A Story to Make You Believe in God -
Capturing Imagination in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (2001)

This week’s blog returns to an analysis of adaptation by examining a novel-to-film adaptation. Yann Martel’s Life of Pi is one of my favourite novels, if not my favourite! Although I have too many to be that definitive really! So for this blog I decided to return to the film and its original source with my adaptation hat on for another look.

A still from the film: Pi alone in the Pacific Ocean

The terrifying sensation of being alone, orphaned, abandoned and floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is what the overwhelmingly colourful Life of Pi left me with when I closed the book on the last page. Not to mention the nauseating sickness that had washed over me with every mention of Pi’s ferocious feline companion! The book starts with an introduction stating that the author went to India seeking inspiration and there met an elderly man who said that he had a story that would make him ‘believe in God’. With this caveat, the novel then introduces Pi, full name Piscine Molitor Patel, and begins the story, which is an intriguing blend of fact and fiction. Pi’s journey does not keep you guessing whether the events are real life, magic or imaginary from scene to scene as in some novels that juggle the careful balance of magical realism, for instance, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). Martel unfolds his tale so expertly that the reader just allows him, or herself, to be carried alongside Pi and Richard Parker on the lifeboat. The most intriguing aspect of the novel is whether Pi’s surreal story is real, meaning that magic does exist in the midst of the vast Pacific Ocean, or if Pi’s account of his adventure was an unconscious psychological response to the trauma of losing his family. Whatever your opinion, how well the magic surrealism or Pi’s imaginative psychological response to his trauma was adapted for the camera was foremost in my mind when I approached the film. 

The director Ang Lee said in an interview with John Hiscock at the Telegraph in December 2012 that it had taken him two months to decide to take on the mammoth challenge 

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmmakersonfilm/9728119/Ang-Lee-interview-how-he-filmed-the-unfilmable-for-Life-of-Pi.html). 

He also stated that he wanted the film to be as unique as the book, which meant “creating the film in another dimension”. 3D was a burgeoning form at the time so Ang selected 3D as the “cinematic language” through which to express his art. The difficulty would be how to film the ocean scenes especially with a live tiger to consider. The tiger issue was of course resolved with the use of outstanding quality animation and the ocean was the world’s largest self-generating wave tank in Taiwan. Practicalities aside, Lee’s approach to film making is that the work has to provoke a ‘visceral response’ in him and that he has to be moved by them. With relation to the adaptation of the novel, Ang said that he focused on the storytelling aspect of the novel, when interviewed by Alex Billington in 2012 for firstshowing.net (http://www.firstshowing.net/2012/interview-ang-lee-on-the-journey-of-bringing-life-of-pi-to-the-screen/). The novel is itself a story told by the adult Pi to the author who is seeking an inspirational story. It is therefore an illusion. And it is a testament to both the novel and the film that you forget that this is someone’s tale. There are a few times at the beginning of the film where Ang deliberately reminds the audience that they are listening to the adult Pi’s story by cutting back to Pi and the author played by Rafe Spall as they are discussing the story and eating their lunch. This frames the story reminding the audience that they are watching an illusion. The thought provoking conclusion where young Pi recounts the last few months of his life to the Japanese insurance company representatives responsible for the boat that was chewed up by the storm are obviously aware of the illusion that Pi has created. But rather than leaving the audience with the confirmation that Pi created a false reality to protect himself as he traversed the vast Pacific Ocean alone, Lee leaves this open allowing the audience to make up their own minds. Was this a story to make YOU believe in God? 

For me, yes. I am intensely aware of the two potential stories that collide in Life of Pi the novel and I swing from believing in the magical realism of a young boy existing with a live tiger to accepting his story as an unconscious response to his trauma. This lack of certainty regarding the veracity of Pi’s tale is one of the most exciting aspects of the novel and because this sense of illusion was also vital to Ang Lee when he approached adapting Life of Pi the film is as much of a success and a thrill as the original source. 

Capturing Historical Accuracy in Belle (2013)

This is a slight diversion from my usual review of adaptations, because I'm looking at historical accuracy in a period drama, however historical accuracy is something I am very interested in particularly with relation to adaptations when they appear! And I was also very eager to watch and review Belle!

I only managed to watch Belle this week despite trying to get tickets on several occasions last year. For some reason my local cinema only had showings around noon on a weekday, which is impossible when you're working and I certainly couldn't justify taking a day off to go to the cinema! The reason I was so keen to watch Belle was that I had been deeply moved when learning her story at school. I was also interested in how they intended to approach and present her as an aristocratic mixed race woman in a twenty first century film whilst also obtaining historical accuracy. Would they sex up the story Andrew Davies’ style aka Colin Firth diving into a pool in his shirt and breeches as Darcy? Or would it be a fairly dry, historical narrative? In actuality it's somewhat a mix of both approaches with the two options Belle has before her as potential husbands and romantic leads. However, it is an excellent film and was really underrated. And I really don't know why it didn't receive much publicity last year. The film opens with the statement ‘Based on a True Story’ so I was hoping for historical accuracy given that the director made such a pointed attempt to tell the viewers of the story’s veracity.

I was particularly keen to find out how the director Amma Asante had captured Eighteenth century attitudes to mixed race women, particularly a wealthy, independent, orphan woman. Amma Asante was born to Ghanaian immigrant parents in London giving her a unique and sensitive insight into the role.  The film opens with the child Belle collected by her wealthy, white, sea Admiral father from squalor and poverty in the care of a black female (possibly a slave, this is not clarified). He then takes her to his uncle’s home to be brought up with her white, illegitimate cousin as he is going on another sea mission. Before he leaves, he tells her how much he loves her and to always remember that. His love and affection for her is not supported by his aunt and uncle, who are initially shocked by the girl. However, her father, Captain Sir John Lindsay, begs his aunt and uncle to provide her with the privileges that she is due as his daughter. We know that William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield did take in his great niece and raised her as his own and the painting of the 1st Earl Mansfield’s great nieces still exists today reflecting the great affection he grew to have for both the girls. 

Painting of Belle with her cousin Elizabeth Murray, formerly attributed to Johann Zoffany, c.1779

One move away from the film’s real life counter-parts’ lives was to make Belle’s cousin Elizabeth illegitimate and to imply that because Belle’s father had recognised her as his child in his will, this took away the stigma of her illegitimate birth. This was not the case. Belle’s illegitimacy would have been as much of an issue as her race in eighteenth century, if not more so, despite her father’s recognition and inheritance. In the film, Belle even has an argument with her cousin Elizabeth about Elizabeth’s lack of success in obtaining a marriage proposal from the affluent and highly eligible James Ashford, during which Belle says that Elizabeth’s proposal was not forthcoming because she is inferior to her, because Elizabeth is illegitimate whereas Belle’s father recognised her as his child in his will. The main issue that the film raises respecting race relations in the eighteenth-century is the Earl of Mansfield’s difficult verdict on the Zong massacre in 1781. Discussions of the case punctuate the film and provoke the people surrounding the Earl of Mansfield, and later Belle herself, to question him on his understanding of the difference that race makes to humanity. The case is most succinctly summarised as whether it is right that human lives can ever be worth claimed as lost cargo. Sadly the court case revealed that the slaves were worth more to the slave traders claimed on their insurance as lost cargo than when sold as diseased slaves. The ultimate verdict, that the Earl of Mansfield as Chief Justice makes, is kept until the very conclusion of the film. His verdict was a critical decision that contributed significantly to the abolition of slavery in Britain. Whilst references to this highly important case punctuate the film, the attitudes which black women (and women) received in the eighteenth century are also identified. A particularly poignant scene captures the attitudes to both black women and women during the period. Belle is discussing the case with the young, as yet unqualified lawyer, John Davinier. She states that she has realised how lucky she is to have escaped slavery twice, as a daughter of a slave and then as an independent woman of fortune. Sadly what the film does not go on to say is that as soon as Belle marries, she would in effect become slave to her husband as the marriage laws of the country did not recognise married women as independent of their husbands. Married women had NO legal identity. A married woman could run up debts in her husband’s name, could not vote (obviously!), could not inherit (all and any inheritance would go to her husband), could not pass on an inheritance, her husband could dispose of her property at will and any money earned by a married woman was also legally the husband’s. Ironically, if Belle decided to marry, she would at that point become more of a slave than she had ever been before despite her origins. It’s a pity that the film does not go into this in further detail, although there is only so much discussion of historical laws that you can present in a 104 minutes! This is definitely a film to watch with your historical hats on! And if you don’t have a historical hat then it’s an excellent and beautifully filmed drama anyway.

Examining Anti-Feminist Messages in Disney’s Beauty and The Beast (1991)

In the wake of the new Disney adaptation of Beauty and The Beast, which will star Emma Watson, Emma Thompson, Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen and Dan Stevens, I decided to watch the 1991 film again. I was surprised by the apparent anti-feminist messages that had swept over my innocent head during my childhood. This then got me thinking about some of the older versions of Beauty and The Beast, were these same messages also evident in them too?

The Beauty and the Beast story that was used in the 1991 Disney version was inspired by Madame de Beaumont’s, which was written in eighteenth century France. However, as with the story of Cinderella, there are versions which date back hundreds of years and appear in a wide variety of cultures. Understandably there are slight differences between them but the recurring theme is that of the beast and that Beauty is either sold to the beast by her father or volunteers her life for his, as in the Disney version. There are also some versions where the beast is not cursed because of his ‘beastly’ behaviour but that he is cursed out of spite by an ugly old witch who wanted to marry him but was refused.

I then started digging around (as all good research students do!) and found a plethora of articles relating to feminist interpretations of the story (or even legend) with opinions varying from Beauty and the Beast being a proto-feminist story to it encouraging young women to seek out violent bad boy relationships. The most interesting is Beauty and the Beast: A Feminist Tale? By Kristin, of Tales of Faerie
(http://spinstrawintogold.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/guest-post-beauty-and-beast-feminist.html). Kristin poses explanations for both attitudes to the story, before saying that we should continue to read this story, despite it’s complex and contentious feminist issues, to children just to show them how far we’ve come as a society.


Turning to the feminist analysis of the 1991 Disney film, the first arguably anti-feminist instance is the opening song. Belle declares her frustration with her circumstances by saying  that  “there must be more than this provincial life”. Her dismay with her life is eased by her reading through which she can escape to more stimulating and fulfilling worlds. Interestingly they are chiefly fairytale worlds that she describes whilst living in a fairytale world herself. Her excessive reading, whilst ameliorating her frustration marks her as ‘peculiar’ as the village describes in song:

“Look there she goes that girl is so peculiar, I wonder if she's feeling well, with a dreamy far-off look and her nose stuck in a book, what a puzzle to the rest of us is Belle.”

Interestingly, her inordinate beauty is not enough to save her from being marked as eccentric “Behind that fair façade I’m afraid she's rather odd”. Feminine behaviour for the villagers obviously does not involve being literate and educated. Despite being considered as ‘odd’ by society, Gaston the hunter wants to marry her anyway. Gaston’s description of her and references to her imply that he sees her as a prize because of her beauty, that he will win because he is the best. When he approaches her to first ‘make his move’ he tells her that she needs to sort out her priorities as she shouldn't be reading “The whole town’s talking about it, it's not right for a woman to read, soon she starts getting ideas and thinking”. If you left the feminist analysis there, it would be very easy to dismiss the 1991 version as anti-women, however the fact is that Belle does not fall for Gaston because she finds him repugnant. She even later calls him a ‘beast’, which loudly proclaims the message of the film, that it's not your appearance that makes you a monster, it's your character. Gaston’s foil is of course the Beast. He embraces Belle’s love of reading and nurtures that as he sets about wooing her by giving her his library. When Gaston discovers the beast’s existence, being a consummate hunter and taunted by Belle’s apparent feelings for him, he sets about hunting and then killing him. When they meet Gaston taunts the beast by saying

“Were you in love with her beast? Did you honestly think she'd want you when she had someone like me?”

The last line is somewhat redolent of the adolescent male’s leering yell ‘I’ve had her’, further suggesting Gaston’s objectification of women. Gaston’s attitude towards women is not permitted to continue in the story world as he dies trying to kill the beast. Further evidence of the story being pro-women and feminist is that it is ultimately the story of a man being re-educated out of his dominating, superior, spoiled, selfish, unkind behaviour and out of the mindset that values beauty over morality. The line that the film opens with is “who could learn to love a beast?” and this line suggests that marriage is and should be between people who love each other, that a woman should love her husband. Now as much as in eighteenth century France, women are forced into arranged marriages where they must be submissive to their husbands in a loveless marriage, so it will be very interesting to see the take that the director Bill Condon takes with 2017 adaptation.

Is the currently derisory attitude towards stage adaptations in academia changing?

The phenomenally successful Warhorse, which has been adapted from the novel to stage and screen to rave reviews

In an article in the The Guardian in September 2013, journalist Lyn Gardner wrote a short piece entitled ‘Are stage adaptations always inferior?’ where she queried twenty-first century attitudes towards stage adaptations. She draws particular reference to William Shakespeare’s writings when examining this negative attitude towards stage adaptations:

If William Shakespeare were writing plays today, what would his inspirations and sources be? As we all know, Shakespeare was a great playwright but not a great originator of plots, and quite happily plundered the work of writers and historians. He took familiar stories and made them his own... Shakespeare's sources tended to be published texts, but if he were writing today he would almost certainly turn his attention to movies, online stories, TV formats and maybe even video games: good playwrights are magpies whose beady eyes alight on the bright and shiny.

She states that the snobbish attitude towards adaptations is unjustified because even William Shakespeare wrote adaptations and that one of his most famous plays Romeo and Juliet is a little known adaptation of Arthur Brooke's narrative poem The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562). She goes on to say that she believes that the current snobbishness towards adaptations must be coming to an end due to the success of adaptations such as Michael Morpurgo’s Warhorse and Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. And maybe the disdain with which adaptations are treated in academic and media circles is now ending, but it’s taken over a century and a half!

One of the reasons for the derision of adaptations, could be the belief “that a story acted on stage by living, breathing people affected the senses ‘much more strongly’ than did the same story nestling between the covers of a book or in a magazine” (Andrew Maunder ‘Sensation Fiction on Stage’ in The Cambridge Companion to Sensation Fiction “(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, p59).This was William Bodham Donne’s, who was the Deputy Examiner of Plays in the Lord Chamberlain’s Office and was responsible for censoring plays, opinion of novel-to-stage-adaptations expressed in 1866. It came about as a consequence of an existing ban on London stage productions of Jack Shepperd and Oliver Twist. The ban was established because ‘the Lord Chamberlain [had been receiving a] great many letters from parents and masters requesting that such pieces should not be exhibited, because they had an ill effect on their sons and apprentices” (Andrew Maunder ‘Sensation Fiction on Stage’ in The Cambridge Companion to Sensation Fiction “(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, p59).

Plays being performed in a theatre exist in a “different cultural space” from their original source (Andrew Maunder ‘Sensation Fiction on Stage’ in The Cambridge Companion to Sensation Fiction “(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, p58-59) and being able to see the action described in the novel taking place directly in front of you was considered to be more affecting merely reading about the events. In the case of several Victorian novels, it is possible to see why the Lord Chamberlain’s Office, and other public figures, were against the staging of plays like Oliver Twist for fear of the action influencing audience members to act out elements of the play in their own lives. Theatre houses did not help matters by turning to the most sensational novels to fill their repertoires. In 1865, the Daily Telegraph reported that ‘latterly the custom [of adaptation] has been carried out to a fuller extent than usual, for the sensational element in the productions of the lady-novelists who are now in the ascendant has possessed great attractions for both actor and audience’ (Andrew Maunder ‘Sensation Fiction on Stage’ in The Cambridge Companion to Sensation Fiction “(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, p58-59). As sensation novels were so often turned to for adaptation to the stage, and they were already receiving criticism because they “appeal[ed] directly to the nerves ... with its surprises, plot twists, and startling revelations” (Gilbert 2011: online source), it is no wonder that the adaptations also received negative attention if they were said to affect the senses “much more strongly” (Andrew Maunder ‘Sensation Fiction on Stage’ in The Cambridge Companion to Sensation Fiction “(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, p59).

Patsy Stoneman examines the dismissal of stage adaptations because they are inconsequential ephemera in Jane Eyre on Stage, 1848-1898 (2007) and attention on this area is now rapidly increasing as a result of the work of people like her and Harold Bloom. Stoneman’s work on the stage adaptations of Jane Eyre picks up from her earlier work on Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights as cultural phenomena. The enormous popularity of the novels when they were first published led to their rapid transfer to the stage. A stage adaptation of Jane Eyre appeared within three months of the novel’s publication and Brontë’s response to it was “[s]uch then is a sample of what amuses the Metropolitan populace!” (Brontë in Stoneman 2007: 1). As we’ve already seen there was a certain cultural snobbishness attached to adaptations in the Victorian era, possibly because at this point in the history of British theatre, melodrama was the king of the Victorian stage and melodrama focuses on sensational plots and farce at the expense of character development. However, this meant that sensational novels were ceased because of their already dramatic plots, vulnerable heroines and wicked villains, books like Jane Eyre, where these same elements appear, were quickly jumped on by theatre houses so that they too could cash in on the success of the original source.

The rushed adaptations are frequently very unrefined in terms of their style, spelling, plot and grammar, and this may be another reason why stage adaptations are seldom examined by academics; however the speed at which they were produced is also one of the reasons why the texts should be examined today. As the stage adaptations had to be written quickly in order to respond to the audience’s demand, they contain many elements of interest to historians as well as to English literature and theatre scholars. Not only do the stage adaptations relay the plot of the original source, the authors also changed it to appeal more to the audience whether by refocusing the attention on another character or even inventing characters who vie against Jane for the audience’s attention. By examining these stage adaptations and the decisions the author made it is possible to identify things like places being significantly affected by the late introduction of the Enclosure Act, as in the case of the 1874 stage adaptation of East Lynne in Nottingham.

       In the Victorian era nothing was safe from the minor theatre houses. Every story, poem, novel or event was looked at as a means of getting ‘bums on seats’ for the theatre houses which contributed to the negative attitude which was held, and is sometimes still held today in many academic spheres. The reason that adaptations have a bad ‘rep’ is because minor theatres used to have them as a regular part of their repertoire as they were cheap and easy to produce. Whereas original plays were considered more ‘sophisticated’, such as the works of Henrik Ibsen or George Bernard Shaw, but particularly canonical works, such as those by William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe and operas and ballets. Due to the consequences of the Licensing Act of 1737, spoken drama was only permitted to be performed at the patented theatres of The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, both of which are in London. This meant that the ‘minor theatres’ were only limited to producing musical dramas, burletta and melodrama (Flanders 2006: 292). One of the ways that the ‘minor theatres’ managed to fill their repertoires, despite the limitations of the Theatre Regulating Act of 1843, was to turn to the current bestseller and transform it for the stage. The theory was that a bestseller would ensure that they got bums on seats because the story was already attracting public and media attention. In academic circles, it was sometimes considered that there was less effort involved in producing adaptations as they were not original ideas, which also contributed to the low reputation of adaptations.

With the cultural phenomena surrounding Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), it is no wonder that Jane Eyre is one of the most adapted stories in English Literature (Stoneman 1996: 1) and why at least eight stage adaptations (that we know of from the Lord Chamberlain’s Archive) took place between 1848 and 1898. The original source, Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), received very mixed reviews, but an enormous amount of attention as well, which is a consequence of its treatment of very controversial issues, such as, the difficulties of unsatisfactory married life and a poor, dependent orphan girl’s struggle for independence and a voice. Matthew Arnold, the renowned critic and author, heavily condemned the book saying that:

Miss Brontë has written a hideous, undelightful, convulsed, constricted novel . . . one of the most utterly disagreeable books I've ever read . . . [because] the writer's mind contains nothing but hunger, rebellion and rage and therefore that is all she can, in fact, put in her book (Arnold in Mayer).

And Victorian essayist and journal editor Anne Mozley felt that Jane Eyre was “a dangerous book” (Mozley qtd. in Allott 2003: 203) because of its “protest against the outrages on decorum, the moral perversity, the toleration of, nay, indifference to vice which deform her first powerful picture of a desolate women’s trials and sufferings” (Mozley qtd. in Allot 2003: 203). But not all of the critical reviews to Jane Eyre were negative, however, Margaret Oliphant, another nineteenth-century reviewer and herself a novelist, described Jane Eyre as “one of the most remarkable works of modern times” (Oliphant in Allott 2003: 313). Whilst the reviews range from fiercely critical to laudatory, none of them feel that the book is ‘cheap’ or of a ‘low standard’, which is sometimes held of adaptations. What is interesting in the context of this study is that in none of the contemporary reviews of the productions of Jane Eyre, by any of the eight adaptors, is adaptation as a genre denigrated.    

   Stage adaptations of Mary Elizabeth Braddon received similar treatment from the press. However, one dramatist sought to avoid any negative criticism regarding a lack of fidelity to the original source by working closely with Braddon herself.  George Roberts invited Braddon to attend the rehearsals of his play and encouraged her to provide her feedback as he wanted desperately to gain her approval. He did this at a time when the copyright laws of the age meant that you didn't need permission to adapt and stage a play from a recent novel so he didn't need to do this. Earlier in the year, Braddon had sued William E. Suter over his attempt to publish his adaptation of her novel because she had not authorised the adaptation of her novel in the first place. Suter’s adaptation has the most melodramatic elements, including several moments of slapstick between the invented servant characters, Bibbles and Bubbles. Suter’s key approach to staging Lady Audley is that she is a bad woman, whereas George Roberts’ was that Lady Audley was a woman pushed to the edge of insanity. Despite the fact that Suter approached Lady Audley in an entirely different manner to Roberts, who worked closely with Braddon, contemporary reviews did not denigrate the genre or accuse the production of cheapness.

Given that no contemporary reviews of adaptations of East Lynne, Lady Audley’s Secret or Jane Eyre I came across whilst researching my thesis felt that adaptation was an inferior genre, it is surprising to me that this attitude was held and is still held today. This also makes it all the more important to study stage adaptations and to try to overcome the attitude that they lack “dramatic authenticity” (Stoneman 2007: 1). That the contemporary reviewers of The Era, The Illustrated London News and even The Times, did not consider the stage adaptations to be beneath them, begs the question ‘why’ given that adaptations are supposed to be so ‘poor’. Why were these adaptations being reviewed? What about them drew press attention to them? And there is no absolute answer to answer this question. Each play has its own merits, whether it was a famous actor or actress starring in a lead role or a different take on the original novel’s contentious character, or even inventing characters that were relevant to the audience surrounding the theatre. From the perspective of sociology and politics, linguistic theory and cultural studies analysis of these plays helps us to understand a specific point and place in time.

In conclusion, whilst Lyn Gardner in her article in The Guardian entitled ‘Are stage adaptations always inferior?’ states that she thinks the snobbishness towards adaptations is coming to an end, but the fact that she was writing an article about it one hundred and fifty years after the Lord Chamberlain’s Office commented on the inferiority of adaptation, indicates that attitudes towards adaptations have not developed far beyond the mid-nineteenth-century. This is despite the work of people like Harold Bloom and Patsy Stoneman who promulgate that they are “unique markers of social and ideological change” (Stoneman 2007: 1), but maybe with continued research this attitude will change one day. Hopefully, one day soon in the case of my thesis!

Bibliography

Flanders, Judith, Consuming Passions (London: Harper Perennial, 2006)

Gilbert, Pamela, A Companion to Sensation Fiction (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011)

Mayer, Sonja, ‘Hey, Teacher, Leave Those Readers Alone! Why a Governess's Narrative in Jane Eyre Shocked Certain Victorians’ in Narrative Strategies in the Novel (English 507, Mercy College Online). Accessed on 01/05/2014 at: http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/bronte/cbronte/mayer1.html

Stoneman, Patsy, Brontë Transformations: The Cultural Dissemination of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights (London: Prentice Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1996)

Stoneman, Patsy, Jane Eyre on Stage, 1848-1898: An Illustrated Edition of Eight Plays with Contextual Notes (Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2007)

Review of The RSC’s The Christmas Truce

This is a somewhat belated review of this festive feast. However, the central aspect is more the varying emotions experienced during the first few months of World War One than any ‘Christmas is the time to spend with your family and that's more important than any amount of gifts’ type message. We’re also still commemorating the First World War’s centenary. Humanity is the pivotal moral message and this is captured in a particularly poignant scene after the two opposing forces have played football and are stood around chatting. It's at this moment that the soldiers, on both sides, realise the commonalities between them and that the other side isn't the foul stereotype espoused in the propaganda of their home country… and that both countries are inciting men to fight with the same strategy of distributing  misinformation about the enemy.

The RSC’s Deputy Artistic director Erica Whyman directed Phil Porter’s moving new play and it certainly captures the complex emotions that a present day analysis of World War One provokes. The cast of the play is essentially the same as the recent RSC productions of Love’s Labour’s Lost and Love’s Labour’s Found, both of which I reviewed some months ago (http://amyeholley.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/the-rscsproduction-of-shakespeares.html and http://amyeholley.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/reviewof-rscs-loves-labours-won-i.html) and they excel in these roles just as much as they did in the Love’s Labour’s Lost and Found productions,  as I had expected. The play opens with the stereotyped image of the Edwardian British country village with young men playing cricket, but this quickly changes developing darker connotations of throwing grenades rather than googlies. This motion becomes a motif for dying in battle throughout the play. The recounting of the war experiences of the hearty Warwickshire country lads is not the only plot. The play also follows a group of nurses who want to help with the war effort. Unfortunately they were placed with a matron who is a stickler for the rules, allowing no room for joy and fun. As both plots unfold, inevitably the nurses care for the wounded soldiers, the two groups meet and they reveal the intense emotional strain that they are both under.

Finally, this was a warm, touching family play with genuinely amusing moments of comic relief to alleviate from the deeply moving and troubling action. If it is repeated as part of the RSC screenings I strongly recommend that you go.

Tom Morton-Smith's 'Oppenheimer' at the RSC

Without doubt this is the best original play that I have seen for years and because of that I've moved away from my specialism focusing on adaptations to review this powerful new piece. Oppenheimer is the latest offering from the young playwright, Tom Morton-Smith, and it's the first of his plays that I've seen but it definitely won't be the last! The play details the build up to the crucial moment where the secret to the atomic bomb is discovered, thereby drawing World War Two to an end. Rather than praising Oppenheimer as a genius hero or branding him as a murderer, Morton-Smith examines the inner conflict which Oppenheimer undoubtedly felt at inventing the atomic bomb. The battle that Oppenheimer must have felt within, knowing that the release of the bomb meant the destruction of Hiroshima and the loss of 66,000 lives, not to mention thousands of casualties, but also the saving of millions of lives with the quick conclusion of the War is dealt with poignantly, philosophically and humanistically. Oppenheimer’s private life is also examined, his relationships with women, his wife, his brother and colleagues are also treated to the same scrutiny that Morton-Smith pays to Oppenheimer’s contribution to the world. He presents a troubled man, who very frequently makes all the wrong decisions, a man who is often NOT a good man (the relationship  presented between Oppenheimer and his wife reveals shocking double standards), a man who is also keen not to be labelled as a hero because he knows that on the other side of the world he is considered a mass murderer and that he is the father of all the other weapons of mass destruction to come. The overwhelming guilt and turmoil that Oppenheimer is struggling with does not affect the pacing of the play, which hurls the action at the audience in much the same way that the bomb was hurled on Japan. Each moment of the immediate years running up to Hiroshima is charted in the same whirligig way. It's very physical, fast, thrusting theatre whilst at once providing a lot of very in depth science. A scene opens with a swinging jazz party celebrating various communist charity efforts but the next second, the majority of the guests have evaporated leaving Oppenheimer and his colleagues furiously chalking equations and explaining the atom out loud with its protons and electrons. The director, Angus Jackson, brings to life Morton-Smith’s play with his often animalistic view of humanity. The scene immediately following the test of the first atomic bomb is redolent of William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies (1954), displaying man at his most uncivilised and savage, and highlights the barbarism and brutality of war, on both sides.

In the last few months, we’ve seen two other world renown scientists, Alan Turing and Stephen Hawking, being glamorised by the transference of the life stories to Art. And whilst Alan Turing’s story is, in a way, very similar to Oppenheimer’s (i.e., the mathematical calculation of lives), somehow the play Oppenheimer does not seem as glamorous as the film ‘The Imitation Game’. Both scientists went on to live very short, troubled lives so there's no happy ending in either story so the difference in the levels of glamour must be due to the impact of cinema as a storytelling medium. Seeing Benedict Cumberbatch’s perfectly proportioned, aquiline face 10 foot wide and so many more feet away from you instantly sets up a barrier and this barrier separates the viewer from the story. Theatre, and this is particularly  the case with the thrust stage design of The Swan Theatre, breaks down those boundaries, the fourth wall is removed and you are immersed in the story as it unravels because the living, breathing specimens are in front of you, tangible and so very near.

The reviews are all very praiseworthy and rightly so. Check out The Guardian’s short review:

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/feb/01/oppenheimer-rsc-stratford-observer-review 

John Heffernan’s “angular” features definitely give him the look of a scientist and as  Oppenheimer he is fantastic. He is every inch the stereotyped scientist; pale and lanky, but he takes your breath away when he shows ‘Oppie’ being overtaken with emotion. The Telegraph’s review of his performance whilst brief is appropriately laudatory:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/11365213/Oppenheimer-RSC-Swan-Stratford-upon-Avon-review-a-dazzling-spectacle.html

Heffernan gives a cataclysmic performance, and like Morton-Smith, is bound for further success.
This is the most exhilarating, thought provoking play to have appeared in the last ten years. I urge you to see it. Now.

Review of Paddington (2014)

I grew up reading Michael Bond’s Paddington Bear books and watching the 1970s BBC series.

BBC series from 1975

As a child, my room was decorated top-to-toe with Paddington memorabilia and at fourteen, when I started a Latin GCSE, one of my favourite teachers bought me Ursus Nomine Paddington (A Bear Called Paddington translated into Latin) to inspire and motivate my study of language. So when I discovered that my favourite childhood books had been adapted I felt both excitement and trepidation. But all my worries regarding fidelity to the text and not destroying my much loved memories of my furry, ursine best friend disappeared within seconds of the film starting. Some of my concerns had dissolved when I learned that Ben Whishaw was voicing Paddington.  I’ve loved watching Ben Whishaw since I saw Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by accident many years ago.

Ben Whishaw in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)

I particularly loved the now-cancelled BBC series The Hour (2011) starring Ben Whishaw and, another one of my favourite actors, Romola Garai. The fact that he was going to be providing the voice for my favourite immigrant from Deepest, Darkest Peru immediately raised my expectations of the film. My diffused fears weren’t wrong. Within seconds of the film opening, Whishaw’s soft, soothing voice looked like it belonged inside the marmalade sandwich munching mammal. The introduction of Paddington’s aunt and uncle and the explorer who taught them English and kick-started their love of marmalade, although a move away from the original story, was poignant and provoked much sympathy from the audience when Paddington was forced to leave the jungle in search of his new home. The evacuation aspect of the original novel (1958), i.e., Paddington waiting at the train station with his suitcase and a label around his neck reading ‘Please Look After This Bear’, would have been very affecting for the parents reading the book to their children given that the evacuation of children into the countryside from the towns and cities during the war had only taken place roughly fifteen years prior. It was particularly interesting to see that this aspect was highlighted rather than brushed over in the film. The antiques shop owner, Mr Gruber, who helps Mrs Brown and Paddington as they attempt to find the explorer who invited Paddington’s aunt and uncle to London, is a refugee from Hitler’s Germany and his reminiscence of arriving in London is beautifully filmed as well as touchingly sad. The Telegraph’s reviewer Robbie Collin suggests that this was a nod to Bond’s original, and whilst this is almost definitely the case (see review here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmreviews/11239741/Paddington-review-a-total-delight.html ), it’s also important to note the large number of refugees living in Britain today and how relevant Paddington’s story is to them.

Another interesting element is the nod towards animal testing and cruelty with Nicole Kidman’s portrayal of the embittered Millicent Clyde working at the Natural History Museum as a taxidermist stuffing and preparing exotic animals for display. This almost Frankenstein-esque element of the film, Paddington being pursued through a snow storm by a scientist clad in laboratory whites eager to dissect him, modernizes the story as much as the contemporary setting and costume. The film definitely proves that Paddington is a story with many universal elements, the most important of which is acceptance. This is shown at all sorts of levels in Paul King’s adaptation, whether it’s Mr Brown’s acceptance of the fact that living a full life is a life full of risks (he is a paranoid, overprotective risk assessor in the film version), Mrs Brown’s acceptance that her children are growing up, or the whole family’s acceptance of Paddington as a new member of their family. Finally, this is definitely a film to watch with your adaptation hat on, but don’t be surprised if you find a marmalade sandwich underneath it! The joy is contagious!

 

Paddington’s Marmalade Sandwich