Paris has kept its centre low-rise has also kept it more human. One of London's more bogus claims is that it consists of a linked series of "villages". Paris seems to me to have a greater sense of villagey difference, both from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, and also within them. I love to turn a corner and suddenly find myself in, say, the sub-quartier of stamp dealers, or eccelesiastical dressware shops. These are, I realise, rather conventional, even sentimental preferences; and I've never explored Paris beyond the Périphérique, where you might find Graham Robb pedalling past on his bicycle. But chacun à son Paris."

If only I'd had the courage to move there when I had the chance.

Batsford's Heritage Guides: Shakespeare's London by Malcolm Day.

When I visited London a couple of years ago, one of my escapades was to visit the two churches that were important to Shakespeare, Southwark Cathedral and St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe (which is a slightly remodelled Wren church now but is sited on the same footprint as the building that was decimated during the Great Fire of London).

Sadly, my forward planning had only led me to print some maps from Google and I’d somehow managed to do this in such a way as to make them incomprehensible – something to do with the scale – and armed with a rubbish sense of direction it took me far longer to find at least the latter than it probably needed to. I flagged a taxi, in the end, which is probably what I should have done in the first place.

All of which is a lead in to suggesting that perhaps I should have invested in a guide book and although this Batsford’s Heritage Guides publication isn’t eclectic enough to include St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe (presumably because the map would be a bit unwieldy if it recorded everywhere Shakespeare may have stood), I’m confident it would have been just the thing to at least point me in the right direction.

In this densely written but accessible survey of the Elizabethan and Jacobean versions of the capital, author Malcolm Day threads elements of Shakespeare’s biography through explanations of the places he would have worked and entertained himself, taking in the local culture and historical business, linking the plays throughout. A discussion of commerce is accompanied by Sherlock’s “I am a Jew …” for example.

My favourite passage is about St Paul’s Cathedral, which both manages to present the requisite awe about its construction and tragedy about the lost spire and also evoke the seething humanity of London at that time by describing how nefarious activities continued in its massive innards and markets selling books including printings of Shakespeare’s plays were held in the yard. As Days says “Nowhere was sacred.”

I also never tire of hearing about the the original London Bridge, a city in and of itself, with its town houses backing directly onto the river supported by nineteen piers, an architectural and engineering marvel too far ahead of its time to survive. The accompanying drawing looks like a concept design for a Terry Gilliam film, tall buildings huddled together on portions of bridge that don't look like they should be supporting the weight they're holding.

A romanticised atmosphere is generated, but Day's research is also bang up to date in communicating currently critical understanding, describing Measure for Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well as ‘dark’ comedies rather than problem plays and that in 1599 he completed “the first draft of Hamlet”. It’s rare that such guides even bother with the textual confusion. It’s very impressive and quite rare in this kind of tourist book.

Also impressive are the illustrations, which comprise copious shots of the Globe reconstruction. As someone who loves the place but lives on the other end of the country such things are gold dust and its quite exciting to see shots from their recent production of Henry VIII not to mention The Merchant of Venice with such clarity. There are also detailed picture credits albeit in microdot on the final page.

The 'sites to see' section takes up three pages at the back, one of which the map. I’ve no argument with the choices and indeed I wish I’d known about the Elizabethan street reconstructions at the Museum of London. Understandably there’s a heavy reliance on inns and churches, though its nice to see Middle Temple Hall mentioned, the site of the first production for Twelfth Night in front of the Queen.

But where are the tube stations? If I’d bought this in London and didn’t have access to Google (it’s possible, we don’t all have iPhones), I think I’d be quite disappointed about that. Only Liverpool St. mainline appears on the map as a landmark/triangulation point. Although I suppose asking for directions does open up a welcome avenue of communication, which can be quite welcome if you’re travelling alone.  Otherwise, Day's book is an absolute bargain.

Batsford's Heritage Guides: Shakespeare's London by Malcolm Day is published by Anova Books.  £3.99.  ISBN: 9-781-9063-8893-5.  Review copy supplied.

the seething humanity

Books When I visited London a couple of years ago, one of my escapades was to visit the two churches that were important to Shakespeare, Southwark Cathedral and St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe (which is a slightly remodelled Wren church now but is sited on the same footprint as the building that was decimated during the Great Fire of London).

Sadly, my forward planning had only led me to print some maps from Google and I’d somehow managed to do this in such a way as to make them incomprehensible – something to do with the scale – and armed with a rubbish sense of direction it took me far longer to find at least the latter than it probably needed to. I flagged a taxi, in the end, which is probably what I should have done in the first place.

All of which is a lead in to suggesting that perhaps I should have invested in a guide book and although this Batsford’s Heritage Guides publication isn’t eclectic enough to include St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe (presumably because the map would be a bit unwieldy if it recorded everywhere Shakespeare may have stood), I’m confident it would have been just the thing to at least point me in the right direction.

In this densely written but accessible survey of the Elizabethan and Jacobean versions of the capital, author Malcolm Day threads elements of Shakespeare’s biography through explanations of the places he would have worked and entertained himself, taking in the local culture and historical business, linking the plays throughout. A discussion of commerce is accompanied by Sherlock’s “I am a Jew …” for example.

My favourite passage is about St Paul’s Cathedral, which both manages to present the requisite awe about its construction and tragedy about the lost spire and also evoke the seething humanity of London at that time by describing how nefarious activities continued in its massive innards and markets selling books including printings of Shakespeare’s plays were held in the yard. As Days says “Nowhere was sacred.”

I also never tire of hearing about the the original London Bridge, a city in and of itself, with its town houses backing directly onto the river supported by nineteen piers, an architectural and engineering marvel too far ahead of its time to survive. The accompanying drawing looks like a concept design for a Terry Gilliam film, tall buildings huddled together on portions of bridge that don't look like they should be supporting the weight they're holding.

A romanticised atmosphere is generated, but Day's research is also bang up to date in communicating currently critical understanding, describing Measure for Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well as ‘dark’ comedies rather than problem plays and that in 1599 he completed “the first draft of Hamlet”. It’s rare that such guides even bother with the textual confusion. It’s very impressive and quite rare in this kind of tourist book.

Also impressive are the illustrations, which comprise copious shots of the Globe reconstruction. As someone who loves the place but lives on the other end of the country such things are gold dust and its quite exciting to see shots from their recent production of Henry VIII not to mention The Merchant of Venice with such clarity. There are also detailed picture credits albeit in microdot on the final page.

The sites to see section takes up three pages at the back, one of which the map. I’ve no argument with the choices and indeed I wish I’d known about the Elizabethan street reconstructions at the Museum of London. Understandably there’s a heavy reliance on inns and churches, though its nice to see Middle Temple Hall mentioned, the site of the first production for Twelfth Night in front of the Queen.

But where are the tube stations? If I’d bought this in London and didn’t have access to Google (it’s possible, we don’t all have iPhones), I think I’d be quite disappointed about that. Only Liverpool St. mainline appears on the map as a landmark/triangulation point. Although I suppose asking for directions does open up a welcome avenue of communication, especially if you’re travelling alone.  Otherwise, Day's book is an absolute bargain.

Batsford's Heritage Guides: Shakespeare's London by Malcolm Day is published by Anova Books.  £3.99.  ISBN: 9-781-9063-8893-5.  Review copy supplied.

"for example, Newton’s laws of motion"

Science Brian Cox and Robin Ince talk to The List about how to make physics funny:

"Cox: It depends on the level of your jokes, I suppose. The famous one-liner about F16 fighter jets, Polish plumbers and singularities in the complex plane, requiring a deep understanding of Cauchy’s integral theorem, is probably never going to work. But I do think that a society in which everyone has a basic background knowledge of, for example, Newton’s laws of motion, Einstein’s theories of relativity and quantum mechanics would be a better place to live. We do expect people to have at least heard of Shakespeare and Beethoven, after all."

Robin doesn't for some reason appear in the accompanying photograph which confirms my suspicion that he must be a vampire.  Or doesn't like to be photographed which is probably just as much proof.

Eyewitness: Hamlet injured in duel.

You've probably already heard of this palpable hit, but just in case ...

Conor Madden -- who plays Hamlet in the Second Age Theatre production -- was duelling with Aonghus Og McAnally, who plays Laertes, when he was accidentally struck in the face with a round-tip sword.

The blade sliced open the flesh underneath his eye socket and the actor collapsed on the stage.

Initially, some in the audience thought the facial injury to Hamlet and the actor's moans were part of the production.

Given the ferocity with which some of the final duels can be played, it's surprising that there aren't more injuries. Thankfully Madden wasn't injured too severely and left hospital with a couple of stitches.

scandalous libels

TV Simon and Schuster, the long term license holders for Star Trek spin-off fiction have announced a clutch of "young adult" titles featuring the versions of the characters from the JJ Abrams film spectacular during those three years at the academy skipped over in the rush to see them in space.

Given that most of the Doctor Who material published by BBC Books these days is for a similar market, I'm hardly in a position to argue (although the scrapped releases from a couple of years ago did sound far more enticing).  Except, you should see the synopsis for the first one which is frankly an act of war:

After a rough week at Starfleet Academy, James T. Kirk and his friends blow off steam at San Francisco’s hottest new club. Their good times come to a screeching halt, however, when one of the cadets is attacked by someone who seemingly appears out of thin air.

Bones and his medical team save the cadet’s life, but they uncover the horrifying consequences of the attack. Meanwhile, Starfleet’s investigation reveals the assailant is actually a brutal serial killer from the past–a mysterious entity known only as the Doctor. Who is the Doctor, and why has he returned after disappearing more than twenty years ago?

At the urging of Commander Spock, Cadet Uhura is called to decipher a message from the Doctor. Spock has no idea that by enlisting Uhura’s help, he has placed her firmly in the Doctor’s sights.

Before long Kirk, Uhura and Bones are caught up in the Doctor’s dangerous web as they race against time to stop the killer before he strikes again.

Don't think these heretical slurs and scandalous libels will go unnoticed, author Rick Barba.  Consider the cordial understanding which has existed between our two franchises at an end.  Just because he may have been accused of murder in the past, you've no right to do it now, especially since all charges were dropped on most occasions, usually during the cliffhanger resolution in episode two.  If you thought the starship bridge in A Christmas Carol was unnecessarily harsh, expect Big Finish to put out a cd featuring a veiled parody of Spock and then see where you'll be.  Ha!  And ha again!

Hamlet (Writers and their Work) by Ann Thompson & Neil Taylor.

“There is no stable entity called Hamlet”, the authors proclaim at the top of chapter six of their discussion and once again I found myself nodding along. Well of course there isn’t. Apart from the three extant texts (Q1, Q2 & F1), there’s the various conflations from multiple editors, the Garrick adaptation, the Devenant playbook, not to mention the thousands of versions of the play which are created by each director whenever they’re foolhardy enough to agree to the job rather than do something fun like a comedy (“The cuts! I can’t believe the cuts!”).

With that in mind, the whole process of literary criticism is in itself a fools errand as is reading most of it since every proclamation must be read and absorbed on the understanding that the writer has themselves had to choose which version of the text to comment on. As Thompson and Taylor note, theatre producers are desperate to give audiences as little Hamlet as they can, publishers the exact opposite. With that in mind, this short discussion spends its pagination surveying the multiplicity of available criticism unpicking traditions left and right.

The result de-constructs Hamlet's academia with much the same zeal as Charlie Brooker when eviscerating of modern news production. The recent inflated tendency to characterise King Lear as the great Shakespearean tragedy is punctured by noting how many of Hamlet’s lines have entered the national consciousness and how many iconic images, notably the prince holding Yorrick’s skull immediately define the play in ways that aren’t possible with Lear. But the inclination of critics to sacrifice simply clarifying the surface meaning of the words and pictures in favour of a kind of thematic archaeology is equally skewered.

Every chapter provides an excellent survey of the present critical state of the art (for better or worse) and still manages to find something new. A prime example is the chapter on Hamlet and Gender which shows how tradition has rather clouded the positions of Gertrude and Ophelia within the fabric of the play, how the histrionics so often attributed to the latter in performance aren't actually in the text.  Some of the more memorable Ophelias have underplayed her desperation making the tragedy of her psychological breakdown all the more upsetting (Claire Jones at the Unity, Lisa Gay Hamilton in the Hallmark film).

It’s impossible to agree with everything. Comparing Daniel Day Lewis at the National unfavourably with Mel Gibson on film seems unfair since the former didn’t have the benefit of Zeffrelli selecting his best takes. But that minor detail isn’t enough to stop me from recommending this text to everyone with an interest. At the back of the book there are a series of images from ancient productions which includes the court scenes as rendered by William Poel in 1881 at Liverpool's St. George’s Hall in what looks like the Concert Room. I wondered if they considered that the same space would be used for a similar purpose over a hundred years later.

Hamlet (Writers and their Work) by Ann Thompson & Neil Taylor is published by Northcote House Publisher's Ltd.. £10.99. ISBN: 978-0746311417. Review copy supplied.

the relationship between the kids

Film This recut trailer seems to capture everything I love about Ferris Bueller's Day Off more than the real thing, the relationship between the kids. Assuming you don't subscribe to the theory that Ferris is a figment of Cameron's imagination [via].

cloisters or copulation

Books While most of Shakespeare’s plays confront issues related to sex to some degree, few forefront them with quite as much zeal as Measure for Measure with its contrasting representations of female sexuality in Mistress Overdone, Marianna and Isabella and masculinity in Lucio, Angelo and the Duke. Throughout the playwright as ever seeks to undermine our expectations demonstrating that the surface image each of them projects is often at odds with their attitude. A Kate Chedgzoy argues in this short survey it’s this subtlety just as much as the curious structure which has led to the play being branded as a ‘problem’.

Characters which elsewhere might be considered the dregs of society are most sympathetically drawn. Mistress Overdone’s “care for Lucio and Kate Keepdown’s bastard casts her as a socially responsible citizen to whom the Duke should be grateful rather than punitive” and it demonstrates quite how aloof Vincentio is that he’s not able to assimilate that information and act accordingly rather than just having her carried off to an ambiguous fate because of what rather than who she is. These kinds of observational nuggets sparkly in what’s obviously a very well researched if densely written text whose word length can't always contain its ideas..

For Chedgzoy too, though the action is said to set in Vienna, Shakespeare is actually commenting on and portraying the contemporary London he knows all too well, a place where sexuality steams through every wall from the prison to the brothel to the convent, where even “nunnery” takes on a double meaning expressing places containing cloisters or copulation. That’s a Hamlet usage of course, but almost every speech in Measure for Measure contains these kinds of euphemistic couplings. In this reading how are we to take the Duke when he says he’s giving Angelo “all the organs / Of our own power”?

The effect this had on a contemporary audience isn’t clear. The single record of a performance was at court, apparently in front of James I during Christmas celebrations. There would have been a multiplicity of opinions then just as there have been since, not least amongst psycho-analysts coming to terms with Isabella’s Catholic attitude perhaps in an attempt to decide whether she will accept the Dukes offers at the end. Chedgzoy suggests it’s up to the individual production to make that choice, though perhaps the ideal conclusion is to freeze the action, bring down the house lights and leave the decision up to us.

Measure for Measure (Writers and their Work) by Kate Chedgzoy is published by Northcote House Publisher's Ltd.. £10.99. ISBN: 978-0-7463-0849-3. Review copy supplied.

Measure for Measure (Writers and their Work) by Kate Chedgzoy.

While most of Shakespeare’s plays confront issues related to sex to some degree, few forefront them with quite as much zeal as Measure for Measure with its contrasting representations of female sexuality in Mistress Overdone, Marianna and Isabella and masculinity in Lucio, Angelo and the Duke. Throughout the playwright as ever seeks to undermine our expectations demonstrating that the surface image each of them projects is often at odds with their attitude. A Kate Chedgzoy argues in this short survey it’s this subtlety just as much as the curious structure which has led to the play being branded as a ‘problem’.

Characters which elsewhere might be considered the dregs of society are most sympathetically drawn. Mistress Overdone’s “care for Lucio and Kate Keepdown’s bastard casts her as a socially responsible citizen to whom the Duke should be grateful rather than punitive” and it demonstrates quite how aloof Vincentio is that he’s not able to assimilate that information and act accordingly rather than just having her carried off to an ambiguous fate because of what rather than who she is. These kinds of observational nuggets sparkly in what’s obviously a very well researched if densely written text whose word length can't always contain its ideas..

For Chedgzoy too, though the action is said to set in Vienna, Shakespeare is actually commenting on and portraying the contemporary London he knows all too well, a place where sexuality steams through every wall from the prison to the brothel to the convent, where even “nunnery” takes on a double meaning expressing places containing cloisters or copulation. That’s a Hamlet usage of course, but almost every speech in Measure for Measure contains these kinds of euphemistic couplings. In this reading how are we to take the Duke when he says he’s giving Angelo “all the organs / Of our own power”?

The effect this had on a contemporary audience isn’t clear. The single record of a performance was at court, apparently in front of James I during Christmas celebrations. There would have been a multiplicity of opinions then just as there have been since, not least amongst psycho-analysts coming to terms with Isabella’s Catholic attitude perhaps in an attempt to decide whether she will accept the Dukes offers at the end. Chedgzoy suggests it’s up to the individual production to make that choice, though perhaps the ideal conclusion is to freeze the action, bring down the house lights and leave the decision up to us.

Measure for Measure (Writers and their Work) by Kate Chedgzoy is published by Northcote House Publisher's Ltd.. £10.99. ISBN: 978-0-7463-0849-3. Review copy supplied.

The AV Club interviews new female Hamlet Mary Tuomanen.

Quite a lot of the codification for her interpretation of the character is in her hair:

"There’s a lot to be done with my hair, because it’s very easy for me to look like a little boy, and Hamlet needs to be a little more than boyish. The transformation of my hair over the course of the play has been fun; we tried slicking it back, and I had a part, and I looked like I was from Hogwarts… (Laughs.) But it turns out the crazier I get, the more I pull at my hair and make it explode and look bizarre, the more I look like Hamlet. As we go through the production, it’s becoming less important that I look like a man and more that I look like Hamlet."

One of the elements I really appreciated in Natalie Quatermass's interpretation was that she kept her hair long and made the character relatively feminine which brought a different energy to her scenes with Ophelia.

"back in the loop"

TV One of the rights of passage most Doctor Who fans go through at some point is watching the whole series from start to, well, it used to be finish. I'm planning mine for 2013 when the entire thing, or what's left of it, is available on dvd (a grand year long session catching up on the production subtitles) but Neil of Tachyon TV, late of Behind The Sofa, has already begun and in a grand experiment to discover what someone who isn't really a fan thinks of it all, he's being accompanied by his wife Sue.

He's writing up each session on the blog in a slot he's calling Adventures with Wife in Space and the result flirts with genius and quite often isn't flirting.

Here's why.  Because she's not seen the series before Sue's fulfilling roughly the same function for Neil and the rest of us as the Doctor says Amy and his previous companions do in the Meanwhile in the TARDIS scenes from the fifth season boxset.  

Like the timelord and his supernovas, it's impossible for us fans to watch any story without some preconceived ideas, because we've been watching them all of our lives and when we've not been watching we've been reading about them, chatting about them, become soggy with nostalgia over them, growing ever more cynical with the passage of time.

Sue allowing us to see them through new eyes, either confirming what we already thought or noticing something new, in other words as close as damn it as how the audience experienced it on first broadcast.  Albeit with some knowledge of what a Dalek is.

When she says of The Rescue, "I like it when they draw attention to how stupid everything looks. It makes me feel like I'm back in the loop", it demonstrates how inclusive the franchise can be and now tolerant we often are of the poor production values.

What makes these reviews work best is the banter between Neil and Sue, the "we" and the "not we" (which she'll understand when she reaches Kinda).  Like the Doctor, Neil will ask her what she thought of something like Vicki as a new companion and she'll be relatively cautious (she's right to be).

But the element of hindsight also means that we "we" know what episodes are coming up and we can't wait to read what Sue thought of them.  The Web Planet is a perfect example and the resulting review is as funny as you would hope.

Othello (Writers and their Work) by Emma Smith.

Commenting on last week's controversy surrounding television producer Brian True-May’s policy of casting whites only in pastoral television detective series Midsomer Murders, Guardian columnist Mark Lawson noted that such guidelines are an anathema in British theatres where a tradition of “colour-blind casting” means that as is currently the case in the National's Frankenstain, “a white son has a non-white father, with no narrative point (such as adoption) being made”.

As Emma Smith explains in this short commentary on Othello which ram-raids three of the main controversies surrounding the play (sexuality, race and domesticity), that tradition hits a wall in relation to the play’s title character, which since the defining casting of Paul Robeson in the 1930s has almost exclusively been played by African-American actors with only a few prominent examples (Welles, Olivier, Hopkins) upholding the tradition of blacking up set by Garrick.

She argues, quite persuasively (aided by a useful quote from actor Hugh Quarshie) that far from countering racism, casting a black actor in the role increases the danger of playing up to the stereotypes inherent within the play and that by casting a white actor in the part, as Jude Kelly did in her 1997 “photo-negative” attempt with Patrick Stewart acting against a predominantly African American cast, you can defuse the racial elements, dislocating them from being a lazy explanation for Othello’s jealousy.

Like many of the critics who’ve wrestled with these more contentious aspects of Shakespeare’s plays, Smith doesn’t have an answer. But she does offer a deliberately inclusive approach to her discussion, cross cutting opinions from a range of sources introducing not just the standard texts (Bradley, Levis, Dover Wilson) but theatre critics, the actors who’ve had to provide a logical psychological presence within their performance and even the implications characteristic of the love-triangle based marketing of the play on film.

She cleanly demonstrates that as is so often the case with Shakespeare, everything has a double meaning. The playwright challenged assumptions by putting all the “Machiavellian malignity” previously integral in black characters into Othello’s white deputy allowing his title character to retain the skin colour and sexuality. While the play has all of the hallmarks of a traditional “domestic tragedy” it deliberately fails to give us much indication of the central couple’s relationship dynamic. That Iago is essentially a clown with a mean streak.  Intriguing.

Emma Smith has recently prepared a podcast about the play, which is available from the University of Oxford website.

Othello (Writes and their Work) by Emma Smith is published by Northcote House Publisher's Ltd.. £10.99. ISBN: 978-0746309995. Review copy supplied.

"Machiavellian malignity"

Books Commenting on last week's controversy surrounding television producer Brian True-May’s policy of casting whites only in pastoral television detective series Midsomer Murders, Guardian columnist Mark Lawson noted that such guidelines are an anathema in British theatres where a tradition of “colour-blind casting” means that as is currently the case in the National's Frankenstain, “a white son has a non-white father, with no narrative point (such as adoption) being made”.

As Emma Smith explains in this short commentary on Othello which deliberate ram-raids three of the main controversies surrounding the play (sexuality, race and domesticity), that tradition hits a wall in relation to this play’s title character, which since the defining casting of Paul Robeson in the 1930s has almost exclusively been played by African-American actors with only a few prominent examples (Welles, Olivier, Hopkins) upholding the tradition set by Garrick of blacking up.

She argues, quite persuasively (aided by a useful quote from Hugh Quarshie) that far from countering racism, casting a black actor in the role increases the danger of playing up to the stereotypes inherent within the play and that by casting a white actor in the part, as Jude Kelly did in her 1997 “photo-negative” attempt with Patrick Stewart playing against a predominantly African American cast, you can defuse the racial elements, dislocating them from being a lazy explanation for Othello’s jealousy.

Like many of the critics who’ve wrestled with these more contentious aspects of Shakespeare’s plays, Smith doesn’t have an answer. But she does offer a deliberately inclusive approach to her discussion, cross cutting opinions from a range of sources introducing not just the standard texts (Bradley, Levis, Dover Wilson) but theatre critics, the actors who’ve had to provide a logical psychological presence within their performance and even the implications characteristic of the love-triangle based marketing of the play on film.

She cleanly demonstrates that as is so often the case with Shakespeare, everything has a double meaning. The playwright challenged assumptions by putting all the “Machiavellian malignity” previously integral in black characters into Othello’s white deputy allowing his title character to retain the skin colour and sexuality. While the play has all of the hallmarks of a traditional “domestic tragedy” it deliberately fails to give us much indication of the central couple’s relationship dynamic. That Iago is essentially a clown with a mean streak.  Intriguing.

Emma Smith has recently prepared a podcast about the play, which is available from the University of Oxford website.

Othello (Writes and their Work) by Emma Smith is published by Northcote House Publisher's Ltd.. £10.99. ISBN: 978-0746309995. Review copy supplied.

Sylvester McCoy goes a bit rogue

TV Sylvester McCoy has talked to the Shadowlocked blog on the occasion of The Hobbit's principle photography and the release of unofficial Doctor Who spin-off Minister of Chance and goes a bit rogue, revealing a few secrets which I'm not sure were in the public domain about up and coming Who projects:

"Ian Levine's putting together a piece of work that didn't get completed over the years, and I was there as The Doctor to kind of 'Doctor Who' them up. There are pieces that have been done too for The Brigadier and The Master that were never quite completed, so that work will make them a rounded whole. Also there's the 30th anniversary show of Doctor Who that was never made, and we're going to do a cartoon version of that. I was doing my role in that as well.

...there were a couple of projects that we were doing. One was actually filming to beef up a piece that's already been done, and the other was recording voices with camera so they can do a lip-sync for the cartoon.

[...]

There are a few...Downtime - that's one that's got a lot of dialogue. The [inaudible] Vortex - much shorter. Search Out Space; and Destiny Of The Doctors...also some audio lines for Dark Dimension.

Wait, what? They're creating an animated version of The Dark Dimension, the anniversary show that was curtailed because of the TV Movie? They're re-releasing some new version of Downtime with added Who?  More's the point Sylv is playing the Doctor on screen (rather than audio) for the first time since 1996? [via]