32 Richard Burton

Hamlet played by Richard Burton.
Directed by John Gielgud.

It’s 1995, I’m in my first flush of college in Leeds and I’m standing in HMV considering a VHS boxset of this Richard Burton’s Hamlet just as I have on a few previous Saturdays. Once again I turn it over and look at the price, £19.99 and consider whether it is the worth my weekly food budget and once again I put it back with a sigh. Then it’s 1997 and I’ve been paid some wages and visit the HMV in Liverpool specially in order to buy it only to discover that it’s been deleted already and I’ve missed my chance. Now in 2011, I’ve bought a VHS copy on eBay for about a tenner and as with so many purchases from the website, an itch has been scratched.

In the meantime I found a copy of Argo’s audio release but knew, because of the number of texts that referred to it, that it was best seen first, rather than just heard especially after the rigmarole which led to the show being recorded. As Richard Burton (who married Liz Taylor during the Canadian tour of Hamlet) reveals in a trailer and the entertaining interview (see below) which act as an introduction to the performance, using a process called “electronovision” and cameras set up throughout the Lunt-Fontaine Theatre on Broadway, a thousand prints were struck so that over four simultaneous performances audiences across the US could enjoy the production.



Anyone attending the NT Live events will agree with Burton (or his script writer), that those witnessing the experiment would see “the theatre of the future taking shape before [their] eyes.” Like the NT Live events, these were supposed to be limited showings; Sheriden Morley reveals in the booklet accompanying the audio cassettes, prints were contractually ordered to be destroyed and that it’s only thanks to Burton keeping a copy for himself and submitted one to the BFI that this was able to resurrected for the home market in 1995. Hopefully, with a safe enough gap, the NT will also allow their recordings to go to shiny disc. I missed Rory Kinnear.

John Gielgud’s production is at least famous enough to have gained a nickname, the “rehearsal room Hamlet” or some derivative thereof. Again in the booklet, Gielgud explains that by acting in rehearsal clothes with minimal props, he hoped that “the beauty of the language and imagery may shine through unencumbered by an elaborate reconstruction of any particular historical period” and to capture the magic of the final read-through when the play cracks on through without interruption from the director and before "the “final adjuncts” cramp the player’s imagination and detract from the poetic imagery” of the text.

It’s a laudable but paradoxical idea because even in attempting to find the moment “before costumes, scenery and lighting are added” such things have still been applied. These are not the clothes the actors turned up for work in – particularly noticeable in the case of Burton’s black habit – and this is still a set which has been designed to look like a rehearsal space, with a costume rack as the arras and large doors opening backwards into a void to accommodate the entre and exeunt of the actors. There are still many lighting effects denoting night and day and spookily blasting the crowned silhouette of the Ghost across the scenery, dwarfing the actors.

Nevertheless, Gielgud is correct when he suggests that Shakespeare’s words are powerful enough to stand alone especially when employed by the deep Welsh tones of Richard Burton, whose magnetic stage presence is so strong it could almost be the reason why the signal the VHS tape its housed on is clearly degrading, the tracking all over the place. He’s applauded by the theatre audience even before he’s spoken, and that applause continues throughout the show, after every soliloquy, after every emotional plea. But they’re not simply being polite; he is extraordinary, absolutely justifying the praise in the reviews at the back of the booklet.

Howard Taubman of The New York Times says that Burton “dominates the drama” and actually if I have a criticism, it’s that he burns so bright the rest of the cast lose visibility, the energy dimming considerably whenever he’s not on stage. Hume Cronyn as Polonius is able to match him and their scenes in which the son of the late king takes full advantage of the Lord Chamberlain’s misguided attempts at diagnosis are amongst the strongest interpretations I’ve seen, their comic time perfect. But elsewhere, the play does suffer. But by contrast, the relationship with Horatio, often the beating heart at the centre of the play, is entirely empty.

Few actors are able to make an impression. Alfred Drake’s Claudius is an unusually sympathetic figure and both he and Gielgud take full advantage of the critical suggestion that the new king took power in order prevent Denmark from being re-taken too easily by Fortinbras due to having a monarch who's gone soft since originally annexing the land, Drake presenting a man who now finds himself repentant and fully aware that he’s going to hell. John Cullum nicely taps into how Laertes’s fate mirrors Hamlet by assuming many of Burton’s physical mannerisms (years later Cullum would spend five years on Northern Exposure as Holling, owner of the local bar).

Despite my reservations, Gielgud’s production fully deserves its reputation, even if on other nights, not everything went completely to plan. Commenting in LIFE Magazine on a book that was later published about the rehearsal process, Burton recollects that he wasn’t always competent when it came to remembering lines. One evening he even began speaking “To Be Or Not To Be” in German, and although as he observes, there was little recognition from the audience beyond a slight murmur, all hell broke out at the back of the stage where Drake and Cronyn were hidden observing. Looks like I’ll be hunting down that book now too.

[Updated 10/7/2011 -- this whole production is now available from Global Shakespeares -- thanks to John for the link]

“a new stereophonic production”

Radio Fans of radio history will love the opening moments of this welcome release of John Tydeman’s long deleted Hamlet, as an RP voice from a man you can tell just from the tone of his voice is wearing DG announces that what we're about to hear is “a new stereophonic production” and that “the play will be presented in two parts with an intermission after approximately an hour and forty-minutes”. The listener is sent right back to the cold Halloween night in 1971 when this first broadcast just before seven o’clock, perhaps tucked up in front of the gas fire, the single source of heat in the house, ears glued to the radiogram as the ghostly tragedy unfolded.

The highlight is quite rightly Ronald Pickup as the Dane. The BBC’s publicity of the time suggested he was that generation’s Hamlet (source), and although that’s perhaps overstating things (there were a lot of them about in the early seventies) gives us a prince that flip-flap-flops between controlled sanity in public and genuine madness – sparked by the news of his father’s death – in private. He’s as pleasant as Cary Grant in North By Northwest and it’s this geniality, inconsistent with his usual personality, which attracts the curiosity of the other palace inhabitants, Pickup able to communicate in audio the mask which never slips in public.

The rest of the cast is filled out with a range of experienced stage and radio actors. Martin Jarvis’s Horatio has an unusual independence, loyal to Hamlet but leading his own life. The most disconcerting performance is from Robert Lang, the timbre of whose voice sounds almost but not exactly like Jacobi. Angela Pleasance (Donald’s daughter best known at the time for playing Catherine Howard in The Six Wives of Henry VIII) is an initially extremely aristocratic Ophelia whose tip into psychosis is chilling, her voice skipping restlessly through the listener's ears, breaking through indiscriminate emotions by the second.

Spreading a full length production of the second quarto across three cds, the crisp sound quality, a brilliant contrast from the earlier cassette version released in 1998, highlights the experimental nature of this early stereo which attempts to mimic the experience of being in a theatre rather than the more intimate atmosphere of later radio production in which the actor’s voice is pressed close to the speaker. The music is provided by Malcolm Clarke of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, best known amongst some of us for his experimental scoring of Doctor Who episodes, and his electronic twang is well utilised to mimic the pipes of Fortinbras’s army.

Hamlet (Classic Radio Theatre) is published by AudioGo. RRP: £16.34 ISBN: 978-1408467251. Review copy supplied.

Hamlet (Classic Radio Theatre).

Fans of radio history will love the opening moments of this welcome release of John Tydeman’s long deleted Hamlet, as an RP voice from a man you can tell just from the tone of his voice is wearing DG announces that what we're about to hear is “a new stereophonic production” and that “the play will be presented in two parts with an intermission after approximately an hour and forty-minutes”. The listener is sent right back to the cold Halloween night in 1971 when this first broadcast just before seven o’clock, perhaps tucked up in front of the gas fire, the single source of heat in the house, ears glued to the radiogram as the ghostly tragedy unfolded.

The highlight is quite rightly Ronald Pickup as the Dane. The BBC’s publicity of the time suggested he was that generation’s Hamlet (source), and although that’s perhaps overstating things (there were a lot of them about in the early seventies) gives us a prince that flip-flap-flops between controlled sanity in public and genuine madness – sparked by the news of his father’s death – in private. He’s as pleasant as Cary Grant in North By Northwest and it’s this geniality, inconsistent with his usual personality, which attracts the curiosity of the other palace inhabitants, Pickup able to communicate in audio the mask which never slips in public.

The rest of the cast is filled out with a range of experienced stage and radio actors. Martin Jarvis’s Horatio has an unusual independence, loyal to Hamlet but leading his own life. The most disconcerting performance is from Robert Lang, the timbre of whose voice sounds almost but not exactly like Jacobi. Angela Pleasance (Donald’s daughter best known at the time for playing Catherine Howard in The Six Wives of Henry VIII) is an initially extremely aristocratic Ophelia whose tip into psychosis is chilling, her voice skipping restlessly through the listener's ears, breaking through indiscriminate emotions by the second.

Spreading a full length production of the second quarto across three cds, the crisp sound quality, a brilliant contrast from the earlier cassette version released in 1998, highlights the experimental nature of this early stereo which attempts to mimic the experience of being in a theatre rather than the more intimate atmosphere of later radio production in which the actor’s voice is pressed close to the speaker. The music is provided by Malcolm Clarke of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, best known amongst some of us for his experimental scoring of Doctor Who episodes, and his electronic twang is well utilised to mimic the pipes of Fortinbras’s army.

Hamlet (Classic Radio Theatre) is published by AudioGo. RRP: £16.34 ISBN: 978-1408467251. Review copy supplied.

Thanks to Professor Bernice Summerfield

Books As we’ve seen on numerous occasions in recent years, during his travels the Doctor has left documentary evidence of one form or another, be it an Egyptian hieroglyph, a cameo in a Laurel and Hardy film or artefacts in futuristic museums based on asteroids. He also has an affinity for the archaeologists who could potentially uncover these appearances, presumably because like him they’re interested in discovering history except of course the Doctor can be eyewitness to events that they can only make evidential assumptions about.

In The Hounds of Artemis, writer James Goss draws these two elements together as the grand daughter of an archaeologist uncovers the diary of one Amy Pond which describes an incident in which she and the Doctor gatecrashed an expedition in the late 1920s which is searching for the tomb of the titular goddess. The Time Lords knows that this Murder in Mesopotamia full of middle class ninnies are for the chop, but their fate is a total mystery and so he tags along sure that his presence is the reason that whatever befell these poor souls didn’t tip over into something much worse.

This is the franchise doing a full on impression of the Indiana Jones/Lara Croft paradigm, with tents in caverns, breakfast around campfires and torches illuminating wall carvings. Thanks to Professor Bernice Summerfield, we’ve enjoyed plenty of similar adventures set on alien planets, but these kinds of Terran investigations are relatively rare, presumably because the given writer has to justify why the Doctor doesn’t just simply go back in the TARDIS and find out for himself what the given artifact was for.

Like many of the best Doctor Who stories, a great deal of the synopsis is in the title, but with what is a relatively slight tale to explain what the hounds are would give away far too much (I’d argue that both the cover and the interview with Goss in this month’s DWM might even go too far!). Goss carefully paces his story by cross cutting between the first person of Amy’s diary and a more traditional third person, often giving two perspectives on the same scene. It’s perhaps slightly more idiosyncratic than in his award winning Tenth Doctor story, Dead Air, which kept to the Time Lord’s perspective but does allow him to ramp up the tension as the TARDIS team are put under threat.

The two threads are kept neatly separate by having two readers. Matt Smith has become an old hand with audiobooks already and he clearly enjoys himself as skips between the Doctor, Amy and the rest of the characters, Goss’s staccato prose (or should that be script) allowing for a few poetic moments in which his Doctor’s range shines through. At one point Amy describes how his “Young face suddenly became very old” and you can hear that incongruity in the actor’s voice as he skips between threatening the villain and promising to take his companion for a happy meal.

His real world companion, Clare Corbett, arguably has the harder job because she’s not Karen Gillan in a piece which may well have been written with the television companion in mind. But Corbett is a worthy replacement as she skips between the grand daughter and Amy herself, and if her accent isn’t a complete match, aided by Goss, she catches most of Karen’s mannerisms (including the Scottish stormer's slightly glib approach to proceedings) and you could well imagine that it’s Amy offering her best German accent or Doctor impression when necessary.

To say much more would spoiler your enjoyment of what is a very entertaining play. This is a full-blooded burst of action adventure mixed with an horrific dose of body horror that’s well worth uncovering, the two narrative threads keeping the momentum and mystery content up right through to the end, the performances of Smith and Corbett making this a worthwhile purchase (assuming you don't already have the vanilla release gifted to you by the The Guardian).

Doctor Who: The Hounds of Artemis by James Goss is published by AudioGo. RRP: £9.25 ISBN: 978-1408427460. Review copy supplied.

Macbeth (Classic Radio Theatre).

How do you create a sense of place in Shakespearean audio productions? A recent Radio 3 production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona became The Two Gentlemen of Valasna and was recorded on location in Maharashtra, with an all-Indian cast, the sounds of the landscape gifting much colonial atmosphere even if something of the story was lost in the abbreviated text. Studio bound, director Richard Eyre’s approach in this millennial recording of Macbeth (also available with the title actors on the cover) is to thread a sound of bitter wind across much of the duration and allow every breath of his actors to assault the microphones punctuating each line and clause, underscoring the emotional resonance of each comma or semi-colon.

His other trump card is to deliver the play in strong Edinburgh accents drawing the audience right back to the turn of the previous millennium and the bloody time of the original monarch, and though Shakespeare has blurred the history (historical Duncan was a much younger man and killed in battle against Macbeth’s forces rather than in his bed chamber), this production does much to underscore the plausibility of his alternative account. Eyre increases the brutality by emphasising the hard consonants in “murder” reversing the trend in some texts (notably the Arden Second Series) to soften the central sound to "murther".

In cutting the horrible deeds of the witches in act one, scene three and diving straight into their meeting with Macbeth, Eyre gives the impression that this will be a less supernatural reading. But the spot music is filled with deathly chords and when Ken Stott’s Macbeth returns to the terrible women who prophesise his doom, the soundtrack fractures and we absolutely understand the mental drift the new king undergoes. Dual casting also offers the possibility that the witches are inhabiting the action themselves, Phyllis Logan and Tracy Wiles playing Ladies Macbeth and Macduff respectively as well as gruffing up their voices to become these weird sisters.

Stott seems initially uncertain in the role, his breaths falling in the wrong places in the verse, apparently making a meal of the iambic pentameter. But beyond the bloody execution, counter to most interpretations, his Macbeth gains an initial startling sense of purpose, his uncertainty only properly returning beyond the death of his wife, his broken sense of the verse returns making his initial hesitancy a feature rather than a failure. Like Ophelia, Lady M is one of Shakespeare’s few roles that never quite works on audio; we need to see her hypnotic mental dance with her husband, the persuasive moment when she fixes him in the eye and all is lost. But Logan cheekily takes advantage of the character's most erotic moment when she calls upon the spirits to embolden her.

Graham Crowdon makes a brief but touching appearance as the Old Man, Rosse’s father though in truth few of the supporting cast really make much of a particular impression, but again that’s as a result of Eyre’s presumed requirement for crisp, clean, lucid diction and interpreting in audio one of Shakespeare’s shortest tragedies in which plot and structure overwhelm character beyond the title role. Nevertheless Tracy Wiles impresses as Lady Macduff, her guttural deathly screams upon the murder of her and her family piercing the ears and Tom Mannion’s Macduff’s reaction on hearing the news of same is one of the production’s highlights.

Macbeth (Classic Radio Theatre) is published by AudioGo. RRP: £13.25 ISBN: 978-1408469781. Review copy supplied.

the persuasive moment when she fixes him in the eye and all is lost

Radio How do you create a sense of place in Shakespearean audio productions? A recent Radio 3 production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona became The Two Gentlemen of Valasna and was recorded on location in Maharashtra, with an all-Indian cast, the sounds of the landscape gifting much colonial atmosphere even if something of the story was lost in the abbreviated text. Studio bound, director Richard Eyre’s approach in this millennial recording of Macbeth (also available with the title actors on the cover) is to thread a sound of bitter wind across much of the duration and allow every breath of his actors to assault the microphones punctuating each line and clause, underscoring the emotional resonance of each comma or semi-colon.

His other trump card is to deliver the play in strong Edinburgh accents drawing the audience right back to the turn of the previous millennium and the bloody time of the original monarch, and though Shakespeare has blurred the history (historical Duncan was a much younger man and killed in battle against Macbeth’s forces rather than in his bed chamber), this production does much to underscore the plausibility of his alternative account. Eyre increases the brutality by emphasising the hard consonants in “murder” reversing the trend in some texts (notably the Arden Second Series) to soften the central sound to "murther".

In cutting the horrible deeds of the witches in act one, scene three and diving straight into their meeting with Macbeth, Eyre gives the impression that this will be a less supernatural reading. But the spot music is filled with deathly chords and when Ken Stott’s Macbeth returns to the terrible women who prophesise his doom, the soundtrack fractures and we absolutely understand the mental drift the new king undergoes. Dual casting also offers the possibility that the witches are inhabiting the action themselves, Phyllis Logan and Tracy Wiles playing Ladies Macbeth and Macduff respectively as well as gruffing up their voices to become these weird sisters.

Stott seems initially uncertain in the role, his breaths falling in the wrong places in the verse, apparently making a meal of the iambic pentameter. But beyond the bloody execution, counter to most interpretations, his Macbeth gains an initial startling sense of purpose, his uncertainty only properly returning beyond the death of his wife, his broken sense of the verse returns making his initial hesitancy a feature rather than a failure. Like Ophelia, Lady M is one of Shakespeare’s few roles that never quite works on audio; we need to see her hypnotic mental dance with her husband, the persuasive moment when she fixes him in the eye and all is lost. But Logan cheekily takes advantage of the character's most erotic moment when she calls upon the spirits to embolden her.

Graham Crowdon makes a brief but touching appearance as the Old Man, Rosse’s father though in truth few of the supporting cast really make much of a particular impression, but again that’s as a result of Eyre’s presumed requirement for crisp, clean, lucid diction and interpreting in audio one of Shakespeare’s shortest tragedies in which plot and structure overwhelm character beyond the title role. Nevertheless Tracy Wiles impresses as Lady Macduff, her guttural deathly screams upon the murder of her and her family piercing the ears and Tom Mannion’s Macduff’s reaction on hearing the news of same is one of the production’s highlights.

Macbeth (Classic Radio Theatre) is published by AudioGo. RRP: £13.25 ISBN: 978-1408469781. Review copy supplied.

the many local inhabitants who fell victim to the Ogri

Books Having built an excellent reputation for producing authentic readings of the TARGET novelisations of classic Doctor Who, with The Stones of Blood, AudioGo have controversially dispensed with Terrance Dicks’s 1980 adaptation in favour of new work by the story’s original scriptwriter David Fisher. TARGET had always been in the business of asking the originator of each story if they’d be interested in adapting their work into prose, but according to the preview in Doctor Who Magazine, Fisher hadn’t been aware of a book coming out until it was published, his agent having not passed on the news. He’s no longer with that agent. But happily all of these years later, AudioGo have gifted him the opportunity to provide his take on the story.

From slap bang in the middle of the Key To Time season, The Stones of Blood sees the Doctor and Romana pitch up at the stone circle of Bodcombe Tor, where eccentric friends Professor Amelia Rumford and Vivian Fey intrigue them with their stories of the stone circle and they become messed up with a local druidic sect. As anyone who’s seen the television version will know, Fisher begins the story with what at first appears to be the kind of Hammersque tale beloved of producer Philip Hinchliffe all blood sacrifices and sibling tragedy, but soon drifts back into the typical whimsy of newer producer Graham Williams until by the end, Baker is trying to outwit a machine-based legal system represented by a couple of obstinate balls of light.

Fisher’s fascination with stone circles began with a filming trip to the Western Isles and extending his story to novel length allows him to demonstrate his grasp of their history, especially in a Radio 4 Book of the Week style introduction which is thick with the lore of Bodcombe Tor and although arguably some of his observations render later exposition obsolete, it’s still fascinating to hear about the many local inhabitants who fell victim to the Ogri across the years and the development de Vries’s rituals. The scratch of land in the tv episode becomes a fully realised patch of countryside, the kind of isolated drop of remote Englishness that would later reoccur in K9 and Company and be parodied to good effect in Hot Fuzz.

Having not read the Dicks adaptation, I can’t contrast the two approaches but Fisher’s feels substantially longer than those old TARGET stories which kept to a fairly limited pagination this spreads a hundred minutes of screen time over a leisurely four hours but its worth it for the level of detail Fisher brings to his characters. The two ill-fated campers gain thorough back stories and Romana’s aristocratic energy is contracted beautifully with Rumford’s harebrained academia. Both have to navigate what for them are entirely alien concepts; sausages sandwiches and bicycles for the former and in the case of the latter the futuristic world the Doctor has brought to the door of her cottage.

There’s a tendency in some of these readings for the actor to attempt impersonations of the original cast but Susan Engel (who portrayed Vivien in the original television version) largely reads much of this in her own voice, apart from moments when its electronically treated, which gives it the feeling of a sinister bedtime story. But it’s impossible for the mannerisms of the actors not to break through such as the grin which always breaks across Baker’s voice during sarcasm and she clearly has great memories of working with Beatrix Lehmann who is also lovingly resurrected. Once again, John Leeson is called on to recreate the voice of K9 and once again his is a proper performance, absolutely heartbreaking in the moment when his power drains away lest he become too invincible.

All in all this is a thoroughly entertaining listen that absolutely repays the decision to hand Fisher back command of his work.

Doctor Who: The Stones of Blood by David Fisher is published by AudioGo. RRP: £13.25 ISBN: 9781408467114. Review copy supplied.

It’s like a synopsis of the McGann era.

"You didn't always take me where I wanted to go."
"But I always took you where you needed to go"

TV We’ve always suspected it and now Neil Gaiman has provided a confirmation. Over the years, over its forty-seven years, Doctor Who has invented itself and reinvented itself, its premise, bolting on new mythology, discarded other pieces that have stopped working, just like the characters of Auntie and Uncle in The Doctor’s Wife in fact, and more often than not it’s changed our perception of the stories which have gone before. It’s impossible to watch the sixties episode now without thinking of the Doctor as a Time Lord, the Meddling Monk too, even though the word wasn’t even uttered for six years. Similarly ever since the TV movie we’ve all had that nagging doubt about his parentage.

It’s not often that a single line of dialogue has the capacity to somewhat reconfigure the premise of the series, perhaps even change the narrative of all its stories across all media. Yet there it is and in one of the best episodes of the modern era, thank goodness. No longer do we need to worry about exactly why the Doctor and his entourage always seem to pitch up at the just the right moment in a planet’s history, from Cardiff in 1869 to Cwmtaff in 2020 or wherever the Ainley Master happens to be during JNT era. But unlike Dr. Sam Beckett, this Time Lord Doctor is driven by a known force to change history for the better, Sexy existing across all of time and space and plonking him down were she thinks he’s most “needed”.

This wasn’t the only nugget in what was a love letter to the franchise, the perfect golden anniversary episode a couple of years too early celebrating the semantics of the franchise just as it reinvented some of the syntactics. I’ll leave it to someone who’s better versed in the worlds of Neil Gaiman to analyse how it fits into the rest of his work (other than he seems like using architectural features as character names). Yet the man is clearly a "we". In his stage directions he described House as a Totters Lane at the end of the universe for goodness sake, and only a fan would be impish enough to create a corridor of doom and lead the production team to spend the entire OB working in a quarry.

As you might expect, the compilers of the continuity section of the TARDIS Index File entry for the episode are very excited. As it notes, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen a TARDIS in humanoid form, there was Marie in Alien Bodies and Compassion. This TARDIS has even had limbs before, in the last huge anniversary story Zagreus, taking the image of the Brigadier though it fails to mention that in that story, the relationship with the Doctor can best be described as fractious and jealous. What it also doesn’t notice is that this isn’t the first time we’ve heard from a sentient House (cf, The Chimes at Midnight). It’s like a synopsis of the McGann era.

All of which means that the episode is kryptonite for reviewers seeking an original thought. I’ve not read many yet, but chances most of the eight to ten paragraph long opinion pieces you’ll read elsewhere will probably open in much the same way as this thing, give or take the references (has this sorted out Bad Wolf too?). They might pinion themselves on the other confirmation that Time Lords can change gender (the fight for Exile's canonicity starts here) or the way the publicity teased (quite successfully if my writing has been anything to go by) that Idris was herself some old Time Lord friend of the Doctor’s in much the same way as House teased the Doctor about the potential for surviving Time Lords.

There was no more apt an episode to broadcast in the week when, to put it lightly, Moffat went off on one about spoilers. I will admit that initially I was disappointed that the “old friend, new face” wasn’t one of the potential Time Lords, that the thing we’ve not seen since The War Games was a hypercube not the War Lord as may have been hinted.  Then I realised that actually the whole point of drama is to surprise and that in their own way correct predictions are just as insidious as spoilers because the emotional core of what you’re witnessing becomes swept up in your personal elation at being correct. Being wrong, as I was here, made the sounds emanating from Suranne’s mouth just right.

We might try to seek some controversy elsewhere in a futile attempt to prove that episode wasn’t perfect. We might note the misunderstanding in relation to the meaning of “pull to open” which probably refers to the door on telephone box within the telephone box rather than the door to the telephone box itself which despite the handles have only ever really opened inwards apart from in The Eleventh Hour and the Cushing films where they opened outwards but the films are wrong and strange whereas this piece of dialogue was just strangely wrong. We might also consider that if that’s all we have to worry about, when in the preceding episode a whole character disappeared from the story without anyone in the story noticing, we need to take a good long hard look at our priorities.

Instead we should all just sit back and marvel. Marvel at Suranne Jones’s performance in which she was able to communicate the non-linearity of the TARDIS’s Ophelia-like premonitory pronouncements and make sense of a seven hundred year old organism which finally has the power of speech (Zagreus accepted). Their relationship wasn’t unlike that between the Doctor and River, the equal measures of attraction and exasperation but running much deeper and intensified due to the limited possible exposure. After her exaggerated turn as the Mona Lisa, it would be easy to dismiss Jones as someone who can’t really do Who, but by half-way though, I was ready to through Amy and Rory to the sidewalk.

Which is unfair of course, since Gaiman’s structure gave them both moments to shine, Rory in finding a logical reason for keeping House at bay, Amy in becoming wrapped up in another psychological horror. In the writer’s original version, these sections would have seen Amy going solo, and though you might argue that the many deaths of Rory have reached the point of self-parody, Karen has still somehow managed to make each seem very real which it still should be. Amy won’t ever become blasé about this because there’s always the possibility that at some point it might be true and this had an even greater ring of truth to it because of the faux-Rory’s tip into madness, his love for her apparently turning to hate.

I cheered twice during the episode. Once during the dialogue at the top of the review and secondarily when these two strode onto what’s now the old TARDIS set, explaining why it was hanging around Cardiff for so long, cameoing in a dozen post-RTD Confidentials. To see the two of them, and Matt, walking around that set was indeed incongruous, as incongruous as Peter Davison in Time Crash or Sylv in the TV movie’s cathedral. As Gaiman prosaically identifies in Confidential, clothes might maketh the man, but console rooms do too. That all of these auxiliary rooms have been archived gladdens will gladden the heart of any librarian who understands the magnitude of what’s lost when you destroy part of your history though its ambiguous as to whether it’s still there now, of course, thanks to House.

He might not have his face on the title sequences, but one of Wales’s most famous sons finally makes an appearance albeit in voice form. Giving it some of the Richard Burtons or Gabriel Wolfs, his rich baritone communicates threat even more than a thousand Daleks simply because we don’t know what he’s capable of. Gaiman uses him to contrast the warmth of the real TARDIS, protecting the passengers within its innards when it has the power to crush them. In Star Trek’s When Silence Has Lease, a similar entity tests the crew by cutting off their air; then it was at least in the search for scientific knowledge. House is just sadistic, making him one of the few sentient entities the Doctor has no quarms about evacuating.

As is ever the case with nu-Who the climax was a blub fest, and not just in the household of the Blue Peter winner who was able to see their work up on screen (and in a slightly less obnoxious way than in Love and Monsters).  As one wag on twitter has said (its doing the rounds I don't know the original source), the Doctor burned up a sun to say goodbye, the TARDIS burned up a body to say hello.  Rory makes a good point, as a nurse he should have been able to go some way to saving her and he might also have noted that what we're watching is the face of the person who died to give Sexy a sexy mouthpiece.  Though I suppose like Margaret Slitheen you can only really relate to whatever's been put in front of you and go with that.

Richard Clark’s direction might initially have seemed a bit bland, but arguably in understanding that this was an episode in which every word counted he kept away from portraying the junkyard too frenetically with handheld cameras kept to a minimum, especially noticeable around “Idris” who’s mental state another director might have chosen to heighten with weird camera angles and wide-angle lenses. Murray Gold’s choice of music was equally unshowy mainly relying on the core themes, again perhaps so as not to pull the viewer out of the moment. A special word though for the costume designers tapped perfectly into the element of make do and mend, of found clothing (not unlike the tv adaptation of Gaiman’s Neverwhere).

After last week’s disappointment, this was a winning return to form, a stand alone episode which still had the capacity to add substantially to the unfolding text. In terms of the ongoing story, we were reminded once again that this is “a younger version” of the Doctor we’re watching, his future uncertain and there was still room for a nugget to ruminate on. I’ve suggested before that Silence in the Library can’t be a coincidental episode title and the TARDIS’s enegmatic "The only water in the forest is the River..." suggests that Forest of the Dead isn’t either. Who wants to bet that by the end of this series we’ll be travelling back to that library and rescuing the older River from the databank, a certain space suit her new means of travel?

"the train home on Friday evening"

TV It's very easy to laugh at technical failure, and how we did on the day of the most recent royal wedding when reporter Jake Humphrey attempted to broadcast from the interior of one of the RAF planes flying over Buckingham Palace, few precious moments of screentime before the video feed shut down. But as he explains here, it was the anticlimactic end of most exciting days of his life:

Despite delivering my lines three times, things conspired against us and we weren't able to deliver what would have been an epic part of the BBC's royal wedding coverage, much to my frustration and sadness.

However, as the well known biblical phrase goes, "The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away."

I think that line sums up exactly how I felt as I collapsed into my seat on the train home on Friday evening.

I was so frustrated that we weren't able to deliver our side of the bargain.

I feel a bit guilty now.

the cogs and wheels for getting things out there

TV We've talked before about spoilers and it'll be a topic we'll return to again, I expect. I hate them, hate them, hate them, hate them. Like Moffat, I especially hate them when they come from fans, since for all the enthusiasm, there's the element of knowing something others don't and having the ability to ruin the experience for someone else so that they can retain the superiority because they were able to watch said episode without the preconceived notions.

Way back, I was given the opportunity to see a preview of the first episode of Torchwood, traipsing out to Manchester for an event at old The Filmworks. I wrote up a review as soon as I got home, this review in fact, but I didn't post it. I waited for the actual broadcast because as I said then "Because really after the ending of Everything Changes it would be like telling a four year old that there isn't a Father Christmas and there's a seventy percent chance they'll spend most of their life working in an office. It wouldn't be fair or right."

The ending saw apparent series regular Suzie being shot through the skull by a Captain Jack who we discover, along with Gwen is an immortal, the kind of thing which only works in the moment and led to gasps in the auditorium.  Such twists have become relatively common place now (see Outcasts) and arguably it was a spin-on the Faulkner deep fat fryer moment in Spooks, but the point is that each of these shows and episodes would have lost their impact if the viewer knew beforehand.

The problem is, and this has to be acknowledged by Moffat, it isn't just fans who do this. It's also the publicity machine, the cogs and wheels for getting things out there. Here's a list of everything which has been spoiled for me in Doctor Who by newspapers (often rereported online) or most insidiously official sources like licensed magazines, trailers or promo clips in television news programmes (with the source if I can remember it in brackets afterwards.

Ninth Doctor regenerates (The Sun and BBC publicity department confirming the story that Eccleston was leaving)
Human Hybrid in Daleks in Manhattan (Radio Times cover)
The Master in Utopia (The Sun)
Rose's return (take your pick)
Davros in Journey's End (The Sun)
David Morrisey isn't the new Doctor (interview)
Owen dies (Torchwood Magazine photo in the preview for the episode)
The Doctor's death in The Impossible Astronaut (publicity photos on the Dr Who website the night before)

Couple of whoppers in there and there are others but they pertain to things which haven't been on yet and I don't want to fall into the trap of outing spoilers whilst talking about spoilers.  I also know that a lot if the US publicity is giving away details for episode thirteen which isn't due to be broadcast until October.  I'm sure there were others. The following did come as something of a surprise:

The little girl in Day of the Moon.
Catherine Tate as the Bride.
Ianto's death.
Captain Jack is the Face of Boe.
The fauxgeneration at the close of The Stolen Earth.

Meagre pickings. The extreme latter did mean I had to spend a week fielding questions about whether he really was gone with the ensuing entertainment of convincing someone Paterson Joseph was the new Doctor.  Which is a kind of faux-spoiler I suppose.  But really, please everyone stop.  Someone on twitter suggested that the tabloids are fed loads of stuff by the BBC PR department, spoilers included.  Well, hum.

I'm desperate to know more about The Doctor's Wife, who she is, what it all means, but I want to find out whilst watching episode.  Luckily the officials seem to have been fairly circumspect (apart from a clip on Blue Peter unbelievably) but it's going to be a rough couple of days.  It's also why I'm not opening up the comments on this post, you scamps.

the nu-Who equivalent

TV Here are some amazing (and I don't use that world lightly) photos I was sent to publicise the addition of The Silence to the Doctor Who Experience exhibition in London (Facebook link). Quite frankly, they're the nu-Who equivalent of the publicity shots of the Daleks or Cybermen against iconic landmarks, though clearly the Doctor's plan didn't work because none of these prols are acknowledging their existence. Why for example isn't the man in the first photograph trying to brain it with his Blackberry?

 

Where once it was a Yeti on the toilet at Tooting Bec, now it's a Silent on an escalator, though the effect is much the same.

Competition: Win Tate Calendars!

Art The big exhibitions at Tate Modern this summer are Miró and Watercolour and their publicity company have been in touch with this excellent offer. Calendars! To win! In a competition! Some information:

Tate Joan Miro Wall Calendar 2012 : Tate Modern 14 April-11 September 2011

Joan Miro may be most often thought of as a painter of mysterious dreamscapes and surreal imagined landscapes. But a blockbuster exhibition at Tate Modern - the first British survey of the artist`s work since 1964 - will show an artist who was politically engaged as a proud Catalan and committed critic of the Nationalist regime in Spain. This calendar represents 12 of what its co-curator describes as `...just fabulous paintings`.

Proper prizes requires a proper question. Here we go:

What is the title of this 1962 Miro watercolour?



Email your answers with the subject line "Tate competition" to feelinglistless@btopenworld.com by the 22nd May and one of you will be randomly selected to receive both calendars.  Good luck!

"for which groups of men?"

TV Monday's post at The Guardian about a horrific answer on Channel 4's Million Pound Drop has spawned acres of similar wrong headedness in comments from other quizzes:

University Challenge in 2000:

Paxman: "The names 'Cheesemongers', 'CherryPickers', 'Bob's Own', 'The Emperor's Chambermaids' and 'The Immortals' are or have been used for which groups of men?"

Contestant: "Homosexuals?"

[...]

From Weakest Link...

Q: Which surname is shared by a real cowboy called Butch and a fictional one called Hopalong?

A: Lesbian

[...]

Worked on Going for Gold years ago.... best answer was
"What is the name of the fish in the 19xx film starring John Cleese and Jamie Lee Curtis?"
A: Jaws?

The camera was bobbing, as the operator laughed so much.

There are hundreds of others here.  For such reasons I've stopped being able to watch most quiz programmes apart from the determinately pretentious Only Connect ("Horned viper, please.")  I know I should find all of this ignorance amusing but I'm a melancholic so it just makes me depressed about the future of the human race and culture's place within it [via].

"the world of Gondal"

Literature SFX posts a press release publicising the Science Fiction exhibition at the British Library which is really extraordinary. Once you've read this first paragraph you will be clicking:

"In their childhood, Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne Brontë created imaginary countries collectively called the Glass Town Federation. Branwell and Charlotte invented the kingdom of Angria, while Emily and Anne created the world of Gondal. They became obsessive about their imaginary worlds, drawing maps and creating lives for their characters and featured themselves as the “gods” (“genii”) of their world. Their stories are in tiny micro-script, as if written by their miniature toy soldiers."

So in their youth, the Bronte sisters were creating the kinds of imaginary worlds we all do at that age, feeding off the genre fiction they were themselves consuming. Imagine how the landscape of literature might have changed if they'd properly continued that obsession into adulthood.

Did she travel back to Japan?

Advertising The gentle irony of Scarlett Johansson doing Japanese coffee commercials. Did she travel back to Japan? Was it weird not having Bill Murray there? Some more below:

Valerie, a song she hates

Music YouTube user lightsatsparkwood21 generally posts spare, improvised, melancholic songs -- mainly cover versions -- sometimes happy. Valerie, a song she hates is above. See also her "shove the fucking ipad up your motherfucking arse you motherfucking fucking fuck" (cf, Nina Gordon's cover of Straight Out of Compton).

the play's fundamental themes of life and death and revenge

TV Off By Heart Shakespeare is a joint operation between the RSC and the BBC attempting to inspire secondary school students with Shakespeare's language through a recital contest. "At regional heats in autumn 2011 students will take part in actor-led workshops to get an exciting experience of performing Shakespeare." The accompanying website is rich in useful content, with RSC produced guides to reading and memorising the language and interviews with actors offering hints and tips.

There is a very focused set list of speeches which in the case of Hamlet are "O, that this too too solid flesh would melt", "Now might I do it pat, now he is praying" and of course "To be, or not to be" which seem to carefully selected to reflect the play's fundamental themes of life and death and revenge and also provide the opportunity for the participating child to reflect a range of emotion.  When I took part in a similar competition at school, we were given "Once more unto the breach..." from Henry V and this sixteen year old simply didn't have the skill set.

All of the speeches are accompanied by examples and this is where things get more exciting for those of us too old to participate.  The primary source for the Hamlet clips is understandably the RSC with Tennant but perhaps since his isn't the most trad of interpretations, the producers have cleverly included some alternatives.  So we have Christopher Plummer from Hamlet at Elsinore in 1964, Lawrence Olivier from his film, Derek Jacobi from the BBC's 1980 and Alex Jennings in a really intriguing Open University production.

Arguably, however, it's outside of Hamlet that the project is at its most interesting since with the exception of Julius Caesar instead of falling back on archive material, new films have been commissioned with contemporary television actors offering their interpretations of the speeches.  Amongst others, there's Katy Brand as Titania, James Sutton (Emmerdale) playing Orsino, Lauren Socha from Misfits playing Juliet, Lenora Crichlow (Being Human) makes for rather a good Portia and Michelle Ryan offers a bit of her Helena.

They're produced with something of the spirit of complete BBC Shakespeare from the 70s and 80s, the spirit which led to John Cleese playing Mercutio; familiar casting attracting audiences that wouldn't otherwise necessarily consider Shakespeare and as in that case it is a mixed bag but always entertaining.  It's also pretty frustrating because some of them are so well realised you could almost imagine that they're clips from full productions employing the contemporary urban landscape as a backdrop [via].

[As you can probably guess this was cross posted from the Hamlet thing, but I thought it was of interest for the "Who's in it from Doctor Who" element (was Cheen in Gridlock, was Lady Christina de Souza in Planet of the Dead). But seriously BBC, what you have here is a blue print for some guerilla Shakespeare, ReTold essentially but with the original language and a feel for contemporary society, more akin to a prime time crime drama like Luthor or Michael Winterbotton's film Wonderland.]

Off By Heart Shakespeare

Off By Heart Shakespeare is a joint operation between the RSC and the BBC attempting to inspire secondary school students with Shakespeare's language through a recital contest. "At regional heats in autumn 2011 students will take part in actor-led workshops to get an exciting experience of performing Shakespeare." The accompanying website is rich in useful content, with RSC produced guides to reading and memorising the language and interviews with actors offering hints and tips.

There is a very focused set list of speeches which in the case of Hamlet are "O, that this too too solid flesh would melt", "Now might I do it pat, now he is praying" and of course "To be, or not to be" which seem to carefully selected to reflect the play's fundamental themes of life and death and revenge and also provide the opportunity for the participating child to reflect a range of emotion.  When I took part in a similar competition at school, we were given "Once more unto the breach..." from Henry V and this sixteen year old simply didn't have the skill set.

All of the speeches are accompanied by examples and this is where things get more exciting for those of us too old to participate.  The primary source for the Hamlet clips is understandably the RSC with Tennant but perhaps since his isn't the most trad of interpretations, the producers have cleverly included some alternatives.  So we have Christopher Plummer from Hamlet at Elsinore in 1964, Lawrence Olivier from his film, Derek Jacobi from the BBC's 1980 and Alex Jennings in a really intriguing Open University production.

Arguably, however, it's outside of Hamlet that the project is at its most interesting since with the exception of Julius Caesar instead of falling back on archive material, new films have been commissioned with contemporary television actors offering their interpretations of the speeches.  Amongst others, there's Katy Brand as Titania, James Sutton (Emmerdale) playing Orsino, Lauren Socha from Misfits playing Juliet, Lenora Crichlow (Being Human) makes for rather a good Portia and Michelle Ryan offers a bit of her Helena.

They're produced with something of the spirit of complete BBC Shakespeare from the 70s and 80s, the spirit which led to John Cleese playing Mercutio; familiar casting attracting audiences that wouldn't otherwise necessarily consider Shakespeare and as in that case it is a mixed bag but always entertaining.  It's also pretty frustrating because some of them are so well realised you could almost imagine that they're clips from full productions employing the contemporary urban landscape as a backdrop [via].

Shakespeare at the The Royal Opera House and beyond.

The Royal Opera House have been in touch about two new Shakespeare related shows, "two vibrant and energetic productions of Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet". They say they're "very interested in attracting both old and new audiences, and particularly interesting is the wonderfully inventive and atmospheric interpretation of familiar Shakespeare’s stories in opera and ballet, which we would love audiences to experience."

Verdi's Macbeth appears in their own House, while R&J is taking up residence at The 02. See below for the relevant press releases:


MACBETH
Giuseppe Verdi
24, 27, 30 MAY, 3, 6, 10, 13, 15 JUNE AT 7.30PM / 18 JUNE AT 7PM

Phyllida Lloyd’s production of Verdi’s Macbeth (1865), new in 2002, returns for its second revival. Designs are by Anthony Ward, lighting by Paule Constable and choreography by Michael Keegan Dolan.

The Royal Opera’s Music Director Antonio Pappano conducts Verdi’s Macbeth for the first time at Covent Garden.

Singing the title role of Macbeth is British baritone Simon Keenlyside, a role he has also sang in Vienna. He made his debut with The Royal Opera in 1989 as Silvio (I Pagliacci) and was most recently heard with the company as Rodrigo (Don Carlo) in 2009. His previous roles at Covent Garden also include Pelléas (Pelléas et Mélisande), Oreste (Iphigénie en Tauride) and the title role in Don Giovanni.

The role of Lady Macbeth will be sung by Ukranian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska, who made her debut with The Royal Opera in the title role of Aida. She recently sang the title role of Tosca in Berlin in 2010, and she made her debut at the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago also in the title role of Tosca.

American bass Raymond Aceto sings the role of Banquo, a role he has previously sung in Chicago. He made his Royal Opera debut in December 2005 singing Don Basilio (Il barbiere di Siviglia), and has returned to sing Sparafucile (Rigoletto), Ferrando (Il trovatore) and Nourabad in a concert performance of Les Pêcheurs des perles for The Royal Opera.

American tenor Dmitri Pittas makes his Covent Garden debut in the role of Macduff, which he recently sang in Chicago, Vienna and Munich. Recently he also performed the role of Edgardo (Lucia di Lammermoor) in Frankfurt, Rodolfo (La bohème) in Dresden and Alfredo (La traviata) in Berlin.

Jette Parker Young Artist British soprano Elisabeth Meister sings the role of Lady-in-Waiting. She made her debut with The Royal Opera as Pale Lady (The Gambler) in 2010 and has also sung the Fox (The Cunning Little Vixen), High Priestess (Aida) and First Lady (Die Zauberflöte).

Making his role debut as Malcolm is American tenor and Jette Parker Young Arist Steven Ebel. He made his Royal Opera debut in 2009 as Victorin / Voice of Gaston (Die tote Stadt), and his other roles for The Royal Opera include Rimenes (Artaxerxes), Major-Domo (Der Rosenkavalier) and Albazar (Il turco in Italia). Earlier in the Season, he sang Jacquino (Fidelio).

Polish bass Lukas Jakobski, a Jette Parker Young Artist, makes his role debut as the Doctor. He made his debut with The Royal Opera as Flemish Deputy (Don Carlos) in 2009 and has since played Tall Englishman (The Gambler), Pietro (Simon Boccanegra), Count Ceprano (Rigoletto) and the King of Egypt (Aida) for The Royal Opera.

INSIGHT AFTERNOON: MACBETH
14 May at 2.30pm
Supported by the Paul Hamlyn Education Fund

Verdi’s ability to catch theatrical colour and powerful drama in his music is second to none. Antonio Pappano, Music Director of the Royal Opera, and guests from the cast and production team explain the power of Verdi’s music.

£19.40 (£7.10 students)
Clore Studio Upstairs


BREATHTAKING BALLET:
THE ROYAL BALLET TAKES CENTRE STAGE AT THE O2

This summer, audiences will be able to see The Royal Ballet as it has never been seen before when it dances a special production of Romeo and Juliet at The O2.

For four nights in June, The Royal Ballet will perform to a 9,000 strong crowd – the first time ballet has been seen on such a scale in the UK. Packed audiences will be able to see the action not only on a stage at the front of the arena but also via huge, televised screens more usually seen at rock concerts.

Stars of The Royal Ballet will perform Kenneth MacMillan’s heart-breaking production of Romeo and Juliet which has wowed audiences at Covent Garden for more than 40 years. Powerfully emotional, it brings the full force of the classic love-story to life, leaving the star-crossed lovers as the fatal victims in its wake.

With over 60 dancers and actors, a live orchestra and specially filmed sequences to enhance the drama on stage, this will be a show unlike any other.

Dame Monica Mason, Director of The Royal Ballet said of the announcement:
“I am delighted that The Royal Ballet is going to have this opportunity to showcase its talent on such a huge scale. The dancers at The Royal Ballet are some of the best in the world and are all at the absolute height of their talent. Romeo and Juliet is a signature work of the Company and the prospect of bringing it to The O2 to share with audiences on such an unprecedented scale is incredible.”

Tickets are on general sale now.
Friday 17 June at 7.30pm
Saturday 18 June at 2.30pm and 7.30pm
Sunday 19 June at 7.30pm
Prices: £10 - £60
Superseats: £95

"Errrraaarrroooo"

Film Fans of the Kermode and Mayo film podcast always enjoy Mark's breathless impression of Danny Dyer. I've always wondered what Dyer himself thinks of it ("Errrraaarrroooo"). No longer thanks to Matthew Bell in The Independent:

"One person he does upset is the film critic Mark Kermode, whose rant against Danny Dy-aaa on Radio 5 Live (relating to his appearance in the film Pimp) has become a YouTube hit. In it, he mocks Dyer's Cockney accent and writes off his films as atrocious. Does this hurt him? "I'm a human being, of course it upsets me." But perhaps it particularly touches a nerve because Dyer knows he has helped create a persona that undermines his credentials as a serious actor. "Mark Kermode thinks I'm some two-bob actor who does two-bob films for no money, who just walks about with a swagger. When actually I'm a serious fucking actor." Do people misunderstand him? "Yes. And I think I'm to blame for that."

He'd best not read the comments underneath the interview either then. And I thought the black riders of The Guardian's Comment Is Free were vicious.