Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds comes out on dvd in December. To celebrate, here’s my unabrigded interview with the director earlier this fall. Two 20 minute sesssions, along with two different Swedish journalists. This is session one. Read the original story here and my interview with Col. Landa actor Christoph Waltz here (both in Norwegian).

How long have you wanted to do scene from a French Café?

QT: That’s a good question. The thing is, it’s only natural when we do a World War II movie, especially taking place in Nazi-occupied France, to do a scene in a French café, because I have a tendency to have scenes take place in restaurants all the time. The first scene for the first movie I ever wrote from beginning to end was Reservoir Dogs, and that took place in a restaurant. I’m a big fan of writing scenes that takes place in restaurants, so a French café is absolutely natural for me in the context of the story.

You have put a lot of attention to languages in the movie, which is not alway the case in WWII movies, where the Germans speak English with a German accent.

QT: The languages was definitely always in the script, it was always my intention. Some people are speculating, will that limit the movie’s potential, because of all the different languages? I think it’s the exact opposite. The stuff where the Germans speak like The Royal Shakespearan Company out of The Old Vic, I think that’s what makes those movies old-fashioned. That was like your father’s WWII movies. It was a contrivance you accepted then, but I don’t think people accept that anymore. Literally, that was makes them seem old-fashioned.

That’s one way of looking at it, just from an aesthetic way, but the other way is actually practical as far as the movie is concerned. Your ability with languages, either to understand them or to speak them, was the difference between life and death. Language itself is one of the most important aspects of this movie, as well it would be, in Europe. It wouldn’t even be the same thing if you were trying to deal with WWII as far as Asia was concerned. The movie could take place in China, and you wouldn’t have to speak anything other than Mandarin.

In the case of Europe, all the time you see movies like Where Eagles Dare. In it, Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood are supposed to be able to speak German so magnificently well that they could put on officer uniforms and walk into a tavern and just kick it in German, and they just know two-three-four ways about it. No worries whatsoever! For the contrivance of the movie, you more or less buy it.

But if Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood were speaking German, that would be a senseful element that would be brought into the movie. And because there would be German speakers out there, it would either be completely phony or it would be exciting. But then again, at the same time, it’s like the way a second generation person speaks German, that they learned in either Canada or they learned in America, is not necessarily the way a person who lives in Frankfurt is going to speak it. That’s just a whole aspect of excitement and suspense that I tried to take full advantage of, because it really hadn’t been explored to the depth that I was exploring it before.

Also, you have all these wonderful German actors, and what often happens in international productions. You’ll have American and British actors, speaking in their own language, maybe feign a Spanish accent, but maybe not. Jeremy Irons doesn’t do that, but then Antonio Banderas walks in, and he truly has a Spanish accent, but where the fuck does he come from? So he actually throws the film off by being authentic. With all these wonderful German actors in there, they all had to be speaking the right thing. That was also the reason that I didn’t cast Dutch or Swedish actors as, I wanted them to be German.

How will the movie be dubbed in Europe?

QT: I actually worked on the dubbing myself, especially when it comes to France, Italy and German. I ended up with a story that couldn’t be dubbed, because it wouldn’t make sense if everybody in the movie spoke the same language. What happened, in the case of Italy and France. German is German, but English will be dubbed. In the case of Germany, French becomes French.

There have been made a lot of WWII movies from historical sources. Was it important for you to make up your own story? To keep distance to History?

QT: You described it pretty well, that’s pretty much the same. I did a tremendous amount of research when I started to write the story a long time ago. I found that I was held back by the research, I got enamored with it. Six months doing research, and spent six months of trying to fit the research into my story. I wanted to show off all this knowledge that I gained, I wanted to give a history lesson.

But I had to get over that. When it comes to stuff like German cinema under The Third Reich, I already had a lot of information on that, so I didn’t need to do a lot of research as far as that was concerned. When I picked up the pen to start writing the story again, I already had done research about the occupation in France, so I had a lot of stuff back here.

I just wrote my story, I didn’t look up anything, and anything that I came to that I didn’t know exactly the historical right and wrongs of it, we’re talking about things like when was curfew during the occupation, I just made it up. I made it up so I wouldn’t have to go backwards. So I could just keep telling my story, I got the freedom to tell my the sory the way I would normally tell them. When I got to the end of it, I looked up the facts. And sometime I liked my way better.

This is the way I normally write, by not trying to make it any different. In a script you have tunnels that your characters can get into, and screenwriters put roadblocks in front of some tunnels, because they can’t afford to have their characters go that road if they want to sell it as a movie. I never had these roadblocks, but this time history itself was a roadblock. I was more or less prepared to respect these roadblocks, but when I got to them, I realised “fuck it”: My characters are gonna do what my characters are gonna do.

My characters don’t know that this is history, my characters don’t know that they can’t go down this road. History hasn’t happened yet, they can do it. If one wants to look at my story as a fairytale, then you’re more than welcome to look at it that way. I don’t look at it like that way. I look at like: My characters changed the outcome of the war. Now that didn’t happen, because my characters didn’t exist. But if they had existed, all that happened in this movie is very plausible.

It seems that Inglourious Basterds treats History like a Western movie treats the history of the American West. It’s more like World War II told as a western, populated with characters and myths.

QT: You guys are really good, I would agree with that. I did actually approach this movie as a way that you would approach a western. In westerns, there is reality and myth, and what survives is what survives.

How did you get to work with Brad Pitt?

QT: We always wanted to work together, but we’ve waited for the right character. While I wrote Aldo, it all came together. One of the things that make Brad so iconic for the role is… Brad’s in a great place as far his career and his superstar persona is concerned. He’s been around for a while, done a lot of movies and worked with some of the most talented directors. He knows what he’s doing, and he’s not a boy anymore. He’s grown out of his boyish good looks, and now they’ve become handsome manly good looks.

There is this special thing about working with Brad at this time, at this time in his career, this is one of the most exciting times to work with him. Both as part of his popularity is concerned, and as far his iconic stature and persona is concerned. He gets thrilling when you set up a shot and look through the viewfinder at him. I can imagine this is the same kinda thrill that Sydney Pollack felt when he was shooting Jeremiah Johnson with Robert Redford. He looked through the viewfinder, and thought he was at the movie theatre.

Cinema plays a big part in this movie, but do you think you could ever make a movie from a time where there was no movies?

QT: You mean before the 20th century? Yeah, I could do that. If I did a swashbuckler it wouldn’t be about the love of cinema, or maybe it would? A western maybe, how would that end up working out? I did not think that years ago, when I came up with the idea of Inglourious Basterds, that at the end of the day that the movie would end being this wild love letter to cinema.

I never thought of that when I came up with the idea of doing a WWII movie. But at some point, when I was writing the first scene between Shoshanna and Fredrick Zoller, it ended up as a conversation about Max Linder. Man, I’ll  do a WWII movie and it becomes a movie about cinema. I guess that’s who I am.

You must have enjoyed shooting the movie at the legendary Studio Babelsberg?

QT: That was so exciting! I’m a lot like Archie Hickox in the movie, and I have a fetishist love of German cinema of the 1920’s and those directors. Actually we were not only shooting in the studio, but at the same sound stages where Josef von Sternberg shot Der Blaue Engel. The place where we built the theatre, that was the stage Marlene Dietrich sang “Falling in Love Again”. And to actually walk the streets where G.W. Pabst walked, our productions offices were on Papst Strasse.

To make the movies where Papst made his movies, the fact that the studio logo was the False Mariah from Metropolis. It was more exciting than working at 2oth Century Fox. The history was lovely there, it goes all the way, our production manager’s office was actually Joseph Goebbel’s old office.

You picked your German actors from the very best of the crop?

QT: I was thinking about the international audience, and I didn’t want a famous person playing Hitler. If it’s Alec Guiness or Anthony Hopkins as Hitler you think “oh that’s Anthony Hopkins doing Hitler”. But if I watch a minor WWII movie and Hitler shows up, looking more or less like Hitler, I’ll go “okay, that’s Hitler”. I don’t really question it.

Martin Wuttke, who plays Hitler is very well known in Germany, where he had done one of the best Hitler performances ever, in a Brecht play where Hitler turns into a dog. He actually said no several times, so we had to talk him into it. In the case of Sylvester Groth, who played Goebbels, he played him before in Mein Führer, which was a black comedy. He’s an amazing actor, just look at the way he brings comedy into his Goebbels portrayal, especially at the scene that takes place at their little Hollywood luncheon. That’s the sequence that’s closest to Ernest Lubisch’s To Be or not To Be. I love the idea of dealing with Goebbels, not as this architect of evil, but as his job as a studio head. Dealing with him in this practical job, that he considered his number one job, and was the production of all these movies. He’s not like Louis DeMille, he’s not a businessman, he’s an artist at heart, much closer to David Zelnick.

And doing a WWII movie got you an opportunity to portray nazis, which you can say are very stylish villains, fashionwise.

QT: Well, whatever you want to say about the Nazis, you really can’t complain about their fashion sense, ha ha. They definitely had a very striking look, even their architecture was something to behold. It was a lot of fun, going through the uniforms and learning about them. Even the two guards outside Hitler’s opera box, those were special uniforms done for Hitler’s guard, and they have never actually been captured on film before. That was eye-opening and interesting.

What do you think of Stockholm? (obligatory question from Swedish journalist)

QT: This is my seventh visit to Stockholm, and it’s a very nice town, with a couple of bars I like. Also, you have one of the most amazing records stores in the world, Pet Sounds. Whenever you bring the name up to a vinyl collector, you think of the highest quality when you hear the name.

Part two of this interview will be published tomorrow.

Our heroines whose names at this point are: Glencora, Duchess of Omnium (Susan Hampshire) and Mrs Marie Finn (Barbara Murray)

Dear Friends,

I’ve put on this blog a summary of the episodes of this part (An Elegiac Culmination), prefaced by situating it in the whole series, and containing several transcripts of key scenes, quotations from others, and stills.

Tonight I add a commentary.

General remarks:

Silverbridge (Anthony Andrews) salutes his sister, Mary (Kate Nicholls), Lady Mabel (Anna Carteret) and Mrs Finn on this cold sunny day (see the blanket)

When we get to Pallisers 12:24 and move finally out of the Prime Minister and into Duke’s Children, the mood of this series changes radically. It becomes idyllic-elegiac, and picturesque. This last book is the most changed by Raven for Raven does not kill off the Duchess until the final episode. He shows her sinking; she looks old and she is continually taking medicines, but she is there and very active. He changes the meaning of the book.

We saw in reading Trollope’s novel, The Duke’s Children, its weakness is its real backstory and passion about the Duke’s dissatisfaction with his marriage finally and this is not brought to the fore. Too painful for Trollope to make a front story because perhaps a parallel with his own marriage. In the book the Duchess’s use of Mary as a vicarious substitute which leads the Duke to reject Tregear passionately.

Here in the film we have instead a deeply loving couple, different no doubt, but sharing grief, loss, outlook. This Duke has no backstory. And the forefront is his struggle with Silverbridge. It is significant that people writing about Trollope’s book before the series write eloquently, movingly, and sentimentally about the Duke v Silverbridge as central to the novel. John Wiltshire says one thing movies often do is make visible how the average person wants to see a novel.

But Raven does more: The Duke’s Children is one of Trollope’s more Victorian novels in some of its attitudes and Raven to put this across uses a mood of bright comfort and high idealism. He has only a fragment of Tregear so he is turned into a poignant lover of Mary which is then contrasted to Lady Mabel Grex’s loss of Frank and her unwilling to marry the boy.

All the proto-feminism of Trollope is erased here: we haven’t a woman who is not given a choice she wants and therefore no place; instead she is made somewhat superficially cynical and wavering with a desire to become Tregear’s lover-mistress again, and we have pairs of young lovers contrasted, and it’s clear Silverbridge and Mabel are the mismatched pair against Frank and Mary’s deeply felt yearning and Silverbridge and Isabel’s bright young hope and energy. This lays the groundwork for the wet dream of the the American girl which takes over (and replaces the function of Madame Max as superfemale in the European movie style)

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Facing it (defeat, later life): Duke (Philip Latham) and Duchess in their bedroom suite late at night

The duke and Duchess’s story:

Raven sees the Duke as noble, but also someone who would be lost, vulnerable, and something of a butt because he’s no networker and is not complicit or corrupt himself; he lives in a way others regard as dull; watching him talk with Phineas Finn through a window, his son, Silverbridge tells Lady Mabel he looks far older than his age. The implication is Silverbridge wants to enjoy life more and thus look younger.

For Trollope the character is this way too: but Trollope also identifies with the Duke, recognizes himself in him and critiques society for more than its materialistic corruption. All along, as Raven once said in an interview, the central figure for Raven has been the Duchess: it’s paradoxical, as Raven in part turned the series in many stories of gentleman attempting to succeed in the world.

Silverbridge is contrasted to his father and Anthony Andrews as Silverbridge gains gravitas when he is contrasted to the Duke’s deep idealism and genuine thought on the one hand and Dolly Longstaffe’s disillusioned cynicism and insight on the other.

There are two scenes between Silverbridge and his father, in the first Silverbridge tells of his desire to marry Lady Mabel and the Duke approves; the second is a central linchpin of the episode — and a powerful dramatic one. The Duchess’s disapproval of her son’s choice (what happened to that idealistic young girl of 1:1? we are to ask) contrasts with his father’s approval; his father’s dismay at his lack of altruism and depth contrasts with his mother’s way of regarding politics as a matter of family sheerly and individuals.

All this is true to Trollope’s conception, only it’s not in the Duke’s Children as the Duchess dies in the book’s first paragraph.

There is no contrast of the Duchess and Lady Mary. They seem to live in different universes. But then the film-makers are male and, except for Marie Finn and the Duchess, at no point in all the series do they show women’s friendships as central to their lives beyond the early courtship before marriage, not even their family ones – as a mother-daughter pair would be. Lady Mary seems only aware of her father: she worries lest Silverbridge upset him further; wants Tregear to appear to be serious and earnest before her father. No comment about her feelings about her mother occurs anywhere in the series — nor the Duchess about her after early on we see her preparing an album to read to the child with — except at first that Tregear is below them and therefore Mary should not marry him (she changes her mind when she learns to like him at Venice).

The culminating great scenes of the whole series are really the very long ones between the Duke and Duchess, which punctuate the series throughout. Sympathetically presented as they are, Phineas Finn and Madame Max (aka Marie) Goesler Finn are secondary hero and heroine. So their enjoyment of their park and grown children and the deeply felt scene at mid-point in the episode as the two learn to live with their loss of power are final moments in a 24 episode long story.

The film story began with a forced marriage between two very unlike people, deeply unsympathetic who had found people congenial to them, and we have experienced a long and rocky road with much estrangement and times of alienation, especially on the deep-feeling Duke’s part, and dogmatic uncomprehending insistence on his own way; for the Duchess it’s been frustration, deep and unending, at first an intense lack of fulfillment of her impulses and then when she had the chance for her ambition, and her desire to show off and have people admire her and feel on top and be ahead, she is thwarted, not appreciated, stopped, partly out of her own adequate judgement Trollope wants us to see, but also that (in the films this is there more unqualifiedly as the book’s anti-semitism and xenophobia has been cut) her protegee never had a chance. But now they are grown old together and have come to understand and appreciate one another.

Trollope’s critique of marriage becomes in the Raven team hands a reinforcement of submission and repression to family aggrandizement and social mores, for there are no such coming together loving scenes between the Duke and Duchess (and very moving they are) in either Phineas 2 or The Duke’s Children — for that matter 8:15 over the Duke’s death are invented and elaborated semi-original scenes too.

Phineas (Donal McCann) and Marie, secondary couple, standing out in the group of friends and family, and standing by

These scenes of Duke and Duchess are contextualized by three or four shorter between the Duke and Bungay, the Duke and Phineas and Bungay and Marie Finn and the Duchess. In all we see how the Duke has come to enjoy power and doesn’t want to let go because he wants to leave his mark on the society; he wants to have done something good and decent and far-reaching. Bungay says it was enough to hold on and provide peace. Phineas and Marie Finn’s views are simply that the Duke and Duchess have done what they could and now that their followers are tired of doing nothing exciting (bustle), nothing for war, for advancement of themselves, they have to let go and be glad they have escaped unscathed relatively, gotten what they could out of it.

The Duchess is as unwilling to let go as the Duke; and in their final long scene together she cries out more than he about their retirement which he has finally accepted before the scene begins.

It’s done in their bedroom with a mirror nearby and often we see her through the mirror — a device used repeatedly in films when women are at the center of the scene: it’s suggested in film studies that this shows how women judge themselves as they imagine society sees them, and invent an identity or assume one society imposes or wants them to enact, or they want to enact in order to be accepted.

Among these contextualizing scenes (for the Duke and Duchess) is the held-over the long scene in The Prime Minister (Chapter 68, “The Prime Minister’s Creed”), where Phineas and the Duke go for a walk in the park and talk politics. This is an important scene in PF2 and it is here too.

What is fascinating is how Trollope remains in generalities far more than the Raven team and how the Raven team update what’s said in Trollope to be a conservative message for the 1970s. In Trollope the Duke and Phineas remain in philosophical generalities like Monk does in his letter (the parallel moment in Phineas Finn when Monk defines what is meant by representative government and faces that it means government which includes the mediocre, the stupid, those who “represent” all the feelings and interests of their constituences. He does not think of lobbyists as we have them today ):

In Trollope the implications have to do with income and property redistribution finally, it’s never made explicit. The Duke is simply a staunch liberal who wants to see more justice, noble loving hearts, clear intellect and egalitarian feelings spread through the earth and then produce legislation. In Raven’s film this is made explicit; he felt he could not remain vague. Palliser is talking of something that would bring about or call for redistributing property and rights and advantages and privileges. It’s Phineas who in both book and film says he is not sure he wants to go beyond fairness. The Duke says as people born to such privilege do they dare argue they deserve this and argue the others don’t (are ontologically inferior is what is meant) and not try to help others and also argue for their rights too, and work towards it. The Duke says this will increase happiness for all, but admits especially those without advantages.

Phineas’ reply in the film is that even those without advantages may not want egalitarianism, and it won’t make them happy to get rid of distinctions, not at all. Raven and his team are careful not to have Phineas argue the conservative view itself, and the Duke turns to his beautiful landscape and we see his luxurious room and remember how lovely his lifestyle and he says he wouldn’t want to give what he has up and maybe has the luxury of hoping for egalitarianism while he knows it will not happen for a long time to come.

This may seem far away from the 1970s, but the costume drama hides the agenda here. Bungay in his scene with the Duke argues (as he’s done before in the film and again not so explicitly in Trollope’s book) that English people don’t want revolution; they want things to remain at peace and orderly. This is Raven’s 1970s Toryism, for he has taken no poll.

Beyond contextualizing our aging hero and heroine this way, their life and times, the relationship and types the Duke and Duchess represent are shown visually and comically. The Duchess is to go out riding in a carriage with Lady Mary and Marie Finn with her sons and Frank Tregear on horseback. She is late dressing herself exquisitely. She does don a beautiful (alluring to my eyes) hat. How she loves coming out and Silverbridge telling her how lovely she looks. Then she refuses her seat in the carriage and instead takes the reigns away from her footman servant and leads the band herself on the top seat.

It’s touching: the young Lady Glen is there yet; this is just the sort of thing she loved from the beginning. After their dialogue the Duke and Phineas walk out and see the group. The Duke hurries over to take his wife down from her perch (lovingly of course) and worries that the young men’s race will hurt them. It’s just the sort of way he has of fretting over her health when she was pregnant in the early episodes. In character still.

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The second generation of heroines: the deep feeling Mary and Lady Mabel (these are the center for Raven, and Isabel Boncassen, so delightful for Trollope to conjure up as an old man, is marginalized as exotic, foreign) talk of their heroes, Tregear and Silverbridge and Mary of her father

This is matched by the scene where Silverbridge tells Tregear he must give it up; this is chosen to be dramatized twice (much earlier when the Duchess objected we had a version of this) as befits a series about gentlemen coping:

Then there is the Duke’s Children, or second generation material. How are we asked to see this in the film? Early in the episode is the very moving scene with Frank where she implies she is offering herself to him sexually again, and he refuses not on the grounds he does not love her or could not again, but that he cannot tear himself between two women.

This romance is not in Trollope; Trollope’s Tregear is harder and would not sentimentalize this way; we are not sure about any sex, and he is now bound to and wants Mary for herself and also what she can bring. Trollope’s feminism is also gone; he really does have Mabel lament she has nothing to do with her life; this is a new motif with him; he shows her in a bleak gothic castle with Miss Cassewary at the end of DC. Here she is simply cut and dismissed by Silverbridge (I like that as in Trollope he is nowhere as likeable as he is in this series). Her need for money as central motivation is in both book and film.

About half-way through the episode we have the scene between Silverbridge where he asks Lady Mabel to marry him and she refuses; while short, it is strong and powerfully emotional. They play at courtship and it’s lyrical and sweet at moments (not hard in the way of Trollope); still, she tells him she cannot marry without love, yet at the end relents to say when he is grown up, harder, to come again. Alas, she does not in the film realize harder means he will not come again. In the book we are told of further proposals (not dramatized) which she refuses; they do not occur here. In the final scene she is regretting having said no because now Isabel will get him.

David Lean says most of the time don’t pay attention to the end of a movie or an episode. It’s a sop for the masses, an upbeat piece tacked on to please nervous backers and distributors. This episode shows that. It’s in the middle of the episode that the great moments arise. I think mini-series and soap opera don’t work in the way of commercial singleton films and the middles and endings are important.

Once again, in Trollope’s Duke’s Children as we have it together (only 3/4s of the original book) the books’ hero is the Duke and he stands alone at the center of the children the Duchess left him who have been brought up by and resemble her. In the book the Duchess is least linked to Lady Mary because she sympathized strongly with the love affair with Tregear remembering her own. That’s why in the book the Duke is against it.

We see 20th century attitudes again (as we did in earlier episodes when we saw the Duke misbehaving in front of his son and the Duchess trying to mediate and “spoiling” her sons0: the older folks Duke and Duchess are suffering badly over their loss of power but hide it from the children. It’s presented that adult parents hide all sorts of realities from their children. That’s a modern ideal or even norm perhaps in some places, but not then. Major Tifto is marginalized, not central in the early way of the book which weighs Silverbridge’s decisions about male friends as heavily as it does his relationship with his father and choice of Isabel over Lady Mab. Then both Duke and Duchess involve themselves in Silverbridge’s choice: is she presentable, they ask (as if he had to get a middle-management joy through giving dinner parties). It’s almost funny in the way the material lends itself to these anachronisms.

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As to technologies: how daring are the close-ups of Susan Hampshire and Philip Latham. Not until very recently did cameras come close to the faces of heroes and heroines (who we are to admire and want to be I suppose, identify with) to show their aging faces, slack skin, pock marks, blemishes of all sorts. This is also seen (a little farther off) for Phineas and Madame Max and Dolly to show them as aging, but not close up.

This is radical, an approach not seen until about 4 years ago.

Visuals have a logic of their own dependent on the particular actor/actress: they chose the yearning Nicholls for daughter of the originally brightly idealistic Lady Glencora; she is in dark green to deepen the pastoral green of the part. She contains in her a haunted spirit and is the visual genius loci of the part. This is why I began the first posting on this part with her

No it’s no Brideshead, The Jewel in the Crown, or Love for Lydia, 11-13 episodes of daring pictorialism and new techniques of various sorts, but I think the Pallisers is not written about in depth because (like the year-long Forsythe Saga), it was so ambitious, and is so difficult to remember, let alone apprehend precisely.

Onto Pallisers 12:25.

Ellen

Luke Goss in ‘Hellboy II’ Totally Looks Like Jeremy Irons in ‘Time Machine’

» Think you can do better? Make your own!

Pictures by: dunno source. Look-Alike by: JocastaMann via Totally Looks Like Builder

Tuesday, December 1 at 7:30 PM
Artist Descending A Staircase : Tom Stoppard
at Old Red Lion Theatre, England – London

Henry Filloux-Bennett & Stephen Makin, The Cherub Company, Loaded Hog Productions and Nick Rogers present

Tom Stoppard’s Artist Descending A Staircase 1972. Martello, Beauchamp and Donner – three contemporary artists who have lived and worked together for 60 years. But this afternoon Donner has been found dead at the bottom of the stairs. Was it professional jealously that led to his demise, or a love triangle that spanned six decades? Six actors play the three artists as the search for artistic truth and criminal motive carries us from 1972 to 1914 and back again. Tom Stoppard is one of the most accomplished and acclaimed playwrights working today. His other plays include Rock ‘n’ Roll, Arcadia, The Real Inspector Hound, The Real Thing and Rozencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead. Cast includes: Jeremy Child (Seperate Lies, Wimbledon, Balmoral), Olivia Darnley (Hayfever – West End, Midsummer Nights Dream – Regent’s Park), Ryan Gage (Hamlet – BBC and RSC, Loves Labour Lost and Midsummer Nights Dream – both RSC), Max Irons (Wallenstein – Chichester, making his London debut), Edward Petherbridge (who created the role of Guildenstern in Stoppard’s Rozencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead), Alex Robertson (Orestes – Shared Experience), David Weston (King Lear – RSC world tour). Directed by Michael Gieleta
Designed by Nicky Bunch
£13.00-£15.00

British actor set to recite ‘A Christmas Carol’ in December

Oscar winner Jeremy Irons is scheduled to read in Athens in mid-December. (Photo: EPA)

British actor Jeremy Irons is expected in Athens in December to interpret Charles Dickens’s celebrated, popular Yuletide tale “A Christmas Carol.”

The Oscar-winning actor is scheduled to appear at the Athens Concert Hall on December 15 and 16, two evenings during which he will transmit the spirit of Dickens in the runup to the holiday season.

A classic

“A Christmas Carol” is one of those stories that has been presented in every conceivable way, ranging from traditional theater productions to television and cinema adaptations featuring Scrooge McDuck and the Muppets, among others. A new version destined for the big screen featuring the voice of Jim Carrey will open in local theaters on Christmas Eve.

Just over a week earlier, Irons and his dulcet voice will tell the classic story of antisocial behavior, guilt and redemption. A gifted narrator, Irons will find himself alone on the Athens Concert Hall stage, accompanied by a few musicians who will be interpreting music and Christmas carols from around the world.

Entertaining as well as horrifying, “A Christmas Carol” tells the story of lead character Ebenezer Scrooge, a nasty misanthropic miser who receives the unwelcome visit of various ghosts.

Haunted by the spirits’ presence, Scrooge eventually repents his actions as well his stinginess and mean character.

Tickets for both upcoming performances are on sale at the Athens Concert Hall box office (Vas. Sofias & Kokkali, tel. 210.728.2333), at 8 Omirou St and online at www.megaron.gr. Prices range from 28 to 100 euros.

One of my favorite films of the new millennium, Kingdom of Heaven is an under-appreciated classic, a treasure of a film that was shunned in many circles at the time of its release because of its incongruity and certain character flaws. It faded quickly into the realms of the forgotten, but I always held a flame aloft for the historical epic. I admitted to most of the flaws, albeit begrudgingly, but I still had a weird attraction to it, and until about a year ago, I couldn’t really explain it. Now, before about a year ago, I would have bowed to conventional wisdom that if I could not put my pro-KoH argument in words, than it obviously was not that good of an argument. But, last April or so, I discovered the reason that the movie seemed so off to me, and the source of a lot of anti-KoH arguments, is that the studio edited almost an HOUR out of the theatrical cut! AN HOUR! That’s a lot of info to leave out! Now, with a lot more backing this time compared to March of last year, I can safely say that Kingdom of Heaven IS a good movie, a great movie even. It’s not a perfect movie, but it skirts very flirtatiously with immortality, something I admire in a work of art.

We’re taken to the 12th century, between the Second and Third Crusades. Balian, a lonely blacksmith in France, grieving over the suicide of his wife, finds no solace in his work or his life doomed to obscurity. As fate would have it, however, a knight traveling through the area pops into his life. He claims to be his father, and offers him a choice; he can stay in the sad, empty husk of France during the Middle Ages and continue his life as if nothing had happened, or he can come with him to Jerusalem, where the knight holds court with King Baldwin IV. At first hesitant, Balian joins the group of Crusaders after hearing that perhaps his wife’s soul can be saved from Hell if he absolves her sins in the Holy Land (people believed that suicides were instant fodder for Hell back then, although some STILL do). Thus begins a journey of the self through the world of the Dark Ages as Balian travels from his tiny, myopic Medieval world all the way to the center of the world’s tumult, Jerusalem, where a new dispute is broiling beneath the surface of the Second Crusade’s short-lived peace. King Baldwin IV is dying painfully from his crippling leprosy, the Knights Templar are restlessly itching for a battle with the Muslims, their sworn enemy, and on the other side of the wall, a new Muslim assault is being only barely kept at bay by the efforts of their sultan, Saladin. The truce will not last much longer, and Balian’s part in this is larger than he yet knows. It will be a long, unforgiving road ahead for him, but with his wife’s eternal soul in the balance, he is willing to do anything to unchain her from the fiery pits below.

Let me start with the big flaw before I start gushing. Before it gets any farther, I have to comment on the fact that Balian is a total Harry Stu. In internet lingo, for those not in on the jive, that means that his character is just a LITTLE too perfect. He just happens to know a lot of things about a lot of things that would be helpful in the Holy Land, including the construction of siege engines, leading large groups of men, and considering he’s played by Orlando Bloom, professional heart-throb, he looks damn good while he does it. It all gets to be a little much sometimes, and by the end, I felt more than a little tinge of disgust for him and his implausible perfection. You know how awesome and perfect Balian is? During a boat trip to Jerusalem, his boat capsizes and sinks in a storm; he wakes up the next morning on the beach with no fellow survivors and a saddled horse ready to give him a lift! How serendipitous!

But when I say that that’s really the only thing I think is wrong with it, I mean it. Director Ridley Scott is so good he can make any subject come alive, and it just so happens that he also found one of my favorite historical periods fascinating. Every detail, with the exception of ultra-perfect Balian, is down to the T. Scott has recreated the Middle Ages with such a realism that they speak to us through the ages in the very subtext of his work. From the weaponry, the architecture, the interactions between people, to even the battle formations and times of day that Muslims and Christians fought during the 12th century, this is all genuine. there are so many stories to be told here, during the reconstruction of Europe from its massive, tragic downfall in the 6th century, I’m so glad someone used this period. And not only that, but I really appreciate the use of the different faiths fighting it out as sort of an allegory for today. It’s the same fight going on with different weapons and words, which Scott cleverly alludes to at one point, making the emotional ties to this ancient era all the more indelible.

The main cast is equally proportionate to the supporting cast here. Liam Neeson, Brendan Gleeson, Michael Sheen, David Thewlis, and other power players make short but memorable appearances that resonate throughout the movie. My favorite of these is Ghassan Massoud, who plays Saladin. While we never see hm that often, his character is similar to Baldwin in that he doesn’t want war, but political and religious pressures are pushing him into a battle that will cost many, many lives. He is excellent, and most importantly he’s a Muslim character that doesn’t give way into stereotypes that so many other films would have. As for the main cast, I’ve said my peace on Balian, but it must be noted that not everyone’s like that. There are some real winners, like Eva Green, who plays Sibylla, Baldwin’s sister. Her scenes suffer the most cutting, and it felt so vindicating to see the Special Director’s Cut edition and piece together what happens to her. She is a force to be reckoned with for me, especially now that the cut has been restored. She is given whole new sets of scenes that add to the emotional complexities, especially the ones involving her son. Without these scenes, her character is very confusing and inconsistent, and it is a definite boon to the film that she not go from one emotional state to the next without any coercing. Jeremy Irons electrifies as Tiberius, the Marshall of Jerusalem and Balian’s moral compass in the Holy Land. His scenes are few, but they are key, and Irons shows his expertise in authoritative but sympathetic words of wisdom as he tries to keep Christian Jerusalem from going into all-out war with the Muslims and Balian from falling off the righteous path. Edward Norton is the emotional heart of the first half of the film as King Baldwin IV. Underneath a silver mask to hide the hideous deformities left by his leprosy, he is trying extremely hard to keep peace in his time by keeping both the Templars at bay and his court satisfied with the truce. But his frail condition has many worried that the Muslims will attack and he will be unable to lead, or, worse, that he is lying down and making too many concessions to their heathen demands. He has so much weight on his slender shoulders, and watching Norton valiantly struggle to keep lives from being lost is heartbreaking and wondrously inspiring.

Sweeping cinematography, an immersive score by Harry-Gregson Williams, an extremely able cast, and a rich realistic tone make Kingdom of Heaven a sweeping film that should be remembered with the ranks of Spartacus and Gladiator in the realm of great historical epics. It’s a whopping three hours for the director’s cut, the only cut there should be, as far as I’m concerned, so there’s a lot going on. Luckily, it’s all great, and with the exception of one or two faults, I would be extremely tempted to call this a perfect film. To get swept away in this historical fervor is a joy and a pleasure that I plan to relish more and more often. Ridley Scott strikes gold again, and the Holy Land is done justice by his beautiful eye and his great cast. I give Kingdom of Heaven 9 1/2 leper kings out of 10. A high recommendation!

Tomorrow’s Sunday, so I don’t know what I’ll watch! It’ll make for a good review, though, I think! Until then!

In the afternoon, as we were driven rapidly along in the post chaise, he said to me, “Life has not many things better than this” (Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Thursday, 21 March 1776)

Lady Mary (Kate Nicholls) drawing outside the Matching Priory ruins

Dear Readers and Movie-Lovers,

This is another of the great parts of this series. Previous extraordinarily good hours were 2:3, 5:10, 8:15 and 8:16. Episodes 31-33 takes us to the film’s close of The Prime Minister matter as well as a culminating moment of the whole series; Episodes 34-35 are pure Duke’s Children, with Silverbridge the last of our young heroes (here only momentarily) astray.

At the close of the previous four novels, we have had a transition of some sort: except for the ending of The Eustace Diamonds (7:14, it has been a return to the pleasure grounds of Matching envisaged as an Arcadia, where we began (1:1), e.g., the transition of Can You Forgive Her to Phineas Finn, 3:6. But now we are not transitioning so much as anticipating a final close and a death of a principal character: so we are asked to remember back to the beginning, the marriage of the Palliser pair, think of the price the winners we are seeing paid, and look at what they have won. The mood is one central to many of these sorts of series: the elegiac. It is a mood rarely available to modern so-called non-costume drama (all movies are in costume), and and one this particular part dwells within continually by repeatedly giving us picturesque and yearning scenes.

A central mode and mood of film adaptations of older books which are also older costume drama is the elegiac. Why is this is rarely available to modern contemporary films. You need the slow graceful pace for at least a few moments; you need the distance so that you can lend yourself to believing such sentiments can be uttered and at length; you need the beautiful surroundings ,the subtle long-drawn developing characterization in a seriously-taken story. The drawing room in this part of the series has become green as a meadow, lit with sunlight.

Now that Lopez (Stuart Wilson, very great in the role) is dead, and the Wharton story cut adrift (11:23),

1) the Duke and Duchess (Philip Latham and Susan Hampshire) are again to the fore; 2), the political themes important to the Phineas books brought back (e.g., the question of the possibility of a faire juster political system, or more equality in life and what this means) and made central once again (if only as a “fading dream”); and 3), the scenes of the Duke’s children are given more depth for themselves (not as contrasting to and defining the relationship and point of life for the Duke and Duchess).

The political theme unites the double-story of Duke and Duchess aging and the next generation replacing them, for Silverbridge’s (Anthony Andrews) stance as a Tory is (in effect, though he is too young to see this clearly) an attempt to change the family allegiance (as he will be the next Duke) to the Tories, and is thus a grave blow to all the Duke sees himself as having striven for when it came to legislative change.

What Raven has done is defer a good deal of the material about the fall of the Duke from The Prime Minister to work it out at more length (especially focusing on the Duchess) and interwoven this with material from The Duke’s Children — which had begun in the previous episodes, here and there:

1) the grown Mary (Kate Nicholls) and Silverbridge first introduced at the end of 10:20

2) Mary’s and Tregear’s (Jeremy Irons) attraction, the duchess’s objections to this and Silverbridge’s backing his mother are woven into 10:21;

3) Silverbridge’s having been thrown out of Oxford, the duke’s distress, and the son’s being sent to Venice which occasions the duchess and Duke’s visit; a slow motion interweaving of Lady Mabel Grex (Anna Carteret), seen first in Venice with Miss Cassewary (Josie Kid) and Treager with Silverbridge: Lady Mabel and Frank look very strained in Silverbridge’s apartment in Venice where enigmatic pregnant words about knowing one another already are passed. All found in 11:22;

4) at Matching we see Tregear attracted to Lady Mary and she to him by looks: 11:23).

So a careful look at the previous 4 episodes shows material developed or adapted from The Duke’s Children threaded into The Prime Minister and contrasted with the Wharton story matter; this enabled Raven to hold off on some of the PM matter, its half-defeated close, until now.

The important thing was to string out Lady Glen or the Duchess’s presence so that she would die in the very last episode and not before. The point of the filmic The Duke’s Children is not (as in Trollope’s book) to show a disillusioned lonely man refusing to allow his daughter to have what his wife wanted for her; Trollope’s duke reacts with a refusal out of vicarious imagined emotional losses. The point of the filmic Prime Minister, and filmic Duke’s Children is to show us how a companionate marriage emerged after much compromise and pain. The series began with that magnificent visually symbolic scene in the park of a forced match, and it ends in understanding and compromise, and beautiful children too (that matters). In the films, The Duke’s Children also the most truncated of the books is as foreshortened as The Eustace Diamonds (which to my taste lingered on too long but it had to for Mr Emilius was the murderer in Trollope’s Phineas Redux. Really we have 2 and one-quarter to one-third episodes at the most for this sixth novel; a tiny bit more if you count stray episodes looking forward to this from 10:20; see thumbnail outline.

I will do as I have done in earlier postings on the series, both summarize the episodes and comment on themes, mood, and individual scenes.

Episode 31: Changing Times

The first scene occurs between an aging Barrington Erle (Moray Watson) and Dolly Longestaffe (Donald Pickering) at the club discussing Lopez’s ejection and the probable coming defeat of the present government. They are chorus once again and provide a frame; at the same time, Silverbridge brings Major Tifto (John Ringham) to the club; thus a major figure in The Duke’s Children is introduced, and (as in the novel) Dolly swiftly sees Tifto is, and exposes him as, a liar. Tifto insinuates he has had an affair with an opera singer, and Dolly (knowing far more her far more than Tifto) asks if Tifto isn’t afraid of her husband. Tifto becomes nervous and anxious about spreading these stories suddenly (source: Duke’s Children, Chapter 7, 1995 Penguin, pp 41-42). Changing times is seen in the aging of Erle and Longestaffe; their preference to sit in a private room, the open talk of sex (which Erle looks embarrassed at) and gambling. There is also a foreshadowing: when Dolly says to Erle “Lady Glen would have made a better Prime Minister,” Erle replies: “I daresay. He’d certainly be lost without her.” The Tifto material comes from The Duke’s Children, Ch 6 (“Major Tifto”), in the Penguin, pp. 41-42.

The second scene is a moving one between the Duchess and Duke of St Bungay (Roger Livesey). It is a semi-original replay of scenes from The Prime Minister, Chs 63, pp. 543-45 and 66, 563-64. Much changed in detail but the basis of the affectionate relationship between the two and their determined attempt to shield the Duke is taken from Trollope; the difference is while Trollope admires the duke for his ethics, he does not sympathize with what he calls “coddling.” In Raven’s scene, the duchess wants to know if the government can last and he gives her answer she doesn’t like: it can’t. She blames herself for Lopez and Bungay exonerates her by saying if it hadn’t been Lopez, it would have been something else. In the novel the last straw is the Duke’s giving the garter to a good man whose virtue deserves it, Lord Earlybird. Raven provides mouth-to-mouth kissing at the end, by visuals suggesting the Duke’s attraction to this woman, but the last still shows her face worn, distressed, unhappy. She kissed to please him, not herself.

Third scene, Bungay, Erle and Phineas discuss coming dissolution. This is reinforcing what is dramatized in more scattered passages in the novel and includes Monk.

Fourth scene, the Duchess and Mrs Finn (Barbara Murray). This is analogous to Prime Minister, Ch 76, pp. 657-59. The duchess expresses her bitter regret the government has to go, and Mrs Finn says she does not mind that her husband will not be in office; does not care about such things unless he does. He’ll be back; but, says the Duchess, her husband will never be PM again. This scene segues into a culminating of the series whose textual basis is a short paragraph in PM where as Phineas and the Duke come to the end of their talk we are told they see the Duchess, Mrs Finn and the Pallisers’ eldest daughter in the carriage (PM, Ch 68, p 586).

Her hat a weapon, a barrier and guard

Scene 5, front room, Matching now this beautifully pastorally-colored place where greens and yellows and sunlight predominate.

This is an extraordinary scene between Frank Tregear Jeremy Irons) and Lady Mabel. This is our first complete true DC and yet it is wholly re-imagined by Raven from the narrator’s allusive references (DC, Ch 9, “In Media Res,” pp. 56-61, a scene in DC, Ch 10, pp. 63-68). Now the original scene far more subversive and disquieting than this one of reproach, Frank in Trollope’s original conception a ruthless riser, not this melancholy remorseful partly yearning young man of Raven.

In Raven’s scene it’s clear Frank and Mabel were once physical lovers and they could be so again were she to have time and space to get to him. [It is a man's view where the man's being trapped and woman the aggressor -- which coheres with an introduction by Raven to Trollope's An Eye for an Eye.] It’s fascinating how a number of the key lines occur in Trollope and the feel is utterly transformed into something less complex yet at once far more poignant and far more bitter. (Life does not yield such strong stuff and Trollope ever tries to imitate life.)

The coloring and tone of the mise-en-scene here is elegiac; she is pleading with him not to forget her and there are lines which suggestively insinuate she would be willing (again) to have sex with him if he would break it off with Lady Mary. It’s a beautifully picturesque and yearning, melancholy scene between Jeremy Irons as noble, well-meaning Frank Tregear, and Anna Carteret, as Lady Mabel Grex who is now wrenchingly regretful that she had given up Tregear two years ago now that she sees him at Matching and taking up with Lady Mary (played winsomely by Kate Nicholls), a few lines delivered by Irons had the tone, the very accents of Ronald Colman when he makes one of his poignant rueful appeals.

Establishment shot: Lady Mabel about to walk upstairs; we see Frank Tregear from the back inside the room. She turns to see him as she goes up; she walks back and into the room and over to him.

Lady Mabel: “Frank.”
Frank: “Good afternoon, Lady Mabel. Is the carriage ready?”
Mabel: “They’re not all there yet. Frank … (her face open to him)”
Frank looks down and then up; he avoids eye contact at the same time looking sensitively pained.
Mabel: “I wonder when we were last alone together.”
Frank: “Two years and more I suppose” (so also in 11:22 and the visit of Duke and Duchess to Venice was supposed to be after this)
Mabel (her lips tight): “[?] that summer at Lady Cantripp’s. Does not it make you yearn a little when you remember it?”
Frank: “What’s the good, Lady Mabel? We both agreed we should give it up because neither of us had the money. Let’s just stick to that.”
Mabel; “That you once swore that you should love me forever.”
Frank: “And you swore some things to me and yet it was you who said we should drop it.”
Mabel: “So I did. But I think the wrench has been greater for me. Your love has been transferred very quickly and very advantageously … [?] Lady Mary.”
Frank: “Yours has not been so very abiding. You do not, I notice, discourage Lord Silverbridge.
Mabel: “That is unkind, Frank. You know very well with such a father as Grex and such a brother as Perceval and the years going all very quickly, I must soon find a husband.”
Frank breathes deep, looks down.
Mabel: “There need be no such haste for you, Frank (her hand is now on his and the camera rests there). You might have been faithful to me for some while yet and you would not have gone wholly unrewarded.”

It’s here they come close, his face twitches and he shakes his head. (We may see she is asking him to be her lover while she gets herself a husband unscrupulously to pay the bills. This is very Henry James kind of couple — anticipating The Wings of the Dove had it been written by Trollope, but it wasn’t this.)
Frank: “You bad me take my love elsewhere and that I’ve done” (sad melancholy soft tone).
Lady Mabel’s voice much louder: “Yes. With the greatest ease” (bitter tone, hurt eyes).
Frank (now he walks off); “I cannot tear my heart and my life to pieces for the sake of an old love” (this is not Trollope’s much harder character).
They are on different sides of the room and then they swiftly walk to one another and are close: “Let’s go and join the others.” (They look as if they are about to kiss.)
Mabel: “Oh Frank I wish … “
And then the interruption; as she is looking up to him, Silverbridge comes in and sees them. He does not register something is happening in front of him that matters (as he later does on DC about these two as lovers).
Silverbridge (opening door): “There you are, you two, come on, the carriage is waiting.”
Look on Frank’s face picked up by camera.
Mabel; “Yes, we were just coming (in an excited high emotional voice) as you see” (hurried tone, steps over towards Silverbridge)
Silverbridge put his amr out and she takes it.
Mabel: “Thank you, Silverbridge (they go out the door together). How well that coat becomes you …”
Frank follows looking grave (an ideal face for this character).
Mabel (loud voice still): “Which of your horses do you ride today?” [he has so many]
Scene of room over and we see it empty now and that is a meaningful chord. It’s the possession or not of such a room that makes Silverbridge what he is and the other two what they are not.

The poignancy of this deceptive ending (Lady Mabel deceiving SIlverbridge) then segues into a glorious elegiac moment — embodying the ambiguity of experience.

Scene 6: Just outside Matching, beautiful sunny day. Silverbridge and Mabel come out and hurry over to carriage, she climbs into carriage with Mrs Finn (waiting from Scene 4) and Lady Mary who has a blanket she puts over Lady Mabel’s lap. Tregar and Gerald (Michael Cochrane). Gerald has first eager lines of “Come on, come on, ” also showing he has less brains and self-consciousness than the others, ) on horses waiting and Duchess emerges in the sun.

The Duchess looks about (wonderful moment as she is beneath great hat and puts on gloves) and is in command; comes over but decides she will be the leader of the horses and take the reigns. Memories of 2:3 where she came in with Alice Vavasour (Caroline Mortimer) and said how she loved to ride and loved to be the driver of a carriage too but the Duke frowned on it.

Episode 32: Fading Dreams

Scene 7: Establishment shot: Phineas (Donal McCann) and Duke seen at medium distance in Duke’s study, Duke behind desk, Phineas in chair, talking intently. From PM, Vol 4, Ch 68, pp 582-86.

Duke: “Do you think it will soon go against us, Finn?”
Finn: “Yes, Duke, soon.”
Duke: “Ah, how so? (shaking finger) surely we could hold on to the beginning of the next season.”

We hear clopping of horses outside (we know it’s Duchess and family and friends in carriage and riding in beautiful place on fine day)

Finn: “I’m very doubtful of that.”
Duke: (Bitter now) “To have done so little, hmmm . . . In fact I would fain carry on. No. I . . . I’m dermined to carry on, Finn, so long as there is any hope that we may be of service.”
Finn: “There comes a time for any government when it’s best service is to be gone.

[Elegiac tone suffused dialogue]

Duke (looks down sad.) “Well, I do not think it’s come to that yet. In fact, I pray not. (Gets up and walks over to another area.) No I would like to do at least some one thing before we go (apparently picked up and now waving blue books).”
Finn: “What is it your Grace would do if you could?”
Duke: (walking back, rueful tone): “If I could, Finn, hmmm, if I could . . . I would spread justice over the entire earth. I would lead chosen friends loving hearts, clear intellect, noble instinct whose one great aim was to abolish the distance between men.”
Finn: “Do men really want that?”
Duke: (Exasperated slight noise, sound like “Finn!”, walks a little): “How can we to whom so much has been given dare to think otherwise?
Finn: “But that which we have been given which if distributed equally would dwindle so pitifully that no man would get anything worth the having.”
Duke: “At least we would be all alike and there’d be justice. Oh Finn (shaking fits) you’re a liberal because you now that all is not what it should be. Because you’d march onto some nearer approach to equality?
Finn: “I want a fairer world, if that’s what you mean.”
Duke. (Makes sound like “Oh!” lips shake) “No no. I mean that as you are a just and liberal man then you must want all men to be equal.”
Finn sits back, “Mmmm.” (Looks melancholy and earnest and sad. He does not appear to
think men are equal nor are they at all like the Duke)

Duke: “Equality is so great thing, so glorious [tone turns acrid, disgust felt] that you become disgusted by the promise of it in the mouths of blood-thirsty and corrupt men.”
Finn: “Such men have asserted a mock equality so much that the very idea of the thing stinks in my nostrils.”
Duke: (Hamlet-like here) “And yet I fear that though equality is but a dream that may never come … still sometimes one likes to dream” (farther off shot, he walks around desk), “especially as there is no danger that Marching all this [his hand indicates his beautiful study and the landscape outside his window -- in which we know his Duchess and adult children and Mrs Finn are riding] will ever be flown away when I wake up.” (Now bangs on world globe). “Ah, it’s pleasant to play with the idea of a millenium, Finn, that will never come to destroy me. Now, I doubt I should stand the test that’s been attempted in other countries.
Finn: “Yes, you should be thankful the English are not given to violent revolution. They prefer to enjoy what they have in peace and leave others to do likewise” (implication Duke would be a big loser).
Duke: “Will it always be so?”
Finn: “That I cannot say. For the time at least Duke, you are free to enjoy your domaine (pointing outwards to grounds beyond) and to walk in it without fear.”
Duke: : (smiles): “Well, Phineas, let’s walk in it together before the best of the day is gone.”

(Again sound of carriage, and next shot of next scene is of deep clear light steely blue sky with ruins seen.)

And then the scene with the Duchess: somehow this next one feels like the true ending of series; it should have ended here — the happy moment, but as in life the curtain does not come down then. It’s at a later serendipitious older moment the end comes.

Scene 8:

Establishment shot: Out of doors. We see horses emerging from the left hand of the frame and see them clopping, we see ruins. Soft blue sky, light breeze, glorious day. Horses seen from vantage of Duke and Phineas (who we know this from previous scene). Curiously memorable one of the grown children (Silverbridge, Gerald, Lady Mary,, Duchess, Mrs Finn and Lady Mabel) processing out to the grounds of matching on a fine spring day — one’s heart stops at the sense of a precious moment caught from the flux of time (see picture above).

Carriage and three horses go by, and then we see back of Phineas from back, black, top-hat and then two top-hatted men whose black silhouettes are closer to us with carriage moving from distance inbetween. Lovingly done. We watch and this is supposed to make us rejoice

The group slowly comes round the path and tree and down towards the men on the path which realls (though not exactly same) Alice Vavasour and Lady Glen ride ever so many years (episodes) ago, Lady Glen driving then and saying how much she loved this. She waves, and camera shows two men lift hats and wave back. Camera then catches them slowing down, stopping and her high on the seat, beginning to come down.

Duke: “Well, good afternoon, my dear.”
Duchess: “Have you had a nice afternoon, Duke?”
Duke: “Yeah. Very pleasant. Oh, Finn, and I we’ve just been talking uh oh politics.”
Duchess: (As she takes flowers from bouquet which seems there somehow) “Well, what other amusement is possible on such a beautiful afternoon” (this comes from somewhere in PM but I can’t find it)
Duke: “Uh, we’re just going out to enjoy it now” (murmurs inarticulate)

[Another picturesque-lovely still from these later Palliser parts, here the Duchess puts a flower in the lapel of the Duke (Philip Latham) after an exhilarating ride for her and before a pleasant walk for him on a bright day at Matching. A nostalgia for what never was matches to pastoral melancholy of the Matching front room, but bright with the spirit of Duchess as conceived by Raven. We once saw her put a flower in Burgo Fitzgerald's lapel, 1:1]

Then from horses of three young men behind:

Gerald: “Silver, Tregear, race you both through the (?) wood?”
Silver: “Right. Tregear?”
Tregear: “Right.”
Silver: “Mrs Finn (signalling his body to her) shall give us orders.”
Mrs Finn: “As you wish, gentleman” (and camera catches her excited happy face, and she gets up hgh on the carriage): “Back, Mr Tregear. Steady, Silverbridge. Are you ready, gentlemen?”

[We are to remember her past too, and what she gave up at first and then how she gained Phineas who stands to the side of the carriage, with women laughing behind and actresses really do look gay and happy, they enjoy this enactment in these costumes in this site de memoire (history). This again is a true moment of culmination for Phineas and Marie.

Mrs Finn: "Off!"
Lady Mary: "Go! Silverbridge ..."
Other lady's voices shouting (indecipherable who) and we see them gallop off hell for leather

Back to waiting group:

Duke": "Well these boys should take more care. Oh come along, Finn."
Duchess holds on to his arm, elbow, slightlyfrom the back. Finn puts a hand on her shoulder. He walks on, Finn next to Duchess and then camera swings to watch young men riding through another landscape, past that ruin.

Young man on horse (Tregear?): "Come on!" (He is way ahead.) He moves to and through ruined wall with big gap (looks like Tregear).
Then man on white-silver horse, appropriately, we remember this is Silverbridge: "Right! The last one at the Lodgegate's a sissy!"
Gerald (the dunce, the clutz, it was he who started this): "Right! Ouff!" (as he comes through).

Now silver-white horse is rounding a tree, Gerald following and they are on the other side of the river from where we saw them originally and they ride forward, apparently Tregear in the lead.

Scene 9: Matching, front room, in walk Lady Mabel and Mary. There is no such scene in DC; instead Chs 29, pp. 181-82, 184-85, mostly narrated scene of Silverbridge asking Mary to be friends as an old friend of his, and then striking encounter where Silverbridge takes Mary to visit Lady Mabel and they find Tregear there with Miss Cass (! -- the chaperon makes it respectable) and Mary thrusts herself into Tregear's arms, they kiss and then Silverbridge breaks it up. Impossibly Victorian, theatrical melodrama.

Here we see Mary's yearning for her father to approve of Tregear and regret that Treager raced; Lady Mabel's memories of her young years growing up with Silverbridge. Mary understands her father's valuing of "serious" nature in young man (in 1:1 Palliser's most gut level objection to Lady Glen was she was not serious, she was frivolous).

Silverbridge, Tregear and Gerald barge in; Mary protests her father didn't like it, and to Gerald and Silverbridge's rejoinder's, Mabel points to the Duke and Phineas seen in the distance by the ruin walking and "you see how earnestly" talking; Silverbridge looks and remarks how "old for his age" is his father, and Lady Mabel how young is Silverbridge; nevertheless she will walk with him, and they move out. Always these window scenes in the series. A motif brought back again and again as we watch different characters in and through it.

The scene moves to Gerald on the other side of Mary and Tregear; he is thick but gets message and Mary to Tregear (the conservative and replacement for her father): "so you may begin your first lesson . ... in treason ...."

Scene 10: Duke's study, from PM, Vol 4, Chapter 72, pp 619-21 (Penguin) and Chapter 76, pp. 659-660, Chapter 80, pp. 690-91. Bungay brings list of those "who want to resign from your ministry." Painful when Duke asks if Bungay is resigning (no nor Monk nor Finn). Again Duke laments that they won't give them another chance to enact something. To idea he must follow "chance" who may bring him in again, like the Duchess, he says "but never as Prime Minister"), and again "they weren not brought in" to do significant legislation ...

Episode 33: No Going Back.

Scene 11: Tregear approaches Lady Mary sketching by the ruin; sheer lyricism. Some of this adapted from Duke's Children, Chapters 2, p 13 (narrated, Lady Mary tells Mrs Finn), and 29, pp. 184-185 (if not the words, the couple's mood towards one another). The Duke's Children is one of Trollope's more Victorian novels in some of its attitudes and Raven to put this across uses a mood of bright comfort and high idealism. He has only a fragment of Tregear so he is turned into a poignant lover of Mary (which is then contrasted to Lady Mabel Grex's loss of Frank and her unwillingness to betray herself and the boy by marrying him)

Yearning

Feeling so strong it's emotional pain

Scene 12: Duke in his study again, late at night. From Prime Minister, Chapter 72, pp. 619-21; Chapter 78, p. 620; and Chapter 80, p 691 (again reference to Caesar and Pompey, and adds "I am given to fretting ...") also, PM, Ch 66, p. 563 (where Trollope uses free indirect speech as follows: "The old duke [Bungay] had known them both well, but had hardly as yet given the Duchess credit for so true a devotion to her husband. It now seemed to him that, though she had failed to love the man, she had given her entire heart to the Prime Minster.”. In novel Monk is central in scenes or as talked about here; it’s Finn who is in the scenes and Monk and Finn talked about

Establishment shot: Duke in evening clothes, grim expression on his face, sitting on his chair
As they speak, the camera reveals that nearby are Finn and Bungay. Late at night.

Finn: “You must join us, Duke. You must not go altogether. We need you as a statesman and as a friend.”
Duke: “You’re very kind, gentlemen, but Caesar could never command a legion under Pompey.”
Bungay: “It has been done much to the benefit of the country, and with no loss of honor in him who did it.”

Duke gets up slowly: “It will never be done by me.” [plot-design of rest of parts of series will be showing him come to accept a new position in parliament as Duke [upper house] with relief after death of Duchess and his experiences of retirement alone and of his adult children.]
Bungay: “If the fact that you have been first minister should deprive the country of your services in other offices given [?] all the years you have left to you, then I for one shall think the loss irreparable.”
Finn: “And I second that. We cannot spare men ilke you, Duke, for very long.

Camera on Duke facing backwards, seen from shoulders up. He turns.

Duke: “Well, gentlemen, I can’t deny it pleases me to hear you say so. But for m’self I shall never desire to stand at the head of a government again. As you may have observed, I’m given to frettin’. I don’t think that a Prime Minister of a free country should suffer from that infirmity. In fact, for some years to come I would prefer to be altogether out of office. However, I pray that the time time come at last when I may again endeavour to be of some humble service” (This is the last sentence of Trollope’s The Prime Minister, p. 691).

Camera on Bungay looking at Duke gravely.

Duke: “Now if you will forgive (hand to forehead) me, gentlemen (he looks as if he really is about to cry) … (and)

Duchess comes in slowly, all in ivory and white lace. “You are all working very late.”
Duke: “Weighty matters to be decided.”
Duchess: (Worry and anxiety on her aging face, weary look): “But you are finished but that now.”
Bungay: “Yes, my dear, we are finished with that now.”

Camera on her nodding. She walks over to him. She puts her hand on his face, great affection in hers. He looks distressed, slightly paralyzed, not knowing what to do next.

Duchess whispers: “Come. It is time to go to bed.”

He nods.

Scene 13: Duke and Duchess’s bedroom

This is taken from PM, Chs 72, pp. 622-24, and Ch 78, pp. 672-75

Establishment shot: she at her glass, he sitting in his bedroom jacket

Duchess: “What did he say?”
Duke: “I’m sorry, my dear (some noise), what?”
Duchess: “What did the Duke say?”
Duke: “Oh, that our days are numbered.”
Duchess: (she laughs a little). “Oh, I could have told him that long ago. There isn’t a porter at one of the clubs who doesn’t know that. Who is to succeed you?”
Duke: “Oh I shall advise her Majesty to send for Mr Gresham. Oh, she may wish to see Mr Daubeny as well. Not easy to make a ministry at present.”
Duchess: “Why should you not go back?”
Duke: “No. That is not on the cards.”
Duchess: “The why not? Ever so many men have done it after going out. Why not you? Oh, how could they be so ungrateful?”
Duke: “Cora. I’m not going back and there is no point in discussing it further.”
Duchess: “Of course. I understand nothing because I am a woman.”
Duke: “You understand a great deal, but not quite right. At least our troubles are over.

She nods.

Duke: “Oh, I remember, you said the other day, the labor of being a prime minister’s wife [had been] almost too many for you.”
Duchess: “I never said so. As long as you did not give way, no labor’s were too great for me. I’d have slaved morning and night so that we might have succeeded. Oh, I do hate being beat like this. I’d sooner be cut to pieces.”
Duke: “Ah, nobody likes to be beaten, Cora. There is always disappointment at first.”

She nods.

Duke: (Hand on her arm): “You did say you’d be relieved when it came.”
Duchess: “Yes, yes, I know and I meant it. Nevertheless, after drinking brandy so to speak for so long I really think a thin claret would hardly agree with my stomach. Hmmm. (She looks round at him.) Shall you like it for yourself?”
Duke: “I’m a private gentleman, my dear, with more time for his wife and children.”
Duchess: “Well, that is all very well, Duke, but we ain’t quite what you’re used to. You can’t bully us like a cabinet meeting or bring in a bill for reforming us or make us go by decimals. You’ll find us very dull subjects to work on.”
Duke: “Oh, I don’t think so, Cora. Ah, there is Gerald and Silverbridge. They’re going to need guidance and advice.”
Duchess: “Indeed. But you needn’t heap it on them by the cartload.”
Duke: Oh, Mary too, you know she’s got to be settled.”
Duchess: “Now that is woman’s work.”
Duke: “Oh yah. Oh very well.”
Duchess: “Oh well. I can dare to tell the truth about this change, Planty, even if you cannot. Oh yes (intense grief in her face close-up), it will make me unhappy.”

They hug, shake a little (movement image here).

Duke: (he whispers): “I can be honest too, with you at any rate. It will fret me to be without work.”
Duchess: “Yes, yes, I know. I am sorry. I do feel responsible [reference to Lopez debacle].”
Duke: “That is nonsense. It would have happened anyway.”
Duchess: “Well, I shall not be altogether discontented.”
Duke: “What will your contentment be?”
Duchess: “In you. In you (gratified look on her face). Your work was making you ill. Rough people whom your tender nature could not understand worried you. Oooh! I’d have given them worry for worry, but you could not. Wel, [?] you’ll be free of them, and I so I shall be contented (close up).
Duke: “Then I shall be contented too.” His face close up seen from a slant looking gravely and very tenderly at hers.” (PM material now come to an end)

Episode 34: Future plans.

Scene 14: Matching front room, begins with Silverbridge telling Frank he must give “it” [Mary] up. DC, Chapter 14, pp. 87-89, Chapter 31, pp. 191-92. Lines about the Duke: “he’ll say a word or two which you’ll find very hard to bear … My governor’s the quietest man going, but he has got a way of making himself disagreeable when he wishes that I never saw equalled.” Mabel comes in with a distraught expression on her face, Silverbridge says to Tregear to “push along, and Silverbridge proposal scene with Mabel and her rejection ensues. DC, Chapter 19, pp. 120-24.

In book scene is so much less pleasant, and we see more what these young intrinsically hard and selfish people are. It’s played here far more plangently and less bitterly than the scene in Trollope. This is true throughout the adaptation of this last novel. Much more romantic at all points.

They are in the film scene somewhat gay and playful, begin with talk of money which to Silverbridge means nothing for real (“What an accursed thing is money …”) and only when Mabel “lets him off the hook” (an ugly phrase which comes out of a mindset which regards women as trapping men) does the scene really veer into Trollope’s mindset, and even then her prominent reason for saying no, that she does not love him, is brought to the surface in a way it’s not quite in the scene. The proto-feminism of Trollope’s approach which is to emphasize her desperation and bring in Silverbridge’s sense something went on between her and Tregear is dropped; she is more simply not able to come up to her own cynicism.

The mise-en-scene is again the pastoral green ambience of the part, with the window not far off. She does look out window from time to time; she is watching Mary and Frank. She does tell him he can come again and he looks all vulnerable and willing. She says she’s won; he says it’s been a draw. She says he needs to be harder (ironically this will boomerang at her)

Scene 15: First of Duke’s scenes with Silverbridge. He has papers and is talking to Silverbridge.
From DC, Chs 26, pp. 167-69, 27, pp. 172-74 (in book it takes place at Silverbridge’s club and is interrupted by Tifto). In book he is older than Lady Mabel by a week; in film she is older than him by a week. Duke suggests Parliament for a career and the seat at Silverbridge now open; Silverbridge tells of his desire to marry Lady Mabel; Duke remembers Lady Mabel’s alcoholic and gambling father and relative poverty but it does not matter; in the book he goes further: realizes she is the kind of person he would naturally be comfortable with. So wants her for daughter-in-law. First of two scenes, the second longish and important.

Scene 16: Invented scene of Duchess and Duke segued into. Duchess in boudoir, again inhaling some medicine (foreshadowing):

She is not for it. She says Silverbridge is too young for Lady Mabel, and she says he’ll get bored, Duke refers to Lady Mabel’s attractiveness and “she’s very clever” and he doubts the boy will be bored (salacious undercurrent in a gentle jest); to which she replies that she will not “interfere” just give “loving motherly advice” and her face turns and we are in the next scene with
Silverbrige

Scene 17: “Why did you go to your father before me, hmmm?” He justifies himself by”well a lot of things have happened to hurt him, mother” and he wanted to be sure. Is she jealous? She is pleased at this semi-flirtation, but we get this comment from her: she wants “the very vest” for her son, but he looks impatient, tired, rueful but wary too. Then we get the very Trollopian sentiment from her that in marriage, the hors d’oeuvres are the easy part; “she’s not tender enough to make a good joint …” Purpose of scene is to keep her and her and Silverbridge’s relationship in front of us.

Scene 18: At Silverbridge’s club. Dolly brought in in lieu of our narrator who cuts across time and space and provides the kind of irony Dolly does in conversation. Dolly is in DC too — though not as much as here proportionately. From DC, Chapter 7, pp. 45-46 (at least to ideas), Chapter 14, pp. 85-87, Trollope’s point is that party doesn’t matter as much as individual family-and-friend allegiance and Silverbridge doesn’t know that as yet, Ch 16, p. 100. As Dolly says “your governor’s going to be no end cut up about this, Tregear comes in to warn Silverbridge against Tifto and at first Silverbridge resentful, but then sees the truth and then the scene between Tifto and Silverbridge where Silverbridge disdains Tifto to his face in front of the others. Words of that scene closely taken from book (e.g., Ch 14, p. 87: “Now look here Major Tifto, if you’re dissatisfied, you and I can easily separate ourselves”).

The humiliated and therefore angry Tifto

Episode 35: Political Clash.

Scene 19: Duke’s Study. From Duke’s Children, Ch 3, p. 19 (narrator tells us), Chs 7, pp. 44-47, a letter in Ch 14, p. 92. Second linchpin scene for tranposition of this sixth book: Opens with Duke upset that Fothergill has reported Silverbridge needs to have bills for 4000 pounds for training thorough racehorses, to which Silverbridge says that’s all right as he’s giving all that up (!), and then demurs he’s keeping Prime Minister with Tifto; then they get into Silverbridge’s betting as “nothing to speak of,” and then when they turn to Silverbridge’s having gone down once to Silverbridge and going again in a week or two, father starts to admonish he has to gain trust of electorate, he says he has it, and then it comes out Silverbridge tells his father he’s a Tory. Duke’s grave face as he listens to this talk:

His ideology is selfishness and protection of his property and class and we are to see he’s hardly thought this out at all; his expressions are banal and through cliches. He refers his father to what Tregear says. The Duke is appalled partly because it’s a question of heritage (irony here) but also his son shows no depths, no real thought and no understanding of the broader issues or any idea he should go into them. Son realizes how hurt his father is:

But nonetheless, he shrugs it off and deals with it by saying with how he’s not smart and everyone says Tories are the party of the stupid so he belongs there. A complex moment catching real psychology of conflict between two such people.

And then Silverbridge insists “I’m jolly hard put to get there as it is,” away to play cricket; 21 other fellows to consider.

Scene 20: Cricket field. Wholly invented scenes but dialogues and ideas taken from party and water scenes in book. In book, Silverbridge first meets Isobel, DC, Ch 28, pp. 176-79.

We are with audience members watching, and then a familiar person in yellow suit walks on, so we are with Dolly once again. He is there at so many transitions. He walks over to Lady Mabel and Miss Casse in lovely shades of pastoral green; back to pastoral world of opening.

Lady Mabel given disillusioned lines with allusion to Tennyson: “I quite like cricketeers. They look so wholesome all dressed up in white, clothed in white samite,” to which Dolly responds ironically, “Mystical. Wonderful.” Dolly says suddenly of Silverbridge that he’s worried, to which Mabel (not sympathetic we feel) “What has his lordship to worry about? Who has bet?” “Well, there is myself,” “So I had supposed.” Gerald brought in as perhaps coming if he can escape Dons. The “oddity” friend, Tifto, brought in and Mabel makes a catty like remark (suggesting she and the duchess might not have hit it off): “Inherits it from his dear mother I dare say.”

They look over and watch the first meeting of Silverbridge and Isobel (Lynn Frederick), and camera shifts to them, and we are close up and watch and listen.

He says he’s “quite worn out” with worrying over all those who’ve bet on his horse, lightly said but we are to feel he partly means it. She’s glad he “feels” his “responsibilities, even though the matter be so trival” (she laughs). But it’s not. He invites her to Derby too. She will go to see, not to risk her money.

Then we (with Boncassen family, Jerry Stovin and Eileen Erskine as Mr and Mrs) watch Silverbridge play cricket — emphasis on his youth, innocence, beauty. The blue sky, her eagerness from afar; montage-lie shots give us sense of afternoon wearing away.

A final dialogue of Silverbridge and Isabel. In book Tregear was there and Mabel is bitter and ill-natured in comments; here she is alone with Miss Cass and says she’s “been a fool” and has lost him, and Miss Cass says “if he was in earnest,” he will come again. This is from DC, Chapter 20,pp 129-30. In the book we are told Silverbridge “went forth to ask three more times” and was put off (Chapter 31, p. 194) three more times (to make us sympathetic to him, but in series he never asks again, and part ends on the desolate face of Mabel.

Lady Mabel has lost him

For information on Sudeley Castle, see comments.

Next: some commentary on this part and then onto 12:25

Ellen

The Oscar Wilde Fairy Tales CDs are currently being digitised for downloading and will be available as both a CD and a download shortly. Please keep checking the website at http://www.sindenproductions.com/fairy-tales.html

OSCAR WILDE FAIRY TALES

DOUBLE CD Available soon exclusively from  Marc Sinden Productions.

“No man is rich enough to buy back his past”. How prophetic Oscar Wilde’s witticism proved to be.

It would be easy to imagine that Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales were written after his tragic fall from grace in 1895 and the unforeseen experience of anguish and loss. In fact they are among his early published works, the first five appearing in 1888 and the remaining four (under the title The House of Pomegranates) in 1891. These were his years of enormous happiness and success. But authors are often wiser in their writings than in their lives. For Wilde, outward beauty and luxury were necessities. Ugliness and misery were not to be countenanced. Yet the stories show us a very different view – listen to The Happy Prince, The Star Child and The Young King. The third of these, a superb piece of storytelling and one of Oscars own favourites, is particularly surprising in its late-Victorian context.

Written for children, but understood in a different, darker way by adults.

For the last track of the CD we have included The Actress, never before recorded. This story was told by Oscar Wilde to Miss Aimee Lowther when she was a child and written out by her soon afterwards. A few copies were privately printed and it was later published in ‘The Mask’ magazine of July 1912. It is believed to be, perhaps, about the great Victorian actress Dame Ellen Terry, to whom Wilde was devoted.

CD Produced, Directed and Designed by Marc Sinden

To aid the Royal Theatrical Fund

Jeremy Irons has donated a signed photograph to the auction organised by HEAL.

An original piece of signed artwork drawn by Oscar-winning actor Anthony Hopkins will be put up for auction as part of a fund-raising drive to put disadvantaged children in Andhra Pradesh into education.

The Welsh film, stage and television veteran is one of several stars to donate signed items in support of Cycle India 2010, organised by the British charity organization HEAL (Health and Education for All).

Best known for his portrayal of cannibal serial killer Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, which won him the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1992, Hopkins has sent a unique pencil drawing from his California home.

Also a keen artist, who frequently doodles on film scripts when learning his lines, Hopkins, 71, has held exhibitions of his pictures exhibited in the United States, some selling for as much as 1,300 dollars.

The 200-mile cycle ride across south in early 2010 will be joined by Welsh sports journalist Jeremy King, 49, who is holding the auction of entertainment and sporting memorabilia.

“I have had kind donations of signed photographs from a number of screen giants, including Jeremy Irons, Ray Winstone and Dame Judi Dench, but the artwork sent by Anthony Hopkins will be a great boost to the auction,” said Jeremy King.

Jeremy Irons conducted an actors’ Masterclass at the Advanced Performers Studio at LAMDA on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 from 6:00pm – 9:00pm.

APS – ADVANCED PERFORMERS STUDIO (part of Associated Studios)

Weekly workshops and masterclasses for professional actors and singers, a studio that allows you to continue developing your craft on weekends and evenings.

Working or resting, APS gives you the chance to take a tailor made selection of workshops and masterclasses with the highest talent the performing industry has to offer.

APS Offers:

- Weekly workshops consolidated into 5-week courses for performance professionals. You may join the courses at any time.

-APS is a STUDIO. We want you to work and often directly improve your chances of employment. If you get professional performance work while on a course, you will get credit for the weeks you miss, if it is more than two consecutive weeks.

- Regular masterclasses with top industry talent including Michael Grandage (Donmar), Lindsay Posner (View from the Bridge, Carousel), Maria Aitken (the 39 Steps), Melly Still (Nation by Terry Pratchett at the National, Jonathan Kent (National Theatre), David Grindrod (casting director), James from Pippa Ailion’s office (Casting) and many more.

- A chance to keep your skills fresh

- Build your repertoire of songs with a different west-end MD every Sunday in our SINGERS’ PERFORMANCE CLASSES, including Nigel Lilley (Spring Awakening, La Cage), Joel Fram (Wicked), Dan Bowling (Phantom, Love Never Dies) and many more

-Work on Monologues, work on new writing at the Royal Court, work on Shakespeare, work on method, work on text,work on scene studies.

- Make new industry contacts

- Be seen by London’s top Artistic Directors

—————————————

Membership is by audition and all classes are capped at 12. We have flexibility to join mid course subject to availability

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION AND TO BOOK AN AUDITION CONTACT US ON 020 73818569

www.associatedstudios.co.uk info@performersstudio.co.uk

The Josephine Hart poetry hour screening room: Robert Browning

Tue 1 Dec 2009, 18:30 – 20:00

Conference Centre, British Library

Price: £2

Book now for 01 Dec 2009, 18.30 – 20.00

Readers Announced- Dominic West and Jeremy Irons to join Josephine Hart.

New tickets have been released to see the Josephine Hart poetry hour: Robert Browning in the live screening room, you may even be upgraded to the main auditorium on the night, subject to availability.

Robert Browning (1812-1889) was one of the most confident and interesting men of his age; the gallant suitor of Elizabeth Barrett at Wimpole Street, the child-frightening author of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and the great pioneer of the dramatic monologue. His verse is technically brilliant, alive and thoughtful and made to be heard aloud.

Drawing on literary and theatrical friends, novelist Josephine Hart matches readers with poets, and prefaces each reading with her own insightful commentary.

Actors, politicians and royalty pay respects to Sir John Mortimer

Celebration of Rumpole creator’s life at Southwark Cathedral one year after lawyer and playwright’s death

Memorial Service for Sir John Mortimer

Detail from the order of service at the memorial service for Sir John Mortimer at Southwark Cathedral.
For a man who did not believe in God, only a cathedral was big enough to accommodate Sir John Mortimer’s many friends and admirers for a memorial service today.

Actually, the event at Southwark Cathedral in London was billed as a celebration of the life of the lawyer, author, playwright, entertainer and wit, who died last January at the age of 85, and that turned out to be more appropriate than a service. The thing about the Church of England is that you don’t have to be religious to get your day in church.

It made for a good house as the performer in him would undoubtedly have acknowledged and, if God was not entirely absent from the proceedings, the biblical readings, prayers, psalms and hymns were outnumbered by readings from the canon of Mortimer himself, declaimed in the most actorly of ways by the likes of Edward Fox, Derek Jacobi and Patricia Hodge. Topping up the bill were Joss Ackland, with a concessionary reading from Ecclesiastes and Jeremy Irons reciting the Thomas Hardy poem Afterwards.

Mortimer was well-known for his defences of artistic free speech as a barrister in court, admired as the playwright of semi-autobiographical works such as A Voyage Round My Father, even more famous as the creator of Rumpole of the Bailey on television and then in novels and latterly celebrated as a raconteur in an indefatigable one-man show – albeit one in which he was invariably accompanied by glamorous women actors. He would have loved the show in the cathedral.

Among the audience – a more appropriate term than congregation – were Mortimer’s widow Penny and children, including daughters Emily and Rosie, both of whom are expecting babies around the anniversary of his death in the new year, the Duchess of Cornwall, and such figures as Tom Stoppard and Peter Hall, Melvyn Bragg, Anna Ford and Peter O’Toole. The former Tory leader Michael Howard came to pay his respects to the old socialist and fellow barrister and there was even a retired bishop, Lord Harries, formerly of the Oxford diocese, in the pews. Lord Kinnock, another old friend and holiday companion, gave the address and Lord Mandelson materialised beside the royal party.

As the service started, wintry sunlight flooded the cathedral, which soon echoed also with music evocative of Mortimer’s lifelong south Oxfordshire home, around the village of Turville Heath. As for the cathedral itself, even that was appropriate, Canon Andrew Nunn said, as it sits just south of the Thames, out of the grasp of the censorious authorities of the City of London and hence surrounded historically by theatres and pleasure grounds, the louche haunt of lawyers and writers out on a spree and the whores who serviced them, known as Winchester geese after the bishop whose writ once ran across the area.

“Please make sure your mobile telephones are turned off and please save any applause for the end of the service,” Nunn added as the performance began. As if to get his retaliation in first he added: “Jesus had more to say about lawyers than any other group in society. He could not stand them, though he may have had a bit more time for Sir John Mortimer.”

Kinnock told the audience that Mortimer had always been a devout unbeliever: “He was in his own words an atheist certainly, but an atheist for Jesus – he liked to say a character without contradictions is like an egg without salt.”

He praised him as a valorous champion for liberty, an opponent of bigotry and a “splendid fulminator”, a friend and admirer of women even though in his own words he had a face like a bag of spanners, and a doting father, including of the son, Ross, who he discovered in his 80s he had conceived 40 years earlier with the actor Wendy Craig.

“He was a day-star of his age,” said Kinnock. “He illuminated our lives, he lit up our times. Rejoice in him and be thankful. The defence rests but his soul goes strolling on.”

Afterwards, the cathedral rang with applause as the service ended, before the more favoured of them filed out to a marquee and to what Mortimer himself described as the unwavering attraction of cold champagne.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/nov/17/sir-john-mortimer-memorial-service
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Afterwards

When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,
‘He was a man who used to notice such things’?

If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid’s soundless blink,
The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight
Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,
‘To him this must have been a familiar sight.’

If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,
When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,
One may say, ‘He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm,
But he could do little for them; and now he is gone.’

If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door,
Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees
Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,
‘He was one who had an eye for such mysteries’?

And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom
And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,
Till they rise again, as they were a new bell’s boom,
‘He hears it not now, but used to notice such things’?

Thomas Hardy
________________________________________________________________________________________

STARS APPEAR AT CONCERT IN AID OF BEREAVED FAMILIES

A Christmas concert featuring performances and readings from actors Jeremy Irons and Vanessa Redgrave, TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh and Cameron Mackintosh’s Oliver! will be held in aid of bereaved families.

Welsh opera singer Natasha Marsh, Cantate Youth Choir and singer Eddi Reader will also be taking part in the event hosted by The Child Bereavement Charity at Holy Trinity Brompton in London on December 3.

Stage, screen and television actor Jeremy said: “Losing a child must cause the most unbearable pain. Pain that I have been lucky enough not to have had to face. “I am most happy to be able to help in a small way those that have.”

The event has been organised by Child Bereavement Charity patron Flappy Lane Fox, whose son Harry Sidebottom, died aged 24. She said: “The Child Bereavement Charity provides such an important service to bereaved families. “My son Harry had a fatal car accident just over 10 years ago, aged 24, and my step granddaughter Molly Lane Fox died of an inoperable brain tumour nearly 18 months ago, aged only five. “These two have remained my constant driving force, and have inspired me to help to ensure the continuance of this very special charity. “The money raised from this concert will ensure that children and families continue to have access to support when they need it most.”

The Child Bereavement Charity supports families and educates professionals both when a child dies and when a child is bereaved. Every year the charity trains around 5,000 professionals across health care, social care, education, the emergency services and the voluntary sector. It also provides a support and information service, resources, an interactive website with online forums and Buckinghamshire-based support groups.

The concert takes place at 6.45pm on December 3 at Holy Trinity Brompton, London SW7 1JA. Tickets are priced £50 and £75. To book call 01494 446648 or email: events@childbereavement.org.uk. For more information about the charity visit www.childbereavement.org.uk.

Il libro che vi cosiglio questa volta è davvero un colpo al cuore. Una scarica di proiettili sordi e meschini che vi colpirà allo stomaco inaspettatamente. Una storia torbida che trascina con se un’inspiegabile fascino. Forse è il personaggio enigmatico di Anna Barton, partorito dalla mente di Josephine Hart, a fare la differenza. Una donna insolita, silenziosa e triste, seducente e pericolosa, la definirei una macchiolina nera caduta su di un foglio tutto bianco. Il foglio bianco e immacolato in questa storia è rappresentato dalla vita pacata e perbene del protagonista; un uomo politico influente, con un’esistenza stabile e prevedibile che verrà sconvolta dall’arrivo di questa donna. La storia è molto più complessa di come possa sembrare; è la psicologia dei personaggi, le loro vicede antecedenti al loro incontro a dare un quadro più vischioso ad una faccenda che sembrerebbe banale in un’altro frangente. Una frase su tutte rappresenta il personaggio tagliente di Anna Barton: “Chi ha subito un danno è pericoloso… Sa di poter sopravvivere.”

Ben riuscita a mio parere la versione cinematografica del romanzo. I personaggi sembrano incarnarsi magicamente nelle persone di Jeremy Irons e Juliette Binoche. Il film è a tratti più sintetico del libro stesso, nonostante il romanzo fosse già essenziale e brevissimo. Sostengo che la scrittrice nel suo libro abbia volutamente limitato l’ntrospezione e abbia lasciato nuda la narrazione dei fatti, rendendoli ancora più crudi. Il lettore si aspetterà una motivazione, una morale, una giustificazione alle azioni dei personaggi ma ne rimarrà deluso. A mio parere il libro però si dilunga un tantino troppo su certe dinamiche noiose, ma la tematica lo tiene su fino alla fine.

Il film compenza la scarna narrazione con le immagini; forti, intese e a tratti sconvolgenti.

Una sensualità raffinata e psicologica, una storia ossessiva e sbagliata che tiene incollata la nostra attenzione! Fatemi sapere se leggete il libro, o se vedete il film e se già conoscete entrambi sentitevi liberi di commentare. A presto!

11 November 2009

Click on the thumbnails for larger images:

Service marks lost WWI generation

Westminster Abbey is to hold a special Armistice Day service following the deaths this year of the three remaining World War I veterans living in the UK.

The Queen will lead the country in observing a two-minute silence at 1100 GMT for the “passing of a generation”.

Bill Stone died at 108 in January followed by both Henry Allingham, 113, and Harry Patch, 111, in July.

The monarch will lay a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior and Mr Stone’s daughter will give a reading.

Gordon Brown will also attend along with former prime ministers John Major and Margaret Thatcher, although Tony Blair will be in the Middle East in his capacity as a special envoy.

Actor Jeremy Irons will read Last Post by the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, during the service to recognise military and civilian contributions to the conflict.

The silence, to be observed around the UK at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, marks the moment four years of war ended with the signing of the Armistice Treaty by Germany and the Allies.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/8353405.stm

Published: 2009/11/11 01:06:04 GMT

—————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Last Post by Carol Ann Duffy

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If poetry could tell it backwards, true, begin

that moment shrapnel scythed you to the stinking mud …

but you get up, amazed, watch bled bad blood

run upwards from the slime into its wounds;

see lines and lines of British boys rewind

back to their trenches, kiss the photographs from home -

mothers, sweethearts, sisters, younger brothers

not entering the story now

to die and die and die.

Dulce – No – Decorum – No – Pro patria mori.

You walk away.

You walk away; drop your gun (fixed bayonet)

like all your mates do too -

Harry, Tommy, Wilfred, Edward, Bert -

and light a cigarette.

There’s coffee in the square,

warm French bread

and all those thousands dead

are shaking dried mud from their hair

and queuing up for home. Freshly alive,

a lad plays Tipperary to the crowd, released

from History; the glistening, healthy horses fit for heroes, kings.

You lean against a wall,

your several million lives still possible

and crammed with love, work, children, talent, English beer, good food.

You see the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile.

If poetry could truly tell it backwards,

then it would.

The director Norman Stone first came to my attention when I watched a brilliant documentary about The Narnia Code (all I’m saying is, it involves planets and Aslan).

My Father told me about who he was and about the fact he was a Christian, the son of a preacher (poor guy) as well as the grandson of a preacher (even worse) and that he is married to the daughter of this guy:

Magnús Magnússon

After some research a few months later I found out that he directed another documentary about C S Lewis as well as the original TV version of Shadowlands more recently he directed the BBC Florence Nightingale series.

I also recently bought a film called Man Dancin’ which he produced & directed. It’s set in Scotland and is about a ex-gang member recently released from prison. There’s a good Christian message in there without making it wet or cheesey; it’s a gritty 15! Awesome.

I’ve only watched half of it thus far; I started watching it late and a man’s gotta wake up in’t mornin’. We’ll see if I benefit from the finished product and wether it will receive the Blewog Seal of Approval.

How gritty!

I’m delighted that there are representatives out there in popular(ish) culture who are generating good quality art with an un-watered down Christian perspective.

I’m reading a book at the moment (I know, unbelievable!) it’s called Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Popular Culture and it’s by William D. Romanowski. I’m really benifitting from it’s clear and wise message; if you’re a Christian you have a duty to engage with the culture around you! We are commanded to “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it [the earth].”

If we are looking upon the culture we see around us as purely evil, then what hope does the world have of being reached with the message of Christ? We ought to be salt and light in this world, we are to be in this world but not of it. Engage with what you see daily, be critical, comment on it from a biblical perspective.

I was thinking about all this and all of a sudden I got an email about something called The Pitch.

The Pitch is your opportunity to pitch to make a short film with professional production support worth in excess of £20,000, a

nd to receive advice from top industry professionals.

Work on your film maker vision and delve into the Bible for inspiration

So I’m working on that with this refreshed perspective in mind.

There are people out there who have the right attitude but I’m sure there could be more. Instead of being someone who makes ‘Christian Music’ why not be ‘A Christian who makes Music’? If Christ is at the centre of your life he will touch everything you do and shape it.

Anyway, something to chew on.

And finally, some news hot off the press involving Mr Stone and this guy:

Jeremy Irons

The project is a film on the life of St Columba.

No, not him:

Him:

Of course you all know who that is but just in case you didn’t; he’s basically credited as the guy who brought Christianity to Scotland.

This film (knowing how these things go) probably won’t be out until 2011; but I’m excited to see if it comes to fruition and what it will be like.

__________________

Oh! You want to know my favourite Jeremy Irons role? No brainer:

Max Irons has made a new short film entitled Unrequited Love.

Max Irons in Unrequited Love

A dark, twisted 2min tale on the perils of Unrequited Love as an advert for the environment. When forlorn and desperate Tom feels Jenn, his angel, his love, slipping away, he resorts to writing poetry to win her back. The problem is his poetry is no good and the pastoral environment isn’t inspiring him. With the first stanza an illusive headache and in a frustrated mess of beer cans, cigarette butts and fast food trash, Jenn texts to dump him…Unrequited Love; Tom and Jenn, the environement and us…

In post – production

Written, Directed and Produced by Jade Syed-Bokhari

Co-Producer and DOP Andy Whale www.andywhale.com

For writer/director Jade Syed-Bokhari of White Fire Films, Unrequited Love was shot at Black Park (near Pinewood Studios) under a beautiful old oak tree with Max Irons (Jeremy Irons son) on what turned out to be a perfect day. Things ran smoothly and the production got everything in the can in under ten hours.

Exclusive: Jeremy Irons to star in new film about St Columba

Nov 8 2009 Mike Merritt, Sunday Mail

OSCAR winner Jeremy Irons is to star in a major new movie about the saint who brought Christianity to Scotland.

The film on the life of St Columba by Shadowlands director Norman Stone will be shot either in Northern Ireland or the west of Scotland.

Producers are also in talks with another A-list Hollywood star said to be interested in the project – but Jeremy is already signed up to play the saint, who came to Scotland from Ireland.

Bafta-winner Stone, whose films include Florence Nightingale and CS Lewis – Beyond Narnia, said: “Jeremy is perfect for the role. He is fascinated by Columba, especially given his Irish ancestry and connections.

“He just can’t wait to get started. This will be a wartsand-all portrayal.

“I see Columba as a man of incredible faith, integrity and strength – but at times flawed.

“He struggled with hunger for power. He was cunning, brave and an independent spirit which sometimes he found difficult to fit into his holy orders.

“But he was a gifted man who changed the religious and social map of Scotland and Britain.

“He was not a saintly saint and this film will be more of a character study and a political thriller than a Christian epic.

“Columba will not wear a halo. It needs big-screen treatment and in Jeremy we have the right person to deliver the performance we are looking for.”

The movie, The End Time, will be shot either in the spring or autumn of next year, with screening six months later.

Jeremy, who won an Academy Award for Best Actor for Reversal Of Fortune in 1990, worked with Stone on BBC drama The Dream in 1993.

A source close to the actor said: “He is delighted to be involved and looking forward to working with Norman.”

Columba arrived in Scotland from Ireland and established a monastery on the island of Iona in 563AD.

He began converting the pagan Scots to Christianity and built several churches across the Outer Hebrides before his death at the age of 75. He is buried in Iona Abbey.

reporters@sundaymail.co.uk

Não é apenas o suspense como gênero cinematográfico que tem o poder de intrigar o espectador. Muitos filmes o fazem de maneira sutil e envolvente. Um deles é “A Mulher do Tenente Francês”, baseado em livro homônimo do escritor inglês John Fowles.

Anna e Mike são dois atores que estão filmando uma produção ambientada numa pequena cidade inglesa no século XIX. O romance conturbado que vivem nas telas, nas peles de Sarah e Charles, também é vivido pelos dois na realidade, em um recurso metalinguístico familiar, porém não menos surpreendente.

Esse jogo de espelhos que o roteiro oferece é o verdadeiro trunfo do filme. A sobreposição da história das personagens e da história dos atores tira o tapete da realidade tanto para Anna e Mike quanto para o público.

Aqui o exercício das entrelinhas se faz presente. Quando percebemos estamos tentados a achar dentro do romance cinematográfico mensagens cifradas do romance dos bastidores, o que torna a experiência do filme mais estimulante e, muitas vezes, labiríntica.

A diferença é que o espectador sai da posição onisciente e passa a questionar o comportamento de Sarah/Anna – mulheres de personalidades fugidias, opacas. Quando o roteiro não proporciona a ampla visão do caráter das personagens é que é percebido o quanto somos sugestionados a acreditar na versão integral do que nos é transmitido. Isso é possível graças a nossa própria passividade enquanto espectadores e, claro, com uma boa dose de interpretação.

Meryl Streep e Jeremy Irons têm a oportunidade de multiplicar seus talentos em quatro papéis diferentes. A dobradinha foi tão bem-sucedida que se repetiu em 1993, em “A Casa dos Espíritos”, outro ótimo filme encabeçado pela grande dupla.

Outro aspecto da película que merece ser destacado é a deslumbrante fotografia, obra de Freddie Francis. Ele também trabalhou com maestria ao lado de David Lynch no incrível “O Homem Elefante”.

Assim “A Mulher do Tenente Francês” se faz maior do que mero entretenimento: ganha ares de romance épico, avança no campo da reflexão e explora bem a psicologia humana.

Filme: A Mulher do Tenente Francês (The French Lieutenant’s Woman)
Diretor: Karel Reisz
Elenco: Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, Hilton McRae, Emily Morgan, Charlotte Mitchell
Duração: 124 minutos

Indicado a cinco Oscars (1982)

Melhor atriz em drama – Meryl Streep (Globo de Ouro, 1982)

Outros prêmios

Não pisque: Quando Anna e Sonia conversam sobre o jardim.

Veja também:

Manhattan (1979)**

A Casa dos Espíritos (1993)

Adaptação (2002)

*Este filme foi assistido a pedido de Eric Paraense na seção Sua programação.

**Manhattan é um dos melhores filmes do meu amigo Woody. Aproveite a mostra dele no CCBB de São Paulo e confira o trabalho do diretor entre 18/11 e 23/12.

Over the course of this week, we will uncover twenty titles you need to seek out at your local DVD store. Here is Part 3.

The list is laid out something like this. The title, year it was made, genre, synopsis and finally my rating. I hope to do more of these lists as I uncover some of the treasures hidden at the local videostore.

10. Zero Effect (1998) (Comedy – Mystery)

Daryl Zero (Bill Pullman) maybe the world’s most reclusive private investigator. Along with his assistant, Steve Arlo (Ben Stiller) he solves impossible crimes and puzzles.

When these two crack professionals are on a case they are brilliant but during the off time they drive each other bananas. In their latest case, Zero must find out who is blackmailing a rich executive, and when his client won’t tell him, why. 

What makes this film so unbelievably clever is the performance by Pullman. Imagine a man with no-social skills, a horrible musician and recluse having to deal with the emotions of love. For years, Zero has lived vicariously through his assistant but for once he has to deal with everyday issues that are right in front of him.

Pullman plays this type of character to utter perfection and to top it all off you have the comedic talent of Ben Stiller to play off of. Stiller is hilarious as he tries to deal with how eccentric his goofy boss really is. The mystery in the film is a little flat but the comedic combination of Pullman and Stiller is pure magic. (3.5 of 5).

9. Dead Ringers (1988) (Thriller)

The Mantle brothers (duo role played by Jeremy Irons) are both doctors – both gynecologists – and identical twins. Mentally however, one of them is more confident than the other, and always manages to seduce the women he meets.

When he’s tired of his current partner, she is passed on to the other brother – without her knowing. The whole plot is upset when the shy brother falls in love first and the balance is upset. Brutal, unnerving and sinister, director David Cronenberg weaves a tale that is bound to get the blood pumping.

Jeremy Irons gives the performances of his lifetime as the world of Mantle brothers explodes into a very sinister plot. A lot of the time you aren’t really sure which brother is which and that is part of the magic. It’s a wonderfully eerie ride. (4 of 5) .

8. Love Letters (1999) (Romance – Drama)

“Love Letters” is an adapted play about an ambitious U.S. Senator (Steven Weber) reflects back on his life after the death of a woman (Laura Linney) whom he loved and kept in contact with only through correspondence.

“Love Letters” is told in a series of flashbacks as the two first meet as children and begin their lifelong correspondence. “Love Letters” is a strong and passionate story that is bound to make you cry.

The performance of Laura Linney is unbelievably moving. This version of the stage adaptation is filmed like it’s being played out on a stage in your TV.

The director doesn’t drop in a lot of twisted camera movements but instead focuses on the actors and the story.

It is a pure delight. (4 of 5) .

7. Deceivers, The (1988) (Adventure)

In 1825, India lives in fear. A mysterious religion’s followers murder everyone that stand in their way. When William Savage (Pierce Brosnan), a tax-collector of a British-Indian company, discovers the new sect. Savage disguises himself as a local and joins the sect as he tries to solve the mystery. 

 This is the first of 2 little-known Brosnan films on this list. It’s strange how much interesting stuff he did between “Remington Steele” and James Bond.

With beautiful exotic locales, this Merchant-Ivory production, this film is also a mindbender of a mystery, as Brosnan’s character is pulled deeper and deeper into the cult.

There are times when you aren’t really sure he wants to uncover the mystery but just live it. He falls in love with two different women and that struggle almost develops a split personality. It truly is one of Brosnan’s greatest performances. (4 of 5) .

 6. Gothic (1986) (Drama – Horror)

What happened the night that Mary Shelley (Natasha Richardson) concocted to the horror classic “Frankenstein”?

Drug induced games, ghost stories and betrayals occur during one night at the mad nobleman, Lord Byron’s country estate.

As Mary begins writing her classic story, she is drawn into the sick world of her lover Shelley (Julian Sands) and her cousin Claire (Myriam Cyr) as Byron (Gabriel Byrne) leads them all down the dark paths of their souls.

“Gothic” is a Victorian story turned upside-down. It’s filled with shocking revelations and euphoria that is bound to keep you guessing.

How a great and twisted story like “Frankenstein” was created is a fascinating story but presented, as a gothic horror story itself is mind-boggling. (4 of 5) .

Cat Stars, Sister & Rat Pack Launch WOS Awards
Date: 3 November 2009

Just days after their London opening in the transatlantic transfer of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Broadway stars James Earl Jones, Phylicia Rashad and Sanaa Lathan will help launch one of the biggest events in the West End: the TENTH ANNUAL Whatsonstage.com Awards, the “theatregoers’ choice”. This year’s glitzy launch party, at which all of the artists and shows in the 2010 awards running will be revealed, is held at Cafe de Paris, at lunchtime on Friday 4 December 2009.

The three Broadway stars, who have a collection of Tony Awards and other US accolades between them, will be our special guest co-presenters, reading the shortlists for the shortlists of nominations across the 20+ awards categories. The 2010 Awards cover the 2009 theatregoing year, running from 1 December 2008 to 30 November 2009. (As Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opens on 1 December 2009, the three actors and their production will be considered as part of the 2011 Awards.)

The Americans will be joined by British stage and screen legend Jeremy Irons, presenting on behalf of this year’s adopted charity, Theatre Royal Haymarket Masterclass, which gives young people the chance to learn from and be inspired by leading artists (See News, 29 Sep 2009).

There will also be three live musical performances. Patina Miller, who won rave reviews earlier this year for stepping into Whoopi Goldberg’s shoes as Deloris von Cartier in blockbuster screen-to-stage hit Sister Act at the London Palladium, will prove why she’s “Fabulous, Baby” in the show. And the ever-smooth Frank, Sammy and Dean from Christmas with The Rat Pack at the Adelphi Theatre will get guests in the festive mood with some croon-worthy seasonal classics.

Last but not least, in honour of the tenth anniversary of the Awards, the stars of satirical musical comedy hit Jest End, which returns this month for a five-week season at Jermyn Street Theatre, will perform a special celebratory medley.

Top (l-r): Patina Miller in Sister Act; Jeremy Irons; Bottom (l-r): Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’s James Earl Jones, Phylicia Rashad and Sanaa Lathan with co-star Adrian Lester; Jest End; and Christmas with The Rat Pack.

Charity, voting & sponsors

The nominations phase of the 2010 Whatsonstage.com Awards has now opened – click here to nominate your favourite shows and artists! After the launch party, the race is on to decide the eventual Whatsonstage.com Award winners, with voting on the shortlists opening on Monday 7 December 2009 and continuing until the end of January. Results are announced and awards presented in front of a live audience of theatregoer voters at our Winners’ Concert on Sunday 14 February 2010 at the West End’s Prince of Wales Theatre.

Both Awards events are held in aid of this year’s adopted charity, Theatre Royal Haymarket Masterclass, which gives young people the chance to learn from and be inspired by leading artists (See News, 29 Sep 2009). Set up by the Theatre Royal Haymarket in 1998, the hugely successful Masterclass programme has now welcomed over 40,000 people aged 17-30. Events are given free of charge and occur at least one Friday a month throughout the year, focusing on all aspects of theatre from acting and directing to writing and producing.

Though Masterclass events are designed for those at the start of their careers, theatregoers and others, of whatever age, are also welcome. The Masterclass Benefactors scheme (priced £55 per annum) has been set up for this purpose. It includes: access to over 12 events a year, an annual friends’ party and special ticket offers for Theatre Royal Haymarket productions. Details can be found at www.masterclass.org.uk.

For more information on the charity and our corporate sponsors in relation to the Awards, please visit our awards microsite later this week. For the first time this year, we’re also making a limited number of sponsorship packages available to individuals. For information on theatregoers’ packages, click here.