Colonel Moseley's REVIEWblog

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews: "CHRISTOPHER AND HIS KIND"

2011-03-22T21:42:00.512Z

As with authors, certain periods intrigue and strike a lasting chord. Alongside Waugh, W.H.Auden and Virginia Woolf, my bookshelves feature most of the works of Christopher Isherwood. They start with 1928's "All the Conspirators", "Mr Norris Changes Trains" of 1935 and "Goodbye to Berlin" from 1939 and conclude with "Christopher and his Kind" from the late 1970's and the recent volumes of diaries.

My history books feature much on the Weimar Republic and plays and theatre programmes include Martin Sherman's "Bent". Art books and exhibition catalogues touch on the fascinatingly sleazy world of George Grosz whilst amongst the DVD's and CDs are several productions of Kander and Ebb's master work "Cabaret" and the canon of Kurt Weill.

Rather like the Titanic, Berlin between the wars has the power to fascinate. Since the 1960s popular imagination has been captivated by the bohemian demi-monde of Weimar, a seedy cauldron of decadence that spawned some striking sounds and images that the straight majority has come to consider glamorous and appealing: naughty Teutons awaiting a shocking come-uppance. For the last fifty years there has been a huge mainstream market for the combination of Weimar decadence and hubris: it sells.

I was interested to see how Isherwood's overview in "Christopher and His Kind" would translate to television eight decades on. The adaptation, shown on BBC 2, was fittingly undertaken by Kevin Elyot whose "My Night with Reg" is a significant landmark in the "age of Aids" towards the end of the last century.

The cast was impressively stellar with Matt Smith effete with floppy fringe, tweed suits and strange, possibly authentically tortured vowels and inflections. He was after sex and put the record straight regarding his intentions with admirable honesty from the outset: "I could say I went because of what was happening politically. But in fact I went because of the boys."

We are left with no illusion as to his priorities. Once he had been met by his chum Wystan Auden (Pip Carter) and dumped his battered suitcase, Isherwood was straight off to the smoky subterranean Cosy Corner club, a louche box of tricks frequented by rent boys, ready to oblige - but as Auden explained, "all rampant hetters."

Unleashed in this sexual sweetie shop, Christopher immediately copped off with the hunky pro Caspar and had a divinely rampant time far far away from his upper middle class background. He inhabited a hedonistic club scene replete with chancers,whores and exhibitionists. This formed the prototype for countless clubs all over the world for decades to come with varying degrees of authenticity and dilution from the truly hard core to the "decadence lite" of London's Blitz and New York's, Studio 54.

Isherwood's Berlin is conveyed with reasonable authenticity and a fair eye for detail. We can't quite smell the ersatz coffee and cheap cigarettes that seem to waft from the pages of "Goodbye to Berlin" but get a fairly comprehensive view of the range of experiences on offer to Christopher, in "permanent foreigner" mode.

This impression is expanded by exceptionally fine portrayals of his contemporary Berliners. Shady businessman and voyeur, Gerald Hamilton - the model for Mr Norris - is convincingly recreated by Toby Jones from the moment of their encounter on the train. He epitomises Berlin at that time - as fake as his poorly fitting toupet, as fraudulent as his business dealings and as tragically seedy as his penchant for a flabby brand of sado-masochism. Naturally after a little bother, Gerald disappears..Del Boy in a gimp mask.

So iconic has the character of Sally Bowles become - as created on film by Liza Minnelli - we almost expected her to appear in this piece. We were in fact presented with the real model or inspiration for Sally, Jean Ross enticingly played by Imogen Potts.

Another lost soul, her Jean is fragile, mannered and full of attitude: "Oh, mummy would nearly die if she knew what an old whore I am." Her convincing performances as a nightclub chanteuse were perfectly pitched, demonstrating what she was selling to her punters but also why she had not the necessary star quality to succeed as an artist. Jean was destined to be exploited by her American lover but never get her big break in Hollywood. Just like Gerald, Jean exemplified the weak and deluded that inhabited this pitifully self-indulgent subculture until it was swept away by the infinitely vile new broom of Nazism.

We see Auden and Isherwood pottering about in this mire. Slumming, they take their pleasures and observe the indigenous wildlife go about their business with the rather superior detachment of the writer observing at the zoo. Each was able to analyse and order what they had noted and build up a portfolio of experience and apercus, as with Auden's supercilious: "I do loathe the sea. It's so wet and sloppy." He then shuffled back home for running repairs.

We also see the well-heeled middle (if not upper) class background which Christopher rejected for the initially divine decadence of Berlin. It was chiefly represented by his formidable mother Kathleen, intelligently played by Lindsay Duncan. A few minutes in her controlling presence explains why her son took refuge amidst the demi-monde. Her uncompromising views chilled rather. She was unmerciful in reminding her son of the pain involved in both in bringing him into the world and in losing his father in the war. Even-handedly, she dispensed her manipulative malice equally to her son's German lover as much as her sons.

One came close to understanding how suffocated Christopher must have felt by the remorseless imposition of maternal views but felt sorriest of all for his brother Richard, condemned to stay at home under her rigid rule. In fact Christopher was presented as joining in with his mother in paying no heed to his sibling's views and feelings. This came across as a form of unthinking betrayal and diminished the viewer's respect for him.

Christopher's apparent detachment from the repression of his brother mirrored his attitude towards his German lovers. In fairness, we can absolve him entirely for the loss of his early affair Casper to the Nazis and observe that he tried to protect his subsequent lover, street sweeper and muscled cherub, Heinz Neddermayer (Douglas Booth) even when both had to leave Berlin, but in the end failed to ensure his long-term safety.

When years later they met, Heinz, now married with a child, seemed intent to use the connection to bring his new family out of East Germany to join his old lover, which Christopher did not exactly rush to agree. We are left questioning whether this amounted to betrayal. The phrase repeated by Isherwood's well-heeled Jewish language student of years before again sprang to mind: ""We must stand by our kind Christopher, whatever the cost." Clearly not everyone was willing or able to adopt this approach - certainly not Christopher, who ultimately seemed to have failed to protect those he may have once loved.

This suspicion is compounded by Auden's harsh remark "The only cause you really care about Christopher is yourself. But you've turned it into an art form." One might also add, "and made a living from it."

Despite a capacity for adventurous sex and romantic attachment, Isherwood's main role in life does appear to be an onlooker and reporter. As an artist, his function was to observe often ghastly goings on and present his take on them.

This beautifully shot film recreates his visit to Berlin with flair and ingenuity. Unfortunately, since Weimar became"fashionable", it has become somewhat cliched and certain scenes, such as the book burning, pogrom and even nightclub lack a degree of impact and are perhaps "tired." Any glamour in the decadence has long-since worn off.

This occasional lack of dramatic impact is compounded by a flatness in Isherwood's character. Although he dared to dive into this hedonistic world, he was presented as essentially selfish and uninvolved and in consequence inevitably failed to carry with him the sympathy of the viewer. In some ways the title "Christopher and his Kind" is perfectly apt: the rent boys of Berlin were equally as exploitative and detached as their customers. Maybe they deserved each other, if not their ultimate fates.

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews: "ERIC AND ERNIE" and "HATTIE"

2011-01-26T18:08:00.571Z

The last month has been marked by two biographical films about three icons of British entertainment - or two if a double act counts as only one: Morecambe and Wise and Hattie Jacques

On BBC 2 "Eric and Ernie", written by Pete Bowker, covered part of the lengthy careers of the nation's favourite double act Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise.

It began with their separate early years with Ernie enjoying considerable success and fast outstripping his father Harry, poignantly played by Reece Shearsmith, destined to be outshone in show business by his talented son.

Eric, initially Bartholomew, experienced less acclaim as a boy performer and did not enjoy the same early recognition as his eventual partner. He did however have the priceless advantage of a driven but level-headed mother, Sadie who seemed to provide just the right amount of encouragement and advice without becoming a monstrous stage mother out of "Gypsy" or a song by Noel Coward.

Played with great sensitivity by Victoria Wood, Sadie Bartholemew comes across as undoubtedly pushy, but principally as unselfish and fundamantally grounded and sane. Both the writing and her understated performance prevent the part turning into caricature.

Eric's father, George Bartholomew, was also portrayed with great restraint and good taste by Jim Moir/Vic Reeves. Less demonstrative than his energetic and dedicated wife, George was another pillar in Eric's life, never complaining when his wife disappeared on tour with his son and devoted most of her waking hours and thoughts to promoting his career.

The film was well written and depicted the pre and post war years authentically with excellent costumes and sets. The young and adult Eric and Ernie were recaptured with great accuracy and their life, ranging from digs on tour to middling theatres and even a circus tent was convincingly recreated.

Daniel Rigby as Eric and Brian Dick as Ernie portrayed the talent, drive and humour of their characters perfectly and the sheer decency of both men. Their early solo years were followed by the unforgettable double act based upon the premise: "You'll be short and bad tempered and I'll be tall and lazy - but we'll both be idiots". The film followed the progress of their career up to their TV break and focused on the inevitable process of growing up.

The key scenes showing the rehearsal and performance of their ill-fated television debut also worked well and the story telling was effective. The basic thrust of the narrative was two fold in showing first the sad inevitability that as their careers developed, the pair would increasingly make their own decisions, leaving Sadie behind, just as Ernie had moved on from his father.

Secondly, the failure of their first TV series demonstrated the need to be true to their own ideas and talents. When Eric and Ernie were later themselves, aided and abetted by excellent writers, such as Sid Green and Dick Hills and Eddie Braben, they would achieve lasting stellar success.

So, "Eric and Ernie" worked well. A lucid and evocative story featuring well-written characters perfectly performed. My only reservation is what perhaps we did not see. The drama might have been even more credible and rounded if a fuller indication was given of the effect on Ernie's father of the relative failure of his own stage career.

Similarly, Sadie Bartholomew takes her disappointment at being sidelined so nobly and in such an understated way. We do not really get to see the full impact of this upon her or indeed the the reality of her life with her husband when fully absorbed in Eric's career and later when excluded from it. At one point he remarks "Ooh, you know me. I don't go much on thinking". This ironic remark makes one want to know all the more how he really felt.

The film presents the duo's rise and early TV set back and shows an honest and talented pair without a darker side. I am not suggesting that Eric and Ernie were anything else, but one wonders if the film steers clear of some of the pressures experienced on a long and no doubt arduous show biz trail. We saw only the story of the career of a famous double act, but do not learn much of their relationship: they were nice chaps who got on well and that was that. It was almost as though the obtaining of the necessary clearances to undertake the project meant that the version reaching the screen had to assume some of the anaemic quality of an American biopic.

On the positive side, even without any hint of a subtext of the stresses often found in the lengthiest of professional partnerships, the film was an engaging reflection of the lives of a pair whose best work was more often than not the highlight of the nation's TV year.

Later in January, BBC 4 showed "Hattie," Stephen Russell's bittersweet bio-drama covering a period in the life of Junoesque film and television actress Hattie Jacques, played by the clever and charismatic Ruth Jones.

The film covered five years beginning in 1966, when Hattie was making "Carry On Cabbie" and ending with a dramatic parting in a hotel room in Rome. The story concerned sex which was in some ways "of its time", being three years after the invention of sex itself in 1963 - as intimated by Philip Larkin.

The viewer is presented with a film and TV actress at the height of her powers and already a national institution as battle-axe matron and foil of Sid James and Kenneth Williams in numerous "Carry On's", whilst on TV she was long suffering sister of Eric Sykes.

As well as sustaining a massively successful career on large and small screen, Hattie was married to leading actor John Le Mesurier and had two healthy young sons. Their London home was a convivial bohemian place full of friends and laughter with Hattie cooking and husband John extemporising on the piano or pottering round with a bottle of Chateau Talbot or gin, asking amiably if "anyone needed a top-up."

This personal and professional paradise was soon to be turned upside down by the advent of a viper in the form of randy second-hand car dealer John Schofeld (Aidan Turner), a decade her junior who turned her head in record time and moved into the family home. I suppose that makes him a cuckoo rather than a viper, but you get my drift...

The effect the handsome Schofield had on Hattie was positively convulsive. Some of the initial attraction seems to have stemmed from caring Hattie's sympathy for his loss of a child. This was compounded by his effortless charm, laid on with a trowel. The charisma worked on her sons as well as their mother for John could amuse them with football in the garden and silly invented games with a carrot, which appeared outside the capabilites of their middle-aged father who tended to be happier with a drink and a book.

The key to Schofied's appeal appears to have been his capacity to override Hattie's continuous self disparagement as someone always cast as "a silly frigid fat girl" - albeit "the nation's favourite silly frigid fat girl." Schofield made Hattie forget her insecurities and revel in her sensuous and passionate nature as "Call Me Irresponsible" played in the background. Hattie so enjoyed being desired, she lost all inhibition and admitted "everything else is irrelevant."

After a short period, their frantic lovemaking nearly rocked her shabby little caravan on the "Carry on Cabby" set off its rusty axle. Their very physical relationship was consummated regularly in the family home to Hattie's great satisfaction. She remarked proudly over drinks in the garden whilst admiring his glistening stripped torso: "He's unstoppable in bed."

All this might have been very well in the self indulgence had not involved victims. The greatest one was naturally the cuckolded husband John, played with requisite langour and diffidence by Robert Bathhurst.

Le Mesurier's tolerance and loyal devotion to his errant wife were spectacular. When coming upon the adulterers in flagrante delicto he is embarrassed and comments "I'm terribly sorry. I forgot my book" - just as though it were a line from the laconic Sergeant Wilson in "Dad's Army."

The scenes of Le Mesurier consigned to the grim attic bedroom - which looked more like 10 Rillington Place than part of a well-heeled actor's London residence - forced to listen to the energetic fornication below, were disturbing and moving.

Even more harrowing, was the pained expression on the face of the older son, overhearing the unmistakable sounds of enthusiastic copulation: an unhealthy and unkind imposition on a child

Le Mesurier's saintly forbearance was manifested in the set piece appearance on "This Is your Life" which was toe-curlingly embarrassing for all concerned and a triumph of illusion and hypocrisy throughout.

He went on to top it all by volunteering to be named the guilty party in the inevitable divorce proceedings. This was ostensively to save his wife's career given the truism that the "British never forgive people who like a lot of sex." (Note: apart from Queen Victoria, I suppose..) With the advantage of hindsight, we know that history was to repeat itself after a fashion when John's new partner Joan subsequently left him for his best friend Tony Hancock.

This film seeks to tell the story of Hattie's affair which came to an explosive end in the hotel room in Rome when Schofield left. Ruth Jones evocation of Hattie was considered and affecting. Hattie was clearly a remarkable woman capable of instilling in her husband the hugest tolerance, forbearance and acts of kindness.

Clearly Hattie was riven by the most agonising of insecurities about her size and desirability, compounded by apparently strong sexual appetites. Be that as it may, however, the sequence of events as presented in this film and the trail of pain and havoc wrought by the adulterers simply does not compute.

Infidelity is one thing, but cruel humiliation another. One can conceive that Le Mesurier's adoration of his wife was strong enough for him to sacrifice his own pride in the way he did. From what we saw of Hattie though - given her manifest decency and kind, loving nature - it is very difficult to imagine how she could have inflicted such suffering upon those closest to her.

Can physical insecurity and a pronounced sex drive so entirely out weigh a caring nature? The viewer was left with no truly credible explanation as to how and why Hattie could have done this to her husband and children or indeed herself.

Despite exceptional performances by the central characters and excellent production values, it was this failure to offer a plausible solution to this fundamental conundrum on which the film ultimately foundered.

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews: "TOAST"

2011-01-25T19:02:00.009Z

The BBC's Christmas offerings included an adaptation of Nigel Slater's autobiography "Toast". Subtitled "the story of a boy's hunger", I had previously found "Toast" a compelling read - of which the whole amounted to so much more than the sum of its apparent parts: gastro-porn, misery memoir and nostalgia-fest.

I was also absorbed by the film. It featured captivating performances by the brilliant Ken Stott (fresh, if that's the word for it, from his excellent portrayal of Tony Hancock, reviewed earlier on this blog) as the father and Helena Bonham-Carter - also already reviewed as a formidably unattractive Enid Blyton - as the wicked stepmother.

Written by Lee Hall, "Toast" turned out to be rather more than an entertaining Billy Elliott-discovers-Arctic-Roll-and-Angel-Delight-in-deepest-Wolverhampton sort of story.

Marcel Proust has a lot to answer for. He has set innumerable autobiographers off on the now well-trodden and remunerated path of recherching temps perdu from a sensory angle. In recent years moving beyond the original and reasonably classy, if somewhat crumby, madeleines, the tastes, smells and sights of all sorts of junk, epitomising the minutiae of childhood and adolescence in the second half of the last century, have been used to flog mega-units of autobiographical product through W.H.Smith and Amazon.

From Peter Kay and other well-known media faces, we now have a comprehensive schedule and total recall of the food, confectionery and clothing and most low-brow television programmes through the entire 1960 and 1970's. The thick seam of recollected trivia of those decades had been exhaustively mined and every memory extracted, sieved, brought to the surface and sold on to satisfy public demand.

Thus we can recall all that we ever used to know about Angel Delight, Cadbury Smash, Fray Bentos tinned pies, Spangles, Jubblys, refreshers and Birds Custard. Just as Peter Kay brings back to life deservedly forgotten "Bulls Eye" on commercial TV on Sunday afternoons, Nigel Slater reminds us of "The Persuaders" and "The Avengers."

Although the motif of both the book and its TV version was stuff in tins and packets we might otherwise have forgotten, the real point of both lies in its subtitle: the story of a boy's hunger. Only the boy himself has certain knowledge of the precise nature of the hunger at issue. To this viewer there seem to be several other than the obvious preoccupation with food. One might guess at love, understanding, acceptance, liberation, self-expression, fulfilment and simple sensation - or any combination of them.

We are presented with the perspective of quite a strange little boy subtly played by the 11 year old Oscar Kennedy and as a teenager by the clever and confident Freddie Highmore. He lives in a middle class home with a mother seriously ill with asthma to whom in many ways he is extremely close. The child is not exactly spoiled, but is often self-centred and lacking in obvious sympathy for others. He is not entirely appealing. He has the perspective of a loner and has his own interests and view of the world. He is greedy for particular experiences, sensations and tastes and is frequently frightened of his father's disapproval and disappointed by his mother's failures - as he perceives them.

The key scene in the first part of the film concerns his mother's noble attempt, as death approached, to keep her promise to teach him to make mince pies. Given her total incompetence in a daunting kitchen, that included a huge Kenwood mixer that emerged menacingly from beneath a work surface on a spring, this did not go well and turned into complete disaster when she realised she had forgotten to buy the mince pie filling- leaving the half-made pastry pie cases symbolically empty. This prompted a telling outburst from her charming son, "I hate you. I hate you. I hope you die," which unfortunately before long she does.

The quirky relationship between Nigel and his mother, delicately played with a tired fragility by Victoria Hamilton, lies at the heart of the book and film and is very real. They clearly drove each other mad at times, but were utterly devoted.

The support Nigel received from his mother when his father was being particularly macho and bullying spoke volumes, as did the magical scene of dancing together whilst on holiday. The boy's aching loss and sense of desertion after her death, when left alone in the house and taking comfort in the lingering smell of her scent on old evening dresses were convincing and poignant. To understand the depth of this is to understand and forgive Nigel's subsequent behaviour towards his mother's successor in his father's bed and affections.

The Slater residence in Wolverhampton seemed to echo with loneliness, even during his mother's lifetime. One senses Nigel's isolation and status as a disappointment to his very conventional father, who did not seem to bond with a rather frail son, prone to faddiness over food and to play at grocers in the garden rather than conventionally butch boy's games.

Unsurprisingly and perhaps justifiably. Mr Slater did not take well to his young son's relationship with Josh the gardener with its occasional nudity and close physical contact.

Many things Nigel did seemed somehow wrong in his father's eyes - particularly in his mother's difficult final illness. It was almost as though subconsciously his father was looking for someone to blame for the impending loss and his unbending and very different youngest son proved a defenceless target. The house seemed grim enough during mother's lifetime, but this was as nothing compared to the emotional desert it became following her death.

Ken Stott captured the grief-stricken, angry and frustrated father impressively. He often vented frustrations at the cruel hand dealt to him on the young son who did not meet his expectations.

In all this warfare of a family life, food seemed to become a weapon on both sides. Young Slater used it to despise his hidebound provincial parents and they punished him for his extreme fussiness and inconvenient unwillingness to cope with sundry dairy products. Milk terrified Nigel at school and eggs at home, giving rise to tense and messy confrontations, each a metaphor for the ongoing key conflicts in the Slater household.

After the death of his mother, Nigel's world was further disrupted by the advent of Joan Potter played with huge elan and divine 1960's hair, dresses and cigarettes by Helena Bonham-Carter. Whilst Slater pere is amusingly seen to lust after the curvaceous domestic goddess, Slater fils loathed her more than words can say.

The viewer has some mixed feelings over his viciously snobbish dismissal of "only a cleaner" who compares most unfavourably to his refined and genteel mother. On the other hand, we see that Joan seems to have set her sights on Mr Slater in a calculating way and ultimately takes over the household leaving no space for the memory of Nigel's mother.

The film does however set out to tell the story from Nigel's perspective and we are allowed to share some of his feelings of loss and betrayal as Nigel's father falls further under the spell of what the son regards as an upwardly mobile char.

As ever in this story, food is the key metaphor. Nigel's increasing obsession with cookery and Joan's pride in her housekeeping and wizard-like cooking skills leads to a culinary arms race, partly to win the affection of Mr Slater, in which no quarter is given.

We see set piece conflicts over Joan's secret recipe for lemon meringue pie . Ultimately, Joan's excesses in the kitchen seem to play a part in bringing about her new husband's early death from a heart attack. Confronted with the appalling prospect of continuing to live with his hated step-mother, Nigel then heads off like Dick Whittington to London and takes a job in the kitchens of the Savoy: the rest is history.

It is difficult to comment on this film in isolation. As might be expected, the book "Toast" covers more ground and gives a fuller version of events - including some idea of Joan's family, why the move was made to the house in the country and Nigel's jobs in catering before moving to London.

The more condensed format on TV simplifies somewhat. In this process one suspects the depiction of Joan has broadened and hardened with a slightly cartoonish quality, magnified by Helena Bonham-Carter's larger-than-life performance.

This suspicion is compounded by recent press comment from Joan's family casting doubt upon the harshness of her depiction, stressing that she was not a cleaning lady motivated by greed and even casting doubt upon the place of the legendary lemon meringue pie in her culinary repertoire.

Even allowing for this dissent, I must praise the production and accept its entitlement to reflect the perspective of its central character. Beautifully photographed and performed and reflecting its period perfectly, including the songs of Dusty Springfield, "Toast" captures the very individual insight on the world of an unusual child, who is so different from his friends and family and who very early determines that his only course is to march according to his own drummer.

In recreating the young Nigel Slater's very personal view of the world - in terms of his perceptions, sensibility and sexuality - this film inevitably risks falling foul of the differences in perspective and opinion that normally bring about so many arguments in most families, which are made up of flawed human beings rather than saints or perfect stereotypes. "Toast" reflects the life of one awkward and imperfect family, but succeeds in doing so in an entertaining, thought-provoking and often moving way.

Colonel Moseley reviews "Passion"

2010-09-29T11:25:00.013+01:00

Legendary composer Stephen Sondheim's 80th. birthday has seen even greater focus on his work. "A Little Night Music" has been revived to acclaim on Broadway via the Menier Chocolate Factory, "Into the Woods" has been well received in Regents Park and a whole Prom was dedicated to his compositions. Cliche though it may be, despite innumerable accolades including the renaming of a Broadway theatre in his honour, Sondheim's work is like Marmite: you love or hate it; there seems to be no half measure.

Here I put my hand up and admit: I am a Sondheim aficionado. I have been eagerly looking forward to the new production of "Passion" at the Donmar Warehouse. I also admit to having flown to New York to see the piece premiered in 1994 at the Plymouth Theatre starring Donna Murphy, Jere Shea and Marin Mazzie. Later, I saw the production in London's Queen Theatre with Maria Friedman, Michael Ball and Helen Hobson. If the Donmar afforded its usual brilliant treatment to "Passion," we Sondheimistas were in for a treat.

With a book by James Lapine, "Passion" was based on the the brooding neo-Romantic film "Passion D'Amore" (1981) directed by Ettore Scola and the 1869 Italian novel "Fosca" by Igino Ugo Tarchetti.

As ever, the Donmar production ensures that less is more. The small stage with a simple backdrop of three arched windows and erotic frescoed walls creates a steamy, shuttered Milan bedroom, an officer's mess on a remote outpost and even a railway station - with the aid of artfully employed clouds of dry ice in the manner of "Brief Encounter." Excellent performances, simple costumes, perfect lighting and the audience's imagination combine to create effective theatrical illusions.

From the outset, "Passion" is founded on contrasts. Giorgio's lover Clara is healthy, conventionally pretty, has a child and a name that means "light" whereas Fosca is seriously ill, at best "plain", childless and with a name meaning "dark". The book and score juxtapose images and sentiment of light and dark throughout to conjure up and sustain what one authority has impressively called "a highly modulated sense of emotional chiaroscuro."

As with previous productions, this one stands or falls by the quality of performance of the three principals. It opens with the romantic abandon of the clandestine afternoon tryst of handsome officer Giorgio (David Thaxton) with Clara in a bedroom in Milan and their uninhibited enjoyment of "All this happiness/Merely from a glance/In the park."

Scarlet Strallen's Clara is beautiful and acts and sings superbly. The audience is ravished by this exquisite celebration of conventional passionate and romantic love. We have no reason not to conclude that their relationship is not the real thing. It is only as the plot develops and the exploration of the theme of love continues that this is brought into doubt.

"Passion" really takes flight after fifteen minutes or so when Fosca appears. Played by the brilliant Elena Roger fresh from recent triumphs as both Evita and Piaf, Fosca is a sallow-eyed invalid prone to melodramatic attacks of fainting and shocking wails of pain. We learn of her unhappy past conned into marriage by a fake Austrian count and resultant hysterical illness. Fosca is studious and shares Giorgio's keen interest in literature. She soon develops an overwhelming, even malignant obsession about Giorgio that makes him the laughing stock of his cynical brother officers.

Throughout the piece the feverish and claustrophobic atmosphere of Fosca's sickroom is contrasted and almost compounded by the intermittent militaristic blasts of drum and bugle on the remote army base on which the story unfolds. Giorgio's comrades are loud and boorish and their ribald commentary reinforces our sense that Giorgio is untypical and isolated in his genuine efforts to do the right thing by Clara his lover and Fosca his terrifyingly selfish and single-minded stalker.

As the story of the unhealthiest of obsessions unfolds, we were absorbed by the performances of the three principals. Elena Roger possesses that quality as a singer and actress that means one's eyes rarely leave her: utter conviction of performance and a radiant star.

Some critics have found "Passion" heavy going, complaining of a boring, joke free story of obsession with unhummable music. I admit it's not A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Sanitorium, but then it didn't try to be.

True to its title, "Passion" is about exactly that. It is a comprehensive exploration - almost a meditation - on love. It might equally have been called "Aspects of Love" for it seeks to explain and contrast the range of elements involved in that most complex of emotions. Giorgio and Clara's passionate physicality and romanticism are gloriously explored but ultimately found wanting when compared to Fosca's unconditional devotion.

The process of explaining this is arduous since Fosca's hysterical pursuit of Giorgio is painful, pitiful and sometimes almost ridiculous to watch. The audience sympathises with the handsome and fair-minded officer taken advantage of by his genteel though manic stalker.

The depth and validity of Fosca's devotion become crystal clear in a moving scene in the railway station, when she sings: "Loving you/Is not a choice/It's who I am./Loving you/Is not a choice/And not much reason/To rejoice,/ But it gives me purpose/Gives me voice/To say to the world/This is why I live/You are why I live./Loving you/Is why I do /The things I do/Loving you/Is not in my control./But loving you,/I have a goal/For what's left of my life../I will live/And I would die for you."

Elena Roger sang "Loving you" with so much still conviction and simplicity. The audience held its breath and what had been an implausible and possibly irritating tale about a bunny boiler became a lesson about the strength and beauty of an unconditional love, impossible to resist.

To complete the picture and underline the message, Giorgio rejects what might normally have been a plausible and reasonable offer by the married Clara to leave her husband for him when her son is older and at school. Rejecting the proposed logical and sensible, practical arrangement Giorgio sings: "You think that this is love?/Love isn't so convenient./Love isn't something/Scheduled in advance,/Not something guaranteed/You need/For fear it may pass you by./You have to take a chance,/You can't just try it out./What's love unless it's/Unconditional?"

So "Passion" is a serious and ambitious piece, set in shadows. It is melodramatic and oppressive and lacks a conventionally happy ending. It explores the deepest of human emotions in an absorbing way with a moving candour. The libretto handles demanding themes with elegance and brevity and the score reaches rhapsodic heights of lyricism: eminently hummable heights. I regard it as Sondheim's "pocket masterpiece" to which this production did full justice.

Colonel Moseley's TV reviews: The Road to "Coronation Street"

2010-09-23T22:57:00.016+01:00

Strangely, the fiftieth anniversary of the birth of Britain's favourite soap opera - the cornerstone of commercial TV - was marked not on ITV but on BBC Four with the seventy-five minute play "The Road to 'Coronation Street.'"

The piece was written by Daran Little in entertaining style, with the surest of touches and a complete grasp of his material. This was only to be expected from a Corriephile once employed by Granada TV as an archivist who went on to become a successful writer on the soap and whose watch saw the introduction of its first gay character, Todd Grimshaw.

Directed by Charles Sturridge, the film charts the gestation and birth of "Coronation Street" -originally intended to be "Florizel Street" but dropped for sounding too like a disinfectant - transmitted in December 1960.

The opening of the 1960's also saw Shelagh Delaney's "A Taste of Honey" and Alan Sillitoe's "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Although the management at Granada were initially reluctant to grasp it, the wind was set fair for presentations of true to life, gritty northern-ness, grime, accents and all.

The format of the play was a slightly camp Magnificent Seven with the central character, the writer Tony Warren setting about assembling a team able to embody the occupants of the soon to be legendary street.

Brilliantly played by David Dawson, Tony Warren looked a little like a knitwear model in the 1960 Littlewoods catalogue: very well turned out and extremely driven. His groundbreaking vision was to present a true-to-life drama set in the North with "dirt under its finger nails."

Warren was confronted by initially intransigent bosses at Granada with old fashioned views on the unacceptability of things northern, which they appeared to feel equated to squalor and utter incomprehensibility.

Paradoxically, studio head Sidney Bernstein (Steven Berkoff) prided himself in possessing the true spirit of showmanship of his hero P T Barnum whose likeness adorned office walls at Granada to inspire excellence and innovation. Ultimately, prompted by this brother Cecil Bernstein (Henry Goodman) and far-sighted and energetic Canadian producer Harry Elton played by Christian McKay, Bernstein and his board of doubting Thomases grudgingly consented to film a trial episode, which led on to the first series.

We see the evolution of Warren from struggling actor to staff writer doing shoddy work he despised on the series "Biggles" to the committed creative force behind "Coronation Street."

The bulk of the play is taken up with casting, starting with Doris Speed, played with a cheeky charm and wit by Celia Imrie. Doris was flattered and cajoled into taking the part of Annie Walker, the chatelaine of the Rovers Return, by former child actor Warren "a little boy who never stopped talking."

Doris Speed seemed immediately to recognise the quality of the part offered, as did Pat Pheonix jauntily played by Jessie Wallace - ecumenically formerly of "East Enders" - who instinctively understood her character was "mutton dressed as lamb" and stormed through a brilliant audition to get the part. The scene played between Pat Pheonix and Tony Warren as Dennis Tanner was simply electric.

We see Pat Pheonix and Warren as soul mates capering about the back streets of Salford in a very Taste of Honey spirit when researching the reality on which the programme was to be based. In perhaps the most telling personal moment in the film, Pat makes it clear that she is at ease with Tony as he really is and is happy to join him and his friends at what is no doubt a gay pub. What this comfort level must have meant to Warren in provincial Manchester in 1960 should not be underestimated.

The element in the casting that remained unresolved for most of the piece was that of the "uncastable" Ena Sharples. The first potential Ena was manifestly unsatisfactory and the arrival of the formidable Violet Carson was a sort of elephant in the room until it took place late on in the drama. When she eventually made her belated entrance, Lynda Barron was little short of sensational.

Initially, Violet took direction and moderated her performance as Ena to the disappointment of all present. She then did it her own way and blew them all away. Violet Carson was correct in asserting that "You can save your breath. I know all about Ena Sharples. This is a woman who has buried children, watched her husband beg for work and still gets down on her knees to pray. There's no powder or rouge touching this face." With the casting of Ena, the array of battle axes was complete and the success of the series was assured.

The difference in the Warren's dedicated attitude towards The Street and the earlier "Biggles" is forcibly presented. The contrast is only too plain between the careless technophobic campery of the description of Biggles' joystick thingy with the clear and decisive explanation of where china ducks needed to fly across particular living room walls and how many milk bottles should stand outside each doorstep. The Street recreated a world that Warren had inhabited. He knew its ways and mores, its thoughts and its speech patterns, learned from hours of listening to the talk of women in his family.

As well as these principal elements, the play contained much interesting and entertaining detail. The performance of Jane Horrocks as the hard-pressed head of casting Margaret Norris was convincing as was John Thompson as script editor Harry Kershaw, about whom one felt much was left unsaid. Ironic humour was found at the expense in the character of Ken Barlow played by William Roache's son James, only looking for a stop-gap, but still there half a century later

I enjoyed the realistic sense of period and its knitwear, when offices had tea ladies and Adler typewriters. For me the play was particularly effective because it evoked an enviable time of rare possibilities. 1960 was a year of opportunity when chances were about to open up for the young, irreverent, talented, gay and even provincial to become successful. "The Road to Coronation Street" was a charming story of an underdog seizing just the right moment to put forward an idea whose time had come and achieving a huge success. It showed the process faithfully and presented the beginning of a spectacular decade authentically. I found it uplifting and entertaining.

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews: "LENNON NAKED"

2010-07-03T09:04:00.010+01:00

The series on Fatherhood on BBC 4 featured "Lennon Naked", a biopic dealing with the life of John Lennon up to 1971. Coherently written by Robert Jones, the film was produced and directed by Edmund Coultard and starred Christopher Ecclestone in the title role.

At 46, Ecclestone could be argued to be too old to play Lennon in his twenties and thirties. For me however his age did not impact upon a brilliant, mesmerising and unforgettable performance. He captured the essence of a charismatic and tortured star and addressed every nuance of a complex character, from a contradictory personality combining acute cynicism with high-minded idealism to his accent, inflection, movement and manner: he simply was John Winston Lennon to the core.

The film was interestingly constructed with black and white contrasted with colour and filmed drama set against contemporary newsreel. Music was judiciously used to reinforce a point, but no attempt was made to cram in as many landmark tunes as Lennon fans in the square states might have preferred. We Will Rock You, it wasn't. Production values were strong, with costumes, locations from Surrey mansions to London basement flats and props such as John's psychodelic Rolls accurate and authentic.

The supporting company was excellent with Naoko Mori, fragile and understated as Yoko and Rory Kinnear exceptional as Brian Epstein, terrified that his cover will be blown with that wide-eyed, rabbit stuck in the headlights expression. Michael Colgan as a louche Derek Taylor and Claudie Blakley as an entirely reasonable but ultimately disposable Cynthia Lennon were also superbly portrayed and utterly convincing. The other Beatles were well and laconically played, capturing the relaxed banter, wit and camaraderie of the band, although Andrew Scott's drawling inflection as Paul was occasionally questionable.

In many ways, the key role other than Lennon was played by Chris Fairbank as Freddie Lennon, his Liverpudlian gobshite father. Perfectly cast, Fairbank conveyed the feckless ex-merchant seaman with unerring accuracy. His face was lined by a million Woodbines and endless Scotches and his feral eyes darted hither and thither like a spiv or petty criminal. He could have been selling watches from the back of his Cortina or a suitcase on the market or serving behind the bar on a ferry out of Birkenhead. He was Jack the lad on the make and entirely without guilt or appreciation of the profound effect of his actions upon his son.

Roles were reversed at one point when Freddie took up with a younger woman and they had a child during the very period when Yoko has miscarried. John was even partly amused by his father's rakishness so late in life. At no point however did we see Freddie come anywhere near understanding the consequences of his actions, let alone taking responsibility for them and trying to undo the harm done.

Reduced to one word, this film is about abandonment. We focus on Lennon's rage and confusion and his struggle to come to terms with one huge watershed in his life recreated evocatively by shaky amateur cine film. To his credit he tried to address his demons and later even underwent primal therapy.

We saw a bright sunny day on the sea front and learned that six year old Lennon was cruelly forced to choose between his father and his mother Julia, accompanied by her new boyfriend. First, he chose his father, but unable to go through with it, ran back to his mother. He returned to Liverpool and was handed over to his Aunt Mimi who effectively brought him up. By his own choice, he managed to lose both mother and father in a single hot afternoon at the seaside and was effectively been abandoned.

The point of this film is that Lennon spent a good part of the rest of his life living with the consequences of this desertion. This was compounded by his bitter disillusionment with the Beatles and the loss in 1967 of Brian Epstein to whom Lennon was so very close and with whom he appeared to have had a special bond. These blows certainly shaped him as a mass of contradictions, as a person and an artist. In consequence, we see a sometimes arrogant and cruel man who could flaunt his infidelities before Cynthia and ruthlessly desert Julian. In contrast, we also observe a vulnerable man capable of great tenderness, as when Yoko is pregnant.

We watch him go on to inflict his own series of abandonments and desertions, dishing out the same treatment to some of his loyal friends from Liverpool, his wife and son, The Beatles themselves and even his country when he left for a self-imposed exile in New York at the end of the film in 1971.

The main visual motif of the film - in addition to John and Yoko's open and vulnerable nudity in their Two Virgins photo shoot - is a child losing grip of his balloon so that it floats away lost into a big blue sky. Echoing this, John and Yoko later symbolically released balloons into the air to open an exhibition together. His childhood bewilderment and loss never really abated. We see Lennon, damaged by his abandonment at six, replicate the behaviour in his own adult life. As is often the case with childhood abuse, the abused becomes the abuser and the painful cycle continues.

This film seems to try to complete only this one part of the Lennon jigsaw. It explains how his childhood abandonment affected him up to 1971. Other parts of the Lennon biographical film canon focus on other elements and relationships: "Nowhere Boy" with mother Julia and Aunt Mimi, "Backbeat" with Stuart Sutcliffe, "The Hours and Times" with Brian Epstein and The Two of Us Paul Mc Cartney. None of the films including "Lennon Naked" attempts to put together all the parts and complete the puzzle and thus none tells the whole story.

All these perspectives put together might create a picture of the man John came to be. We now know some of what transpired in New York after 1971, the phase of hedonism, rapprochement with Yoko and withdrawal into a happier domestic life which led to a creative renaissance followed by the waste of his tragic early death.

By the end, it appears that many of the specific demons explored in this film may have been conquered and bridges rebuilt with some of those affected along the way. "Lennon Naked" makes an absorbing attempt to explain a significant part of the evolution of a complex man who was so very important to many of us. For that it should be applauded.

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews : "Worried About The Boy"

2010-05-25T19:30:00.016+01:00

As part of its Eighties series, BBC 2 recently showed "Worried About the Boy," an absorbing ninety minute biopic written by Tony Basgallop. The film told the story of the early years of George O'Dowd who, as a teenager, left a stifling home in suburbia with a naked mannequin under his arm and went to live in a squat on the outskirts of New Romantic bohemia. We follow his louche existence as a flamboyant androgynous trendsetter in and around the Blitz Club in Soho in the immediately post-punk early 1980s.

As a recreation of an era and a group of like-minded outsiders, the film worked well. The setting was authentic. The costumes and make-up were spot-on and the sound track included the obvious New Romantic anthems of the period plus what must have been seminal influences, such as the Velvet Underground's "Venus in Furs".

We were treated to a wonderfully lounge-lizardy Steve Strange (Marc Warren) and Spandau Ballet replicated their costumes, poses and pouts of the period. A gloriously over-the-top Mark Gatiss as Malcolm McClaren played at managing Bow Wow Wow from his gothic Highgate lair and came across somewhere between a deranged medieval pope and Colonel Parker. Freddie Fox succeeded completely as a Kay Kendall-ish Marilyn - and also contrived to appear more intelligent and attractive than the original.

George's life once he had moved to the wicked city was colourful. Douglas Booth gave a stunning performance. He did not make the mistake of presenting himself as a camp stereotype; he was openly gay and outre in his appearance and manner but, like the real Boy George, carried himself in a uniquely individual and contradictory way.

He was vulnerable and delicate, yet manly and brave, mischievous, rebellious, witty and eccentric in an appealing, very British manner.

Douglas Booth conveyed this most complex of characters with a subtle and nuanced performance, interspersed with some funny one liners -as when, wearing a nun's habit he has just enjoyed himself enormously with a man in a phone box. The man says, "I'm not really gay," and George replies "That's OK. I'm not really a nun."

The star-struck panic that engulfed the Blitz Club when every posturing wannabee's god, David Bowie visited was pointedly accurate and hilarious.

With no pun intended, George's character did have a chameleon-like quality, one moment bravely invading a suburban lounge in the middle of the night to confront a lover who has let him down and the next stealing from coats in the cloakroom of the Blitz and being sacked - whilst dressed in a Korean peasant's hat. High or low, good or bad, it has to be admitted that George was never dull or ordinary: he carried off each drama rather magnificently.

Mathew Horne also convinced as Jon Moss, the drummer of Culture Club. We see something of his insight into the music business and his hesitant relationship with George. For me however the stormy passage of their relationship and the progress of the band's career was conveyed in superficial terms and deserved sharper focus. It speaks volumes for the quality of performances of Booth and Horne that, despite the occasionally impressionistic script, they succeeded in giving such emotional depth to their characters.

The film culminates in contrasting two crises in George's life: first in 1982 when he had to be persuaded out of the back of a limo to perform Culture Club's first number one on Top of the Pops, when his relationship with Jon Moss had run its course, and secondly in 1986 when disclosure of his heroin addiction led to him being besieged in his Hampstead home by paparazzi.

This twin dramatic climax demonstrated the cruel pressures and ultimate destructiveness of fame and fortune in sobering contrast to the starstruck individualist that had set off for the squat with the dummy under his arm years before.

As a sketch of a fascinating character "Worried About the Boy" works well with arresting performances, a sound sense of period and excellent production values. Unfortunately it only adds up to a workmanlike story well-told: in a series of episodes a fragile outsider goes out into the big bad world, has lots of ups and downs and eventually reaches the top, but at a terrible cost.

If Boy George had gone to live quietly in Australia in 1986, this might have been a satisfactory biopic leaving no loose ends. The reality is however that he has continued to live a full and colourful life including brushes with the law and periodic reinvention in his career. This film chooses only to show some aspects of how our hero made it by 1982 and his trouble in 1986. Knowing what we do about George's life so far, however, the story up to 1982 or 1986 alone isn't enough: what we need to know is how he made it through the eighties, nineties and noughties to 2010.

Basically "Worried About the Boy" doesn't answer enough of our most significant questions about what made such a compelling and fascinating character tick. This is because it doesn't ask many of them. Despite its brilliant performances and accomplished sense of period, it is frustratingly incomplete.

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews: "Canoe Man"

2010-05-21T22:56:00.009+01:00

Before I forget, I wanted to note my impressions of a recent BBC 4 drama based on real-life events that turned out to be much stranger than fiction. Well written and directed by Norman Hull, "Canoe Man" stylishly tells the story of John Darwin (Bernard Hill) who in 2002 faked his death by abandoning his canoe to wash ashore to give the impression that he had perished at sea. After a few uncomfortable weeks on a campsite, Darwin returned home unnoticed and hid, taking refuge next door through a hole in the wall whenever visitors appeared.

By this means Darwin was able to avoid the bankruptcy that confronted him if he continued to live "officially" and to obtain a hefty life insurance payout with which to fund a new life in Panama. He was aided-and-abetted in the scam by his compliant wife Anne, brilliantly played by Saskia Reeves.

This was not a victimless crime as both the insurance company, rooked out of a large sum of money, and the Darwin's two sons who were mercilessly told their father had died, will attest.

Darwin as played by Bernard Hill was not a warm and likable chap. He comes across as a charmless, egotistical man, as signalled when in the pub he irritably orders a large scotch and "a little more subservience."

For most of the drama, he had what could be described as a funny look in his eye: the unattractive squint of the grumpy schemer rather than the appealing twinkle of the dreamer.

Darwin was not presented as a hero in the mould of Reginald Perrin. He was a fantasist with delusions of grandeur that he could bend the world to his will. His money-making schemes had not succeeded and he worked as a prison warder, a position one imagines he felt beneath him.

His several years of concealment at home in Redcar mix farce and fairy tale. He rushes off when the doorbell rings, as in a Carry On, and conceals himself via the back of a wardrobe as if fleeing to Narnia.

The farce reaches its climax with the extraordinary mistake of allowing himself to be photographed in Panama for the website, which led to his discovery. He was also portrayed as rather half-soaked and incompetent in not grasping the Panamanian residency requirements before committing to the move: all in all, a shambles.

Although well-performed by Bernard Hill, the Darwin we see is rather a one-dimensional villain ranging from the tragic to the absurd. He appears to have been loved by the sons he so cruelly betrayed and yet this contradiction and their feelings are not explored or explained.

Rather than the world as seen by John Darwin, we view events through the eyes of his wife. The emotional toll of the collapse of the ill-conceived fraud is convincingly presented, as demonstrated by a heart-wrenching scene in which a distraught Anne kneels exhausted under the shower. We learn how Anne was pressured into going along with the scheme and becoming an effective accomplice. Her onerous duties extended to reporting her husband as missing, dealing with the authorities and insurers as well as telling her sons that their father was dead and later -somewhat implausibly- that she was moving to Panama alone.

Anne's feelings of guilt are repeatedly signalled with much counting of rosaries. Her only explanation for her involvement was that she loved him, as though that was sufficient answer. Her taste for the far-flung was however hinted at by some exotic prints in the kitchen and the impressive ease with which she settled in her new Panamanian home - both of which might be taken to signal a taste for adventure unlikely in an entirely downtrodden cipher.

Ultimately, we do not know from this film if John Darwin was more than a fantasist and unprincipled manipulator of his closest family. At his trial, to his credit, he belatedly sought to take the whole blame by saying his wife had acted under extreme duress. This seems not to have been believed since her sentence was marginally longer than his.

Similarly, we do not know whether Anne played her part just because her husband asked her to and she was simply not strong enough to stand up for herself or her sons.

Whatever their actual motives, the celebrated case of the canoe man does not reflect well upon our times. On every Saturday night TV talent show we see people who believe they are destined for fame and fortune. The absence of intelligent thought, hard work or discernible talent does not dissuade them from this delusion and consequent - possibly humiliating - public rejection.

Celebrity culture and the huge wealth easily acquired for a few highly publicised individuals has misled many to think not only "Why not me?" but sometimes aggressively, "It should be me and I deserve it!" I wonder if such an unreal and deluded view of self-worth and the absence of any workable moral compass might come somewhere near explaining the canoe man's actions and why he ended up so far from home without a paddle? Also, might it not give a lesson to us all?

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews: "On Expenses"

2010-02-24T09:06:00.012Z

"This film is based on real characters and events. Some scenes have been imagined, some dates have been compressed. But mostly, you couldn't make it up"

BBC 4's hot streak of wry-yet-punchy dramas recapturing the recent political past continued last night with "On Expenses."

A stellar writing, directing and acting team - of Manchester City or Chelsea proportions - was assembled to very good effect.

Written by Tony Saint and directed by Simon Cellan-Jones, the film dramatised the struggle of Heather Brookes, an American journalist, to secure full public disclosure of MP's expenses under the Freedom of Information Act.

Heather's American perspective was a key to the drama. She demonstrated horror and indeed shock that so many at the heart of power in this country could be so rapacious in feathering their nests and yet so smug and self-righteous in doing so.

As a woman and an American Ms Brookes was the ultimate outsider, but she also represented all of us standing outside the glib luxurious world of the British Establishment.

Anna Maxwell Martin played Heather Brookes with verve and energy. The last time I saw her was as Sally Bowles in "Cabaret" a few years ago. She mesmerised now as then and was the focus of attention whenever on screen.

Her character was driven and pushy. She was a bundle of nervous energy which she just-about kept under control. Channeling this potentially explosive inner turmoil seemed to be crucial to her well-being and she found outlets in campaigning, journalism and even creative dance.

She was ambitious in a competitive American way and sometimes almost exhibitionist in her iconoclasm. One is never entirely sure how much this need to puncture the pompous balloon of petty officialdom was pure activism or bloody-mindedness or her sense of humour. To be sure, she was amused by the lunacy demonstrated by the jobsworths with whom she crossed swords.

Whatever the precise motivation, she was feisty, combative and effective - as demonstrated by her lengthy but ultimately successful campaign to improve lighting in subways in her neighbourhood which had become a haven for muggers.

Heather's drive and work ethic saw her decide upon and complete her book upon the Freedom of Information Act and apply the same commitment and organisation in the subsequent battle before the Tribunal and in the High Court to defeat her parliamentary opponents - just as she had overcome her local council.

On one occasion she literally stood in front of the Speaker's procession in a vaulted hall in Westminster before shuffling stubbornly out of its way like a sulky teenager being difficult, just to show she could.

Many of Tony Saint's trademarks in "The Long Road to Finchley" were evident: you may recall the almost schoolboy jokes with the Thatcher twins and droll references to the jungle and desert.

Here, with topical and not very subtle jokiness, an MP leafs through a magazine - "The Mortgage Guide" and Speaker Martin drinks his Irn Bru and tells his wife on the telephone to be sure to get receipts. In truth however there was no need to devise such humour, however artfully. The truth was far too grotesquely comic.

Fairly or not, most of the ills of this rottenest of parliaments is reflected in the characterisation of Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, played with uncanny accuracy and considerable insight by Brian Cox.

Speaker Martin is presented in some depth with occasional lapses into caricature, as with the Celtic scarf over the back of his chair and bagpipe playing in moments of stress.

We see an ambitious politico scheming to achieve the office, using his connections to get the job "out of turn" and winking conspiratorially at his cronies when emerging from the key meeting when he has swung it with the all-important party whips. Contrary to established protocol, he is shown to set out expressly to make his selection "tribal"

We see the emphasis upon his lowly origins when it suited, as when an upper class civil servant inquired about his tailor. This contrasts with a self-important insistence to a lowly member of staff on being accorded his full title.

The split in his personality is reflected in sniffyness over wearing the full Speaker's regalia yet wanting the best that money can buy and apparent extravagance over the Pugin wallpaper for the Speaker's lodgings.

Speaker Martin and his MP cronies are presented in an unflattering light. Tim Pigott-Smith's sweaty characterisation of Labour MP Alan Keen is particularly telling.

Almost more shocking than the crude materialism, is the complacent failure of men in public life to grasp the way the tide of public opinion was turning and the manner in which they underestimated the challenge that was brewing.

The proceedings in the Tribunal and High Court are lucidly presented with a lightness of touch, helped by excellent performances by Neal Pearson as Hugh Tomkinson QC and Alex Jennings as the hapless head of the Fees Office, Andrew Walker.

The end of "On Expenses" has some of the quality of Shakespearean tragedy: hubris abounds.

There is to be no Pullitzer Prize for Heather Brookes. Much of her thunder is stolen by the detailed expose in the "Daily Telegraph" leading her to wail poignantly "It just pisses me off that they've gone and done it so....brilliantly."

For Speaker Martin it is arguably worse. Immediately after quoting Burns in his resignation, he was shunned and ignored by those he protested he sought to protect and to whom, in the 'elfnsafetyspeak beloved of New Labour, he had "a duty of care". Alone, in an empty corridor in the palace of Westminster, he railed at "the bastards" who have deserted him like Richard III bewailing his fate on Bosworth Field.

At that moment and at other times, the brilliant subtlety of the performance by Brian Cox tempted one to feel some sympathy for this fallen Icarus that had dared to fly too high. He had been deserted by a privileged clique to whose interests he had dedicated himself.

In reality however he could look forward to retirement on a substantial index-linked pension and the honour of elevation to a peerage. In 2010 it is hard to see the tragedy in that.

The real tragedy occurred for the citizens of this country who obey the law, listen to the posturing of the politicians about ethics and all that public life entails and in good faith elect their MPs.

The so-called "expenses scandal" demonstrated that many of our representatives do not have the personal qualities of integrity and judgement making them fit for office. Some compound the irony by lecturing the rest us of us loftily about standards in public life. The real victims in this tragic story are the British people. Depressingly, it seems that our rulers still don't get it. You really couldn't make it up.

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews: "MO"

2010-02-02T09:57:00.013Z

The positive critical reception of "Mo" could not have been more different to the drubbing given to "Rock and Chips." Starring the brilliant Julie Walters, it was Channel 4's highest-rated drama for eight years and "received five star reviews across the board."

The film was a dramatised version of the life of New Labour politician Mo Mowlam from the eve of the election victory in 1997 to her death in 2005. It focused initially upon coming to power and her energetic and individualistic efforts to break centuries of deadlock and bring about a negotiated political peace in Northern Ireland.

After a flying start and perhaps in reaction to her astonishing personal popularity, the bulk of the increasingly sad and bitter latter part of the story addresses Mo's battles against political in-fighting that cost her her job as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and an eventual losing struggle against cancer.

What shine out of this film and the convincing performance of Julie Walters are the remarkable personal qualities of Mo Mowlam. The piece does amount to a powerful and moving tribute, but we also see many sides of a complex character, including what might be regarded as flaws.

Julie Walter's Mo Mowlam was a force of nature with boundless energy and verve. She was dynamic and committed and went about everything with zest from politics to rounders on the beach, hard drinking or making love.

Mo lived life with panache and was outgoing and extrovert. Her lack of inhibition meant she would unselfconsciously leave a lavatory door open to be able to conduct a conversation and would continue a heated argument with her PPS inside the Gents as he stood at the urinal. Mo was no shrinking violet and did not suffer from shyness or fools gladly. Accordingly, in politics she made friends and enemies in pretty equal measure.

She was positive and idealistic with time for everyone whether they be elderly or disabled. Mo had the dynamism necessary at least to begin to break down centuries of bigotry and intransigence in Ireland. We also saw that she was incredibly physically brave in confronting sectarian prisoners in jail face to face when trying to break the early log-jam in talks.

Walter's Mo is amazingly straight talking, often using the vulgar of profane to budge those with whom she was dealing from their complacent and entrenched positions. Her shock and awe approach included flashing her knickers at an amazed and discomforted David Trimble. What effect this approach had in the longer term against such an apparently straight-laced man is not entirely clear. We do not know whether he ultimately failed to deal with her because he could never be comfortable on a personal level or because he considered that she unfairly favoured the Catholics.

Similarly, her gutsy and eccentric side is demonstrated when she removed her wig and scratched her thinning hair in front of a dumbfounded Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. This warm and engaging, earthiness seemed to have helped initially in establishing some human contact with each side and to have played a part in achieving eventual progress.

A weakness in the film is that we never seem to go any deeper into Mo's approach and technique in promoting progress in the talks. We know Mo is "Dr Mowlam" and the possessor of no mean intellect, but are left with no clear idea of the detailed mechanics of what must have been delicate and technical negotiations and her role in fostering success. We are given no detailed explanation of why and how she was periodically excluded from the process whilst still in office. There must have been something more than charming and shocking with occasional forays into the outrageous. More politics would have helped to obtain a truer picture.

Instead of gaining an understanding of how the negotiations actually worked - or didn't work, the viewer is given a strong impression of conniving by a Machiavellian Peter Mandelson to replace her. Played with a dry malevolence by Steven Mackintosh, he lurks in corridors and on staircases clutching a file and mobile phone conspiring. This leads to more than one outspoken confrontation and accusations of "trying to take my job". When Peter Mandelson has succeeded her in the province and Mo is about to be driven away her gut-wrenching sobs make it only too plain that she considers she has been manoeuvred out by a lesser man.

Alleged Mandelsonian ambition seems to be a main inference of the piece together with the desire of Tony Blair to remove her after she dared to receive a longer standing ovation than he at the first Party conference after the election.

In 1998 Mo was the darling of the party and openly called "the people's politician." It is not inconceivable that "our Mo" was perceived to constitute a potential threat and future leader.

This was stated to be the view of Mo's loyal and devoted husband Jon, played with great sensitivity by David Haig. In fairness, the case is not proven. Alternatively, did Tony Blair simply become disaffected owing to Mo's perceived failings as a politician, albeit partially due to briefings from those ill-disposed towards her? Did he feel an alternative Secretary of State simply might be better able to deliver peace?

Apart from the portrayal of a remarkable woman and a partisan view regarding bad guys in her story, "Mo" is a painful exposition on cancer itself. Anyone whose loved ones have suffered in this way knows the pain, exhaustion and anxiety resulting from the illness and its treatment.

We learn early on that Mo had been determined to conceal the gravity of her condition and had led Tony Blair to believe the tumour was benign. It was on this basis that she was given her one of the most demanding jobs in government.

In one telling scene long after Mo had left office, she met with her doctor Mark Glaser (Toby Jones). After explaining - whilst waltzing distractedly around her sitting room in her nigh dress - that she had been asked to "do this programme where they get celebrities to dance," Mo went on to what was perhaps the key question in the whole film.

She asked when her tumour might have begun to take effect. Mo wanted to know how much of her much-loved, outrageously extrovert personality was purely "her" and how much due to the cancer.

Glaser replied that the tumour could have been present as long as twenty years before the diagnosis in 1997. This meant that the disinhibition and personality changes known often to stem from such tumours could have started that long ago.

To Mo this comment must have gone to the very core of her identity. It was entirely understandable that she should want to know whether the qualities which had played such a part in her success stemmed entirely from "the real me" and were not an effect of her illness. This exchange was played with great poignancy and delicacy by Julie Walters and Toby Jones.

The question was not answered as Mo had hoped and it was perhaps only then that despair overtook her as reflected in the terrible bitterness and pain of her excoriating lamentation, "I've had everything taken from me by Blair, cancer and God. My life has meant nothing. Peace in Ireland. F***ing **it!"

So, not unlike its subject, "Mo" was brilliant and life-enhancing, but had some flaws. The film reflected the vital personal qualities that made Mo Mowlam so very special. For me its central case against Messrs Blair and Mandelson was not entirely proven and I would have liked to understand the peace process better.

Above all, I like to think that the personal qualities that enabled Mo Mowlam to make such an important contribution in Northern Ireland stemmed entirely from her and were not a by-product of her illness. Cancer took away so much from her: it should not diminish one iota of the huge credit to which she is due.

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews: "Rock and Chips"

2010-01-29T23:33:00.019Z

Once upon a time in Peckham - well actually in the 1987 Only Fools and Horses Christmas special, entitled " The Frog's Legacy" - first mention was made on British airwaves of a certain Freddie Robdal.

Sixteen ratings-busting years later, the 2003 OF&H Yuletide "Sleepless in Peckham", was intended to be the final instalment of what had by then become a national institution. During this episode Rodney Trotter is prompted to work out his own paternity on discovering a photograph of Freddie on the legendary Jolly Boys coach outing to Margate in 1960.

Such was the success over decades of OF&H, that it is hardly surprising that a prequel was mooted. Depending on the degree of one's cynicism, this would amount to the exploitative milking of an exhausted cash cow best put out of its misery or the welcome return of an entertaining old friend giving a new perspective on some wonderful characters.

This dichotomy together with generally harsh appraisals by the professional critics of the OF&H prequel set in 1960 "Rock and Chips" written by John Sullivan prompted me to write this.

The press consensus appeared negative with dismissive one liners such as "an ocean going stinker" and "'The History Boys' written by Chas and Dave". It was summarily rejected as an "old Arthur Askey movie", "immeasurably long and plodding"," lazy", "cynical" and even "misbegotten".

It struck me that this degree of aphoristic spleen might say as much about our current critical climate as about the piece itself. Some of the press criticism seems to come from the same school as the more attention-seeking judgements from the panels on the ballroom dancing and ice skating littering peak hours on TV.

Ageing retired pros vie with each other for memorable soundbites on the performances of celebrity contestants. Coverage is guaranteed by the most negative appraisal and a species of disdainfully vituperative panel queens has evolved. The barbed apercus of panto bad-guy ugly sisters are usually balanced by a kinder and avuncular figure expressing a gentler view - laced with occasional bile to keep the audience on its toes.

Whatever the dynamic, judges and critics seem to find it easier to cope in a demanding environment by dishing out a good kicking from time to time. Just as it always was with the most formidable bullies in the school playground, victims are ridiculed as well as thumped.

So, did "Rock and Chips" deserve its mauling?

Their main gripe seemed to be the credibility of the central character Freddie "the Frog" Robdal played by Nicholas Lyndhurst. This career criminal had an established past as a trained diver, safe-cracker and art specialist. He was also the father of the affable Rodney and must have possessed sufficient attraction to charm and woo Rodney's mother, Joan.

For me the construction of character and the performance by Nicholas Lyndhurst more than passed muster. Debonair Freddie was tall and impressive in his well-cut suits and flash motor car. He was laconic, slightly diffident and attuned to the better things in life.

His immediate attraction to Joan was convincing, but he was undeniably on-the-make and a crook underneath the cultured veneer. Freddie was only slightly menacing but anything more unpleasant would have been implausible from Rodney's father and Joan's lover.

The performances by the other principals were also impeccable - notably Kellie Bright as Joan Trotter. She conveyed a sassy yet vulnerable quality that was charming and convincing. The stereotype of the pneumatic bottle-blond tottering down the street in short skirt, beehive and stilettos to the universal disapproval of gossipping neighbours may have been cliched, but here it was integral to the plot and character and not a flaw.

Other key characters such as Phil Daniel's Grandad and James Buckley's Del were convincingly played. Care was taken to achieve accuracy in mindset throughout. At 15 Del was hormonal and ducking and diving but already drawing the line at drugs.

The youthful Boycie, Slater, Trigger and Denzil were also presented faithfully as blue print versions of the men they turned out to be. The Jolly Boys outing to Margate conveyed the good natured spirit and warmth of what was after all, a community.

The student of authenticity would have appreciated the appearance of Reenie Turpin and Jumbo Mills who appeared in the 1986 OF&H "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" on his return from Australia with memories of selling iffy gear outside the Nags Head. It was appropriate that in 1960 he and Del were already shifting hooky carpets from the back of a van.

The second issue causing most critical distaste appeared to be the sense of period and nostalgia quotient. For me the rather sombre lighting and Play For Today feel worked. People tend to forget that life in 1960 was closer to austerity than the swinging sixties. It wasn't all Tommy Steele flashing his teeth and singing "Little White Bull" in sparkly chrome coffee bars up West. Real life was often closer to the grime of 10 Rillington Place lit by a single 40 watt bulb.

I also had no problem with the shorthand of fixing period with the showing of "Psycho" at the local cinema. Similarly the school scenes with the psychotic games teacher and alienated teenagers theoretically forced to stay on but actually excess to requirements, were truthful and funny.

Above all, this production used music well to give a convincing sense of time and place. A woman like Joan could well have lived her life to the accompaniment of her records and a dockland home would have received early copies of American disks - as was the case in Liverpool.

For me the shabby down-at-heel feel of this area in 1960 worked well; the monochrome titles, kitchen sink interiors, cars, clothes, decor, lighting and music were apt and evocative.

The other major criticism of the production appeared to be its humour. It's difficult to write about what could be called "comedic values" without appearing pompous, but here goes...

The critics panned some of the jokes such as Freddie's question to Joan, "Have you ever been to the National?" and her reply, "No, but I've been to the Derby once"

Obviously humour is a personal and subjective and reviewers are entitled to their view. There is however an alternative one. There is a long thread of very British humour that is not crude, crass or unkind that is our very own. It is amazingly diverse and combines the madcap, silly and often vulgar in a thread that runs through artists as different as Rob Wilton, Carry On, Joyce Grenfell, Les Dawson, Victoria Wood and the better early material of Benny Hill.

It is the kind of indigenous humour that appreciates that to the British some words are funny in themselves - take "gusset" for example. Admittedly, Robert Davies repressed cinema manager may not have been John Sullivan's finest creation, but the running gag in the hospital waiting room centred on the pronunciation of Joan's assumed surname of "Ming" was funny.

Like Olive and Arthur in "On the Buses" or Mel's falsetto rendition of "Lonely Girl" in "Benidorm", it's a British thing. It either floats your boat and you laugh until you cry or it doesn't. Fortunately for Mr Sullivan, over the years most of us have "got" most of his jokes from crashing chandeliers and falling through bars to Trigger's non sequiturs and Del's malapropisms. Perhaps it doesn't now play so well in the lofts of cutting-edge Hoxton. Sadly, maybe many of the current generation of critics are on a different wavelength and do not get it. Shame really.

I'm still not sure that "Rock and Chips" would justify a series. I did however thoroughly enjoy it as a one-off drama-comedy and was intrigued by its darker quality. The central performances by Nicholas Lyndhust and Kellie Bright were exceptional. The production had integrity and did justice to its period, story-line and characters.

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews: "An Englishman in New York"

2009-12-30T09:23:00.029Z

Post-Christmas offerings on ITV 1 included the ninety minute biopic "An Englishman in New York." This sequel to 1975 award-winning "The Naked Civil Servant" again starred John Hurt as Quentin Crisp.

It also featured Cynthia Nixon from "Sex in the City" as performance artist Penny Arcade who appeared with Crisp.

As one anticipated, it proved impossible to match, let alone improve upon, the brilliant "Naked Civil Servant" which told the story of Quentin Crisp's earlier life, struggles and apparent eventual triumph to become "one of the stately homos of England" with such brilliance that it remains a high watermark in TV drama.

"The Naked Civil Servant" contrived to be witty, evocative, moving and informative and perhaps was the ultimate film biography of its period. It both entertained and changed perceptions, genuinely increasing public understanding of what it meant to be homosexual in England in the middle third of the twentieth century.

This sequel set out to explain what happened to Crisp when he moved to New York in 1981 at the age of 72 until his death in 1999.

We see Crisp's serene progress through Manhattan in the 1980's wowing audiences with his disarming, but carefully prepared, apercus at his one-man shows. He found New York offered constant opportunities to perform on and off the streets and we see him revelling in walking about the liberal capital of the world relaxed and completely at home in its cosmopolitan atmosphere.

The piece is also a poem to the Big Apple with loving shots of exteriors around Greenwich Village and the Bowery with Crisp only one of many louche figures on view. His New York is different from that of "Friends"; there is graffiti in every exterior shot, whilst none is ever seen on the way to Central Perk.

This New York is also hedonistic and very gay: the look of the day is clone and the odour du jour amyl nitrate.

Our Quentin is doing very nicely earning a good living from the stage, public appearances and reviewing. He subsists on a diet of champagne and peanuts from a constant round of fashionable parties. His one room apartment soon resembles his London flat with its patina of undisturbed dust.

He even secures a right to stay in the US as a resident alien, apparently upon the basic of the uniqueness of his personal contribution to American cultural life.

All goes swimmingly until he sees fit to remark publicly that AIDs which was already cutting a swathe through the gay community was "just a fad." Coming from an iconic figure seen to represent what it was to be an out and proud and who endured taunts and persecution for his overt homosexuality, this self-evidently crass comment seemed to many to be a callous betrayal.

In one scene a leather clad gay man tearfully berated Crisp for his ill-judged remark. Crisp could see the truth and sincerity of his accuser's remarks and promised not to repeat them to cause so much pain. Typically however he did not recant.

As a result of his comments on Aids, Crisp's popularity declined and, despite the urging of close friends, he never retracted them. For this and indeed for many other remarks regarded as homophobic, Crisp is still reviled by some in the gay community.

High profile campaigner Peter Tatchell has been reported to comment that although he was astonishingly brave and defiant as an out gay man in the 1930's and 1940s, he was later self-obsessed, homophobic and reactionary, dismissive of the gay rights movement and even homosexuality itself.

Crisp reportedly remarked that gay men were incapable of love and that they had feminine minds - leaving himself open to the accusation of the rarely seen combination of homophobia and misogyny. His views have led some to feel that his life confirmed rather than challenged prejudices.

This film did not shirk from presenting this almost inexplicably negative side of Crisp's make up. He persisted in the view that by their nature gay men were incapable of sustaining genuinely loving relationships. On this he refused to budge. Indeed one of the few things he had in common with John Wayne appeared to be a refusal to "complain or explain."

The vanity and superficiality of some of New York's meat rack gay clubs in the 1980s might give some support to his cynicism regarding what was in some ways a self-indulgent sexual ghetto.

Arguably much of Crisp's posturing might have stemmed from self assertion and resentment at no longer being a unique dissident figure. He was to some extent addicted to the isolation and exclusion that goes with martyrdom at whatever cost. Seeing him withdraw into himself stubbornly, it seemed he obtained a masochistic pleasure from the criticism brought upon him by his insensitive remarks on AIDs.

The film softens our alienation somewhat by showing his acts of kindness to the struggling painter Patrick Angus and his considerable discreet donations to AIDs charities. He also maintains the diffident and gentle air of bewilderment and other-wordliness that constitutes so much of his charm.

This impression is compounded by the bravery shown by Crisp in dealing with the tribulations and humiliations of growing old living alone and the dignity of his apparent decision to bring his life to an end with least fuss possible by undertaking an arduous air flight and tour of Britain which was virtually guaranteed to kill him. The return to the UK resulted in death without much fuss, as he had apparently planned.

Issues were so much clearer and more sharply focused in Crisp's heyday in London in the 1930's and 40's. He was an exhibitionist homosexual who suffered at the hands of a homophobic Establishment. He had the fortitude to endure the prejudice and survived to become an icon.

New York of the 1980's and 90's was so much more complex. Crisp appeared to consider gay attempts at love or loving relationships inferior to their straight equivalents and undervalued the contribution made to the advancement of the interests of gay men and women by the liberation movement and its radical offshoots. He cannot really be commended for clinging on so stubbornly to such misguided views.

Similarly his initial views on AIDs are plain wrong. Why he refused to retract or modify them is a mystery other than the obvious point that decades of outspokeness and defiance of convention appeared to have removed his capacity to back down from a position once asserted. His identity and very raison d'etre were founded upon unshakable adherence to a position or viewpoint once adopted. To back down was simply not possible if he were to remain the creature he had created.

He tried to make amends for unwise statements by private acts of kindness and generosity in charitable giving, but could not seem to find it in himself to retract .

"An Englishman in New York" lucidly showed how this all came about and the unfavourable consequences. It reflected Crisp's good and bad qualities and left the viewer to decide where the truth lay. As we have come to expect, it featured an impeccable performance from John Hurt with an excellent supporting cast and another co-star in Manhattan itself.

I do not think this amounted to an attempt to "sanitise" his later life. It does however, arguably sit on the fence and for me this did not work. I never think it is the job of filmmakers to abstain. Consequently, it ended up largely plain vanilla.

Of all the descriptions that could fairly be applied to Quentin Crisp, hardly any would have shocked him: proud individualist, free spirit, exhibitionist, stately homo, iconic, colourful, unique. The adjective he might have had difficulty in accepting and felt he least merited was "beige." Sadly this engaging film missed an opportunity to try to solve the riddle or enigma at the centre of Crisp's stance in his later years and, as a result, perhaps qualifies for that single word review.

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews : "THE QUEEN"

2009-12-03T18:30:00.021Z

Over five consecutive nights Channel 4 has televised a lavish series of docu-dramas based upon what are seen as key incidents during the reign of Queen Elizabeth II: Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend, unrest in the 1970s and the attempted kidnap of Princess Anne, Mrs Thatcher, South Africa and the Commonwealth, the Annus Horribilis of 1992 and the marriage of Prince Charles and Camilla. None of the events represented the finest hour of this country. The question is, I suppose: Did any represent the finest hour of HM The Queen? Also, Did any of it really matter?

The introductory voice-over was delivered in a constipated version of that used at the beginning of the X Factor. We were sententiously advised five times that "Her story is all our stories". What a crass and laughably silly remark. In various ways many of the key problems of public perception faced by our Royal Family over the last century have arisen precisely because their story has not been our story.

The unseen voice also pointlessly remarked that "One woman has been a the heart of Britain's national crises." Again this does not seem entirely accurate or helpful. So...not a promising start then.

One preview suggested that the ambitious production was Channel 4's attempt to adopt its own approach to address the period reviewed in Andrew Marr's The Making of Modern Britain which concluded yesterday. That may have been the programmer's intention, but on first view this series didn't outgun Marr for authority or gravitas, which admittedly isn't saying much.

On consideration however perhaps the series weren't wholly different. Each adopted a point of view of varying degrees of obviousness or the smartarse opposite in the stereotypical Oxbridge History Boy tradition and used a variety of media - newsreels, talking heads and dramatic reconstructions to try to get the argument across and entertain and retain viewers now so easily distracted by their X boxes and reality TV beamed straight from the jungle.

The first film dealt with the scandal over Princess Margaret's "mooted" marriage to divorcee Group Captain Peter Townsend.

Emilia Fox played the pretty new Queen with an appealingly thoughtful and fragile dignity and Katie McGrath her pouting, snogging, smoking younger sister. Wisely, no attempt was made to replicate the cut-glass accents and braying cadences of young women of their age and circle at the time which avoided irritating and alienating many viewers.

Production values were very much to the fore and costumes, hair and period feel were entirely accurate. Good use was made of somewhat prosaic talking heads and contemporary film of crowds in sensible winter coats applauding huge Daimlers pulling up at sundry functions.

Pearls, cardigans and pained looks were much in evidence as attitudes to divorce in the 1950s were examined at a pedestrian pace. The Abdication Crisis was still relatively fresh in the memory and made even more vivid by the passing of the King, whose early death was widely blamed upon the pressures placed upon him when obliged to assume the Crown due to the irresponsible failure of his brother to put his duty first when insisting on marrying a divorcee.

The Queen's views were obvious and as black and white as the Pathe News. Religious and patriotic duty and social mores obliged the Princess to refrain from marrying a divorced man. The story passed and re-passed along this well-trodden path with much sulking and heart searching until the Princess, mindful of the various pressure on her, caved.

In this version of events, we see little of the Queen Mother and learn nothing of her part in her daughters' decisions. We see the Queen maintain a firm line and her sister eventually concede.

The lasting image from the film is at the very end when the siblings pass on the steps of one palace or another as the Queen is about to set off on another tour. They have clearly not seen anything of each other in recent months and they do not seem likely to grow any closer in the immediate future.

The message seems to be that the Princess decided not to proceed with the marriage not so much due to obedience to the teachings of the Church or fear of loss of royal privilege, but because of fear of being frozen out of the inner royal circle. The film ends with the Princess very much alone on those grand steps.

Given what we know about the closeness between the sisters throughout their lives with daily contact at least on the telephone, it seems implausible that Margaret was frozen out beyond the distance necessarily created by her sister's busy schedule of official duties and the pressures of young motherhood.

It might have been more interesting to explore was the reaction of the younger more beautiful daughter who was the vivacious favourite of the late King to being thrust so forcefully out of the limelight following the Accession of her sister. What would have been more appealing to a rather spoiled, attention-seeking young woman with a passionate and romantic nature than to ensure that all eyes were upon her by so public a romance and the protracted contemplation of so unsuitable a marriage?

What could restore the coquettish and immature princess to centre stage better than being seen to consider a union with a divorced man who was also a dashing decorated war hero? Margaret certainly managed to press all the right buttons in the emotions of the monarchy and with the public to resume her position centre stage.

Given conventional morality in 1955, was there ever really any chance of the Princess becoming Mrs Townsend, the wife of a lowly Air Attache stationed in Belgium? Was the whole exercise attention seeking by a princess, unused to being sidelined?

This conjecture was not territory into which this production ventured. Although the piece was prefaced by the warning that "the drama is imagined", "imagination" per se did not seem to play much part.

Samantha Bond followed in the next piece which examined the crisis-ridden 1970s and focused on the attempted kidnapping of Princess Anne from her limousine in the Mall.

I had succeeded in forgetting much of this dreary period, but found effective use was made of archive footage to bring back a grey time scarred by IRA bombing, power cuts, rubbish rotting on street corners and the dead unburied.

The film evoked grim memories of civil and industrial unrest and general seediness of the age. I'm not entirely sure that from the pantheon of experts I would have selected Dame Anne Leslie and Dennis Skinner as the most qualified. I wondered idly if by now it was Baron Skinner of Bolsover, but decided not - although stranger things have happened.

Against this apocalyptic backdrop, we see the Queen apparently focusing only upon a protracted battle to increase the Civil List. In the process we are amused by caricatures such as the ardent Republican, Willie Hamilton, straight out of pantomime and some good one-liners from HM: "What am I supposed to do - ask the Emperor of Japan to bring a bottle?"

Recollection was rendered more tawdry by the recreation of Harold Wilson as a calculating opportunist and fixer. Like a scene from a soap we see the Queen and her Prime Minister settle the little matter of the Civil List with an exchange of glances, a nudge and a wink over the washing up at Balmoral, as though it were Albert Square.

One reviewer commented that this episode was a heist movie given the dramatic reconstruction of the attempted kidnapping of Princess Anne in 1974. It wasn't - but the section dealing with the incident was engagingly straight out of The Sweeney. It managed to convey the reality of the threat and the terrifying use of guns very convincingly. Princess Anne was shown to have tremendous bravery and sang froid and came out of the incident with credit.

On the whole, the film shows the Queen's focus not upon social unrest, terrorism or even republicanism, but on the Civil List. The unrest, death and decay on her doorstep are not shown to impact upon her, nor do we even see much of her reaction to the attempted abduction of her daughter. More imagination combined with sensible powers of deduction would have been helpful here and might have cast some light upon the mind and emotions of the subject. As it was, nothing was added to our perception of the period and the person allegedly so central to it.

In the third programme, Susan Jameson's stiff and occasionally combative Queen is pitted against Leslie Manville's multi-faceted Margaret Thatcher, who as well as being her usual forceful self, at times appeared surprisingly vulnerable.

Their battle ground concerns the unwillingness of the Iron Lady for Britain to join in sanctions against apartheid South Africa and the damage this seemed certain to do to the Queen's beloved Commonwealth. The Queen was also concerned whether withdrawals in protest at the policy of Her Government would mean no African nations would compete at the Commonwealth Games she was about to open.

We are reminded of the emotional commitment of the Queen to the family of nations that succeeded Empire, ever since the sacred vow to serve given upon her Accession. Margaret Thatcher on the other hand was inclined to be dismissive of the Commonwealth and saw no reason that fear of fragmenting it should force her to join in sanctions against the minority white regime.

The scenes involving Mrs Thatcher are varied, ranging from the slapstick of the loss of her unsuitable court shoe in the mud whilst out for a hearty yomp in the heather with the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and her husband.

We learn that Mrs Thatcher was afraid of the dark and always slept with a torch after the terrors of the Brighton Metropole bombing. When Margaret mentions that the Thatchers have acquired a retirement home in Dulwich, the Queen responds, "Dulwich, that's near Peckham isn't it?"

The Elizabeth versus Margaret Commonwealth saga had an edge and interest mainly because it involved an issue to which the Queen was shown to be devoted and felt deeply that she had a sworn obligation to promote. Whether it was central to the lives of many of her subjects and deserved this degree of focus is another matter. Did the filmmakers consider whether the Queen was so deeply motivated on any other issues of the time?

The Queen in her Annus Horribilis of 1992 was played by Barbara Flynn. This difficult time for the Windsors had seen the very public implosion of the marriage of the Duke and Duchess of York for reasons which are not explored and the disintegration of that of the Prince and Princess of Wales. As her marriage decays, Diana suffers from eating disorders - surprisingly to the soundtrack of Radiohead's "Creep." (I was equally taken-aback later when the Queen later walked briskly away accompanied by the La's "There she goes", but I digress..) Sadly, no new insight or explanation for these events is brought forward.

At one point, in the spirit of much despised American Royal docu-dramas, the impending divorcees frolic about throwing snowballs watched through a window stern-faced by the Queen. A memorable climax - for the wrong reasons - is later achieved when a flunkie enters and delivers the classic line "Excuse me Ma'am, Windsor Castle is on fire."

This re-telling of the events of the year does not seem to add anything to what was set out in the tabloids at the time. The comments - even handedly - by Jonathan Dimbleby for Charles and Patrick Jephson for Diana - seem authoritative, but - like this play as a whole -bring nothing new to the party. We are left with a depressing tale from which no lessons are stated to have been learned.

We are told that this year "marked a sea change in public perception of the Royal Family." Frankly, it seems a long time since the people of this country looked to this family as whole for moral guidance, although the espousal of duty by the Queen and her parents continues to be highly regarded. Nor, as demonstrated by the Jubilee, should one ever make the mistake of underestimating the capacity of the British to throng the Mall waving flags in celebration of the Windsors, whatever they do or do not do.

As for 1992, one is inclined to feel that Her subjects took the events as confirmation of the human frailties of which they were only too aware. The people exchanged knowing glances, raised an eyebrow, tutted and simply got on with their lives.

The makers of this film had an opportunity to put this perceived watershed into a more meaningful perspective. They failed to make it more than a re-hash of one particular annus horribilis out of a reign that for her subjects has contained many anni horribili.

The series concluded with Diana Quick playing the Queen as she struggled to come to terms with the possibility of the marriage of Charles and Camilla. The position of both sides in the argument was lucidly set out and we witnessed the progress of a calculated PR campaign to win over public opinion to accept the marriage.

At each stage of what is effectively a war, we observe the line adopted by the Queen and the modification of her stance under sustained careful pressure from her Private Secretary and other advisers, advocating the need to bend and adapt in the face of changing public opinion.

The commentary by her Press Secretary and others provide interesting insights and it eventually comes as no surprise that the Queen acquiesces in her son's marriage and completes the circle begun with her opposition to that of her sister.

Certain of the dramatic re-enactments in this film do add to our understanding, including the Queen's deft handling of her first official meeting with Camilla at the reception at Highgrove. Similarly her post-blessing and Grand National speech at the reception at Windsor is charming and reflects a lighter touch not previously much in evidence. Charles' friend Timothy West got it just about right when wryly commenting that this was "an occasion not untinged with relief."

I gather the series was intended to cover Elizabeths 'darkest hours' and "to shine a light on fifty years of British life". It certainly attempted to cover some key events in the history of a family whose dysfunctionality seemed to run parallel with the breakdown of much of nuclear family life in a country whose social structures seem to have creaked and been on the verge of disintegration as the reign wore on.

It is I think a mistake however, to imply that these difficult incidents did anything but reflect the failure of members of a prominent family to keep a lid on the impact of human frailties concerning love, money and power. More often than not, the Queen was concerned with doing her duty, as she had sworn to do and fighting to retain what her family had in an ever more inhospitable world. Eventually modern techniques of media management came to the fore and the Queen took on board the possibility of bending more than she had been able to do in 1955.

The Queen presented to us in these plays is serious-minded and hard working. She was, by the way, extremely well played by each of the actresses cast, all of whom have suffered unfair comparison with Helen Mirren. The Queen was shown to be devout in the conduct of her duty, however painful the personal consequences might have been. She was political enough to use whatever approach is likely to be most effective to secure the interests and position of her family, as when fighting to increase the Civil List or in deciding to pay income tax.

In these plays, however, we never see such passion extending outside these particular royal concerns. No such ardour is demonstrated regarding issues such as health or social welfare. Obviously the ability of a constitutional monarch to demonstrate such concerns is necessarily limited, but arguably plays such as this did have an opportunity to reflect any other known strongly-felt views in the interests of her people.

One is reminded of the public distress at the failure of the royal family to return more quickly from Balmoral to London after the death of Diana. I also recall a comment allegedly made when the Royal Yacht Britannia was decommissioned some years ago and most unusually the Queen was widely believed to have been seen to shed a tear: "The only time she cries is when they take away her ******* yacht".

I appreciate that this remark was an unfair and possibly untrue view about someone not allowed to answer back. It does however bring to the fore an opportunity perhaps missed by this series. Instead of wearily re-treading so much old ground, why not show, if such was the case, that our Queen did share at least some of the concerns of her subjects during trying and turbulent times?

Divorce, the Civil List and The Commonwealth weren't really enough. For me these plays wasted an opportunity; they shone little if any new light on the Queen and her family and none on British life.

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews: "MARGOT"

2009-12-01T19:50:00.023Z

Following "Enid" and "Gracie!", BBC 4's "Women We Loved" series, which explored the agonies of fame, concluded with "Margot". Based upon Meredith Daneman's authoritative biography, the screenplay was written by Amanda Coe, who also wrote the excellent "Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story" (http:/colonelmoseleysstageblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/colonel-moseleys-tv-reviews-filth-mary.html.)

Directed by Otto Bathurst, the film presented the latter part of the career of Peggy Hookham, born in Reigate in Surrey in 1919, who was to become Dame Margot Fonteyn, the only prima ballerina assoluta of the Royal Ballet.

The title role amongst a heavy-weight cast was brilliantly played by the exquisite Anne-Marie Duff. Already of a certain age at the beginning of the film, the camera lingers long and often on the elegant and charismatic Margot who has a chameleon-like quality.

With her almost bulging childlike eyes, her face has a waif-like quality, not unlike Edith Piaf. The similarities do not end there for in that small, lithe body we have countless contradictions - the girl from the poor background applying herself to rise to the very highest level of her art.

We see the blood, sweat and tears literally entailed in dance training and the adulation heaped upon its greatest and most glamorous star.

Never a classical beauty, we learn of the cosmetic surgery on her nose and face and the pain from her arthritic feet. The blood soaked ballet slipper at the end of a performance may be a cliche, but here it reflected the truth. It was the price paid for the thirty two successive fouettees performed by Odette/Odille in "Swan Lake", arduous enough for any ballerina, let alone one over the age of forty.

Margot had worked and fought her way to achieve her success and global reputation. The pragmatic and almost cynical attitude of Ninette de Valois, acutely played by Lindsay Duncan, towards her slightly waning star, demonstrated the precarious quality of the hard-won fame of even a pre-eminent ballerina.

Before Nureyev's defection, Margot was a jet-setting superstar and icon, rubbing shoulders with Warhol and Elizabeth Taylor and really was "on the biscuit tins" (like Princess Diana was later to be "on the tea towels"). Staying at the top of the profession was as challenging as the ascent to success.

At this point Margot seemed to be "on the cusp" artistically. Clearly the Seymours and other up-and-coming ballerinas were laying claim to her crown and the physical demands of her art were taking their toll. The Royal Ballet even reduced her status to "visiting" artist rather than permanent prima ballerina. Dark clouds were massing on the horizon.

Then Nureyev appeared. The personal and artistic chemistry they forged elevated them even higher in the pantheon of an art form already predisposed to immortalise its leading figures.

This story begins with Nureyev's defection to the West in 1961. A wildly passionate bohemian, Nureyev sets out his stall from the beginning, impetuously getting a taxi from the airport to Margot's home, instead of meekly awaiting the car she had sent for him.

Nureyev, played by Michael Huisman, is head-turningly handsome and vital to the core. He is exotic and roughly sensual and his connection with Margot is evident from the outset. First sight of the hunky newcomer prompted Puck-like Sir Frederick Ashton, played by Sir Derek Jacobi, to gasp through a cloud of Silk Cut "Fu** me darling, he's better than Nijinsky. " He was not a bad judge, but it is not reported whether the reknowned choreographer also continued "And vada the bona lallies and dolly old eek."

We see the frisson created by contact between the pair hot, sweaty and panting in the rehearsal room. The atmosphere is electric and this supercharged partnership translated to the stage and allegedly the bedroom.

We see a raunchy love scene between Nureyev and Margot, twenty years his senior. Their liaisons are confirmed by Frederick Ashton, who saucily comments with more than a hint of Gielgud, that the boy had certainly "***ked the old girl into shape." Confusingly, in real life, it appears Ashton remarked that their relationship was platonic.

The did-they, didn't-they? question overhangs the play tiresomely. On the pro side, each was a highly-sexed athlete whose job required the closest of physical contact, separated by only the thinnest layer of lycra. Both were sensual, headstrong and emotional artists during the hedonistic height of the swinging 60's, all of which make it plausible that their friendship extended to the bedroom.

On the con side, Nureyev appears to have been predominantly gay. He certainly made no secret of long and short term relationships with men even whilst living under Margot's roof.

On the whole, I am inclined to believe that Rudolf was a bi- or pan-sexual faun as first presented by Diaghilev and that he and Margot were for a time lovers. It seems entirely understandable that the exhilaration of the dizzy heights to which their artistic partnership in the most ardent and physical of art forms should have taken them should find expression sexually.

Margot's uninhibited sexuality is also very apparent in her relationship with her husband, the philandering Panamanian diplomat, Roberto/Tito Arias, played by Con O'Neill. His, somewhat seedy, Arias has vocal mannerisms somewhere between Marlon Brando's Godfather and Ari Onassis, but his performance is rivetting.

We are introduced to Arias in the elegant high-ceilinged London drawing room when they meet again when one or both have been abroad. They couple excitedly clothed as though it were a clandestine liaison in a car park and then adjust their dress, pick up their gin and tonics and resume their conversation.

We learn that Arias pursued the celebrated ballerina for years. She, in her way, seems fascinated by his raffish charm. There is no doubt that during their long separations often on different continents Arias had affairs, which adds weight to the likelihood of Margot having a physical relationship with Nureyev.

The lifestyle of Arias seems to be taken from some B feature movie starring George Raft. We learn of Arias smuggling liquor and leading a failed coup in Panama. Ultimately in 1964 he was left paralysed after an attempt on his life. This was possibly after one dalliance too many with the wife of his opponent.

When Arias is injured, Margot flies to his side and nobly applies ice cubes to his parched lips and sleeps on the floor next to his hospital bed. For this nobility the paralysed Arias typically rewards his wife by fumbling at the starched bosom of the ward sister. Even paralysis, it seems, does not stop a cad being a cad.

Throughout the play we see extracts from various ballets. Margot speaks of the exotic stories from Swan Lake to Giselle involving transformation from princesses to swans, love, adventure, madness, death and spirits.

Scenes from the ballet are recreated under intense spotlights, giving a dreamlike quality. The viewer expects a crescendo of applause to follow, but there is only silence.

The more shocking events in Margot's life are treated similarly, as when she hears of the attempted assassination of Arias. She flees through more dimly-lit empty high ceilinged rooms and is eventually cradled in the arms of Nureyev in a comforting pas de deux.

The viewer is intended to make the connection between the overlap between the high drama of the ballet and Margot's own life. She adopts the role of heroine in numerous ballets and, with no thought for herself, does the same in real life. There is little distinction between the two.

As with most biopics, there seems to be one event or even thought which the writer considers the key to the soul of the subject. The clue to this sometimes comes from a parent who is often at least partially responsible for a particular trait or even kink.

In the case of Enid Blyton, her emotional development was stunted by the departure of her philandering father. Gracie Fields seems to have been seeking a way to let go of the ever-accelerating Rochdale tram that she had grabbed hold of as a young girl and from which she could never seem to release her grip.

For Margot, her mother BQ, assuredly played by Penelope Wilton, refers to her daughter's coping mechanism from childhood of packaging up elements of her life into neat boxes and stowing then away.

Considering the complexities of Margot's life as an ageing prima ballerina, this is entirely plausible. Margot is a pragmatist. She addresses problems and moves on. She improves her elocution with lessons and her nose and face with cosmetic surgery. Her arthritic feet are medicated or she just bears the pain. She overcomes a decline in her career by forging a famous partnership that thrills the world. Her husband is a philanderer and she compensates by an implausible affair with her new co-star. Her husband is injured and she sacrifices herself to be by his bedside and exhausts herself to earn the huge sums required to fund his private health care. She even learns to require payment by paper bags stuffed with cash.

Looking into Margot's slightly bewildered faun-like eyes during several recreated television interviews, one is never entirely sure that she completely grasps everything that is going on. Paradoxically, however, the dedicated and hard-working prima ballerina has tied up all the loose ends and each problem is neatly parcelled complete with its gorgeous bow.

What is unclear however is the extent to which Margot always succeeded in distinguishing the extreme romance of the exotic plot of the ballet from the melodrama, heights of adulation and depths of despair of her real life. Once each element was neatly in its box, it must have been difficult to distinguish one from the other.

As ever with biopics, the sting comes with the pithy statements over the end credits. We learn that Margot continued to perform into her 60's, despite being ravaged by arthritis brought on by the rigours of a dancer's life. Margot and Arias retired to live in poverty on a Panamanian ranch followed by their respective reletively early deaths. Thus everything that one feared fate had in store for them tragically came to pass, as it did with the death of Nureyev from AIDs some years later.

Unlike "Enid" and "Gracie!", it was difficult to grasp everything that "Margot" had to say. More questions were left unanswered. The viewer is not certain whether Margot and Rudolf were lovers. Nor is it clear whether the price paid for global superstardom and an ascent to the absolute summit of grace and beauty in the art of ballet was worth the physical and emotional agonies it entailed. Armed with her capacity to pack up and put away life's problems and a comprehensive blurring of the margins of art and real life, I suspect that Margot Fonteyn prima ballerina assoluta would not have had it any other way.

Colonel Moseley's Top Ten Favourite UK Sitcoms

2009-11-30T17:31:00.003Z

I could easily have listed twenty and have had to miss out Hancock's Half Hour, Steptoe & Son and Early Doors, but here are a personal top ten:

Gavin & Stacey
Yes, Minister
The Royle Family
dinnerladies
The Good Life
The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin
The High Life
Are You Being Served
To the Manor Born
Hi de Hi

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews: "GRACIE!"

2009-11-24T11:04:00.013Z

BBC 4's trio of biographical plays about "women we loved" from the last century continued with "Gracie!" with Jane Horrocks playing Gracie Fields.

The play was well-written by Nick Vivian, husband of la Horrocks. The overall effect was much warmer and more cheerful than the previous play centred on the formidable Enid Blyton. This is not to say that our Gracie wasn't formidable. She certainly was, but in all the right ways. The play celebrates an international star and a genuinely nice and unselfish woman. Until the war Gracie truly was loved by her public.

An accomplished performer and effervescent personality in her own right, Jane Horrocks recreates Gracie Fields as a hugely talented and utterly irrepressible entertainer: a singer, comedienne and for a time the highest paid film actress in the world.

It was interesting to watch Andrew Marr's documentary regarding the 1930's a day or so later with its confirmation of her amazing fame and the role this quirky Lancastrian seemed to have played in helping the British endure such hard and strange times. Marr also expressed bewilderment over the plot of "Sing as we go" which for him, it seems, fell a long way short of Bergman and Fellini and he described as the worst film he had ever seen.

Jane Horrocks performance as Gracie Fields is multi-faceted and entirely authentic. Clutching a silk scarf, she captures her style and mannerisms in songs ranging from the romantic and sentimental to the comic and patriotic. Her Gracie is unbending yet fragile, brash yet shy and forever giving, particularly when it came to "our lads".

The Gracie we see is a gifted force of nature, but grounded and sane. She is clearly the daughter of her working class parents. Her mother once put the amiable but Italian Monty Banks in his place with the memorable phase "We don't do that in Rochdale".

Her father tellingly looks back to Gracie's days as a youngster in Lancashire, dangerously running to keep up with the ever-speeding tram. Until some semblance of a happier private life emerged, this helter skelter charge seemed to sum up Gracie's existence: "I was running for my life. I couldn't stop." More could perhaps have been made of this as the motif of her career.

Our Gracie faces up to the tribulations of life like one of her mill-girl-made-good film characters. She was completely and sincerely devoted to the idea of doing her bit to cheer up the troops.

She overcomes cervical cancer and a radical hysterectomy and puts exhaustion to one side to go on tour as soon as war is declared to entertain our soldiers. In return they adore her and take advantage of her good-natured willingness to perform until she drops. This repeatedly takes it toll on her relationship with Monty Banks

This play is rather more an ensemble piece than "Enid", although everything revolves around Gracie. Tom Hollander plays Monty Banks the Italian film director and former Keystone Cop, who would eventually become her husband.

His twinkly-eyed performance combines humour and wit with an inner sadness that captures the delicate position of the partner of a great star whose motives are always under suspicion.

Banks is seen with Gracie on tour endlessly trying to stop her harming herself by giving too much to her public. The humiliations of his role are presented early in the piece as he is forced to sit outside whilst Gracie talks over touring arrangements with Basil Dean, the director of several of her successful films and now heading ENSA.

Clearly no love is lost between Dean and Banks. Banks does not think much of Dean's skills as a director and cheekily interrupts the meeting and succeeds in puncturing Dean's rather pompous balloon and announcing his continued presence. Gracie is much amused by Monty's intervention and clearly appreciated his genuine concern for her welfare. Later after many confrontations, when Monty has come second to the needs of British servicemen, Gracie admits tearfully that it is he who keeps her going and make her laugh. He helps her function.

One of the other excellent characters in a strong cast is Gracie's accompanist, Harry Parr Jones. A martyr to constipation, we have the running joke of graphic daily reports on the success or other wise of his "motions". More poignantly, it is obvious to everyone other than Gracie that the curmudgeonly Welshman Harry, who leaves the excellent piano available to him in the Irish Guards to accompany her on what turns into an exhausting world tour, is in fact in love with her, but too reticent to admit it. He plays down his role with superb poignancy.

Much of the melodrama of the play stems from the venomous press vilification that follows the alleged desertion of Gracie and her Italian husband at the beginning of the war. He is branded a fascist and laughably even a member of Al Capone's Gang as well as being accused of taking the huge sum of £100,000 out of he country with a fortune in jewelry. We see a frenzied press pack, antagonistic audiences booing her rendition of "There'll always be an England" and even a young boy spitting at her to express public loathing.

At the end of an exhausting tour, which entertained the troops and raised a great deal of money, Gracie says with simple dignity on the newsreel that it is good to be back home.

We then cut to her post-war appearance at the London Palladium. With Monty in the wings, Gracie sings meaningfully Piaf's "La vie en rose" in its English form,"Take me to your heart again" and is rewarded by warm applause and box office records.

In reality however, Gracie Field's reputation never really recovered with the British public. Gracie and Monty lived quietly in Capri and within two years he had died of an heart attack.

Nick Vivian's play succeeded. It presented a hugely talented performer who was not only a star but genuinely concerned to do her bit and, as she put it, "not to let my country down". She could "not forget all the love" her public gave her.

Her desire to cheer up the lads was genuine and selfless and it is deeply saddening that sections of the press found it necessary to traduce her good name in such a vile and enduring manner. Given her sincere desire to entertain during the war at whatever risk - as evidenced by the fact that the Germans bombed the hotel where she had stayed in Arras only shortly after her departure - it is difficult to imagine a more hurtful and slanderous interpretation of her conduct and motives. Happily this entertaining and rounded account helps redress the balance.

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews: "ENID".

2009-11-22T11:19:00.008Z

BBC 4's series of occasional twentieth century biopics continues with three plays depicting the lives of "women we loved". The sequence began with a portrait of children's author Enid Blyton who by her death in 1968 had sold 600 million books world-wide.

There will follow lives of film and theatre star Gracie Fields and prima ballerina Margot Fonteyn. Each story promises to cast a different light on the burdens of fame in the time before the cheap celebrity of Heat magazine and reality TV in the jungle.

"Enid " is very much a vehicle for it's lustrous star Helena Bonham Carter who plays the role with elan. Her fastidious eye for detail is matched by impeccable production values reflected by every aspect of the production from casting to locations, set and costume design to writing. The sense of period and atmosphere of the piece is consistently precise and authentic.

As a child I dipped an occasional toe into her books. "Noddy" was aimed at too young an age group for me which left the "Famous Five" and "Secret Seven".

My parents and teachers never directed my reading or influenced my taste. I just went to the public library and selected whatever I fancied. For me the Secret Seven were too frantic and left me cold. The Famous Five however seemed more credible and accessible even though their middle class existence and endless summers of bicycle picnics, breathless adventures in remote coves and sumptuous teas was a million miles away from my suburban life. On the whole I preferred Richmal Crompton's Just William series which were not so formulaic, were better written and more entertaining.

This play set out to explain the events of Enid Blyton's life and their practical consequences in what amounted to a study in cause and effect.

We see Blyton as the beloved daughter of a successful cutlery salesman, Thomas Carey Blyton. Her previously secure bourgeois world was turned upside down when her adored, adoring and adulterous father left the family home. The shock of this event apparently impacted upon Enid's gynecological development. It also prompted her to retreat to a secure private world of her writing which was repetitive, simple, familiar and reassuring.

The devastating loss of her father impacted on every aspect of Enid life. She blamed her mother entirely and appeared to cease any emotional development altogether. From this period, Enid devoted herself ruthlessly to the promotion of her writing and the calculated "Blyton brand", even down to her distinctive signature.

Enid Blyton the author was a mass of contradictions. She seemed forever a child and thought and wrote as a child yet had a chillingly modern grasp of the need to preserve brand integrity even when this involved distorting the truth. The airbrushed version of the famous Enid Blyton beloved of children everywhere and her devoted daughters bore little resemblance to the underlying reality.

The play places much emphasis of the dysfunctional relationship of Blyton with her daughters Gillian and Imogen. Self-obsessed and dismissive, Enid is seen to lack a genuine maternal instinct and to be irritated and offended when her children cried or disappointed her in any way. There are particularly affecting scenes when Enid offers kindness and warm hospitality to visiting young fans whilst her own daughters sit upstairs with their nurse excluded from the fun.

Both daughters are eventually sent away to school to be brought out for staged publicity shots of the happy Blyton family when needed for publicity.

Enid was similarly unkind toward her first husband, publisher Hugh Pollock who had been useful in establishing her career but was destined to alcoholism and depression and to be divorced after fifteen years. Enid's manipulative side is shown in her insistence that he admit to adultery to preserve her crucial reputation. This was agreed to on the condition that he was allowed unrestricted access to his daughters after the divorce. Enid did not keep her part of the bargain and also used her power as an important writer to insist that her publisher husband was subsequently dismissed and blackballed. He was effectively ruined.

Enid's initially adulterous relationship with amiable Kenneth Darrell Walters moved seamlessly onto marriage and cohabitation following the divorce from Pollock. He seemed a compliant and fatherly figure - perhaps reminding Enid of her own father . He did little to impede her workaholic ways and overweening ambition and life fell into its required pattern of the advancement of Enid's career with the girls safely away at school and any danger to the Blyton brand carefully expunged.

We see Enid miscarry a baby in her late forties and seek immediate solace in the creation and promotion of her wildly successful Noddy character. Tellingly, in one scene Enid tenderly arranges a model of Noddy prominently in front of and obscuring a picture of her daughters from whom she was clearly growing yet more distant.

The overall impression created by Helena Bonham Carter was of something of a monster. Her passions appeared only truly roused when venting anger at accusations that she did not write her books or expressing frustration at the BBC for failing to take her work sufficiently seriously.

In the latter stages of he play, we see the first signs of the memory loss and detachment that heralded her early descent into dementia. Given the havoc she thoughtlessly created for others, this sad and isolated fate almost seems her just dessert.

Looking for positives, one could not help but admire Enid Blyton's single-minded belief in her own talent and tenacity in promoting her work on what became a global level. Her ruthless business acumen and awareness of the importance of marketing were well-ahead of her time.

Neither this industriousness or the shock of the desertion of her beloved father, however, excuses her apparently cold and spiteful attitude toward her daughters and first husband and a willingness to distort the truth to promote her product and image.

We are left with a woman irreparably damaged by the loss of her womanising father who immediately ceased developing physically and emotionally. This cost her immediate family huge pain and seemed to give her the capacity to produce a body of escapist writing which packaged up for young children a prim, twee world that was cosy and reassuring but fundamentally unreal and false.

Perhaps the output of a woman self-evidently emotionally underdeveloped, if not retarded, and arguably a vindictive egoist, didn't actually harm any of her young readers beyond depicting an unreal middle class world where children had adventures during long hot summers by the seaside, where the only working class were criminals and there was always lashings of ginger beer for tea. More by luck than judgment I think.

In any event "Enid" was a thought-provoking and well constructed piece of work. Its star was entrancing.

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews: "MARGARET!"

2009-02-27T18:11:00.020Z

"For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf,
And the strength of the Wolf is the Pack "
~Rudyard Kipling, "The Law of the Jungle"

It seems apt that the BBC 2 drama “Margaret!” should be shown yesterday at the end of the awards season which started long-ago with the Golden Globes, passed through the BAFTA's and terminated with last weekend's Oscars.

This is not because prizes may well come the way of this piece of work. Given its quality they probably will. To me it seems apt because of its similarity to the compilations of clips shown to illustrate the nominees or the career of someone about to be honoured. In such montages the common thread is the featured actor; otherwise dissimilar and sometimes dissonant scenes are strung together, linked only by one central figure. Incorporating several diverse styles and moods, “Margaret!” in some ways creates the same impression.

Written by Richard Cottan, responsible for the brilliant “Hancock and Joan” (reviewed on this blog on 31 March 2008), the play charts the fall from power of Margaret Thatcher over eleven dramatic days in 1990. It pacily covers a lot of ground and its occasionally dark tone and atmosphere sometimes oscillate in a manic way. As Margaret Thatcher, Lindsay Duncan ranges strikingly between Glenn Close in “Damages” to Cate Blanchett in “Elizabeth” and from Caligula in “I, Claudius” to Margot Leadbetter in “The Good Life”.

The mood of the piece shifts as rapidly as events and Margaret’s fortunes. At the beginning we have complacency as Margaret blithely prepares for the Lord Mayor’s banquet. At the same time her morbidly ovine nemesis in the shape of Geoffrey Howe is writing his resignation statement. Although it did not actually start his leader on her disastrous downhill path, Howe’s dramatic speech gave her an irresistible shove down a hill that, all too soon, turned into a veritable Cresta Run.

From the outset, Margaret’s stubbornness and overwhelming pride are compounded by an arrogant refusal to consider sane advice. Hubris is in the air and it is plain that a personal tragedy of Greek dimensions is brewing. This is all set against a Shakespearean backdrop of storming irritably around the Palace of Westminster surrounded by flunkies and yes-men whilst plotting continues behind pillars, in smoky tea rooms and in tentative coded telephone calls with pauses as meaningful as Pinter. The palace setting is no accident; we are concerned with life in all its duplicity at Margaret’s court as if it had been that of good Queen Bess or Catherine de Medici.

As PM, Margaret is as regal and imperious as the ruffle on her gown to be worn to the Lord Mayor’s banquet. She flounces around with courtiers being fed only information she wants to hear which ultimately costs her throne. In a telling scene, Rosemary Leach, entirely plausible as the real Queen, discreetly hints at the dangers posed by her ministers. In a later reflective moment Margaret acknowledges her insight.

Some attempt is made to explain how she grew into what she became. Margaret poignantly confides that her parents had wanted a boy and treated her as such. We learn of the huge influence of her Councillor father Alf Roberts and how young Margaret followed him around the committee rooms of Grantham, mixing in his very male political world.

As a recurrent theme, we hear her repeated childhood recitation from Kipling's "The Law of the Jungle" with tell-tale Lincolnshire vowels, later to be expunged only to emerge in her memorable cry of “frit” in the Commons. These few lines speak volumes - of elocution lessons, self-improvement, the values that made the Empire and the bloody battle for survival as a grown woman in the jungle of politics.

We watch her confrontation with a sour and dismissive Ted Heath before standing against him as Tory leader and her bitter refusal to take his call of congratulation when she won the general election. The strength of Margret's vitriol when roused still surprises after all these years; she seethes and fulminates in almost Dalek mode "You don't make friends with your enemies, you destroy them!"

We note her Pygmalion-like willingness to do whatever was necessary to achieve her ends: her tutelage by Airey Neave to secure the leadership and later change of speech patterns and demeanour under her Henry Higgins PR guru to increase her electoral appeal.

In what has become a cliché, we observe the scant attention paid to her daughter Carol even to the extent of overlooking her examinations during the election. We also see her blind favouritism towards the charmless Mark, exemplified by the scene when she wipes his shoe whilst awaiting the telephone call summoning her to the Palace to kiss hands as the first woman Prime Minister.

Throughout, we also see a bastion of normality, common sense and loyalty in husband Denis. He calls her “love” like any husband just back from the golf club, which is not something one could imagine from any of the Tory grandees on show, even Norman Tebbit. Convincingly played by Ian Mc Diarmid as one of the few men on show with any degree of genuineness, Denis is a constant, always there before, during and after her career to pick up the pieces and pour very stiff drinks.

Against her hard core of truly loyal supporters –Denis, Crawfie, her dresser and Norman Tebbit are balanced her party.

Necessarily their characters are presented somewhat one dimensionally. Amongst the conspirators, as Michael Heseltine, Oliver Cotton is all blond mane and eyes burning with loathing. Ultimately he learns to his chagrin that he who wields the dagger does not get to wear the crown. Robert Hardy gives convincingly rheumy-eyed patrician performance as Willie Whitelaw, whilst Kevin McNally conveys Kenneth Clarke with an accurately blokish matter-of-factness.

Occasionally, the characterisation slips over somewhat into caricature as with Margaret’s PPS Peter Morrison who comes to resemble Piers Fletcher-Dervish in the “New Statesman”. He is shown asleep with feet on his desk as the enemy were gathering strength and generally underestimating the opposition. It is suggested that this ultimately had more than a little to do with the PM’s demise. One kept expecting Alan Clark - intelligently played by Michael Cochrane - to poke Peter/Piers in the eye or give him a Chinese burn, just like Alan B’stard.

Counteracting the lightening sketches of many of the leading players is John Session’s Geoffrey Howe whose voice and slightly comatose delivery capture his subject authentically. The profound eventual effect of his resignation speech renders its deadpan delivery all the more dramatic.

Flashback also proves useful in explaining the depth of loathing of her senior cadre of ministers as when Margaret ruthlessly belittles several at a reception to mark the tenth anniversary of her administration. By that stage the plotting seems to be taking place before her very eyes and Margaret hands out ritual humiliations in public – as when imperiously ordering Geoffrey Howe to fetch her shawl or insultingly patronising an amiable Cranley Onslow, influential chairman of the Tory backbencher’s 1922 Committee.

The combination of explanatory flashback and tense ongoing narrative is intended to bring the drama to its ultimate tragic conclusion. Devices such as clunky sound effects and grainy lighting straight from “Damages” are interposed with revealing reflective monologues to camera from “I, Claudius”.

The growing personal discomfort of an exhausted Margaret supported by her husband and dresser, receiving vitamin shots, drinking a lot of scotch and taking solace in work is set against a backcloth of silly unhelpful tears from a loyalist, who looked not unlike John Selwyn Gummer, and the on-going self-serving calculation of those slyly waiting to benefit from the impending assassination.

Throughout the play, Lindsay Duncan rides the wave of the enormously larger than life character like a master surfer. We see Elizabeth I, Patty Hewes, Caligula, and Eliza Doolittle combined into one fascinating giant actress bestriding the stage like a permed colossus.

Her Margaret is tireless yet exhausted, worn yet glamorous, vicious and loving and knowing but gullible: altogether a mass of contradictions.

Lindsay Duncan manages to put aside her own political views on Mrs Thatcher to present this multi-faceted personality. Her creation is much too large and complex to be described as just "sympathetic". She is vulnerable and lovable at times but she is also harsh, vengeful and unkind. At others she is maternal and considerate. She is basically a force of nature with a place in history, not in a confining pigeon hole. Ultimately, history must judge for it is there that she has her place.

This drama shows accurately enough how certain of her flaws were compounded by the faults of some of her supporters and coincided with effective action by the ambitious schemers who opposed her. Thus the scenario for her tragic fall to be acted out was set and the price for her hubris was paid.

Looking back upon the ten days or so that let to her downfall, it was apparent to most contemporary observers that Mrs Thatcher was doomed from the first ballot and perhaps from when Geoffrey Howe sat down at the end of his resignation statement. So powerful and compelling was Lindsay Duncan's performance, however, that we focus largely upon Margaret's own myopic perception of events and how she developed into what she became.

Such was my fascination of the complexities of Margaret’s personality, the multi layered performance of Lindsay Duncan and the thoughtful writing that I was never really fully engaged with the mechanics of her assassination or the perspective of the “lesser men”, if not “pygmies”, that slew and succeeded her.

As drama “Margaret!” was wide ranging and outlined many of her formative influences as well as explaining how the “coup” or “assassination” – call it what you will - took place. It was entertaining and thought-provoking.

Leaving to one side the specifics of her policies, Margaret Thatcher had become a formidable figure by the end of her time in power. She had also been much affected by the experience - not all for the better.

Whilst I would leave it to others to decide if, as the saying goes, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” one thing is clear: “Prolonged terms of office may damage and delude”. Accordingly, our legislators might consider whether it is in the best interests of us all to place some limit upon prime ministerial terms.

The almost casual ease with which some close colleagues - members of her own "Pack" - unseated Margaret, in a manoeuvre unheard of for an incumbent Prime Minister, owed much to party rules that enabled a relatively small cadre to invoke procedures resulting in her removal.

Remembering the young Margaret's incantation of Kipling's "Law of the Jungle", it is ironic that the mother of deregulation and the acknowledged master of detail should owe her demise to the fact that other big beasts of the jungle knew its Law better than she.

In hindsight, perhaps the key "Law of the Parliamentary Jungle" is twofold: first, the devil is in the detail, so know the ground rules and secondly, whilst the opposition sits in front of you, your enemies sit behind.

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews : Countdown and The Antiques Rogue Show

2009-01-15T12:17:00.009Z

Since the turn of the year, not much on television has captured my imagination – other than the new presenters of Channel 4’s tea-time institution, “Countdown”.

After the relative tension of the last few months under the former regime, both have made a promising start with Jeff Stellings personable, witty and competent and Rachel Riley charming and more-than-adequately numerate.

Rachel, in particular, has had to put up with the twitterings of our press comparing her with her illustrious predecessor in terms of performance and dress. I guess that goes with the territory and must be endured for the other questionable rewards of “celebrity.” One constructive suggestion however: if she is to continue to wear such attractively lofty high heels, the producers should consider raising the board a little, since her continued stooping to put up the letters may cause injury and give rise to a claim for some kind of work-induced, repetitive strain injury.

The Champion of Champions competition, with which the series started, did not afford much opportunity for her to shine at hard sums, since the competitors virtually always find the solution and, if they don’t, it’s often insoluble anyway. Her role should be more challenging with less brilliant competitors and may give more opportunities to shine as a maths wizz.

Most presenters without Tourettes, impaired hearing or hideous disfigurement could make a reasonable stab at either job, so hopefully the good ship “Countdown” will continue to sail on for many a comfy tea time with the new pairing at the helm.

Otherwise, apart from the excellent and informative “Victorian Farm”, my attention has only really been grabbed by the unfortunately punningly titled “Antiques Rogue Show”, both on BBC 2.

Written and directed by Norman Hull and billed as a “drama documentary”, it told the fascinating story of the Greenhalgh’s, who operated a high-end art forgery business from their home on a council estate in Bolton. Last year, the family were the subject of a similar pun-fest entitled “The Artful Codgers” in the entertaining “Cutting Edge” series on Channel 4.

The programme told the story of middle-aged Shaun Greenhalgh, played with a kind of brooding, mysterious matter-of-factness by Jeremy Swift, who lived with his octogenarian parents George and Olive (Peter Vaughan and Liz Smith) and a taciturn elderly aunt who knitted and watched, as though observing events at the guillotine.

From his humble shed in the back garden we see Shaun produce a headless statue carved from translucent alabaster. Equally importantly, his father George devised a plausible provenance and managed to sell what became the “Amarna Princess” to the Bolton Museum for £440,000 or so.

The principals are unfortunately not presented as entirely rounded characters. George is seen as wily and persuasive, but a nice old man, apt to wander off into repetitious tales of how he was wounded in the war. It is not wholly clear whether this was just a bluff to obfuscate cunning capable of devising credible provenances and the sang froid necessary to “sell” a variety of pieces to highly-qualified experts in museums and galleries all over the country.

Peter Vaughan carries off the portrayal fluently, but we are left with an enigma. Similarly Liz Smith oscillates between the dull housewife, uninvolved and frightened by the intrusions into her home and the cunning old lady well-aware of what was going on.

It seems highly possible that they both understood the whys and wherefores of their little cottage industry and that, for them, the safest and most effective course lay in giving the impression of a charmingly bewildered eccentricity.

Their son Shaun proved to be the greatest puzzle. We are not entirely certain as to why he lived with his parents in his late forties. The reflective scenes in the wood had a Dennis Potter feel, racked with unexplained angst and repression. He is touchingly presented as a large and unprepossessing child-man, deliberate in speech and amiable in manner, who clearly has a gift in replicating works of art of all kinds. As with his parents, this innocence seems at odds with the guile and calculation essential to become a successful forger

One wonders what the motivation of the Greenhalghs' was to embark upon forgery on such a scale. Other than buying a car and funding low-key living expenses, the large sums received did not fund an extravagant lifestyle. The family kept themselves very much to themselves, although the impression was given that George had a reputation for tall tales and most in the local pub took what he said with more than a pinch of salt.

In some ways the answer to the question “Why do it?” was simply “Because we can”. The family seemed proud that they had the skills between them to make, document and sell the forgeries. Perhaps the money wasn’t really the issue; what they wanted to do was win the game.

Tellingly, at one point Shaun resentfully asked, “Would anyone buy my unmade bed or dirty knickers?” Here he encapsulated the main point that the play seemed to wish to make. In “Art” today “provenance” seems to be everything. The value of a work is determined by its provenance and that of its creator, not necessarily by its intrinsic merit. It could be argued that Shaun Greenhalgh in his shed on an estate in Bromley Cross to the north of unfashionable Bolton did not have the right provenance – even though much his work might have been just as good as the original.

The answer might ultimately be more prosaic. Perhaps Shaun’s only talent was to replicate and forge, albeit with skill and ingenuity. At his trial, his barrister reportedly said his client’s “one outlook was from his garden shed” and that he discovered many years ago that he had “no style of his own” and that “all he could do was copy”. He summed up Shaun’s career as a forger as “trying to perfect the love he had for such arts”.

The viewer was presented with the virtual genius apparent in a range of remarkable work, considerable élan in faking provenance and Shaun’s understated rage at the credentials and connection it took to succeed in the manifestly superficial and elitist art world. In the light of this, it doesn’t wash that Shaun Greenhalgh was just “perfecting his love for such arts”. He was making a point and getting one over on the shallow, London-centred art establishment. He and his parents may not have been clever enough to get away with it entirely, but they did so for a number of years. Together, they clearly proved a point.

Given the susceptibility of the art establishment to such fakery, one is tempted to wonder how many other of Shaun’s works might be in museums and galleries – and how widespread is the traffic in forgeries generally? What proportion of the art on display around the world is “genuine” – whatever “genuine” means?

More importantly, if a piece is created with skill and even genius, does its provenance really matter quite so much? These questions go to the very heart of both "value" and "values".

The upside of this absorbing and well-performed play was that it prompted so many questions; its frustrating downside was that it never really approached answering them…or did it?

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews: Hutch ~ High Society's Favourite Gigolo

2008-11-28T09:21:00.012Z

As part of the High Society series, Channel 4 recently showed “High Society’s Favourite Gigolo” which documented and partially dramatised the life of black Granada-born pianist, singer and society entertainer Leslie “Hutch” Hutchinson.

The programme told the rags-to-riches-to-comparative-rags story of a black interloper who entered – in so many ways – the highest echelons of the British establishment between the Wars. For many Hutch embodied the chic of cafe society: he was talented, attractive and glamorous and in many ways Britain’s first black superstar.

The format of the programme was conventional enough and began with use of still pictures and film to cover his Caribbean origins, early academic promise, the rejection of medicine for music and the move to Harlem and thence Paris. A little chillingly it is noted that Hutch never saw or spoke to his parents again after deserting his studies in New York. Perhaps the man couldn’t have been all that warm and fluffy

Dramatic reconstruction is used to good effect to depict his gay affair in Paris with Cole Porter and subsequently filthy-rich hostess Edwina Mountbatten and his move to London. Ubi Ugoala plays the beautiful young Hutch convincingly.

We see the bisexual – indeed pan-sexual Hutch – being the centre of attention in a world of smoky nightclubs full of bright young things in evening dress. He performs sophisticated songs of Porter and Coward at the piano at Quaglinos, Café de Paris, Café Anglais and other fashionable venues frequented by high society.

His eminence, glamour and success are almost unimaginable – bringing huge wealth, a house in Hampstead, Rolls Royce, clothes, and everything he desired including a string of famous lovers of both sexes, reputedly extending from Tallulah Bankhead and Merle Oberon to Ivor Novello.

As all this continues, we learn Hutch had left at home his wife, a black Anglo-Chinese girl, Ella Byrd. No attempt was made to show her in the programme and we are told that not even a photograph survives. Her point of view is un-stated. The audience is left to wonder what her life during the height of his success and frenetic love-life must have been. How did she live, behave and, most importantly, feel? Similarly how did his daughter Lesley and several more children from various mothers cope with such a father and what effect did it have on them? This is touched upon in passing but deserved more thorough analysis.

So much did Hutch symbolise the black cabaret star of the 1920’s that he was immortalised as Chokey in Evelyn Waugh’s “Decline and Fall”. Perhaps more than any other work this reflected the way in which he fitted into this decadent world where he played divinely and was just crazy to meet the aristocracy. Chokey embodied the stereotypes of the time: “My race” said Chokey “is essentially an artistic race. We have the child’s love of song and colour and the child’s natural good taste. All you white folks despise the poor coloured man.” Free use is made of the “‘n’ word” and the seedy thrill and shock that sex between the races engendered. To some extent this programme peddled the same stereotype and scandalous frisson.

Hutch is shown entering the lavish Mayfair parties at which he was to entertain the greatest in the land by the servant’s entrance, but there is no detailed review of the bitterness or other reaction it prompted in him. We see him engaged in explicit embraces with Edwina in public, but are given no real explanation as to how this actually worked at a time when such things were very much beyond the pale.

An enormous scandal ensued when a newspaper alleged that a rich and well-connected hostess had been caught in compromising circumstances with a “coloured man”. This led Edwina Mountbatten - reputedly on the King's insistence - to sue successfully for libel over inaccurate claims that she had an affair with Paul Robeson. Subsequently, the programme shows the liaison between Edwina and Hutch became even more brazen to the alleged, very graphic, chagrin of Lord Louis.

The affair continues outlandishly with no real explanation of the practicalities or the motives and feelings of those involved. The viewer may assume simple lust and wantonness and possibly arrogance and carefree hedonism. We have no idea of love or affection or any insight into their own perception of the risks being undertaken and where the outrageous behaviour might end.

We see Lord Louis’ alleged bitterness and the establishment taking its revenge. Despite his fame, Hutch was never again invited to appear in a Command Performance nor was his tireless performance to troops and public throughout the War recognised by any honour. Similarly, his name was never again mentioned in the Beaverbrook press.

It seems clear that Hutch paid a massive price for his wealth, fame and indiscretion. He reputedly had relationships with various other members of the royal family and appears to have been cast into outer darkness by way of retribution. Social ostracism was mirrored by the destruction of his career as a performer. Today, a celebrity might try to resurrect a career on reality TV in the jungle or Big Brother house but not then.

His fall from grace was virtually Faustian as in the post-war years engagements in night clubs dried up. By the 1960’s discotheques had replaced many of the up-market supper clubs at which he might have performed. Hutch he was forced to work low down in the bill in sparsely attended shows at the end of seaside piers and even holiday camps.

As his fortune diminished in consequence of lack of work and gambling, he was obliged to sell his London home to pay tax and other debts and to move into a small flat. Ultimately these pressures and increased drinking damaged his looks and his health deteriorated, leading to a premature death from pneumonia at the age of 69. Only forty two mourners attended his funeral

One wondered whether an interview during his later years might cast light on his motives and view of the world and himself. Sadly, all we see is an apparently shallow and damaged man dropping names to impress. We do not even see the famous charmer of yore.

I wish it had been made easier for the viewer to understand him more but we seemed mainly to be left with a list of unanswered questions. What was his relationship with his parents really like? Was he just a gigolo who used his sexual prowess to get on? Was he used or the user? Who was hurt more by such relationships? How could he treat his wife like that? What was her perspective? Why couldn’t he have been a better father to his many children? How much was he affected by the discrimination about his colour? Why didn’t he feel more empathy for other black people in this country? As to whether the story was really worth telling without trying harder to answer these questions more fully, I’m not sure it was.

If it had been possible to address more of these issues, instead of the public's sniggering inclination to dwell upon his endowment and gossip of Royal conquests, we might have struggled towards a clearer understanding of the man. As it is, we are left with an indelibly sad impression of a superficial, sexually voracious exhibitionist without conscience who was prey to his selfish urges and who, Icarus-like, fell from a great height to a dismal end. My hope is that this is only part of the story and that the whole truth about a beautiful and talented but flawed man may one day be told.

One point is however crystal clear: hell hath no fury like the British Establishment toward those that overstep the mark and get above themselves.

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews: "In Love With Barbara"

2008-11-07T18:24:00.014Z

BBC 4 seems to have developed a speciality in quirky plays focussing upon British icons of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Many tragi-comic figures have received the BBC 4 treatment, including comedians Frankie Howerd, Tony Hancock and Kenneth Williams and trailblazing TV cook, Fanny Craddock.

The latest in an entertaining sequence was “In Love With Barbara” written by Jacquetta May, dealing with larger-than-life, Baroque romantic novelist and health-food guru, Barbara Cartland.

The parallels with Fanny Craddock are numerous from pronounced maquillage and startling frocks to outrageous personality and views, all combining to shock, amuse and grab the media spotlight. In doing so, Barbara made piles of money decades before celebrity chefs, popular novelists and even reality TV stars trod the same path to wealth and passing fame or notoriety - whatever the correct term might be.

The production demonstrates the usual lavish values of BBC 4. Sets, costumes and particularly the cars are authentic and appropriately luxe.

Her early life is reflected briefly with a scene straight from E.F.Nesbitt’s “The Railway Children”. Barbara sits demurely with her harassed mother on the steamy platform with soldiers in khaki in the background being told that, with the death of her father, money would be short and that the education of her two brothers at Charterhouse would be a priority.

It would be necessary for Barbara to be sacrificed and learn useful skills such as shorthand and typing to be able to make her way in the world. Selflessly, Barbara acquiesced, applied herself and the die was cast for the early part of her life.

We see the young Barbara hone her journalistic skills and being paid by newspapers for snippets of social gossip. She began to write romantic fiction and set the scene for a productive career, which resulted in 723 novels. Her difficult first marriage is convincingly portrayed with flashes of drunkenness and an unsatisfactory sex life with much resultant knocking on locked bedroom doors whilst hot tears dampen pillows within.

After a scandalous and humiliating divorce, the second marriage to a nice-enough, war-damaged aristo didn’t seem to move Barbara to huge enthusiasm. Her coolness matched her sniffy distaste upon seeing her baby daughter Raine suffering from a bout of infantile eczema.

The traumas of unhappy marriage and trials of motherhood seem to have influenced her attitude on such matters for the rest of her life. Whenever in doubt, Barbara sought solace in front of her trusty typewriter and escaped to an idealised world inhabited by romantic heroes with chiseled jaws and virginal heroines.

As the young Barbara, Sinead Matthews conveyed the multi-faceted quality of her character and the squeaky, cut-glass voice of her time and class wonderfully. Her somewhat gawky and toothy young Barbara was able to manifest vulnerability, drive, hard work, common sense and silliness in quick succession.

Her scene before a charity ball, dressed as an ocean liner, with three funnelled hat and port-holes below, summed up her vivacious charm. She fell somewhere between Joyce Grenfell and Gertrude Lawrence: all shrill gaiety on the brink of bullied despair.

Perhaps the key relationship in the play was with her adored brother Ronald, solidly played by Tom Burke. He contrived a kind of listless, good-natured idealism and integrity somehow typical of his inter-war generation. He was clearly a good sort, but would only amount to something with the drive and support of his devoted sister.

We see Barbara support him financially and emotionally, shaping his career as an independent MP. She had the practical common sense and energy to mastermind his career, canvass and generally take care of him.

Their bond is evident in quiet holidays together in pre-war Germany, cheaply signposted by brown shirts walking around in the background, just like in Cabaret. There appeared to be the frisson of an exchanged glance between a brown shirt and shirtless Ronald by a sunlit stream, but I may be mistaken. Such bat squeaks of desire are necessarily difficult to pin down.

The elephant in the room during much of the play is an unspoken unease regarding relationship of brother and sister. The undercurrent leaves one to wonder whether any guilt stemming from repressed attraction played a part in creating the extreme romanticism of Barbara’s fiction.

The loss of her brother at Dunkirk prompted an excruciating agony of grief which was instantly converted into another headlong immersion in her romantic stories at her typewriter. For the rest of her life Barbara needed to have the reassurance of feeling his presence near her from the other side, and was disturbed when it was not evident.

Much of the play centres upon Barbara’s prime in the 1970’s. By this time she was a wealthy and successful novelist, living in a mansion assisted by her son and dealing autocratically with a large staff, producing twenty or so romances a year.

She was ahead of her time in truly exploiting the media to promote her writing and fearlessly diversified into areas such as singing romantic songs with full orchestra to promote the Cartland brand.

During this period Barbara invented herself. She breakfasted in bed issuing orders to staff like Madame de Pompadour. She had become a heavily made-up creature in yards of pink chiffon, clutching a Pekinese and became a virtual parody of herself, as when she forbade new staff to wear trousers.

We see her developing relationship with Lord Louis Mountbatten, played with a kind of laconic restraint by David Warner, that gave no incentive to warm to the character.

Their relationship is depicted as essentially flirtatious, lightweight and a little silly. She declares him to be England’s last hero and he is flattered by her attention. They converse initially in the back of his Bentley – in what looked like the fictitious episode of which we are warned at the beginning of the play. They lunch and dance romantically al fresco. Barbara introduces him to her health products and they collaborate upon a novel with a naval setting.

Although their liaisons are an innocent and pleasant way to pass the time, Barbara clearly thinks Mountbatten will propose marriage and he is seen trying to convince his family on the telephone that he has no such intention.

Her flirtation with Mountbatten leads the viewer to worry that she will inevitably be hurt by his rejection. Barbara’s delusion is never really shattered, since before the issue is tested, we have news of Mountbatten’s tragic death in a terrorist bombing. Yet again, Barbara negated her grief by announcing to her staff that there was no such thing as death and taking immediate refuge in her work.

The recurring leitmotif of Barbara’s life appeared to be seeking asylum in her invented pink romantic bubble, whenever events made the twentieth century too ghastly.

Anne Reid brilliantly captures the older Barbara at the height of her powers and set in her autocratic, eccentric and very “pink” ways. She demonstrates her carefree arrogance and confident enjoyment of the rewards of success. We see a dynamo producing prose like a machine and spouting outrageous opinions with the same remorseless energy and certainty. On a TV show in the 1970s, her outmoded views on careers, morality and marriage are hissed by an audience already affected by the growing Women’s Lib movement.

Anne Reid’s performance is full of light and shade: one moment a fierce battle axe, the next a fluttering coquette, now a bulldozing one-woman industry and next a frightened and vulnerable old lady. As always, when confronted by devastating loss, she finds consolation in her work.

The play is something of a collage rather than a straightforward narrative. The viewer has preconceptions of Barbara’s life, work and personality and this play makes some attempt to explain why she turned out as she did.

We see the consequences of loss of wealth and status and the damage done by an unhappy marriage and the death of her father, brother and romantic hero. We marvel at her sheer dynamism: the ability to apply herself to the tasks of making a living, writing and promoting the career of her brother. Throughout we see her devotion to Ronald and can only guess at whether it was this, combined with the experience of love in so many unsatisfactory forms, that led her to invent the pure and unsullied version idealised in countless romances.

A pre-eminent critic considered this play to be meagre, spiteful, malicious and fawning. I took a more sympathetic view: the depiction of the events of Barbara Cartland's life gave some explanation of the grande dame she became, her strengths and talents and the frailties and delusions from which she suffered.

One agreed with hardly any of the views she expressed or the imperious manner in which she treated her subordinates. The play did however explore her life in a way that gave some insight into her experiences and the reasons why she may have developed as she did. It allowed the viewer to have some sympathy and understand what were essentially her own coping mechanisms. It absorbed and entertained and was embellished by excellent performances from the brilliant Sinead Mathews and the evergreen Anne Reid.

Colonel Moseley's Favourite Diaries

2008-07-21T11:10:00.005+01:00

I found the following diaries very absorbing:

Diaries of Evelyn Waugh ~ edited by Michael Davie (Penguin Books)
The Duff Cooper Diaries ~ edited by John Julius Norwich (Orion )
The Noel Coward Diaries ~ edited by Graham Payn and Sheridan Morley (Macmillan)
The Diaries of Virginia Woolf ~ edited by Anne Oliver Bell (Penguin Books)
The Kenneth Williams Diaries ~ edited by Russell Davies (Harper Collins)
The Joe Orton Diaries ~ edited by John Lahr (Methuen)
Kilvert’s Diaries ~ edited by William Plomer (Book Club Associates)
The Roy Strong Diaries (Weidenfeld and Nicholson)
The Journals of Denton Welch ~ edited by Michael de la Noy (Penguin Books)
Nella Last’s War - The Second World War Diaries of Housewife, 49 ~ edited by Richard Broad and Suzie Fleming (Profile Books)

Colonel Moseley's Favourite Collected Letters

2008-07-21T10:52:00.007+01:00

I have particularly enjoyed reading the following collections of letters:

The Letters of Noel Coward ~ edited by Barry Day (Methuen)
The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde ~ edited by Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart Davies (Fourth Estate)
The Mitfords – Letters Between Six Sisters ~ Edited by Charlotte Moseley (Fourth Estate)
The Letters of Evelyn Waugh ~ edited by Mark Amory
Gielgud’s Letters ~ edited by Richard Mangan (Pheonix)
Decca – the Letters of Jessica Mitford ~ edited by Peter Y. Sussman
Speaking for Themselves: The Personal Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill ~ edited by Mary Soames (Doubleday)
The Letters of Nancy Mitford ~ edited by Charlotte Moseley (Sceptre)
Vita and Harold – the letters of Vita Sackville West and Harold Nicolson 1910-1962 ~ edited by Nigel Nicolson (Pheonix)
Brian Johnston - Letters Home 1926-1945 ~ edited by Barry Johnston

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews : The Long Walk to Finchley

2008-07-07T12:06:00.012+01:00

Apart from our beloved Countdown, the only programme I Skyplussed (assuming it’s now a verb) during a recent summer holiday was The Long Walk to Finchley on BBC 4. Unlike many TV dramas, this one did not seem to be the subject of much pre-broadcast promotion and general hoopla. I’m not sure why not. Perhaps its material and general tone was considered sensitive with its subject still with us, albeit in relatively quiet retirement.

Written by Tony Saint, the play used a partly fictionalised and partly comic format to tell the story of the struggle over a decade of Grantham-born, Margaret Roberts - later Thatcher - to be adopted as a candidate and gain election as an MP.

Starring as the Blessed Margaret was vivacious, 26 year old Andrea Riseborough who brought the part to life with a vital and riveting performance that wrung the most out the script. Clearly based on long study of her character’s vocal and physical mannerisms, tics and inflections, her Margaret came to life and dominated the screen. Knowingly, her every nuance is nailed: the slow speech, softening of tone, leaning forward to convey emphasis and a slightly scuttling, forward-leaning totter of a walk with handbag clutched.

The piece tells the tale of Margaret’s struggles in the 1950's to overcome prejudice and simple antagonism to gain acceptance as a female parliamentary candidate. From early on, Margaret had the capacity to alienate others as well as to inspire admiration. The prejudice and sexism on display – as represented by Geoffrey Palmer’s convincing bigoted retiring sitting MP - does not reflect well on the Tories at local or national level or on attitudes in the decade as a whole.

As ever on BBC 4, the production values were superb. The lavish sets, clothes and cars – especially Denis’s, tart-trap Jaguar – oozed authenticity and period feel. The leading ladies’ dresses, hats and hair were dazzlingly accurate as were the interiors such as the Thatcher kitchen and sundry smoky committee rooms.

Characterisation and the writing generally worked well in narrating Margaret’s struggle and parallel progress of her professional and private life. Her efficient transformation from chemist to the Bar is explained and presented with a light touch as is her meeting, courtship and subsequent marriage. That relationship was surprisingly touching.

Throughout the narrative, Margaret’s relentless energy and drive, work ethic, obsession with politics and acumen is explained in development. Obvious markers are set including her need only for four hours sleep a night and ability to keep many balls in the air at once, such as controlling the minutiae of the family breakfast seconds before leaving for an important meeting: a formidable force of nature indeed. The influence of her father, Alf Roberts, the dour and pragmatic Grantham shopkeeper and councillor is lucidly presented.

Similarly, the character and contribution of husband Denis is shown with clarity. Well-observed by Rory Kinnear, Denis comes across as a sensible, likeable and level-headed. His 1950's southern golf club bar speech patterns and accent were spot-on. The point is accurately made that he was an able and successful businessman. He is unselfish and devoted to his wife and is prepared to sacrifice much to allow her to pursue her career.

His lengthy disappearance to Africa on business is inconvenient at the time when he was required to be on display amongst the candidate’s spouses at Finchley, but it was he who devised her more feminine approach, a change that helped her gain her goal. The Denis we see, seems to match the reality of a plain-spoken, honest and decent man and not the caricature of Dear Bill fame. He was prepared to accept the implications of a wife in the limelight but without losing his own identity or fondness for gin, cigarettes, golf or refereeing a game of rugby.

The twins, Carol and Mark are presented as neat and tidy Enid Blyton children, all shorts and cardigans and sensible Clarks shoes for playing in the manicured garden. There is some suggestion that Mark is mummy’s favourite; fittingly, he has a darker edge with a slight hint of Damien from The Omen.

Some of the more interesting episodes made up the fictionalised and comic elements. Silhouetted in her strapless evening gown on a dark balcony, a coquettish Margaret importunes an alarmed Ted Heath breathlessly – and implausibly –“take me on your journey to power”. Her propositioning didn’t ring true and was discordant, but amusing.

Subsequently, her virtual seduction of the chairman of candidates when complaining tearfully of discrimination – all sighs, tears, heaving bosom and crossed legs - was over-the-top and hilarious. It did contain at least a grain of truth in that in her career Margaret was reputed to use elements of the feminine side of her character to gain advantage - if not so grotesquely as depicted here. Didn’t the President Mitterand once describe our first female Prime Minister as having the eyes of Caligula and lips of Marilyn Monroe? I doubt he would have waxed so lyrical about John Major, let alone Ted Heath.

The comic content included some rather unexpected slapstick with ice cream whilst a young chemist. There developed an almost uncontrolled jokiness with a running gag of predicting future events. They included not very subtle references to Grocer Heath, Carol in the jungle, Mark being lost in the sand dunes and also going to Africa, Margaret’s mission regarding milk for schoolchildren and a tour de force rant of unlikely prescience bellowing at an overcharging French waiter “I want my money back!”

The thread running through the story of the romantic frisson between Margaret and a constipated-looking Ted Heath, memorably played with a kind of teeth-gritted angst by Sam West, was the most dangerous ploy used by Tony Saint. Doubts over Heath’s sexuality were actually voiced and, with a touch of farce, a matchmaking Tory lady set up the encounter on the dance-floor which concluded with Margaret’s unsuccessful plea on the starlit balcony.

What united these two awkward outsiders was not romance but lust of a different kind - an unbridled desire for success and perhaps power. Ted ultimately helped Margaret through the selection process to defeat the be-meddled, chauvinistic old–guard because his father had been a builder and he understood the slights Margaret had endured. Also one wonders whether he had been touched by Margaret’s note of sympathy on the death of his mother to overcome his natural antipathy and help her – to his eventual cost.

The Long Walk to Finchley was entertaining but worried me in many of the ways that Filth: the Mary Whitehouse Story had done. On the surface, both plays represent a revisionist trend at the BBC.

For me the Mary Whitehouse play failed – despite a superb cast - because it distorted her significance. Her story was trailed and presented as a David and Goliath battle of the small provincial woman against an arrogant, metropolitan BBC to stem a tide of filth.

In fact, Mary was an increasingly media-savvy moral re-armer, oblivious to the artistic merits of some of the work she decried. She was prepared to throw the good out with the bad to promote the fundamentalist values she espoused and to damage the liberal causes of which she disapproved. Mrs. Whitehouse became much more than a victim and the play tended to lose sight of this.

In the case of the Long Walk, one may have even more problems with Mrs Thatcher and her eventual impact upon social cohesion, the values in this country and its communities and measures such as Clause 28.

This play did accurately reflect her early political views, such as the threat of communism and the trade unions. For the most part however, it focussed on the development of her personality and the struggle to achieve a massive ambition against overwhelming odds of sexism and class prejudice. It fantasised and exaggerated on occasion, but did not distort the underlying truth regarding her journey. It amounted to a thought-provoking and entertaining piece of work.

It also had the advantage of being embellished by the performance of the fascinating Andrea Riseborough for whom great things lie ahead.

Colonel Moseley's Favourite Holiday Books

2008-06-29T09:28:00.008+01:00

This year on holiday I have thoroughly enjoyed:

The Wisdom of Donkeys – Finding Tranquility in a Chaotic World ~ Andy Merrifield (Short Books)
Hancock’s Last Stand –The Series That Never Was ~ Edward Joffe (The Book Guild)
Wild Thyme in Ibiza ~ Stewart Anderson (Survival books)

Spilling The Beans ~ Clarissa Dickson-Wright (Hodder & Stoughton)
The Palace Diaries -12 Years with HRH Prince Charles ~ Sarah Goodall and Nicholas Monson (Mainstream Publishing)

Anything Goes – The Autobiography ~ John Barrowman (Michael O’Meara Books Ltd)
Lethal Witness – Sir Bernard Spilsbury, Honorary Pathologist ~ Andrew Rose (Sutton Publishing)

Keeping Mum – A Wartime Childhood ~ Brian Thompson (Atlantic Books)

Winston Churchill By His Personal Secretary ~ Elisabeth Nel (iUniverse Inc.)
Red Carpets and other banana skins – the Autobiography ~ Rupert Everett (Little Brown)

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews : Filth ~ The Mary Whitehouse Story

2008-06-03T09:42:00.012+01:00

One can always rely upon the quality of the work of Julie Walters. Just think of the range of her film and TV credits which include Educating Rita, Boys from the Black stuff, Personal Services, Pat and Margaret, Acorn Antiques up to dinnerladies and The Wife of Bath. Her output has been consistently accomplished and entertaining. So naturally I looked forward to her leading role in Amanda Coe’s TV biography Filth: the Mary Whitehouse Story. How many actresses could depict both Cynthia Payne and Mary Whitehouse?

Filth tells the story of the rise to prominence of the Nuneaton-born, Wolverhampton-based art teacher and mother and her campaign to clean up TV. Mary is presented as a warm but tough suburban matron. Self-doubt does appear when her family come into the firing line, but generally her feisty resolve to combat what she considered a rising tide of filth was unwavering. Her bete noire was BBC Director General between 1960 and 1968, Sir Hugh Greene, brilliantly played by Hugh Bonneville.

From the opening scene of Mary riding about her village on a matronly bicycle waving to her neighbours to a jaunty tune and light-hearted chorus of juvenile rude words, the piece has a light and affectionate touch. The period feel is ironic and rather tongue in cheek in a slightly Five Go Mad in Dorset comic strip sort of way – all hats and gloves, perms, horn-rimmed glasses and singing Jerusalem in the Rover. This is not a stinging critique or even a satire.

From the outset, Mrs Whitehouse’s major task appeared to be to make the pompous and impatient Greene acknowledge her very existence. Her initial, and possibly justifiable, gripes against a programme on premarital sex, inappropriately shown in the early evening, were fielded by a senior assistant who disappeared on retirement. A major issue in the ensuing battle appeared to be Mary Whitehouse’s increasingly injured pride in not being even recognised to exist by her adversary. Greene was everything Mary was not - metropolitan, liberal and upper class. He was altogether disinclined to massage her ego.

Greene’s patrician insouciance was contrasted with the oleaginous former radio doctor Lord Hill who, as Chairman of ITV, took the time to meet personally with Mary over tea. In charming and flattering her, he seemed largely to diffuse her as any kind of problem for the commercial channel. Later, Greene simply could not work alongside Hill, when he became his Chairman at the BBC, exactly mirroring his failure to make any effort to find a modus vivendi with Mrs Whitehouse.

We see Greene as an opinionated and inflexible, cricket-playing liberal who manages also to be a sexist, leering at the legs of secretaries and carelessly making enemies of those within the BBC who would pass on ammunition for Mrs Whitehouse to use against him. He also, perhaps unwisely, chose not to curb some of the more spiteful excesses of satirical programmes which gave Mrs Whitehouse the moral high-ground.

At times Greene’s antipathy towards Mrs Whitehouse verged on the schoolboy with the many-breasted modernist oil painting dedicated to her in his office targeted with paper pellets - just like during prep in the Remove.

Mary’s rise is presented lucidly from the first momentous public meeting in Birmingham Town Hall to the development of support for her Clean Up TV Campaign, which became the National Viewers and Listeners Association and latterly Mediawatch UK.

We have a certain amount of humour at Mary’s expense as with her innocent ignorance of the unfortunate impact of the acronym of the first name for her organisation discreetly pointed out by her postman husband Ernest, admirably played by Alun Armstrong.

Prim and unworldly, Mary has a talent for the unintentional double entendre such as being only a finger in the dyke, manages to overlook some very phallic images in her pupils' artwork and even confuses Hugh Greene with Hughie Green the quiz show host. The humour throughout the play works well with only an ill-judged fantasy love scene between the protagonists striking a discordant note.

Although inclined to the dotty and with a short fuse, her motives from the outset are favourably presented. She is genuinely concerned about the moral welfare of her sons and a perplexed girl pupil at her school. We see her bravely stand up against hecklers at her first public meeting and cope with the unfair press attempts to compromise her sons at a party and later to hound her husband after being innocently involved in a road fatality.

It is only later that a more fundamentalist air emerges, as when she complains about the content of Pinky and Perky, rails against the reference to knickers in the Beatles’ I am the Walrus and completely loses it in a disapproving rant over some hippies kissing.

Julie Walters conveys the developing darker, authoritarian side of Mary and her loathing of Hugh Greene in an understated way, using a hardening expression, narrowing of eyes already glazed and imperious in her horn rims and a setting of the jaw that makes her appear truly formidable.

Her dance of victory when her husband comes to her exercise class in the village hall to tell her that Hugh Greene has resigned as Director General reflects her pent-up resentment and is a perfect demonstration of triumphalism.

Although the play appears superficially to be non-partisan, the BBC Press Office did describe it as the story of Mary's David and Goliath type struggle with the BBC and referred to her heroic and surprising victories. It seems clear who is the heroine. Mrs Whitehouse ultimately won and her victory is celebrated. Impatient autocrat the DG may have been, but Mary saw him off comprehensively.

Greene’s major weakness and ultimate undoing, when Lord Hill became Chairman of Governors, was his intransigence in dealing with opposite viewpoints and a failure to understand the increasing power of popular opinion. The satisfaction etched onto her face as Mrs Whitehouse waited to meet with her adversary’s successor, Sir Charles Curran at Broadcasting House said it all.

Characterisation never descends to ridicule but of the two principals perhaps Hugh Greene is caricatured more as avant-garde, lecherous and stubborn and with more than a hint of Basil Fawlty. We should however remember that under his stewardship the BBC produced drama of the highest quality and relevance ranging from Cathy Come Home to the early work of Dennis Potter, none of which met with the approval of Mrs Whitehouse.

Also, the play precedes some of Mary’s more strident campaigning, such as the case against Romans in Britain. In reality, her opposition of homosexuality, which she considered a condition to be cured, was visceral.

I don’t think sufficient emphasis was placed upon the vigorous and creative phase of drama in the BBC fostered by a liberal and modernising Hugh Greene. Mary Whitehouse may have been gauche and provincial, but became an adroit and effective manipulator of the media. It has been argued that her approach sometimes verged upon bullying and an attack on creativity. Her home-spun moral outrage did mask a reactionary agenda close to that of right wing moral re-armers that could be described as narrow-minded.

One reviewer applauded the piece for demonstrating that Mary Whitehouse was not the semi-fascistic old bat of popular myth. He was correct that she was not presented in that way. For me, however, this was the major weakness in a play that really amounted to an apologia.

Colonel Moseley's Weekly Playlist #9

2008-05-14T12:30:00.004+01:00

This week I have been mainly listening to:

Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles ~ Jerry’s Boys!
Harvey Andrews ~ Someday Fantasy
Fascinating Aida ~ One Last Flutter
David Mallett ~Ambition
Pet Shop Boys ~ Fundamental
Petula Clark ~ Downtown, The Best of
The Beatles ~ Live at the BBC
Nick Drake ~Way to Blue, an Introduction
Joan Armatrading ~ Track Record
Merrily We Roll Along ~ Original Cast Recording

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews : The Apprentice

2008-05-13T14:23:00.008+01:00

Now that the Curse of Comedy season has finished, I have fewer must-see TV programmes. They include the compelling Mad Men and the addictive Benidorm. My only other regular appointment is with The Apprentice.

I do have a taste for reality TV and confess to watching most of Big Brother each summer and its winter celebrity incarnation as well as the Jungle version with Ant and Dec. This weakness extended to oddities like Coach Party and each previous series of The Apprentice with larger than life characters such as Tre and the Badger.

If you visit the programme’s web-site it seems the current series should flag-up some interesting and able candidates. Twenty thousand CVs were received and the sixteen contestants included a barrister, bank manager, ex-Army engineer and car trader.

Well, you could have fooled me! The staggering thing about this series has been the way that the contestants have been presented pretty much as a rather loud bunch of half-wits. For the most part they have appeared disorganised, ill-informed and barely capable of stringing together a coherent sentence. This lack of ability has been made more laughable by outrageous expressions of self-worth typified by a confident claim to be the best sales person in Europe.

Viewers have watched a progression of shambolic tasks, each achieving its own weirdly chaotic level from selling fish to running a themed night in a pub to marketing a new line of greetings cards. Each task seemed to have been marked by a special degree of misjudgement ranging from underestimating the market price of seafood to devising cards that no-one would want to buy. The incompetence displayed in each project was accompanied by much in-fighting and a wholly unjustified self confidence. Self–help courses teach that self-belief is one of the keys to enduring success, but surely it must have some foundation in reality.

Up to the most recent episode, each task seems to have been lost by the most incompetent team rather than won through clever tactics or applied skill. The shopping task in Marrakesh however showed some sign that Lee’s winning team had got its act together and won on merit by co-operating and applying simple virtues such as forethought, hard work and shrewd bargaining. The losers lost the contest spectacularly and managed to compound magnificent ignorance over the meaning of kosher and careless buying with an attempt to bribe shopkeepers not to provide a service to their competitors. Anyone who has watched previous series would have known that S’rAlan appreciates ingenuity, but will not countenance the underhand or unprofessional.

Despite some irritation at the shortcomings of some of the contestants, no-one could deny that the programmes have been entertaining with some interesting twists and turns. The odd serial incompetent has been saved to live and fail another day and perceived back-biters received their surprise come-uppance when not one but two member of the losing team were fired this week.

Grimly fascinating though the self-proclaimed good Jewish boy Michael might be – he who seemed to confuse halal with kosher - for me the real stars are S’rAlan’s lieutenants, the dry and laconic Nick Hewer and the shrewd and twinkle–eyed Margaret Mountford.

My highlight of the series so far took place when Nick expressed surprise at Michael’s ignorance of Jewish lore, since he was allegedly bright and had read Classics at Edinburgh University. Deadpan, Margaret replied artlessly “I think Edinburgh isn’t what it used to be”.

Gems like that, and much else besides, make it worthwhile to endure the more gormless contestants and to watch the rest of the battle to be the Apprentice. Even so, based on what I have seen so far, I still don’t really envy S’rAlan the choice that lies before him.

Colonel Moseley's Weekly Playlist # 8

2008-05-01T19:51:00.012+01:00

This week I have been mainly listening to:

A Little Night Music ~ Royal National Theatre Production

Talking Heads ~ The Best of – Once in a Lifetime

Andrea Bocelli ~ Sogno

Fairport Convention ~ The History of Fairport Convention

Eva Cassidy ~ Songbird

Closer to Heaven ~ Original Cast Recording

Randy Newman ~ Good Old Boys

Tom Paxton ~ Live for the Record

Harvey Andrews ~ Somewhere in the Stars

Neil Young ~ Harvest

Colonel Moseley's Weekly Playlist #7

2008-04-23T09:21:00.003+01:00

This week I have been mainly listening to:

Dolly Parton ~ Little Sparrow
Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground ~ The Best of
Nick Drake ~ Bryter Layter
Pet Shop Boys ~ Bilingual
The Seekers ~ Come the Day
The Flying Burrito Brothers ~ The Gilded Palace of Sin
The Beatles ~ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Pink Floyd ~ Wish You Were Here
Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles ~ Simply Sondheim
Marc Bolan and T Rex ~ The Ultimate Collection

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews: "Benidorm"

2008-04-22T00:39:00.012+01:00

After several reviews of dramas, I thought I would write about my current favourite TV comedy. I have a great weakness for Benidorm which has made me laugh more than any programme recently. I loved its debut last year and am now enjoying its second series on ITV 1. I’m not sure how it failed to win the award for best situation comedy in last night’s TV BAFTAs.

Written by Derren Litten, who co-wrote The Catherine Tate Show, Benidorm is set in the all-inclusive Solana Resort in the concrete heart of Benidorm on the Costa Blanca. For many, a fortnight at the Solana represents a vision of chav-hell rather than holiday heaven. It is this underlying pleasure at the misfortune of others that helps create a compelling comedy.

At the centre of affairs is the Garvey family from Manchester. They are dysfunctional and argumentative but rub along and basically care for each other in the manner of the Royle family.

Work-shy jack–the–lad and benefit cheat Mick (Steve Pemberton) and his feisty, mistrustful and well-meaning wife Janice (Siobhan Finneran) have been brought on holiday by Janice’s garrulous mother Madge.

Sun-worshipping pensioner Madge, gloriously played by Sheila Reid, embodies the series. She is a chain-smoking, motor-mouthed, leathery conker riding around on a hired mobility scooter - although it seems she can walk reasonably well.

Acid-tongued Madge sees the worst in everything and is not shy of expressing strong and negative opinions. She never lets her daughter and son-in-law forget that she paid for their first holiday abroad at the Solano last year.

In the current series Madge is accompanied by her elderly boyfriend Mel (Geoffrey Hutchings) who is of a similar mahogany hue and is the well-heeled owner of five sun-bed shops. He sees himself as Didsbury’s answer to Julio Inglesias and oscillates between white suits and a medallion like John Travolta and a backless thong of truly alarming brevity. Mel also enjoys constantly reminding Mick that he paid for this year's holiday

The alluring Garvey party includes eight year old son Michael who caused panic at the end of the last series by launching a turd in the pool. The final Garveys are unmarried teenage daughter Chantelle with her baby Coolio.

The Solano boasts a motley selection of other regular guests who seem to return year after year.

Donald and Jacqueline, played by Kenny Ireland and Jane Duvitsky, have been holidaying in Benidorm for many years without venturing out of the resort or actually paying for anything. They have never had occasion to touch a Spanish peseta let alone a new-fangled Euro. Devoted couple though they may be, they are dedicated swingers and lead a hectic and exotic social life.

The programme’s resident gay couple are Gavin and Troy who married whilst on holiday at the Solano last year and watch the goings on with waspish remarks and fascinated amusement, hiding behind a black lace fan and clonish goatee respectively.

Also returning we have Kate and Martin Weedon whose marriage was nearly destroyed by their previous stay which included Kate’s very ill-advised fling with randy barman and love-rat, Matteo. Swearing they would never return to Benidorm, fate takes a predictably cruel twist by ensuring that their accommodation in nearby Altea falls through and they are transferred to the one place on earth they do not want to be – the Solano Resort.

The final pair of regulars is overweight 37 year old bachelor and Lancashire pub quiz champion, Geoff Maltby played by comic, Johnny Vegas and his devoted and slightly batty mother Noreen. Geoff prefers to be known as the Oracle and unsuccessfully tries to pass his doting mum off as his PA. Prone to depression, the Oracle enjoys arm wrestling for money and karaoke at Neptune’s Bar at the Solano.

On one level , we have a selection of stereotypes including the gobby family from Lancashire, mouthy mother-in-law, local Lothario, middle class interlopers appalled by it all and a deluded fatty with his mum. Why then is it so funny?

First of all, the situation is full of potential . The Solano Resort is irredeemably naff from the diet of burgers to the every night spent in Neptune's Bar to free trips to the bull fight actually intended to flog overpriced juicers. The guests are marvellously trapped. The frustration and resentment of Mick having his mother–in-law's charity thrust down his throat is funny as is the horrific experience of Kate forced to stay somewhere she loathes and where she made such a fool of herself with the barman. Similarly her devoted husband Martin has to deal with his wife’s infidelity and his failure in her eyes. The audience can work out what Kate really wants is a child. It might be Miller.

Some of the characters are comic classics. Madge’s outspokenness, extreme tan, flatulence and queening about on her mobility scooter are surreal.

Similarly, Mel’s vile thong is hilarious. The scene in Neptune’s Bar where Mel strides on stage in his white suit and medallion reaches a wonderful climax when, instead of a gruff Barry White, he delivers Lonely Girl at length in a high falsetto. The effect is compounded by the cutting away to the open-mouthed shock it induces in the audience. I laughed so much it hurt

There is also something utterly splendid about the pervy swingers. They are hilarious because for the most part they are innocents - a mundane and amiable couple. They have been coming to the Solano for decades and are incredibly parsimonious and unadventurous. In contrast to this they are completely liberated sexually and have no hang ups to match the rest of their suburban conformity. Occasionally this dichotomy is expressed in very rude terms - as in the first series when Donald’s throw-away reference to a pair of padded coat hangers made me choke.

Many of the gags in Benidorm have the same good-natured and very British vulgarity of the very best of the old Carry Ons. The chaotic turd in the pool scene which climaxed the first series was brilliant, as are those featuring the flatulence of Madge – and her grandson Coolio.

There are a good many genuinely funny sight gags such as Jacqueline beating Mick at arm wrestling. For me the best of Johnny Vegas comes in his slapstick scenes doing belly flops into the pool or in karaoke. The scene at the bull fight where Matteo fights what appears to be a labrador with paper horns was beautifully silly. On top of this Madge on her scooter or Mel in his thong are simply funny.

As the series continues, particular themes develop. Mel’s brushes with death in the pool and a near fatal juicer electrocution at the bullfight seem to echo the regular fatalities suffered by Kenny in South Park. One wonders if he will continue to dice with death. A more obvious and equally funny pastiche took place when The Oracle and Chantelle devoured their burgers with the sensual almost pornographic pleasure of a Flake advert -and a hint of the supper scene from the film of Tom Jones.

The trouble with writing about comedy is that the attempt at analysis destroys the underlying lightness and humour - and in doing one so appears at best a pseud. So I won’t even try to call Benidorm a post-modern Carry On.

It is however well-written and brilliantly performed. It combines funny situations and characters with a range of gags of all kinds with a wholesomely shocking brand of vulgarity delightfully all of its own.

There are occasional flashes of dark desperation and an arch insight that give the proceedings an edge which makes sure it never descends to the realm of Benny Hill. Unlike Madge on a stuffy coach on a hot day, Benidorm is like a breath of fresh air.

Colonel Moseley's Weekly Playlist #6

2008-04-13T18:36:00.004+01:00

This week I have been mainly listening to:

Pet Shop Boys ~ Back to Mine
Bette Midler ~ Experience the Divine
Jim Croce ~ Photographs and Memories
Oasis ~ (What’s the story) Morning Glory?
Prince ~ The Very Best Of
Cassagrande ~ Spanish Chill Ambient
Ralph Mc Tell ~ You Well-Meaning Brought Me Here
Follies in Concert ~ New York Philharmonic
Harvey Andrews ~ Writer of Songs
Annie Lennox ~ Diva

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews: FRANKIE HOWERD: RATHER YOU THAN ME

2008-04-10T11:57:00.017+01:00

The Curse of Comedy series came to an exciting climax yesterday with Frankie Howerd: Rather You Than Me. As Frankie himself might have said : Ooh no, Missus, nay and thrice nay, titter ye not ...

Written by Peter Harness and directed by John Alexander, the play focussed mainly on the down-turn in Howerd’s career between the late-1950s to the point when he was taken up in the satire and TV boom of the early 1960s.

As we have come to expect in this series, we see a good deal of the darker side of the comedian. In Howerd’s case, we are treated to an often miserable and lugubrious star who is mistrustful of others, prone to depression, insecure and frequently selfish. He is regularly crippled with stage fright and hugely conscious of his appearance, resorting to what has been called a ludicrous toupee.

Most of all, Howerd was terrified of exposure as a homosexual at a time when such acts were illegal. Throughout his career, Howerd believed that being outed spelled ruin. As in so many cases before legalisation in 1967, we see him being blackmailed after at least one indiscretion.

Paradoxically and inconveniently, Howerd was energetically promiscuous and apt to proposition attractive younger men with a genuinely gay abandon, yet he was often racked with guilt and self-loathing about it. He showed this by crying after sex and stated that he wished he wasn’t gay.

As Howerd, David Walliams captures his facial and physical mannerisms and vocal inflections perfectly, particularly in performance later in his career at the Oxford Union. He also accurately portrays the time Howerd is off; his impression of Frankie when lonely, in pain and seeking reassurance is utterly convincing.

Alongside Walliams, we have Rafe Spall as his handsome young partner Dennis Heymer. His performance is also magnificent and he manages to capture another complex character. We see a down-to-earth and essentially humble person who is deeply devoted. He makes the difficult journey from waiter and barman to driver and eventually Howerd’s manager.

Heymer’s role required tact and self-control as he was frequently humiliated by virtually being airbrushed out of the picture in consequence of Howard’s overriding fear of being recognised as gay. Throughout many ups and downs, Dennis provides the emotional and practical support to keep his partner afloat. Despite his bravado, Howerd is shown to be fragile. Heymer understands his flaws and vanities, but remains steadfast.

We see the disturbing effect on Howerd of psychotherapy and drug therapy, including LSD. The viewer does not know if the treatment was aimed just at his depression or if it was an attempt to cure his homosexuality; but, whatever its intention, it appears too harsh and of dubious value.

As with Tony Hancock, we see a close relationship with his mother Edith, beautifully played by the ageless Dilys Laye. Edith is seen as warm and supportive, without being smothering. She is well-disposed towards Dennis and trusts him to take care of her son after her.

On her deathbed she speaks to Heymer, as Howerd sleeps in the background: he was always a good sleeper. In a simple statement, Edith sums up the essential chemistry of the relationship between the volatile Howerd and Heymer: There has to be one of you who makes things peaceful.

As one might expect, the death of his mother affected Howerd very deeply. The scene in which he re-visits her house and breaks down when looking through a box of old photographs is genuinely touching.

This trauma prompts Howerd to explain graphically to Dennis the sexual abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of his drunken father. This disclosure reinforces the love of the compassionate Heymer and prompts him to stay with the needy Howerd, rather than move on.

One of the strengths of this story is its realism: it is dark and Howerd is riddled with uncertainties and personal and professional doubts. This gloom seems to go with the territory of brilliant comedy.

We see that, perhaps for different reasons, both Howerd and Heymer have liaisons with others. They argue and even come to blows at times but each understands the realities of gay life and ultimately appreciates the value of their relationship.

Unlike the earlier story of Hughie Green, this play gives a credible explanation as to why Howerd had his darker side. We may miss out on any glitzy appreciation of Howerd’s brilliant talent as a comedian, but instead are given a deeper insight into the development of his complex personality and the pressures this imposed upon his partner. For me this was the more interesting story.

Colonel Moseley's Weekly Playlist #5

2008-04-05T15:03:00.004+01:00

This week I have been mainly listening to:

Lauryn Hill ~ The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
The Beatles ~ Revolver
Randy Newman ~ Sail Away
Vashti Bunyan ~ Just Another Diamond Day
Harvey Andrews ~ The Journey
Megan Mullally and the Supreme Music Program ~ Big as a Berry
Robert and Elizabeth ~ Original cast recording
Pet Shop Boys ~ Behaviour
Robert Wyatt ~ His Greatest Misses
Kate Rusby ~ Little Lights

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews: HUGHIE GREEN, MOST SINCERELY

2008-04-04T14:23:00.015+01:00

The Curse of Comedy season reached its third part with Tony Basgallop’s Hughie Green, Most Sincerely on BBC4.

I did wonder why this piece was part of the season. Hughie Green may have been Mr Showbiz and a household name for decades, but he wasn’t a comedian or comic actor; he was a TV personality and presenter. He didn’t even use the catchphrase “..and I mean that most sincerely folks” enshrined in the title; it was invented by Mike Yarwood.

The play tells the story in more-or-less chronological order of his adult career. He was a highly-paid child star with his own BBC radio show at the age of 14 and toured in his children’s concert party Hughie Green and his Gang. After touring Canada, he appeared in the film Midshipman Easy in 1935 and went to Hollywood for Tom Brown’s Schooldays.

Green’s unstable childhood is reflected in flashbacks of his father pushing him onstage and crying bitterly as his son walks in on his adulterous mother in flagrante delicto. The viewer is supposed to work out how this impacts on Green’s later behaviour.

In real life, according to Wikipedia, he fathered an illegitimate child by a Canadian usherette at the age of 17. The play charts the progress of his career through Double your Money in black and white on to colour with Opportunity Knocks and the less successful The Sky’s the Limit. It is suggested – not entirely convincingly - that his work may have validity as an early precursor of reality TV.

As Hughie Green, Trevor Eve cleverly captures his oleaginous mid-Atlantic drawl and the facial and physical mannerisms of the man who, for many, personified insincerity. He re-created his asthmatic interludes and later respiratory problems with particular authenticity.

One common thread running through this season so far has been the sheer tawdry, sleaziness of the business they call "show". Accordingly we see Green continuously cheating on his wife and drinking to excess. He obnoxiously punches a crewman, who comes to help him when he trips over on-set and generally behaves arrogantly.

At home, he appears distant, aloof and entirely selfish – as when he monopolises a train set and literally locks his children out

Whilst touring in Wales, he stays in the hotel run by Jess Yates (Mark Benton) and his new wife and before-long has cuckolded him. He later learns that this liaison resulted in the birth of Paula Yates.

Personally and professionally Green is presented as self-obsessed and unkind. When Yates becomes his producer on Opportunity Knocks, they argue viciously over a tie Yates wishes Green to wear. Yates' loathing for Green by this stage results in a hysterical outburst in the control room. By way of pay-back, it appears that Green ultimately destroyed Yates professionally as a religious broadcaster by planting with the press the story of his affair with an actress.

We see Green use Opportunity Knocks as a soapbox for a right-wing rant on air about the state of the country and urge viewers to stand up and be counted, where the managers manage and the workers don’t go on strike.

After many complaints and attempts to discipline him, the show was axed despite continuing to achieve high ratings.

There followed a period of presenting similar programmes in Ireland, Australia and even the USSR and strange ideas such as televised bingo and a combined fishing and quiz show, which never saw the light of day.

Much of the later part of the play follows Green’s fascination with the rising media career of his natural daughter Paula Yates. He appears proud of her success yet, with typically misjudged priorities, was outraged at the language of Bob Geldof at Live Aid in 1985.

Just before his death we see him struggle into black tie to attend a reception apparently to meet Paula Yates. She arrives and is whisked away in an attendant media throng and in the scrum he humiliatingly has a drink poured over him.

By the time of the death of his former wife Claire, Green is hardly on speaking terms with his children Christopher and Linda and yet seems surprised when excluded from her funeral. We are being invited to feel sorry for his loneliness and pain, but can only reflect that they were probably his just deserts

After Hughie Green’s death, an article by his friend at the News of the World, Noel Botham disclosed that Green was the father of Paula Yates. Following her recent tragic loss of Michael Hutchence, Paula reportedly commented: “I’m horrified. I thought I was at the darkest point of my life – now this”.

So, we have a sad story about an apparently selfish and immoral man with no obvious redeeming features. To be fair, at one point he does take time to comfort a nervous young trombonist about to appear on Opportunity Knocks, perhaps mainly because it triggers memories of similar humiliation in his youth.

Otherwise we see no trace of tenderness or compassion either as a performer, husband, father, lover or friend. His life is depicted as a sequence of excess, anger and self-pity. His main recreations are presented as drink, drugs and promiscuity and he left a trail of broken relationships, betrayal and unhappiness.

It is suggested that his disordered personality may have resulted from his dysfunctional childhood with his adulterous mother and bankrupt father. For me however the root cause of his conduct is never really persuasively explained.

His legitimate children understandably appear bitter about his effect on them. Paula Yates seems to have been deeply hurt by his intrusion into her life. His various mistresses must have achieved something from their relationships with him, but this is not clearly explained.

The other sufferers from the alleged curse of comedy, Messrs Corbett, Brambell and Hancock were, to say the least, fully paid-up members of the awkward squad. Each bore the scars of a difficult life. The first two plays in this series however managed to piece together some kind of answer as to why they became what they did. The viewer ended up with respect for their talent and a greater understanding of the evolution of their personality.

Notwithstanding Trevor Eve’s admirable performance and a fine cast, this play left me without much respect for Hughie Green as a performer and – given the havoc he left in his wake - even less as a person.

To be truly satisfying, biographies such as this need to paint an accurate picture of their subject and give a plausible explanation as to how and why that person developed in a particular way. Unfortunately for me Hughie Green, Most Sincerely did not give a sufficiently meaningful insight into what made the man and thus failed to deliver in this respect; it simply did not compute.

Colonel Moseley's Weekly Playlist #4

2008-04-01T19:30:00.003+01:00

This week I have been mainly listening to:

Electric Light Orchestra ~ All Over the World: the Very Best of ELO
Tom Paxton ~ Live in Concert
Judith Durham ~ Hold on to your Dream
Mark Knopfler ~ Sailing to Philadelphia
Mama Cass ~ Dedicated to the one I love
Neil Young ~ After the Gold Rush
Mackeras and Welsh National Opera ~ The Mikado
Kevin Ayers ~ The Very Best of Kevin Ayers
Bernadette Peters ~ Sondheim etc : Live at Carnegie Hall
The Beach Boys ~ Pet Sounds

Colonel Moseley's TV Reviews: HANCOCK AND JOAN

2008-03-31T13:54:00.007+01:00

The excellent four part Curse of Comedy series continued with Hancock and Joan with Ken Stott and Maxine Peake in the title roles. The play charts the final year in the life of Tony Hancock and his affair with Joan, the new wife of his close friend John Le Mesurier.

As with the opener, The Curse of Steptoe, the writing, production values and performances were impeccable and combined to move, appal and intrigue. Written by Richard Cottan, Hancock and Joan is a powerful and authentic study of passionate love, guilt and despair; it is brilliantly and truthfully dark.

At the core of the play is the genius of Tony Hancock. He is driven by powerful demons. We know that in his work Hancock was wildly successful and almost a national institution. However, he never rested on his laurels and, perhaps unwisely, was always dissatisfied and seeking ways to improve his performance, scripts and casting. This compulsion led him to dispense with colleagues such as Sid James and Kenneth Williams and disastrously with his gifted writers, Galton and Simpson, freeing them up to leave him behind and move on to Steptoe and Son.

At this point in his life Hancock’s career is on the downturn. His recent shows on ATV had not matched his previous successes and his films had been poorly reviewed in this country and made negligible impact overseas.

This deterioration professionally was matched by a chaotic private life. He had left his first wife Cicely and married his agent Freddie Ross, but parted from her as his alcoholism and violent and depressive interludes increased.

At this low ebb Hancock met Joan. Although they both resist at first, their mutual attraction is immediate and intense. They are both constrained by love and respect for the trusting and amiable John Le Mesurier (Alex Jennings) but ultimately are both powerless to resist a mutual obsessive passion.

The attraction between the two is passionately physical. They also seem to satisfy other needs. As well as being sexual, Joan is caring, compassionate and tolerant. In some ways she is like a mother.

When sober, Hancock is brilliant, lovable and vulnerable. He is also freer and more impulsive than the restrained and fastidious John, which may also be part of his attraction to Joan. One could never imagine Hancock telling Joan I love you more than somewhat.

From the outset we see that both Hancock and Joan love John and regret the pain their liaison causes him; despite their genuine shared guilt, they really cannot help themselves.

Another link between the two lovers is humour. They lose themselves in fits of giggles at the drop of a hat, as when Hancock’s mother catches them in flagrante delicto and he calls out “I’m coming mother”.

Similarly, the extended comic scene with the Pythonesque landlady in Ramsgate is hilarious from the moment the bell push drops off until she sniffily describes in detail how she prefers gentlemen to use the lavatory.

When first together, Hancock and Joan are blissfully happy. They laugh all the time and Hancock enjoys the warmth of acceptance within Joan’s family and playing with her son.

Sadly, before long, professional pressures mount. We see nerves before his Festival Hall performance send him rushing to the bathroom, but Joan is able to face it all and comfort him - like a mother.

This stress eventually pushes Hancock to seek the solace of alcohol and we realise how extreme his alcoholism is. Hancock gulps down brandy and becomes depressed and ultimately violent and abusive.

In this state he wrecks a family supper, calling Joan’s mother a four letter Anglo Saxon expletive – and a provincial Mancunian one at that - for which she never, ever forgave him. He later careered around his new home in Kent brandishing a coffee table and applied the same sobriquet to his adopted home county.

In this period Hancock is admitted to clinics to dry out. One doctor explains the grim truths of his condition to Joan, including that Hancock’s first wife loyally tried to keep him company in his drinking and paid for this by herself becoming a hopeless alcoholic.

This is echoed by a shocking scene in which Joan tries to persuade Tony to stop by drinking glass after glass full of brandy before collapsing in tears, taking an overdose and herself ending up in hospital. Hancock’s addiction is so severe that he carries on regardless and only appears mortified when he comes round.

Two figures seem to play a significant part in making Hancock what he has become. To Joan’s disgust his long-standing chauffeur aids and abets his quest for drink and is portrayed as seeming jealously to resent Joan’s intrusion into Hancock’s life.

Hancock’s mother Lil is also a huge influence. Hancock’s bashful, pained and almost quizzical smile to Joan at times of stress is very much that of a little boy wistfully seeking comfort or reassurance from his mother. He demonstrates this in the joke about memories of the mother pointing out the choo-choo, puff-puff to her son on a day out long ago. The trouble was he was 32. Hancock was needy and Joan was in many ways a mother-substitute.

The horror of life with advanced alcoholism is graphically presented. Only a person who has been obliged to live with someone with this condition can really appreciate its corrosive daily impact. On days when drink is not in control, sheer relief heightens the pleasures of normal life but the underlying anxiety about when the next cruel incident will take place is always there. In some ways this nervous anticipation of suffering to come during the good sober days is as cruel as the actual trauma endured on the bad drunk days; the stress involved is almost unimaginable.

After herself being hospitalized, Joan gives up on the fight for a while and returns to the forgiving John. She cannot, however, let go entirely and still loves Tony. Following his return from Australia, Joan and Tony meet clandestinely for a time. After months of turmoil, she eventually agrees that if he makes a go of his next trip for a series in Australia and keeps off the booze for a year, she would leave John and marry him.

In Australia we see the pressure again mount on Hancock. He copes with the work on his new TV show, but is undermined by news of adverse press coverage of the affair back in the UK. His vital life-line of letters form Joan is cut – either by Joan ceasing to write or a postal strike or both - and the fragile Tony cannot cope.

We see Joan try unsuccessfully to speak to him on the telephone. Prompted by a desperate Tony, his mother Lil tries to 'phone Joan at her parent’s house, but is dismissed by her mother who is still bitter about his drunken insults to her.

Following this, alone half a world away in his lower floor apartment in the rented house shared with his director Eddie Joffe, Tony Hancock is drunk and hallucinating, depressed over professional and personal failure. He takes an overdose and dies.

The death scene in the lonely bedroom is bleak, but we are left with one ray of hope. As he commits suicide, Hancock sees his comic self in his trademark astrakhan coat and Homburg. They shyly hug each other, perhaps for the first time; it is an embrace seemingly signifying acceptance, understanding and – hopefully - peace.

In the penultimate scene Joan visits Lil, whilst John waits outside. Devastated, Joan feels if she had gone to Australia, Tony would still be alive.

In an effort to make her feel better, Lil confides that Tony left two notes. The second, barely legible, was to Lil. After apologising for causing her yet more grief, Tony wanted a message passed on to her: "he now knew that the soul was everlasting and that Lil would understand. "

Lil believed Tony recognised in the end that "his soul was his gift and that he would never die". Lil had tried to make him understand this: "but he he could never see it; all he could see was an empty hole, that he tried to fill with drink."

Racked with guilt, Joan admitted that she had wished it was John that had gone and not Tony. Lil reminded her :" John is a good man. Don't hurt him any more. Tony never wanted that; he loved John. Get on with your life."

In the closing flashback, Hancock told an interviewer: "I don't regret it, but I wouldn't want to go through it again. I've tried to do the very best that I can. There's nothing worse than to come off and disappoint them. But sometimes, maybe the the audience asks a little too much. You just try to give as much as possible."

This brings to mind the perceptive tribute to Tony Hancock, the performer, by the late Sir Harry Secombe: "The demands of his profession shaped him, destroyed him and eventually killed him. If anyone paid dearly for laughs it was the lad himself. May he lie sweetly at rest".

Over the final credits Ella Fitzgerald sang the Rogers and Hart classic of love that just won't go away, Where or When. It's air of wistful romance suited the star-crossed love story of Tony and Joan and was fully in keeping with Joan's absorbing book on which the play was largely based, Lady Don't Fall Backwards.

Given that the real climax of the play was Hancock's confrontation and embrace with himself as the artist in trade-mark Homburg and astrakhan at the moment of his death, I wondered whether the tribute of another Brummie, Harvey Andrews from his song Mr Homburg Hat might have been even more apt:

And when we laughed, you cried
And when we sat in silence,
You tried all you knew
But when we came to say
That we'd really like to see you play
Because we love you
We love you
You only turned and took the bottle down
It served to help you through another town
And the papers said
That all the laughs were dead
Another broken clown.
Now there's no more Homburg hat and astrakhan
Just empty places on the seating plan
But now they flock to say
The greatest of his day
That funny man -
How sad he ran.

Colonel Moseley's Weekly Playlist #3

2008-03-27T12:14:00.002Z

This week I have been mainly listening to:

The Byrds ~ Sweetheart of the Rodeo
Dusty Springfield ~ Live at the Albert Hall
Harvey Andrews ~ Snaps – the Family Album
Robert Wyatt ~ Rock Bottom
Neil Diamond ~ Twelve Songs
Van Morrison ~ Astral Weeks
San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus ~ Abbamania
Liza Minnelli ~ Results
REM ~ Automatic for the People
Assassins ~ Original Cast Recording

Colonel Moseley's TV reviews: THE CURSE OF STEPTOE

2008-03-26T08:49:00.005Z

After reviewing two excellent American dramas, it makes a change to write about a very English bio-pic, The Curse of Steptoe on BBC 4. It was written by Brian Fillis whose Fear of Fanny, based on the life of Fanny Craddock, absorbed and entertained.

The programme told the story of the creation of Steptoe and Son, a landmark series considered by many to have given birth to the modern TV sitcom. Created by the brilliant Ray Galton (Burn Gorman) and Alan Simpson (Rory Kinnear) at the instigation of Tom Sloane (Roger Allam), Steptoe and Son offered an innovative combination of laughter and deepest pathos. Success stemmed from subtle development of character and plausible situations set against the downbeat backdrop of the home and scrap-yard in Oil Drum Lane in Shepherd’s Bush. Steptoe and Son was strikingly different from the lightweight fare previously on offer under the banner of situation comedy.

As one has come to expect with recent gems such as Fantabulosa which depicted the rather sad life of Kenneth Williams, the production featured a coherent and many-layered script, convincing individual and ensemble performances and an accurate sense of period from the monochrome early 1960's on.

The Curse of Steptoe focused mainly upon Harold Steptoe played by Harry H Corbett (Jason Isaacs) and father Albert played by Wilfrid Brambell (Phil Davies). The measured and insightful performances of Isaacs and Davies were superb.

At the most obvious level, the extreme differences between both actors were bluntly presented. Corbett was a rather pretentious and egocentric left-wing, method actor, spoken of as the English Brando, whilst Brambell was a complete opposite and of the old school, inclined to say, “I just put on the costume and act”.

Corbett was compulsive in his preparation and came to the first read-through having thoroughly learned the script, whilst Brambell was invariably late, unable to learn lines and sometimes lacking in focus.

Corbett was an uninhibited and rampant heterosexual, whilst Brambell was a repressed homosexual, bitterly ill-at-ease in his own skin and full of self-loathing.

Paradoxically, both principals had even more in common. Each loathed the other and only spoke when necessary. Noticeably, neither went for a drink with colleagues after the recording before a live audience if the other was to be there. Both drank and smoked to excess, although Brambell’s dependency amounted to alcoholism. Both were socially ill at ease.

It emerged that both suffered major perceived rejections with Corbett never knowing his father and losing his mother at birth. Brambell was humiliated and embittered by a divorce from his wife, who bore a child by a 24 year old lodger. Reminding a smug Corbett that he was a Lothario bedding everything in sight, his perceptive partner Sheila remarked: No wonder he doesn’t like you too much.

At the beginning, we see that Corbett had a considerable stage career ahead of him. Joan Littlewood enthused that Corbett had performed a Richard for the masses and knocked Geilgud and his cronies into a cocked hat. She sketched out his next career moves: the Histories, Macbeth and then the Danish ditherer. As the story progressed, we saw Corbett’s mounting angst at hearing Albert Finney had been cast as Macbeth or scored a personal triumph as Hamlet. He was not even auditioned for Uncle Vanya in Liverpool. Later, he was losing out to Bernard Breslaw for parts in Carry On films

When he later bumped into Joan Littlewood after receiving a Variety club Award for Steptoe, she was dismissive and ignored Corbett’s unconvincing remarks on its political significance. He was crushed by her indifference.

Corbett’s anxiety over his loss of a brilliant career in legitimate theatre was compounded by his tepid film work. He wanted to act in films on his merits, but found directors only required a re-hashed version of Harold with the same accent and vocal inflections. He knew that this was not worthy of his talents and made tame excuses, such as that the film had been released at the wrong time.

We also see that Corbett’s professional self-absorption and selfishness was paralleled in his treatment of his partner. He was dismissive of Sheila's acting career and a bully, as demonstrated in ordering her to dress less revealingly if they were to go out. He seemed to accept further series of Steptoe and Son in part to assert himself and punish her. She stoically accepted this until eventually leaving him.

Brambell’s private life was at least as dysfunctional as Corbett’s. Despite previously being married, he was homosexual. He was drawn to public lavatories and suffered immense self-loathing in consequence. He felt humiliated in gay pubs and guiltily paid for muscular young men to visit him. He was ultimately arrested for soliciting for immoral purposes with harrowing press coverage. We see Corbett laughing insensitively at newspaper reports of the case.

After the hearing, Brambell sought work (any part, however small) abroad to escape Steptoe and Sons and this publicity. Even this failed, when the Broadway Show Kelly the Musical folded after one performance.

In truth, Corbett had been delighted when Brambell declined to do a further series of Steptoe to go to Broadway. He was pleased at the prospect of a new series with Albert killed-off and Harold’s new-found son appearing to join him. The sitcom could move on a generation and could still properly be called Steptoe and Son.

It is unclear whether Corbett’s joy at the prospect of this change was for the new direction of the plot or the departure of the loathed Brambell. He was shattered on Brambell's return and the continued status quo.

Towards the end of the play, we saw more of the almost Macchiavellian role of the producer and writers. When the writers considered they had exhausted all possibilities for comedy, Tom Sloane he made sure that they continued with what was, after all, an established ratings-winner. After many series, Galton and Simpson knowingly began to mine an increasingly sensitive seam of material which became classic comedy, but was very personal to the performers.

This was particularly demonstrated when Harold wished to become an actor and in scenes such as his Marlon Brando “I could have been a contender” speech in the taxi from On the Waterfront. This was capped by Brambell’s insensitive: “Is it me?” and Corbett’s anguished response: “It’s always going to be you.”

The exchange of glances between Galton and Simpson during this scene showed that all concerned were well aware how much it touched upon open wounds. In this instance the adjective “visceral” could accurately be applied to the outwardly comic exchanges they had written.

We also saw Harold leaving the local theatre being asked by a young boy brandishing an autograph book if he was an actor. Harold replied desolately that he will only ever be a rag and bone man. That one line encapsulated Harry H Corbett’s fate as a performer and perhaps the true meaning of the Curse of Steptoe. Corbett had entered into a Faustian pact; he had achieved huge international fame overnight at the cost of, what he considered, his artistic soul. Tragically, he never really seemed fully to enjoy the upside.

A couple of small moments in the piece demonstrate subtle writing. Brambell was asked if he enjoyed his holiday in Hong Kong. He confirmed he did bring back some pretty little things for the flat. Again looks were exchanged between the knowing Galton and Simpson. In the brief wordless penultimate scene we saw Brambell returning to his flat where the door was opened and he was kissed and handed a gin and tonic by a Chinese male.

Similarly, when Corbett was walking down a BBC corridor, on his way to bring the purgatory of Steptoe and Son to an end for good, he glanced at a large framed photograph on the wall of Geilgud as Hamlet, the embodiment of what his career might have been.

His subsequent terse but gentle conversation with Brambell was perfect in the way it conveyed sincere and tired resignation: “Let’s not do this anymore” to which Wilfrid simply replied “Alright”. Brambell responded to Corbett’s final “Good-bye, father” spoken in Harold’s voice with “Fuck ‘orf”, which he managed to say with a good-natured warmth entirely absent from every single one of their earlier dealings.

Although the tone of the piece was consistently bleak, one wonders if Corbett’s late fatherhood and Brambell’s companion, possibly from Hong Kong, brought happiness and contentment that was only hinted at.

Our parting impression of Harry H Corbett was a 'phone call to his agent. Neither actor had worked much since the last series. After panto’, all that was on offer was a stage version of Steptoe and Son touring Australia and they already had Wilfrid on board.

Corbett’s eyes conveyed the abject realisation that, like Harold and Albert, he and Brambell would be trapped, shackled together for all eternity. As he commented when waiting for the tardy Wilfrid to arrive at the very first read-through for the Comedy Playhouse pilot all those years ago, it was just like "Waiting for Godot".

In the end it seemed that Harry H Corbett and Wilfrid Brambell were destined to continue to play their own desperate version of Vladimir and Estragon until the final curtain came down.

Colonel Moseley's Weekly Playlist #2

2008-03-13T08:03:00.001Z

This week I have been mainly listening to:

Vashti Bunyan ~ Lookaftering
Nick Drake ~ Pink Moon
Green Day ~ American Idiot
Sir John Betjeman ~Betjeman’s Banana Blush
John Lennon ~ Working Class Hero: The Definitive Lennon
Pete Atkin ~ A King at Nightfall
The Seekers ~ 25 Year Reunion Live in Concert
Randy Newman ~ Land of Dreams
Joni Mitchell ~ Blue
The Smiths ~ The Queen is Dead

Colonel Moseley's TV review: "MAD MEN"

2008-03-12T08:48:00.003Z

Unusually, another of my favourite dramas just now comes from America; it is Mad Men showing on BBC4 on Sundays and repeated on Wednesday on BBC2.

The programme is set in New York’s Madison Avenue in 1960 just before Kennedy beat Nixon and the short-lived Camelot period began. It was to end within three years with the sound of gunshots in Dallas.

The initial appeal of Mad Men lies in its slick, cinematic depiction of the fresh self-confidence of its time. It is a period drama with production values to die for. The sky scrapers in the Big Apple are tall and shiny, the clothes are sharp and appealing and the advertising executives are creative, forward-looking Masters of the Universe.

When I walk around New York my head is always full of Rhapsody in Blue or the theme from the Odd Couple. I expect to see Holly Golightly fresh from Breakfast at Tiffany’s or Jack Lemon on his way to The Apartment. My mental New York is all about lunch with dry martinis in a buttoned booth at Sardis or The Four Seasons.

In this respect, Mad Men delivers in spades. The production values are delicious and it’s as much of a costume drama as Cranford or Pride and Prejudice. The suits are sharp and somehow of the moment, the dresses and hair are stylish and the sets are authentic from offices to restaurants to suburban homes. Visually it is a delight and a triumph.

As well as capturing the look of the times, Mad Men reflects its mores. Against a background of unlimited chutzpah, political incorrectness and rampant consumerism, we are presented with grotesque displays of sexism, misogyny, homophobia, anti-semitism, racism, bigotry, hypocrisy, immorality and greed.

A general inclination towards excess and self-gratification is reflected in patronising rudeness to black waiters, endemic treatment of female staff as sex objects and virtually compulsory infidelity and drinking.

Strikingly, everyone seems to smoke at all times whether in the office, restaurant or on the psychiatrist’s couch. Smoking in many ways is the leitmotif of this whole story. It is an essential element of the picture of the time; it reflects the bravado and ultimate weakness of the characters and demonstrates the essence of the ad man’s role and mentality.

In the first episode our hero/antihero, Don Draper (Jon Hamm) is confronted with the problem of advertising Lucky Strike cigarettes after the link with lung cancer had been established and the advertiser's palette of misinformation had been limited. His solution “It’s toasted” encapsulated the essence of the man and his job. Advertising is not about informing or explaining. Most politely, it’s about comfortable illusion or distraction. More accurately it’s often about misleading or lying for money

The cigarette advertising dilemma flags up the basic issue about this world. It is glossy, slick and glamorous but basically e-moral, exploitative and corrupt. Its reality is much more desolate Edward Hopper than cosy Norman Rockwell.

Later he comes up with the slogan “Any excuse to get closer” to promote Right Guard. The skill or evil genius involved in arriving at this brilliant commercial solution impresses and terrifies at the same time. This new breed of canny ad man is sensitive and insightful and well as cynical and exploitative. From then on, the innocent consumer didn’t stand a chance.

The world of advertising men is also corrupting. It will be intriguing to see what becomes of the new secretary from the sticks who seems destined to join the rank of abused victims sobbing in the ladies' washroom at the office.

Don Draper himself embodies this moral vacuum of the ad business. He is attractive and intelligent. He seems to reflect a great deal and is not entirely insensitive. He knows the power he wields, but we do not yet know if he feels this should bring with it any responsibilities. He is capable of flashes of insight and we note in the opening episode that he has a purple heart decoration in the drawer of his desk in his office. This may be clarified later.

He is more appealing than some of his more boorish and vicious subordinates, yet he is regularly unfaithful with his girlfriend in the city whilst outwardly devoted to his pretty wife and two children out in comfortable Westchester suburbia.

We do not know if Draper’s occasional reflective moments demonstrate any awareness or concerns about his cynical existence in a moral vacuum. In the real world sleeping in the office in the afternoon is usually just that - and not a manifestation of intense thought, inner conflict or mental anguish. Just because they are still, waters don't have to be deep -still waters can be very shallow.

This uncertainty sums up the point and fascination of the drama. The merit of Mad Men is not just its sumptuous production values that mean one can almost taste the vodka gimlets and smell the Lucky Strikes.

It intrigues because it flags up such unanswered contradictions. Draper, who seems personable enough, can live with a job which is, at best, misinforming his fellow Americans. He can also live through adultery and lies as a matter of routine.

Viewers want to know why and how he can do this. More broadly, we want to know how his whole industry flourished on a foundation of the illusory and misleading. Also, what does it signify for us now when we know full well that spin and deceit dominate what we consume and think and how we are governed?

Mad Men is more than costume drama; it illuminates 1960 and maybe today.

Colonel Moseley's weekly PLAYLIST

2008-03-07T19:47:00.001Z

This week I have been mainly listening to - and thoroughly recommend :

Pete Atkin ~ Midnight Voices

Brian Wilson ~ Smile

Pet Shop Boys ~ Very

Parade ~ The Original Broadway Cast Recording

Brian Eno ~ Ambient 1, Music for Airports

Rufus Wainwright ~ Release the Stars

Harvey Andrews ~ 25 Years on the Road

Judith Durham ~ Mona Lisas

Dusty Springfield ~ Dusty in Memphis

Dave Mallett ~ Parallel Lives

Colonel Moseley's TV review: "Damages"

2008-02-28T01:04:00.001Z

My must-see programme just now is the dark American legal drama Damages on Monday evening on BBC1.

Its tortuous plot is slickly edited and embellished with quick-fire flashbacks and grainy leaps forward contrived to create a strange and unsettling e-moral atmosphere – not entirely unlike most systems of civil litigation. The viewer feels a detachment similar to the weird, almost out-of-body frisson of rural Americana in Twin Peaks.

It’s difficult to sum up the complex plot of Damages. The story is set in New York and follows Ellen Parsons, a newly-appointed associate in a leading litigation practice, portrayed by Rose Byrne.

The firm is headed by charismatic Patty Hewes played by Glenn Close – for which she won a Golden Globe. Her firm is involved in a mega-bucks class suit by workers against billionaire baddie Arthur Frobisher, who made a fortune selling his stock in his company before it went bust leaving thousands of his employees facing poverty. In the role of the villain, Ted Danson is about as far away from Sam Malone in Cheers as is possible.

Much of the pleasure in watching the show derives from the icy Patty who is glamorously successful, ruthless and fascinating. Glenn Close avoids histrionics and any vulgar large acting. Her iconic performance is subtle, understatedly mannered and almost painfully quiet – not dissimilar to Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada.

It is difficult to imagine so deadly an operator, who is capable of having a pet dog killed to advance her case, having the emotions to sustain motherhood and marriage – unless perhaps the husband is killed and eaten after mating. Patty’s dysfunctional relationship with her Mephistophelean son makes an intriguing subplot that may assume even greater significance later in the proceedings.

If Damages is primarily the story of Ellen, it serves mainly to tell the story of the corruption of youthful decency or more particularly of a Faustian pact.

From the outset, it seems Ellen increasingly risks loss of her integrity and is fated to sell her soul for the largesse Patty can bestow – a smart Manhattan apartment, large salary, professional prestige and most tellingly of all, Patty’s approval.

Ellen’s journey away from the light is crystallised in her firing of her incompetent assistant which was prompted by Patty. Much of the series is spent wondering whether this journey will climax with blame for the gory murder of her fiancé.

The theme of selling one’s soul is repeated by other characters such as the double-dealing elderly former employee, the sister of Ellen’s fiancé, a key witness and even Frobisher’s lawyer. Each is tainted and somehow damned by their dealings with the satanic Frobisher.

Ted Danson’s performance is intricate and multi-layered. His character ranges from the warm family man by the pool to the degenerate high on cocaine in his car with a hooker and the violent bully assaulting his insufficiently sycophantic ghost-writer. He exudes an unbalanced feral quality all the more difficult to deal with since he seems to have convinced himself of the truth of his own lies. He embodies the devil and is entirely corrupt and corrupting.

I am writing this after four episodes and have not yet seen Patty and Frobisher in the same scene. Their characters are charismatic and repulsive at the same time. It will be interesting to see the chemistry if they appear on screen together: there may be spontaneous combustion.

As well as exploring the Faustian pact, Damages paints a savage picture of a system of civil litigation rife with cynicism, greed, lies, corruption, brutality and any number of character defects most useful in constructing compelling drama. It is not genteel. Eminent but hugely flawed lawyers seek the massive fruits of victory at any cost.

The sub-plot of the crossing lady’s suit against Ellen’s under-insured father shows how corrosive and potentially ruinous even cases much smaller than class actions can be. Ellen’s father’s decency seems a potentially disastrous delusion in a system that can often be vicious in effect.

I recommend Damages for its accomplished leading performances, thought-provoking writing and pacy editing. It intrigues, entertains and occasionally shocks. I am looking forward to the rest of the series.

Colonel Moseley's TV review: "Masterchef "

2008-02-16T23:26:00.001Z

The Mem and I have always enjoyed watching Masterchef from it's original incarnation with Loyd Grossman to its current four nights a week with John Torode and his sidekick Gregg Wallace - who seems to have morphed from a vegetable guru to an ingedients expert. Anyway, we find the gastro-porn laced with tough competition and human interest compelling and relaxing with a gin and tonic of an evening. Other than the fact that the current 8.30 slot is less convenient than 6.30, a few things strike one about the current format:

it's a shame that every programme starts with clips of several contestants inadvisably asserting that they have come to win the whole competition and that it will change their lives. Few seem to realise how demanding the job would be. Many should be afraid of achieving what they say they wish.

sometimes when the verdict between contestants is close, it is possible to predict who will win and live to fight another day. Basically, the contestant who is good TV seems more likely to survive - there is an advantage in being telegenic - cute, attractive or appealingly quirky. We usually win our imaginary bets between ourselves on the outcome

it seems sad that a contestant who has survived the tough first round can be sent home after the ingredients and passion test in the quarter final without even cooking

the passion test itself now looks a little unconvincing, tired and formulaic - it needs a revamp

the endurance test seems a little over the top. It's not too entertaining to see amateurs struggle over breakfast service which they could probably master with reasonable practice and then decide they don't really want to spend their lives being a short order cook - it doesn't seem to represent what contestants aspire to. The dinner service of their own creations is a more useful indicator of potential excellence and makes more interesting viewing - it can also test stamina sufficiently.

more contestants now seem canny enough to play to the judge's admitted tastes and personalities -from a love of certain puddings and cuisines to the promotion of the underdog. Viewers can detect what may not be entirely genuine and it detracts from the programme

Despite these few issues, Masterchef is still compulsive viewing for foodies. The next series might be even better if these points were addressed. Bon appetit!

Postscript 29~2~2008: the 2008 series ended last night with James a worthy winner. What a talented group of finalists and what daunting tasks they overcame in the final. With their exceptional but different talents Jonny, Emily or James might have won. It's difficult to imagine how they managed to hold their nerve to cook such a complex dinner for that table of Michelin-starred chefs at the Dorchester, let alone to recreate those signature dishes for the likes of Pierre Gagnaire in France. The latter stages of the series were fascinating. It couldn't get much better than this next year - or could it?

Colonel Moseley reviews Parade: A New Musical

2007-10-26T23:38:00.001+01:00

We celebrated my recent birthday with tickets for Parade at the intimate Donmar Warehouse in Covent Garden. Although Parade is still subtitled A New Musical it’s now nine years since its Broadway premiere in 1998 when, despite winning Tony’s for best original score and best book, it ran for only 84 performances at the Lincoln Centre.

Set in Georgia in the Deepest South, the musical concerns the rape and murder of Mary Phagan, a thirteen year old white girl in the Marietta pencil factory where she worked on Confederate Memorial Day in 1913 and the trial of her college-educated, Brooklyn-born Jewish supervisor Leo Frank. He was convicted on the basis of largely trumped-up evidence following a hysterical political, religious and press witch-hunt.

Parade addresses a life and death story-line with other issues: there is a not-very-sub subtext of the ongoing bitterness of the South fifty years after the Civil War, Northern economic exploitation, anti-Semitism, philistinism and the repression of blacks and women - Mame, clearly it ‘aint.

Interestingly, the book writer Alfred Uhry -who won a Pulitzer Prize for his first play, Driving Miss Daisy - had a direct connection to this true story in that the pencil factory was owned by his mother’s uncle.

The show’s composer Jason Robert Brown has put together a powerful score exploring a range of musical Americana including gospel, ragtime, hymns, country and a chain-gang blues. This is partly in the manner of Sondheim’s dipping into the American songbook in Assassins. There is also some undisguised use of items from the musical writer’s now standard repertoire that I imagine is taught to promising author/composers at universities nowadays.

Christopher Oram’s monochrome set serves the production well providing a blank canvass for the factory, courtroom and governor’s mansion with a balcony even serving as the river bank. All is overseen by a sepia backcloth of haunting faces bearing witness. The stage is smokily lit and manages to evoke the steamy South.

Lately I have increasingly appreciated how much the choreographer can create not only atmosphere but accelerate the drama- as Xavier de Frutos did in Cabaret.

Rob Ashford directs and cleverly choreographs Parade and creates several scenes summing up the atmosphere and ethos of the time such as Memorial Day in Marietta, drama at the court house and bitter scenes at Mary’s funeral.

My strongest memory of the entire production is Leo and Lucille clinging pitifully together after the guilty verdict is announced whilst the mob circle around wildly stamping out their merciless animalistic celebration in a cakewalk of hatred. It conveyed a vicious and bigoted triumphalism many times worse than the coarsest football crowd and made my flesh crawl.

As well as superb ensemble work, Parade is illuminated by brilliant individual performances. I would single out newcomer Stuart Matthew Price trebling up as the young soldier who opens the proceedings, a guard and Frankie Epps who embodies youthful Georgian lust for vengeance. Also Jayne Fisher doubles as the young victim Mary Phagan and the porcelain-complexioned southern belle Lila haunting in a white dress and parasol representing the lost and vanquished South.

Shaun Escoffery is consistently excellent as Newt Lee, Riley and Jim Conley, the perjuring witness and possible actual murderer: his acting and singing are of the highest standard. Similarly, Mark Bonnar and Gary Milner are faultless as the ambitious prosecutor and governor.

Necessarily the drama relies most upon its central characters Leo Franks and his wife Lucille. As Leo, Bertie Carvel constructs a complex and ultimately convincing character. He begins as an un-likable uptight pedant, finicky and cold: all ticks and twitches with the manner and voice of an autistic Woody Allen. One gets the impression that the small town rednecks disliked him as much for his college education and lack of down-home clubability as for being Jewish.

With continuous anxiety and adversity, he mellows and we see a more human and vulnerable side. He achieves this by a combination of meticulous acting and impeccable delivery of well-constructed, tour de force numbers such as It’s Hard to Speak my Heart.

Lara Pulver conveys the development of Lucille Franks from housewife to doughty campaigner entirely convincingly. Seemingly against the whole world her unconditional loyalty and commitment-as reflected in Do It Alone- ultimately help win over the governor.

Leo’s belated recognition and appreciation of his wife’s devotion and achievement are touching. Their journey alone and ultimately together is perfectly reflected in their glorious duets This is Not Over Yet and All the Wasted Time.

We were settling back into our seats after the interval and chatting to our neighbours about the performance. All agreed it had been powerful and absorbing theatre but the question arose as to whether the story could have been better addressed in a play.

It is undeniable that the musical necessarily simplifies events –such as omitting reference to the powerful groundswell of support for Leo Franks from the more liberal North. Also the format imposes requirements of scene setting, establishment and development of characters and storyline, plus musical and thematic light and shade that the seasoned viewer can see coming. The same applies to an approach to songs based on an intention to cast its net widely across indigenous American song from hymn and march to the blues.

The gloriously catchy and uplifting opening and closing The Old Red Hills of Home is a good example of the problems this creates. The song speaks of the land where honor lives and breathes and glorifies the Old South. Oversimplified though it may be, the point of Parade is that what the South has endured by way of defeat, humiliation and economic exploitation magnified its bitterness, bigotry and philistinism to an extent that it could be easily manipulated by political, religious or press shysters to do truly terrible things - as witness the cruel fate of Leo Franks.

To end the show with a reprise of this tired hymn to the red hills –perhaps red with blood of the different or the outsider- is ironic and leaves one feeling frustrated and depressed that, yet again, the bad guys have won.

These painful issues do not lend themselves particularly easily to the musical. On the other hand, there are moments when the story takes flight. These include Leo Franks witty exposition of the point of view of a Brooklyn Jew in Georgia in How Can I Call This Home and Lucille’s loving defence of her husband in both You Don’t know this Man and Do It Alone. Emotion is heightened and the drama is intensified and expedited by tour de force duets such as This is Not Over Yet and set piece numbers involving most of the cast such as That’s What He Said.

Occasionally references to musicals past grate a little such as when Mrs Phagan’s heartbreaking song of loss at her daughter’s funeral concludes with the shocking And so I forgive you….Jew. The anti-semitism is validly presented but the shock value dissipated somewhat by the use of the same device at the end of If you could see her in Cabaret.

On the whole however I felt that the combination of well-crafted lyrics, diversity of music and dramatic effects meant that the musical form brought much more to this story than a straight play could have done. Despite the contraints and occasional crassness of the musical format, this production includes touching moments of real beauty; it also manages to move, appal, outrage and depress. Above all, it involves its audience.

As a story of bigotry and scapegoating the outsider Parade is relevant; in the light of the McCann case, its depiction of the influence and power-for-ill of the popular press is also timely

The poster for Parade quotes the Sunday Telegraph review “This production ranks as one of the Donmar’s best”. I don’t think Parade is the quite best musical ever staged at the Donmar, but given how it engages its audience it must rank as one of its best productions.

Colonel Moseley reviews Follies in Concert

2007-10-26T23:10:00.001+01:00

There’s no denying it, the first two months of the year are grim. No amount of reality television or celebrity ice skating can lift the post-Christmas gloom. I was thinking that the Mem and I needed a lift when I spotted the advert for Follies in Concert at the London Palladium on Sunday 4th. February; it was to be one evening performance and would benefit the very worthwhile Starlight Children's Foundation and Kingston Hospital Cancer Unit Appeal.

The Mem and I admire Stephen Sondheim’s work and love Follies most. It depicts a reunion of several decades’ of performers from Weismann’s Follies on the stage of his theatre, just before its demolition.

The show has everything: humour, success, failure, delusion, love and regret…the lot. Its songs reflect the history of musical theatre from Lehar to Rogers and from burlesque to torch song. It addresses time passing, the reality and illusion of past and present, sanity, disappointment and the way we mislead others and ourselves. It epitomises the term bittersweet.

We have seen the show several times: a glitzy all-star version at London’s Shaftesbury Theatre, Paul Kerryson’s absorbingly understandable interpretation at Leicester’s Haymarket and a truly authentic production in the run–down Belasco Theatre on Broadway.

We have the CD of most Sondheim productions, but our favourite remains the gala production of Follies in Concert at the Lincoln Centre in New York starring the legendary Barbara Cook and the divine Lee Remick. The concert featured some truly marvellous moments, including Elaine Stritch bringing down the house with the definitive performance of Broadway Baby.

Our seats at the Palladium were in the third row centre of the royal circle with an excellent view of the stage. The audience was a mixture of those that attend glitzy charity galas, friends of the musical – and many of Dorothy – and Sondheim aficionados (which other, more worldly, bloggers call anoraks). Whatever their origins, they made an appreciative audience that helped the evening go with a swing.

The staging was simple and effective. A runway crossed the back of the set, leading down one side to stage centre with a flight of ten or so red-carpeted steps. To the rear was the orchestra with a clear performance area at stage-front. Another runway went into the audience around the edge of the empty orchestra pit.

During the overture, the cast sauntered into the reunion, meeting and greeting and forming excited little groups.Trevor McDonald set the scene authoritatively as the radio announcer and Patrick Mower took control as a larger than life –and dare-one-say, a tad hammy – Dimitri Weismann. He soon called on Roscoe to welcome the Weismann Girls in his inimitable manner. Bonaventura Bottone set the standard for the evening’s singing with a crystal clear rendition of Beautiful Girls.

To my delight the audience responded by loudly applauding each of the former follies girls as they processed down the stairs to centre stage, reaching a glorious climax involving the entire company.

Once the cast was assembled, relationships were revisited and old illusions explored, particularly as between the four principals: Buddy, Ben, Phyllis and Sally.

Maria Friedman was a plausible Sally Durant Plummer, gauche and provincial and still manifesting the thwarted passion of decades before. As Benjamin Stone, Philip Quast was credible as materially successful but ultimately exploitative and shallow. Liz Robertson was a cool and sarcastic Phyllis. Tim Flavin's Buddy was a convincingly seedy salesman seeking comfort in the arms of his mistress.

Sally and Ben’s first duet Don’t Look at Me was crisp and lucid and set the scene perfectly. The same applies for the Waiting for the Girls Upstairs involving the principal quartet and their younger selves, excellently played by Neil McDermott, Adam-Jon Fiorentino, Summer Strallen and Rachel Barrell.This first half was given even greater impetus by the montage of follies songs performed by “old girls”.

Wendi Peters and Richard Calkin got this segment on the road as the Whitmans with a spirited version of Rain on the Roof , including a very accomplished soft shoe shuffle. It evoked Comden and Green’s classic version at Lincoln Centre, but was better phrased – which is high praise.

This was followed by a saucy Ah, Paris! by the ageless, indomitable - and scene stealing - Liliane Montevecchi, reprising her Solange. It was sassy, camp and a huge success with the audience, which was by now fully warmed-up.

Then came Broadway Baby – to this show what the soliloquy is to Hamlet. Imelda Staunton, in a fetching new-wave, mid-calf gown, carried a great burden of anticipation, not least because La Stritch herself had been advertised initially to appear in this production, albeit as Carlotta rather than Hattie.

Given Miss Staunton’s talent, no-one had cause to worry. She carried it off with aplomb. Her version wasn’t all pauses and deadpan a la Stritch, but a feisty driving number more suited to a pocket battleship. It roared to a climax that merged with the reprises from the two other songs.

I always think this is a shame since Hattie loses the opportunity to bask alone in the glory of a really great moment of musical theatre. I guess there’s a moral in that somewhere…even if I’m not sure exactly where.

After the wham-bam of the montage comes a more reflective section with a stunning The Road You Didn’t Take from Ben. Philip Quast’s precise diction and tasteful phrasing gave the lyric even greater clarity and relevance. The flooding orchestration always reminds me of Debussy at his most lyrical. Here, I commend the orchestra and particularly its woodwind section.

There followed a touching and real In Buddy’s Eyes from Maria Friedman. The aching void of Sally’s suburban existence was painted as vividly as the flowers in her garden. I loved Maria's interpretation of the song; it moved me as much as Barbara Cook's.

The contrast of light and shade continued with a show-stopping Who’s that Woman (the Mirror Song) led with drive by Meg Johnson as Stella Deems. The line of mature hoofers was joined by most of the company and danced and sang their hearts out to a joyous, if exhausted, climax and tumultuous applause. Who said you could never remember the tunes in Sondheim shows?

The first half ended with a tour de force I’m Still Here from Kim Criswell as Carlotta Campion. I remember years ago sitting in the front row of the Shaftesbury listening in awe as Dolores Grey triumphantly sold this number, sitting nonchalantly on a bar stool following a leg injury.

On this evening Kim Crisswell was more mobile and built the number to a massive crescendo and thoroughly deserved the huge ovation that followed.

Act II began with the exotic Bolero D’Amore superbly performed by Paul Killick and Alison Epsom. The Mem still speaks fondly and distractedly of his shirtless paso from Strictly Come Dancing.

They were joined by Angela Rippon with dress slashed to the thigh. She danced very expressively in Mr Killick’s safe and expert hands and her marvellous legs went on as far as they did in that Morecambe & Wise Christmas Show all those years ago.

Ben and Sally’s Too Many Mornings was, for me, the highlight of the concert. The song is complex and seems part conversational and part thought process. Here Maria Friedman and Philip Quast seemed to have a telepathic synchronicity which gave the duet a real pace and fluidity, as though it was one voice. This allowed the emotion to flow with a rapture that captured the fleeting magic of transitory passionate love. This quality is difficult to set to music and sing - or even describe.

Buddy’s opportunity to describe and justify his attitudes and behaviour came with The Right Girl. Tim Flavin attacked the song with the requisite American macho drive. This rollicking exposition of men’s needs was counterbalanced with a delicate duet, One More Kiss between Heidi Schiller and her young self, which evoked the fragility of old age and vigour of youth. The older soprano looks on as the ravishing voice of her twenties soars exquisitely; she is proud yet wistfully concludes “never look back”. This was a touching and apt duet, beautifully performed by Josephine Barstow and Charlotte Page.

The bittersweet of One More Kiss was followed by the bitterness of Could I Leave You in which Phyllis, tired of Ben’s philandering, explains a few home truths. She adroitly outlines the futility of their existence together and ultimately leaves him hanging as to whether she will or will not take him for every cent he has - in the American way of divorce.

Liz Robertson handles a very convoluted and very Sondheim lyric masterfully: her breath control and phrasing were superb.

The final Follies section of the show follows the high camp Loveland sequence. The young Ben, Phyllis, Buddy and Sally scampered through You’re Gonna Love Tomorrow and Love will see Us Through. Their singing, acting and movement were of a high order.

Similarly, Tim Flavin attacked The God-Why-Don’t-You- Love-Me Blues with élan, ably assisted by Emma Cannon as Margie and Charlie Bull as Sally. The combination of verbal gymnastics and hoofing, making full use of the runway at the front of the stage, worked well.

The ribaldry of Buddy’s Folly was followed immediately by the quiet madness of Sally’s. Maria Friedman walked demurely to the top of the staircase and sang what is perhaps the ultimate torch song Losing My Mind with aching poignancy. The number was moodily staged and lit and created a lasting memory.

Piling one contrast after another, Phyllis’s Folly took the form of an upbeat vaudeville number telling the Story of Lucy and Jessie with male dancers. Liz Robertson managed yet more tongue twisting lyrics in breathlessly long phrases admirably and the audience roared.

The Follies concluded with Ben’s Live Laugh and Love. Again, Philip Quast mastered a difficult lyric with some high kicking and suffered the mental breakdown that brings the proceedings to a close.

Ben, Phyllis, Buddy and Sally return home with their spouses crushed and numbed by the experience of being confronted with their past and the cold reality of the present: it wasn’t pretty.

At the end of the show the audience gave the cast a deserved standing ovation. The quality of singing, acting and dance was consistently high and the story-line was clearly presented. With relatively little rehearsal, the performers had been able to provide a thrilling evening.

I always think Follies is like the best work of Dennis Potter such as Pennies from Heaven or The Singing Detective. Memories are powerfully evoked by songs or what Noel Coward called cheap music. Such songs can often help us block-out or distort what actually went on.

Paradoxically, they can also trigger memories which help us recollect or work out the past.The truth about the past isn’t always pleasant, particularly when the sugar-coating is removed, but it’s still the truth and that’s what we are ultimately searching for. Quite often the discovery is painful or traumatic. We are left dazed and have to lick our wounds and work out how to deal with tomorrow – just like Ben, Phyllis, Buddy and Sally at the end of Follies.

Follies deals with some big issues and yet still moves and entertains; that’s why it is my favourite musical.

Written in February 2007

Colonel Moseley reviews Merry Wives : the Musical ...and reviews the reviews

2007-10-26T22:51:00.001+01:00

Unlike some politicians, before proceeding further I feel I should declare a personal interest. In common with a good proportion of the British public, I am devoted to Dame Judi Dench. She has been my favourite actress ever since I first saw her Portia in The Merchant of Venice at Stratford in the early 1970's.

Apart from the intelligence and insight of her characterisation, she has a beautiful voice. Listening to her speak, sing or even laugh is pleasurable.

Over the years I have enjoyed her in musicals starting with Sally Bowles in Cabaret and latterly Desiree in A Little Night Music and in plays ranging from Absolute Hell to her most recent comedy master class in Hay Fever. In every one Dame Judi illuminated the stage and wove a special magic.

You can imagine that I was pleased to obtain tickets for Greg Doran’s production of Merry Wives:The Musical shortly after its opening in the main house at Stratford before Christmas.

Visiting the RSC is interesting nowadays. The crowded foyer reminded me of Lourdes. I don’t think I have ever seen such an assembly of the elderly - not that I can talk! Perhaps they anticipated that sight of the blessed Dame during Advent would have miraculous properties.

I hear that in Leeds many a pensioner has been able to dismantle the stair-lift after seeing Carol Vorderman during Lent; nowadays such is the true power of celebrity.

The few below retirement age seemed to be made up of teachers and social workers: the look was unsmiling and the mot du jour, earnest.

Merry Wives: the Musical is such a huge undertaking that it’s difficult to know quite where to begin. One’s view of the success of the production depends entirely on the marriage of a quirky and complex comedy with the musical form.

The brilliant Greg Doran adapted the play and made judicious decisions on cutting sundry sub plots. He also magnified the role of Mistress Quickly. This simplification and lightening works well without amounting to dumbing down.

I also had no problem with the musical format. The transitions to song and dance are never unduly strained or silly.

From the outset it is plain that the composer Paul Englishby has painted from an enormous palette and produces an eclectic score. Depending on one’s stance, this could be regarded as pastiche, homage or simple referencing of styles which ranged from Lloyd Webber to Weill and from hoe-down to madrigal.

I liked the hoe-down number where pots and pans are beaten with gusto just as they were in the show-stopping I Got Rhythm in Crazy for You.

Cutting to the chase, the first of my two criticisms of the production relates to the score. Not enough of the tunes were sufficiently memorable or whistle-able to make this a great musical. They were adequate for a good entertainment but a musical can only take wings when the music transports.

My second concern is Ranjit Bolt’s lyrics, as exemplified by the wives' oft-quoted description of Falstaff: “He stinks of urine/And thinks he’s so alluring”. This wasn’t quite Sondheim and didn’t quite do it for me, even though I was willing to be amused.

The designer, Stephen Brimson Lewis delivers the goods across the board with Tudorbethan sets which were striking and upbeat. There is a lovely moment when Judi Dench halts upstage - destroying the fake perspective - and peers with bafflement at the model half-timbered houses. The audience roared.

There is also hilarity when Simon Callow as Falstaff takes a bath in his fat suit echoing Bubbles de Vere in Little Britain. Falstaff also gets to lark around in hampers and get covered in soot from the chimney. It’s pantomime with tongue firmly in cheek and better for it.

The range of costumes is also appealing. I particularly liked the chic 1590’s meets 1950’s ensembles of the wives and the contemporary references in the costumes for Bardolph, Nym and Pistol who resembled Russ Abbott’s Scots Wee Jimmy, Kenny Everett’s eternal punk , Sid Snot and a black-clad Russell Brand.

These adroitly played caricatures were fun. They each owed something to the tradition of topical references in panto – but why not?

As one would expect from the RSC, the show featured numerous excellent individual performances. Simon Trinder was outstanding as the gormless love-struck Slender and must go on to even greater things. Paul Chahidi and Ian Hughes were extremely funny as Dr Caius and Sir Hugh Evans with marvellous accents and physical business: ‘Allo ‘Allo meets Hi de Hi.

With hats and handbags to the fore, Haydn Gwynne and Alexandra Gilbreath were convincingly pert as the elegant and comely wives, whilst Alistair McGowan handled his comic scenes as the jealous husband coherently and well.

Like many, I had been looking forward to Desmond Barrit’s Falstaff. I shall never forget his Malvolio at the RSC which managed heartrending pathos and hilarity in quick succession. He held the audience in the palm of his hand with some Charles Laughton and a touch of Ken Dodd.
I understand that Simon Callow bravely took on the role of Falstaff relatively late-on. He delivered the part with great authority and presence and handled the knockabout expertly.

Some difficult songs were delivered with aplomb. His bluff and blustering Falstaff had gravitas and was presented con brio. His performance was that of a very good actor at work but lacked genuine pathos. Even in his ultimate humiliation the audience was never really forced to care.
As ever, Judi Dench was a delight. Her slatternly Mistress Quickly, all red hair and racy past, was saucy and touching in equal measure.

For me the highlight of the show was her poignant rendition of Honeysuckle Villain when considering whether to reignite old flames with Falstaff. Her tavern-smoked voice conveyed all the world-weariness and regret of a lifetime. It was moving, wistful and so utterly convincing that one was brought back to earth with a bump when she then waltzed off arm-in-arm with young Pistol instead.

Dame Judi also astonished during another number by appearing to execute several very athletic somersaults across the stage. At the critical moment, however, the acrobat’s wig slipped, somewhat spoiling the illusion. Dame Judi saved the gag and brought the house down by “returning” to the stage adjusting her own wig: what a pro!

My other favourite comic moment - which says much of my sense of humour - is during the fairy sequence when a small child with a pumpkin on his head walked into the set.

On reading some of the reviews, I did wonder if I had seen the same production. Several critics were scathing about the quality of singing. Perhaps on press night nerves took hold, but a day or so later the singing was solid; Alistair McGowan did not “shout” nor was Simon Callow out of tune.

To call it “laugh free” was just plain wrong. Several critics also found the simplified characters and range of styles and references difficult. They appeared embarrassed by the energetic jollity and hectic frivolity of the production. Basically, they need to lighten up and be more prepared to be entertained. It certainly wasn’t Les Mis but then it didn’t set out to be.

So what was my conclusion about Merry Wives: the Musical? It was a happy pre-Christmas evening. In my view Shakespeare’s plays, especially the comedies, deserve to be treated with respect but not reverence. In putting this piece together, Greg Doran certainly showed respect. The cutting was judicious, sets and costumes witty and the individual and ensemble performances of a high order. As ever, Dame Judi Dench was a joy.

Many of the diverse range of songs, however, were not sufficiently memorable and a more comic, less “actory” Falstaff might have lifted the show to greater heights. All in all Merry Wives: the Entertainment might have been more apt.

Written in December 2006

Merry Wives: The Musical, RSC Stratford until 10th February 2007
Tickets 0870 609 1110

*this review also appeared in Birmingham 13

Colonel Moseley on "Cabaret"

2007-10-26T19:59:00.002+01:00

The Mem and I visited London again to celebrate my birthday and decided on an evening at the theatre. Several musicals were due to premier in the autumn including Spamalot and Wicked over from Broadway, but my decision was made for me when I saw a new production of Cabaret was previewing at the Lyric.

I worried whether to write about a preview, but decided it was fair since I’m not a professional reviewer and, in any event, my comments are very positive and should not deter paying customers.

Many musicals are only right for their time and do not age well. Cabaret manages to be much more. Like a good drama, it addresses important issues and can be dusted off and revived with a new interpretation which casts further light on our past.

Cabaret is capable of different forms of presentation; it must be set in Weimar Germany in 1931, but much else is left up for grabs. The world that is the Kit Kat Club, Berlin and its inhabitants is hugely variable; it accomodates the shabby, chic, straight, gay, vaudevillian, addict, aspirant, failure and any number of lost souls.

My chief image of Cabaret is the 1972 film with Liza Minnelli in black tights and bowler, astride a cane chair in the style of Bob Fosse. As well as this American jazz-hands classic, I recall Judi Dench in 1968, an English coquette with full orchestra in a tuneful show biz version.

There followed Sam Mendes' milestone pared-down Cabaret at the Donmar in 1993 with a mannered Alan Cummings and Jane Horrocks and a memorable Sara Kestelman.

Following his direction of Festen and Market Boy, I was intrigued as to what Rufus Norris would do with Cabaret and did not anticipate a spangly Shaftsbury Avenue extravaganza.
With high expectations, we took our seats for a 7.45 start on a warm evening. By eight the audience was growing a little restless and, sure enough, a stage manager appeared to apologise for the delay.

Ten minutes later Rufus Norris himself ambled on and explained something had been spilled on the stage and was having to be carefully cleaned off to ensure it was safe for the dancers. He shuffled off with a backwards glance and shrug reminiscent of Julie Andrews misbehaving at the end of the Charlot chorus line in Star - to a tumult of good-natured applause.

The Mem commented that she hoped Sir Cliff was not in the audience tonight; the delay was tolerable but a forty minute Wimbledon-rain-delay-medley of Summer Holiday and Livin' Doll would have been too much to bear.

The performance soon began and it was clear that the show had moved on. The set was dark and sparse, featuring grey and black angular wood and lettering that more than hinted of the concentration camp.

Six basic bed frames were moved and used imaginatively in different contexts, as were vertical ladders sliding across the stage. Sets were simple leaving one to create the railway station, Kit Kat Club and boarding house in Berlin in the imagination.

At the rear of the stage was the band, dressed as raffishly as the dancers: their brassy sound of the jazz age was brash and authentic, but not lush.

James Dreyfus as the Emcee began the show wearing clown’s white make-up on the lower half of his face, incorporating a topical reference to the evening’s delay. He sang well and held the show together with a lugubrious, malign presence.

His numbers, including Two Ladies and The Money Song, were crisp and clever with no comic opportunities missed.Dreyfus maximised a heavy-handed, Germanic humour, mirroring what was developing on the streets. One could find no shred of warmth or decency in the Emcee, culminating in the spiteful anti-semitic ending of If you could See Her. This Emcee made the part his own and was no pale imitation either Joel Grey or Alan Cummings.

Like many in the audience, I was fascinated to see what Anna Maxwell Martin would bring to Sally Bowles. She turned out to be a blonde waif from the London suburbs, a charmingly frivolous hedonist interested only in the moment and ignoring the world.

Anna’s Sally with Marcel-waived hair and slinky clothes of the Weimar inhabited the loucher side of decadent. Her novice nun suspended from an inverted bed during Don’t Tell Mama was deliciously naughty.

After Wilcommen this was the first number featuring dancers choreographed by Javier de Frutos, the London-based Venezuelan, recently-appointed director of the Pheonix Dance Theatre.

Without a bowler or jazz hand in sight, de Frutos has put together an ensemble that embodies the dark eroticism, excess and hedonism of Weimar Berlin, full of sexual ambiguity and abandon. The look is a mixture of sado-masochism, fur, leather and skin; it is drug-fuelled and desolate. The feel is of the kind of spiritual void depicted more genteelly in Ackland’s Absolute Hell - although Trainspotting might be a closer fit. Whatever the influences, the dancing is raunchy, stylish and striking with groupings and glassy-eyed poses straight from the paintings of George Grosz.

Sex and drugs are more than hinted at in this Kit Kat Club. There is some light- hearted nudity with a capering sailor at Fraulein Schneider’s guesthouse and at the Kit Kat, none of it gratuitous. It might be argued that a divinely decadent Mein Herr is a paean in praise of cocaine, rather than a departing lover.

One of the revelations of this production is Sheila Hancock as Fraulein Schneider. I have always thought that performance of Sara Kestelman in the role at the Donmar could not be equalled, but here Sheila Hancock produces a multi-layered characterisation: she is sharp, funny, bitter, hopeful, vulnerable, pragmatic and ultimately resigned.

In addition to subtle and sensitive acting, she sings beautifully.Her Fraulein Schneider is complimented by a wholly convincing Herr Schultz by Geoffrey Hutchings. Herr Schultz does not have the comedic scope given to Peter Sallis in the Harold Prince version with a novelty number such as Meeskite. This would have been off-message in the more oppressive atmosphere of this production, but Geoffrey Hutchings still succeeds in giving a memorable performance and he and Sheila Hancock combine perfectly.

Michael Hayden carries off the difficult central role of Clifford Bradshaw capably but does not have the benefit of a beautiful showstopper like Why should I wake up given to Kevin Colson in the 1968 production.

Cliff’s bi-sexuality is reflected more graphically in this production than others and his somewhat implausible relationship with Sally is presented as convincingly as possible.

This brings us back to Sally. In the first half, Anna Maxwell Martin carries off the production numbers with aplomb. After Don’t tell Mama and Mein Herr, her duet with Cliff in Perfectly Marvellous lived up to its name.

Maybe my hopes for Maybe This Time were too high or too much based on previous interpretations, but it was the only song of the evening that I found did not quite exceed my expectations. It was well-sung but delivered in a controlled and almost contemplative, very English, way that was almost too reserved to go on to develop into the torch-singing belter that one might expect from Ms Minnelli - or her mother. Maybe this English Sally actually knew, deep down, that she wasn't going to win and wasn't going to make too much fuss about it.

For me, Sally had two truly magical moments in the second half. First, when she greeted Cliff after having the abortion and stood, arms clutched around herself, utterly lost and the epitome of vulnerability and desolation and secondly, her performance of Cabaret. This is a song to which I have never really related: rhyming “Elsie” with “Chelsea”, it was a little too vaudeville to be moving. Anna Maxwell Martin however overcame this and imbued the song with a mindless defiance that made sense in Sally’s own limited world. It was very special and made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

At the finale Cliff’s words echo about a cabaret in a city called Berlin and dancing with Sally Bowles… “and we were both fast asleep”. The refrains of the principal characters resonate ironically as they cross the stage. Then the Emcee and dancers undress and retire in a line facing the back of the stage. They form a grim tableau, pale and shadowy, predicting the inmates of the camps so soon to be herded naked and dehumanised into gas chambers.

That chilling moment embodies the message of Cabaret and explains why it is more than just another musical: we should not ignore or waive responsibility for what is going on in the world and, if we do, a terrible price may be paid - from Dachau to Darfur. So I recommend Cabaret; it’s pretty well all that a musical can hope to be.

"Cabaret" at the Lyric Theatre, Shaftsbury Avenue, London W1
Call See 0870 890 1107 Booking fees apply
www.cabaret-the-musical.co.uk