This is a new play by Simon Gray and Hugh Whitmore, based on Simon Gray’s The Smoking Diaries and his final book Coda. He is played by three actors, including Felicity Kendal, not at different time periods but all at the same time. It is as though he is having an inner conversation with himself. He talks about life from his early years to being diagnosed with cancer. It could be melancholy, but due to Grays sharp wit it is ofter hilarious. You did feel what a waste of a life. But he knew what he was doing. He was warned by friends to give up smoking many times. He also drank heavily, consuming several bottles of champagne a night. He also had the habit of working through the night and sleeping in to midday. This did cause problems with his co author Hugh Whitmore, who had more sociable hours. But they have managed to construct a very enjoyable play about a man who lived life the way he wanted. At the end of the play he is told that instead of one year to live it was more likely going to be two. He then died, last August, not from the cancer caused by the smoking but from an aneurysm only a couple of months into his two years. He did not live long enough to complete the play.
There are some lovely passages in the play – “I regret the hundreds and hundreds and thousands and thousands of cigarettes… pause, as if to denounce the weed, but ends … I’ve never experienced.”
My favourite is when he was talking to Harold Pinter, who also died last year, ”We can’t die yet, we haven’t grown up!” They were in their 70’s.
In the end it left me wishing to know more about this extraordinary man.
I also saw “The curious case of Benjamin Button”. I thoroughly enjoyed this film. It is nearly 3 hours long, but it kept my attention throughout. It was a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald which I had never read and never heard of before. It seems to say that your course in life is the same, whether you grow old naturally or are born old and become young. This is what happen to Benjamin. In growing up this way he had only a short time with the one woman he really loved before he grew too young for her. It was a sad and thoughtful film worthy of its Oscar nomination.
I have just crawled back from the gym. They haveall new equipment at Goodwood. On the treadmill you can connect your IPod and watch any music or videos you have recorded. You can also chose to watch TV including the news if you want to be depressed. (Its interesting to note that my bank has in theory been nationalised. Who would have thought this would happen a year ago!) The machine also shows in graphic form myheart rate. The best thing I can say about that is that it recovers fairly quickly. On the spinning bike you can watch a video of a male blond very fit Californian fitness instructor. Not my type. I won’t be watching him again.
The whole experience is quite addictive which is good as I spend more time oin the machines without the boredom factor.
I have seen two films in the last week. Slumdog Millionaire and Young Victoria. Both enjoyable fils for different reasons. Slumdog nearly ended up as a film going straight to DVD thus excluding it from the Oscars. It was brave of the Academy to give it the best picture Oscar. The film does deserve it and even though it is uplifting at the end, it depicts a very violent underclass in India.
Young Victoria is quite a different film. It is semi truthful depiction of the young Victoria prior to her becoming Queen and her relationship and eventual marriage to Albert. It has stunning scenery including Arundel Castle, but there is no real depth to the film.
This is a talk in the TED series about the computer grahics that went to make ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’. I will be seeing this film next week.
What a happy film! This is not a good film for the end of the week Friday evening relaxation. It is based on Richard Yates’ classic novel. The film is a riveting and stark marital drama with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet acting together again, this time as husband and wife. How different their parts are compared to the ones in Titanic. It is directed by Sam Mendes Kate’s real husband.
It is set in 1955 New England. They have a picture perfect house, but become increasingly resentful of the path their lives have taken. She wanted to be an actress but never made it. She became pregnant with their first child and so they settled down into their mundane lives. Neither fulfilling their dreams.
April, played by Kate Winslet tries to improve their life by suggesting they go to live in Paris. She feels that she will be able to get a job to support them. Unfortunately she falls pregant with their third child. Frank, played by DiCaprio, is also offered a better paid job.
We follow the internal journeys of these two people through the way they punish each other for failing to make the American Dream work the way it should.
The performances are mesmerizing from all the cast but it is not an easy film to watch.
This Saturday we were in London to see A Little Night Music. This is one of my favourite musicals by Stephem Sondheim. It was at the Menier Chocolate Factory near London Bridge. This is a very small theatre with very hard bench seats for only 150 people. The show could not have been better for me. Trevor Nunn directed and the cast included Maureen Lipman and Hannah Waddingham, who I last saw as the Lady of the Lake in Spamalot. It also included Jessie Buckly who was runner up in the BBC production “I’d do anything”.
The rest of the season is sold out, but it will be tranferring to the Garrick Theatre in the west End in March. The show is all about tangled relationships at turn of the last century, which was fitting for Valentines day. It includes the song ‘Send in the Clowns’ http://www.menierchocolatefactory.com/a_little_night_music
Just to remind you that the special offers in the newsletter only last until the 13th March.
Yesterday I went to see the new American musical ‘Spring Awakening’ at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith. The musical is based on the German play by Frank Wedekind’s who wrote it in 1891. It was banned and only had a private performance at the Royal Court in 1963. The play was about teenage sexual awakenings against a backdrop of religious and parental repression. Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph wrote”With titles like Totally F***ed and The Bitch of Living the songs, are sometimes aggressively in your face. But more often the musical numbers have a bruised tenderness about them.”
The young cast are all excellent in there parts, and this is their first time on the west end stage.
It is only onto the 13th March unless it gets a transfer to another theatre. It is in the style of Hair and Rent, but it is not just for young people, but for young at heart who can remember their teenage years.
The winner is Russell Fellows who sent us this email and this photograph:
Dear All,
Having just received a reminder for my appointment on Monday, I enclose my entry for the “unusual place “competition.
I send it promptly as my camera has no date stamp facility for the pictures, or it may have but I couldn’t find it before I lost patience!
When the reminder came I found myself on top of a “cryogenic test facility”, not that exciting I know, but still an usual place to be.
This test bunker is part of a project with which I have been commercially and technically involved for around two years. It is for testing the performance of superconducting magnet coils, these are very high field magnet coils similar to those used in MRI machines. These operate at liquid helium temperature of -270 degrees C! The bunker is made of more than 60 tons of steel, positioned to contain the huge magnetic fields which would otherwise stop heart pacemakers or attract large metal objects from several meters away.
The project is part of a development program for new generation Cancer treatments. The technology is licensed and is proven as a far more effective and targetable treatment than conventional radiotherapy techniques. The goal of this project is to make this treatment more accessible to the world as a whole. It is personally important to me as I have lost close family to cancer and hope that the future will be brighter as a result of these new technologies.
Last weekend I was in Manchester at a conference about patient how to give them a conceiage service. My wife and I stayed at this amazing hotel, The Palace. The rooms were hugh. The height of our room must have been nearly 20ft.
This is my flip video of the outside of the Hotel. It also happens to be right next door to the Palace theatre showing Mary Poppins. On the Saturday night we had a lovely meal at the Italian Pizzeria across the road from the Hotel. On Sunday we went for a walk along the canal and then the river. We came across a very derelict entrance to Granada Studios!
