Books, Movies and Random Thoughts

There were a few things we wanted to see around Inverness, so we set off bright and early in the morning.

Our first destination was Urquhart Castle, on the west bank of Loch Ness. The road down had lots of stopping places to view the Loch, which looked lovely in the early morning mists. It was sufficiently early in the morning, that it was very quiet (there was one tour bus, but we had walked down a little path to the edge of the loch, and for some reason they all stayed in the parking area to take their photos).

We drove through the village of Drumnadrochit, declining to stop at any of the monster exhibitions, and got to the castle 20 minutes before opening times. There were a few people hanging around the carpark, but we decided to backtrack slightly and go to Divach Falls. They turned out to be not the most exciting waterfall in the world, but it was a lovely walk to get there and much better than sitting in the carpark.

When we got back to the castle, it was open but still fairly quiet. Before going to the castle, you watch a short film on its history (repeatedly sacked, damaged and rebuilt over the centuries, and finally blown up in 1692 to prevent Jacobites using it), and when the film finishes, the curtains open and there are the castle ruins before you. Quite effective. The ruins were nice to wander around, and the views of the Loch were spectacular.

We planned to go to Culloden Battlefield next, so we drove back up the Loch (the roads were more crowded by this time) but we arrived to find a police car at the entrance, and we were told the Battlefield was closed until 2:30. No explanation as to why. We speculated that there might have been some kind of incident, but it did seem rather unlikely that the police would know in advance exactly when they would be finishing up. Later, we learned that the Queen was visiting (though apparently she didn’t go onto the battlefield at all - just stayed in the new Visitor Centre and had lunch).

We therefore went off to nearby Clava Cairns - Bronze Age burial chambers. There were two ring cairns and two passage graves, which made an interesting contrast to (Neolithic) Maes Howe in Orkney. The passage graves were open rather than fully enclosed, so not grassed over, and there was a single passage into the middle, which was aligned with the setting sun. Each one was within a ring of standing stones.

We then had to decide between seeing Cawdor Castle and Fort George. In the end, we picked Fort George - we decided it would be a bit different (we will be seeing quite a few castles) and also it was included in our Historic Scotland ticket, whereas Cawdor Castle wasn’t. And Cawdor Castle doesn’t really have a Macbeth connection, as it only dates back to the 14th Century.

Fort George was built after the Battle of Culloden, as a base for George II’s army to quell any future Jacobite uprisings. This ultimately proved unnecessary, but it has been used every since as a military barracks (and still is today). Because it is still in use, some bits were off-limits, but much of it was open, with several rooms set up to show how they would have looked historically. The audio commentary (free) was very informative, and it was particularly interesting to walk around the walls and see how the changing nature of warfare had led to the Fort being built with ravelins (big ditches and earthworks to absorb the impact of cannon fire), rather than high fortress walls which could be shattered by a cannon ball

The weather had been a bit cloudier than the last couple of days, and at about 3:30 we noticed that it was starting to look like rain. So we thought it would be a good idea to go to Culloden before it hit. (As it turned out, although it sprinkled a bit, if there was full-on rain it went somewhere other than Culloden.)

The big fancy Visitor Centre (only finished in 2008) was quite informative about the events leading up to the battle, but to be honest I thought quite a lot of the presentation was basically fluff. They could have shown everything very nearly as effectively - and a heck of a lot less expensively - by just having information boards and diagrams, without the need for sound effects, computer screens, etc. And the money saved could have been spent on restoring the area to how it would have been for the battle (which they are also trying to do). We went on a short guided walk of the field, which was quite good, but annoyingly the GPS-driven audio guides weren’t available. For some reason, I found it all a bit less evocative that when we went to Bosworth Field (though admittedly that was over 10 years ago, so I could be mis-remembering). However, seeing the clan graves was quite moving.

The conference finished at lunchtime on Thursday. We had picked up our hire car that morning, so we were able to set off as soon as we had finished lunch. We drove as far as Inverness, stopping on the way at Kildrummy and Glenbuchet castles. We had wonderful sunny weather, and our visit to Kildrummy was enlivened by the sound of lawnmowers and whipper-snippers, and the smell of fresh-cut grass. Glenbuchet turned out to be in the middle of a sheep paddock - someting I hadn’t factored in when I decided not to change out of my conference-going clothes. However, I managed to avoid stepping in anything nasty. Both were enjoyable - Kildrummy (13th century) was larger and grander, but considerably more ruined than Glenbuchet (1590), which had most of its walls still intact.

The next day, which was bright and sunny, we drove up to Scrabster, where we were booked on the ferry to Orkney. It was an extremely large car-ferry, with restaurant, bar, etc. More importantly, it was the scenic ferry route, going around Hoy (we got a good view of the Old Man of Hoy) and into picturesque Stromness. Getting off the ferry, we went straight to our B&B, “Ashleigh”. It wasn’t an old building, but it was central to all the things we wanted to see, it had a view over the Loch of Harray, and the room was huge and well appointed. The owner, Audrey Poke, was very nice and helpful, and, as we discovered the next morning, provided a wonderful breakfast. Definitely a high rating on the B&B scale.

After offloading all our bags, we went to see the nearby Stones of Stenness and Ring of Brodgar. Both were originally stone circles in henges - Stenness had much larger stones, but only a few were left standing, whereas you could still tell that Brodger was a ring (see photo). They both clearly had the ditch (feature of a henge) and causeway still visible. Stenness is the oldest henge in the UK, and Brodger may well be the third oldest - they are both older than Stonehenge.

We had seen that there was a “Taste of Orkney” céilidh happening nearby, so we went along. It wasn’t a tourist thing - more like a local community concert. So some performances were not exactly traditional (e.g. ballet students dancing to an Abba song) but there was a fantastic pair of drummers, a flute/guitar pair (playing Shetland rather than Orkney tunes!) and a brilliant folk singer. He sang a song that I think was called “Proud women rule us with their tears”, inspired by Flora Macdonald, that was beautiful. There was a supper (local Orkney produce) and then a dance, that we didn’t stay for. It was 11pm by the time we got back to the B&B - and still light.

The next day, which was again bright and sunny (we had fantastic luck with the weather!) we started off with a trip to Kirkwall, to do some shopping and to see St Magnus Cathedral, the Earl’s Palace and the Bishop’s Palace. The last two were ruins - but all three were, by a considerable margin, the most recent things we were to visit that day. At midday we went back to the Ring of Brodger for a (free) guided walk, which covered not only the history but also the local flora and fauna. The guide (Elaine) told us that Brodger, Stenness, Skara Brae and Maes Howe had together been designated a World Heritage Site - the “heart of Neolithic Orkney”. As well as these four sites, the area has a number of other standing stones, and is just littered with artefacts. However, because of this, they are not allowed to dig more than two inches into the ground without permission, and they have to have an archaeologist present when they do so. This means that just putting up a signpost can be a lengthy process!

From here, we went to the next component of Neolithic Orkney - Skara Brae. This is a Neolithic village which has been amazingly well preserved. Basically, it was completely buried in sand, and then revealed as the result of a big storm in the 19th century. It was certainly interesting, and amazingly well preserved, but it didn’t feel “special” in the same way that Brogder and Stenness did.

The last item in the quartet is Maes Howe, a burial chamber. We had booked to do a “twilight” tour at 8pm (not that this was really twilight!) which meant that we had time to go to the Brough of Birsay first. This is an island that you can walk to during low tide (which happened to be in the evening) and which has the remains of a Viking settlement. We then walked to the top of the hill, which had a lighthouse, and views of the cliffs. It also had a number of bird watchers.

After the slight disappointment of Skara Brae, visiting Maes Howe was more like the other places - it really felt special. It is a covered burial chamber - again, far older than Stonehenge, probably about the same age as Newgrange in Ireland, though not as big. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t look like anything much from the outside (see photo) but the inside was amazing. We had to stoop down and shuffle through the entrance passage (whereas in Newgrange, we could stand upright but it was so narrow we had to go in sideways.) The inner chamber had three areas for placement of bones, although any bones that may have been there were lost when it was excavated in the 19th century. Like Newgrange it is precisely aligned so that during the winter solstice the sun’s rays shine directly into the central chamber (though in this case it is the rising sun where as Newgrange is the setting sun - or maybe it is the other way around …). The other fascinating thing about it is that, millennia after it had been abandoned, the Vikings found it. It is possible that they may have used it to store treasure, but it is certain that a number took shelter during a fierce winter storm. The chamber is full of Viking graffiti.

We were only booked to stay two nights on Orkney, so reluctantly we had to leave on Sunday morning. We were booked on the shorter, cheaper, less-scenic ferry from St Margaret’s Hope. On the drive over, we stopped to look at the Italian Chapel - built by Italian prisoners-of-war out of two Nissen huts. An amazing piece of work - the inside is painted to look like the stonework of a cathedral.

The ferry went from St Margaret’s Hope to Gills Bay, which is between Dunnet Head (Britain’s most northerly point) and John O’Groats. So we went to see both. With its lighthouse and sea and view of Hoy on the horizen. Dunnet Head felt splendidly remote (see photo). John O’Groats … didn’t.

On the subject of remoteness, one thing that struck me on Orkney was that we managed to fluke visiting places at a time when most other people weren’t there. In fact, except for Skara Brae it was remarkably quiet, and easy to get photos without lots of people in them - and even Skara Brae wasn’t overly crowded. Apparently Saturday is often a quiet day (people coming for a week are leaving/arriving), but even so we were very lucky in that regard.

The Information: Interactions and Impact conference ran from 22-25 June - three half days and a full day. I attended the following sessions:

• Knowing and learning in organizations: Information and the enactment of
  meaning, knowledge and decisions (Keynote address)
• Teachers’ Conceptions of Teaching and Learning in the Context of a School Library Project. A Follow-up Study in the City of Oulu, Finland
• Students requests for help and the teacher’s strategies of support in a secondary school classroom working on a research assignment
• Complexity, coherence, constraint, cognition & context (Keynote address)
• Students, question formulation and the issues of transfer
• Information Seeking Behaviour of Computer Science and Information Technology Undergraduates
• Dealing with Web 2.0 genre: How do competitive intelligence professionals assess online sources’ credibility?
• The Information Behaviour of an Information Provider: A Sequential Mixed Methods Study
• Like an open book? A student-centred view of e-books and a new model for delivery
• King Saud University Female Students’ use and perspective of Online Communication
• Information Literacies beyond rhetoric: developing research and practice between the intersection of information seeking and learning (keynote address)
• Formal learning in an informal setting: investigating the student learning journey
• Optimizing Students’ Information Interactions through Mediation Experiences
• Information Literacy Training for Postgrad and Postdoc Researchers: a National Survey and its International Implications
• Making a difference? Assessment of Information Literacy Education at Linköping University Library

(Unfortunately I had to miss Michael’s paper on Theatre Professionals, as it clashed with another paper that seemed particularly relevant to my current role.)

Probably the paper I enjoyed most was Complexity, coherence, constraint, cognition & context, by Dave Snowden. Most of what he said wasn’t devastatingly new (e.g. if you are looking for something you will probably fail to notice other stuff, even if it is really obvious) but he delivered it very well, with lots of engaging stories to prove his points. And it was really refreshing to hear someone with high-level corporate experience talk about management strategies, etc, and say that they are basically bulls**t. He has put the slides, and a podcast of the talk, up on his website - it probably would have been more effective to combine them into a vodcast (particularly since one of the slides included video) but I guess that would have been more time consuming to organise.

There were no real standouts in the other papers (though I was a bit chuffed when the first keynote used the Challenger and Columbia disasters to illustrate a point, since we had used the exact same stories as one of our case studies in the Risk Management training). I’d had high hopes of the paper on eBooks, but in the end it didn’t really tell me much I didn’t already know, though it was nevertheless useful to see that current studies are still confirming certain generally accepted truths.

At one point, I was talking to someone who said that he was a bit tired of seemingly endless case studies that don’t really seem to be generalisable. I’m a bit inclined to agree with this - particularly since in many cases they also don’t seem to be able to be turned into specific practices either. They were not uninteresting, but I’m not sure how much theoretical relevance, or practical applicability, they had outside the world of the case study.

But having said this, learning about some of the contexts in which the case studies took place was fascinating - e.g. the arrangements at King Saud University (gender segregaged campuses), the way health information is collected in Scotland, setting up school libraries in Finland, how information literacy is assessed in a particular course at Linköping University.

As well as the papers, there were other conferency events - a Civic Reception at the Townhouse, a half day trip to a Crathes Castle, and the Conference Dinner. The Castle was quite small, but not uninteresting, and the gardens were lovely. The food offered at the dinner was good, but not enormously to my taste (though I learned that even if there only seems to be one dessert on offer, if you ask you may be able to get an amended version of it - in this case non-alcoholic - which was nice). The entertainment consisted of a group of three violins and a keyboard playing mostly traditional Scottish music (the keyboard player was so into it, he was practically dancing while sitting down) and an a cappella singer - both thoroughly enjoyable.

Finally, the other key point of a successful conference is who you talk to, and in this case I met some very interesting people. So all in all, the good very much outweighed the not-quite-so-good. It was definitely a worthwhile and enjoyable experience.

I’m resurrecting my blog to cover our four week holiday in the UK, which incorporates a conference, a fencing competition and some driving around the Scottish Highlands.

The flight over was not quite as horrible as usual. We managed to get upgraded to Premium Economy, which meant much wider seats, with much more legroom and more of a recline. It was also a set of two rather than three, so I wasn’t stuck between Michael and a stranger. As a result, I actually manged to get a couple of hours sleep. I also watched a few TV episodes of programs I had already seen, and five movies:

• Defiance
• Appaloosa
• Igor
• Inkheart
• Michael Clayton

They were all quite watchable, though I can’t say I regret missing any of them at the cinema. I probably enjoyed Michael Clayton and Inkheart the most.

We arrived in Aberdeen at about midday, only to learn that my fencing bag was still at Heathrow. However, they promised that it would be on the next flight up, and I wasn’t too fussed since the fencing competition isn’t until the other end of the holiday.

On the taxi ride in from the airport, we quickly learned why it is called the Granite City - even the suburban houses were made of granite rather than brick, and looked really nice in the sun. (Though I have since discovered that this is not the case in all suburbs, it was certainly a lovely introduction to the city.)

After we had checked into the hotel, showered and changed, we went out to wander around for a bit. The sun had gone in, and it was starting to look a bit overcast, and it was at this point that I remembered I had packed my raincoat into my fencing bag. Not the best move.

But it wasn’t actually raining, so we went out anyway. We walked down the main street, went to the Maritime Museum and were then wandering back to the hotel when the heavens opened and we had to take shelter in the doorway of a restaurant. Fortunately it only lasted for about ten minutes (and we weren’t the only people taking shelter in that doorway!)

On Saturday, we went to Provost Skene’s House, a 17th century house that is almost entirely surrouned by tall buildings (and the signs pointing towards it weren’t as helpful as they might have been). It had a fairly amazing painted gallery, dating back to 1622 and restored as best they could (i.e. one or two places are completely blank, and the diagram just labels them as “scenes from the life of Jesus). As a complete contrast, the other memorable feature of the house was the enormous rocking horse in the nursery.

We then went to the bay area: we walked down the Esplanade and into a suburb called Footdee, which apparently used to be a fishing village. The little houses were very charming and completely non-touristy: it was just somewhere people were living. Though this did mean that our assumption there would be shops and somewhere we could by fish and chips were mistaken.

Finally , we went to the Art Gallery. It had quite a nice collection of 19th century painting, but I thought the most striking piece we saw was a sculpture on the ground floor. It was called Feedback Loop 2003, by Kenny Hunter: I have linked to an online photo of it, although this doesn’t really do it justice. Michael described it as Manga meets Chairman Mao, and this is pretty much what the notes in the gallery said. I can’t really say why I liked it (except that the online photo doesn’t really capture the power of it).

On Sunday we did a walking tour of Old Aberdeen, which included Kings College Chapel, the university’s Botanical Gardens, St Machar’s Cathedral (a fortified cathedral!), Seton Park and Aberdeen’s oldest bridge. A lovely area, and the guided tour was reasonably informative.

The conference started today, but I will hold off on blogging it until the end.

A while ago, I offered to review two “Real Reads” retellings of Jane Austen for the Jane Austen Society of Australia journal. Unfortunately my review, plus those of the people reviewing the other books in the series, took up far more space than the editor could justify allocating to them, and so she was forced to ask our permission to severely cut the reviews to just a few grabs (naturally we all quite understood her dilemma, and were happy to give such permission). However, since lack of space is not a problem with a blog, I thought I might as well post my full review here. Though be warned - it is quite long.

It would appear that the Jane Austen Real Reads are aimed at the pre-teen, probably female, demographic. So my first question is “why?” There are many, many good books written for girls of this age. Frances Hodgsen Burnett, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Mary Grant Bruce, Noel Streatfeild, Louise Fitzhugh, Hilary McKay, Odo Hirsch: for over a century, people have been writing books for girls that are stimulating, challenging, exciting, or simply really good stories. So is there really a need for girls to be introduced to “adult classics” at this age? Particularly since the majority won’t really want to go straight from the cut-down to the full versions: most (though, of course, not all) would probably be better off waiting until they are a few years older before reading Jane Austen. So I don’t really see the point in introducing the stories this early.

But obviously someone disagrees with me, and so we have Real Reads: “Pick up these great little versions of the world’s greatest books, and you’ll discover that Real Reads are a Real Treat.” I volunteered to read Persuasion and Mansfield Park, but I’m afraid I didn’t find them a real treat, and I’m not sure I would have even as an 11 year old. Unfortunately, I did not have a tame pre-teen to try them out on, so the following review is based purely on my own reaction to the books.

On starting to read, the first thing I realized was that, although the cover says “Jane Austen” in big letters, and “Retold by Gill Tavner” in smaller print, the key word is definitely “retold”. These are not abridged versions of the book, they are complete rewrites. The narration contains little to nothing of Jane Austen’s words, and although the dialogue fares rather better, I would say that barely 50% is from the original books.

In some ways, the storytelling reminded me of film novelizations. An author writing a book-of-the-film, who has probably had nothing to do with the original production, presents the story in a perfectly competent manner, but is not allowed to put any stamp of his/her own individuality into the retelling. Similarly, in these two Real Reads, all of the Austen narrator’s personality is removed, and it is replaced with … nothing.

The books are also very short: 54 pages each, including illustrations and a two page character list (plus another ten pages on “Taking things further”). Unsurprisingly, therefore, a number of subplots are sacrificed, and most of the rich characterisation is also lost.

Persuasion does a reasonable job of covering the salient plot points, although the removal of all reference to Fanny Harville means that Benwick’s personality is something of a blank. (In case you are wondering, it also means that Anne does not talk about constancy to Captain Harville, who barely appears. But she has a similar, if shorter, conversation with Admiral Croft, enabling Wentworth to overhear and write an abbreviated version of the letter we all know.) I was also a little surprised that the book actually opens with the events of the year Six, rather than presenting them in flashback. But perhaps Gill Tavner felt that her readers do not yet have the literary sophistication to cope with a non-chronological ordering: as she is a teacher, I will defer to her greater knowledge of this age group’s capabilities.

The cuts to Mansfield Park are more extreme, but then the book is longer and more plot-intensive. I was particularly struck by the curtailing of the Sotherton scenes: the various meanderings through the garden are reduced to “[Mary] wanted to discuss the matter [of Edmund taking orders] with her brother, but as he and Maria had left the group to explore a more overgrown path, she would have to wait”. And the visit to Portsmouth is removed entirely! Gill Tavner also seems to have had some trouble with Lovers’ Vows: she describes it as “inappropriate”, without explaining why, and redefines Henry’s and Maria’s characters as lovers (in the same sense as Mary’s and Edmund’s characters), rather than as a mother and her illegitimate son.

The books are full of colour illustrations: these are not unappealing, but they didn’t always seem entirely right. However, this might just mean that Fanny Price and Anne Elliot aren’t really suited to this style of illustration: I thought the cover pictures for Emma and Northanger Abbey really did capture the spirit of the books.

But, for me, perhaps the single biggest problem with these retellings is … they aren’t funny. Admittedly, Mansfield Park and Persuasion are perhaps the least “light, bright and sparkling” of Jane Austen’s books, but they nevertheless have some wonderful comic scenes and ironic authorial comments. And all of these are totally absent from Gill Tavner’s versions.

So if you lose the authorial voice, the rich characterisation and the comedy of the original novels, is there any real point to these versions? I can’t help feeling that if the objective is to introduce young readers to the Austen’s stories – and I’m still not convinced that this is a good idea, particularly for an age group this young - it might be more effective for them to watch one of the better film/television adaptations. Even where these diverge markedly from the original plot (and in some cases, the amount of divergence is no greater than Gill Tavner’s) they offer an artistic reinterpretation of the novel, rather than just a cut-down, blanded-out retelling.

This is not to say that a child reader might not enjoy Real Reads. They are competently written, and pleasant enough. But if one ignores the fact that they are based on classics, then they don’t really have a great deal to offer. It seems to me that the time spent reading them could be much better spent on Saffy’s Angel, or Something’s Fishy Hazel Green, or Harriet the Spy, or Ballet Shoes, or The Secret Garden – classic or modern, these children’s books offer a much richer reading experience than Gill Tavner’s retellings of Mansfield Park and Persuasion.

Let Austen wait until the reader is ready for the originals – be that at age 12, age 17 or age 35. And let her (or him) enjoy seeing the story unfold, without pre-knowledge of the plot. We only ever have one chance to read Jane Austen for the first time. Why spoil it?

I believe in its original incarnation, The Beggar’s Opera was quite a searing look at 18th century society. The same cannot be said of its reworking into The Convict’s Opera.

The basic premise is that a number of prisoners on a convict ship bound for Australia are given permission to put on a production of The Beggar’s Opera. So rehearsals of portions of the Opera are seen (fortunately in chronological order) interspersed with non-rehearsal scenes in which we learn about the convicts’ backgrounds, see the effect being involved in the play has on them and follow events such as a planned mutiny. There was enough plot and characterisation to keep the whole thing moving along, but nothing all that powerful or insightful about it.

Original songs from The Beggar’s Opera were mixed with more modern numbers, such as Sailing, 500 Miles, You’re So Vain and I Want to be Straight - though often with the words somewhat changed to fit the historical setting. There was no separate orchestra: where there was music, it was provided by the actors themselves, playing instruments on stage (or, if they weren’t actually playing them, doing a very, very good impersonation). For some reason, the actors seemed a little less comfortable with the very simple settings of the original songs, whereas some (though not all) of the modern songs were delivered very effectively. Overall, I thought the mix of old and new worked reasonably well, but not outstandingly so.

This was a co-production between the Sydney Theatre Company and Out of Joint: five of the actors were Australian, and five from the British company. I thought the cast was solid but not brilliant, with the best performances probably being Catherine Russell (Mrs Peachum/Bett Rock) and Brian Protheroe (Peachum/Ben Barnwell). I would also be curious to know whether the costume design was done before or after Juan Jackson was cast as Macheath/Harry Morton. Not that many actors have the physique for a final entrance in nothing more than a pair of budgie-smugglers, but he absolutely did!

Stephen Jeffreys, who did the adaptation, had previously written The Art of War, which was one of my favourite plays of 2007. The Convict’s Opera wasn’t painful to sit through, but neither did it even come close to the achievement of Art of War.

So far in 2008 I have seen 8 plays:

Blackbird (David Harrower): Sydney Theatre Company at the Wharf Theatre
The subject matter of this play is fairly confronting - a man receives an unexpected visit from a woman he had a sexual relationship with many years ago, when he was 40 and she was 12 - and apparently the first production, in Edinburgh, was very popular. But for some reason - I don’t know whether it was the cast, the direction or the play itself - I just wasn’t engaged by it. I think part of the point (aside from dealing with such a taboo subject) was to look at the layers of lies and deception gradually being stripped off, but in the end I didn’t really care what the final truths were.

As You Like It (William Shakespeare): Bell Shakespeare Company at the Playhouse (Sydney Opera House)
As You Like It has never really worked for me on the page, and I’d never actually seen a professional production before, so I was looking forward to seeing what Bell Shakespeare would do with it. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. I finally realised that Rosalind can be an engaging character, rather than a pain in the neck, and Celia came across as having a bit more backbone than I had thought. The production didn’t really change my opinion that Orlando is a bit of a thicko, but it seemed to me as if they’d just gone “OK, he’s a dork, let’s just accept that and move on”. So rather than try and make him anything more than he is, they concentrated on making him fundamentally likeable - and succeeded. Most of the rest of the cast were good fun as well, though Jacques seemed rather inconsistent between scenes (in that his personality was whatever they wanted for that particular scene, regardless of what he had been like before) but maybe that smoothed out later in the run: we saw it fairly early on. All in all, the production was a fun romp, and though I still wouldn’t put As You Like It on the same level as Twelfth Night or Much Ado, I now have more time for it than I did previously.

The Vertical Hour (David Hare): Sydney Theatre Company at the Drama Theatre (Sydney Opera House)
The problem with this was that the two main characters were self-righteous and basically unpleasant, and the number three character was nice enough but totally wet. It could have been an interesting debate about the Iraq war, and there were some good bits, but her voice was like fingernails down a blackboard, and he was a nasty manipulative piece of work, and this really made it difficult to get any empathy with either of their positions.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (William Shakespeare): Dash Arts at the Sydney Theatre
This production was by Indian and Sri Lankan actors, using a range of different languages - English, Tamil, Malayalam, Sinhalese, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Sanskrit - without surtitles. So it helped to be moderately familiar with the text, or one might have been quite lost as to what was happening - languages would change between characters, and even within speeches. The performances and costumes were good, but what really struck me most was the athleticism of the production. The acrobatic work - apparently all done without safety harnesses - was just breathtaking.

Rock ‘n’ Roll (Tom Stoppard): Sydney Theatre Company at the Sydney Theatre
Michael thought this play was baby boomer self indulgence. I quite enjoyed it, though it would have been better if Matthew Newton (Jan) had had more charisma (or any). But I thought William Zappa (Max) was fine, and Genevieve Picot (Eleanor and then Esme) was very good. I thought the moment where (as Eleanor, suffering from breast cancer) rips off her wig and tears open the front of her dress was very powerful - far more confronting than any single moment in, for example, Blackbird. I might have got more out of the play if I had been more familiar with Czech history: the play starts in the late 60s and finishes in about 1990, and I knew absolutely nothing about what was happening in Prague through this period (nor did I have any idea that Plastic People of the Universe - a group whose name I was vaguely familiar with - were Czech). But the play did inspire me to look it up afterwards. Which has to be considered a Good Thing.

The Serpent’s Teeth (Daniel Keene): Sydney Theatre Company at the Drama Theatre (Sydney Opera House)
This was actually two one-act plays, dealing with different aspects of war. The first one, Citizens, was set at the dividing wall of an unnamed country beset by war. It was a series of vignettes of citizens walking past the wall, getting on with their day-to-day lives in the face of hardships - an old man and his grandson taking a tree to the next village, and bringing a different one back, a married, pregnant couple walking to a new home, a woman carrying her dog to find a vet. It had some very compelling moments - the bit where the husband and wife are arguing, and spill part of their last bottle of water made the whole audience gasp - but there was somehow something a bit distancing about it. In spite of being about “the human spirit”, it was intellectually interesting, but for the most part not emotionally gripping.

The second one, Soldiers, was set in an Australian airbase (or something), where the families of five dead soldiers are awaiting the return of the bodies - a mix of wives, siblings, parents, children, etc. This one really was emotionally compelling. At some stage, most of the characters had a “poem” - sort of Ancient-Greek style theatre - which I found a bit stylised and not really successful. But the interactions between family members, and between members of different families, were very powerful.

As with just about every other STC Actors Company production, the standouts were Amber McMahon, Hayley McElhinney, Pamela Rabe and John Gaden, with Peter Carroll also putting in excellent performances in each half.

The Great (Tony McNamara): Sydney Theatre Company at the Wharf Theatre
This play about Catherine the Great was not very historically accurate, and had many intentional anachronisms (not to mention a truly remarkable number of horse references in the first act) but it was hugely fun. Robin McLeavy, who played young Catherine in the first act and her daughter Natalie in the second, was very funny, and Liz Alexander (the older, second-act Catherine) filled the stage with personality. Toby Schmitz as the second-act Orlo was wittily amusing but also emotionally resonant at times.Toby Schmitz was funny as Peter in the first half (though he seemed to have watched Hugh Laurie in Blackadder III way too many times) and okay as the son, Didi, in the second act. I thought the play was at its best when delivering clever dialogue and court intrigues, and at its weakest in the more emotional scenes (excepting some of the older Orlo’s). In particular, I found the love-of-Catherine’s life plotline not very successful. Overall, though, it was a fun play, if not particularly deep and meaningful.

Hamlet (William Shakespeare): Bell Shakespeare Company at the Drama Theatre (Sydney Opera House)
This production has had very good reviews, but it didn’t really work for me. Brendan Cowell’s Hamlet was very “big” (for want of a better word): he wasn’t actually chewing the scenery, but he was certainly very out there. I would like to see something a bit more intimate and introspective. And I didn’t think the scenes with the ghost were very successful: they were using a sort of split-stage effect (which the Cheek-By-Jowel Othello also used) with the ghost on one side of the stage, and everyone else on the other side, but rather than looking at the ghost, they were looking straight ahead, as if the ghost were in the audience. On the other hand, I enjoyed Colin Moody’s Claudius, and Heather Mitchell’s Gertrude was okay, up until her rather overdone death scene (it’s a bit of a worry when the audience actually laughs). Ophelia was pleasant, but not very strong, and R and G were basically a comedy act. The fencing in the duel scene wasn’t very impressive.

The accepted wisdom is that the film The Golden Compass is much weaker than the original book, Northern Lights. Certainly, everything is much more obvious and unsubtle, and some nuances are missing. Having said this, however, I felt that they did a pretty good job of compressing the actual plot of the book (except for the ending - more on this later). I didn’t think that the removal of all references to the Church, to God and to sin actually detracted in this instance, though how they plan to sustain this for the later books has me baffled. Aside from the ending, I thought the single biggest problem was the scene with the intercised Billy Costa: the equivalent scene in the book (with the not-appearing-in-the-film Tony Markarios) was intensely powerful and heartbreaking, and it was somewhat emasculated in the film - particularly since Billy Costa still seemed to be alive at the end. Actually, I was a bit worried about seeing this on screen, as I thought it would be too harrowing, but by making it less disturbing, they also reduced the impact of how evil the intercision process is.

I thought all the performances were good. Actually, given the way the plot was trimmed, it was basically just Lyra and everyone else. Possibly Ian McKellen’s Iorek sounded a bit too cultured, but Sam Elliot was great as Lee Scoresby, as was Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel, Eva Green as Serafina Pekkala (for the tiny amount of screen time she got) and the rest. I had imagined that Nicole Kidman would be perfect as Mrs Coulter, but when she first spoke I got a bit of a shock - her voice sounded a bit high and “little girlish”, rather than mature and sophisticated. But she looked exactly right, and either her voice changed or I just got used to it as the film progressed.

But Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra was brilliant. I have never really been able to warm to Lyra. A bit like Jane Austen’s Emma, I have never been able to make sense of the fact that other characters in the book love her, when all I can really see as her faults. But Dakota Blue Richards finally made me see it (as Alicia Silversone did as the Emma equivalent in Clueless, but Gwyneth Paltrow completely failed to do in the big screen Emma). All of Lyra’s faults were still there - she was a liar, she was shamelessly manipulative - and yet through all that, she completely shone through as a pure and even lovable character.

The “look” of the film was great - particularly some of the early scenes with the group of children and their daemons running around, and some of Pantalaimon’s transitions from one form to another. The big battle scenes were also good: clearly riding on the coat-tails of Lord of the Rings, but then there are only so many ways you can show a battle.

So the only real problem with the film - and it’s a biggie - was the ending. I’m really not comfortable with the idea of cutting off the last few chapters, and writing a new, upbeat ending to the book.

Michael, who hasn’t read the book, found the final scene rather saccharine, and felt that it undercut what had gone before. So in at least one case, the changed ending didn’t work for someone who didn’t know any better.

But for me, knowing what was to come, the ending was neither upbeat nor even saccharine - I found it unbelievably heartbreaking. Because they think everything is alright, and it so completely isn’t. Finishing the film on Lyra’s totally optimistic - and totally wrong - understanding of what is happening just feels wrong. In fact, she is even more wrong than she was at the equivalent point in the book, since I think we are meant to assume that she will also be able to get Ratter back for Tony Costa.

So if the changed ending doesn’t necessarily work for people who haven’t read the book - and those who have will obviously know what comes next - it would surely have been better to climax with the tragedy, and then finish - as the book does - with Lyra, sadder but wiser, moving forward and making her own choices. This is not exactly a happy ending, but neither is it despairing: Lyra is no longer anybody’s puppet, and she may well achieve what she sets out to do.

Books

I read 167 books in 2007, of which 106 were re-reads and 61 were new (though of the 61, there were two I didn’t finish - Lolita and Crime and Punishment). Dividing up by category, 104 were adult fiction, 32 children’s fiction, 20 young adult fiction and 11 non-fiction. By genre, I read 55 crime/thriller and 53 SF/fantasy - though SF/fantasy is spread across all age categories, and crime/thriller was only adult books. My most read author was Agatha Christie, of whom I am slowly doing a chronological re-read - this probably also skewed the genre numbers, since slightly over half the crime/thrillers I read were Christies. There was a big drop to my second-most-read author (Donna Andrews - also crime/thriller, and also a complete re-read - with 10 books) and there were 47 authors of whom I only read one book.

Probably my favourite “discovery” for the year was Sonia Soanes - I absolutely loved her verse-novel Stop Pretending: What happened when my big sister went crazy. Though I found her other books much less gripping - Stop Pretending was a very emotional book, whereas the others were a bit more lightweight. The other young adult book I was very impressed by was Alex Flinn’s Fade to Black, and I will probably be chasing up more of her work. In the adult fiction line, I have been enjoying Amanda Grange’s diary-of-Austen-hero books, and (at the other end of the “literature” scale) I am glad to have read The Odyssey, though at times it was a bit of a struggle.

None of the other new authors I tried really grabbed me, and of the new-books-by-favourite-authors probably the one I was most pleased to get was Susan Geason’s new(ish) Syd Fish story, Hook, Line and Sinker. This isn’t actually published, but it’s available for download from her website. The new Dick Francis was very readable, but not out of this world, and I was a bit underwhelmed by the new Lois McMaster Bujold fantasy - I don’t find this particular fantasy world all that interesting, and in any case I prefer her SF books.

Films

I saw 10 films at the cinema, and another 8 or so on various planes. There were no real stand-outs, though my favourites were probably Breach (which I unaccountably failed to blog), Hot Fuzz and Music and Lyrics, with honourable mentions to Pan’s Labyrinth and No Country for Old Men - these two were probably the “best” films I saw, but Pan’s Labyrinth was rather depressing - and very violent - and No Country for Old Men didn’t quite work for me. Amazing Grace and Sunshine are also worth mentioning.

The worst film I saw was probably Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, though there was competition from 300.

Plays

I only saw 6 plays, all by the Sydney Theatre Company. The two best were Riflemind and The Art of War, and I probably got least enjoyment from The Season at the Sarsparilla and Tales from the Vienna Woods - though neither of these came even close to the awfulness of 2006’s The Lost Echo . But I’m definitely going to make an attempt to get to the theatre more often in 2008.

Somehow, No Country for Old Men didn’t quite work for me. It was very well written, and the performances were excellent. I liked the twists on standard action-film cliches, I liked the theme of random chance, I really liked some of the dialogue and the cinematography. And I thought the last few scenes, in particular, were very well done. I even found most of the characters interesting, but in the end, I just wasn’t emotionally engaged with any of them.

I’m certainly glad to have seen it, but I don’t feel any urge to see it again. I have some slight curiosity about the book, but probably not enough to actually hunt it up.