The Magistrate, NTLive, January

Anna and I missed out on a lot of theatre recently because of my bedridden-ness, but when I knew I would be better-ish by January we booked cinema tickets to see John Lithgow's National Theatre Pinero farce. And boy were we glad we only saw it at the cinema. Yet again that was another NT Live show that I thought was tat (so far only She Stoops to Conquer and The Kitchen were ones I'd wished I'd seen for real).
I enjoyed Nancy Carroll's performance and John Lithgow of course but otherwise it was nothing special at all. The Pinero I saw in the summer (Dandy Dick touring) was a very similar pay but the pacing was much much better- it was much shorter, the sets were much better, the songs were better and the acting was the same. The only draw the Magistrate seemed to have was that this one had John Lithgow, an American movie star. When Anna and I tried to think which British actor could play the part (double-taking, eyebrow-raising caricature) we could only think of Nicholas le Prevost who had done Dandy Dick, but of course, he can't headline at the National! That would not bring in the crowds (sorry, Nick).
Anyway, glad I saw Nancy Carroll, she was my favourite. I love a good female comic turn, makes a nice change!

Robin Hood Prince of Thieves (1991)

I used to love this film, well, bits of it. And those bits I found I do still love! But my god, what a boring overly long film it is! Still better than Russell Crowe but nowhere near as good as the Disney version.
Christ! All these Americans! Ending with a wink to the camera?! Jesus! Self-righteous American tosh! And then, every twenty minutes or so you get this really quite different, darkly comic British pantomime, Alan Rickman arrives and you wake up and you find you're enjoying the film all of a sudden! He's camp but he's scary, he's funny but fucking weird! That bit when he talks to that kid "I had a very troubled childhood, I'll tell you about it sometime..." then he stops an seems to remember he's in the middle of being a professional sheriff, he's not, he's a fucking nutbar! And he plays it so well. You can bet your bottom dollar that it's because of his performance in this dreadful film that got him every other job he's ever had.
Sometimes I think it's a shame he got that Harry Potter job. Yes I'm in the minority that think he's completely miscast, but I really do think that comedy is where his talent really lies, that in Robin Hood and Galaxy Quest he is simply brilliant, and perhaps if he hadn't done Harry Potter he might have had better roles and made some better films! Who knows.
Tim Roth would have been a great Snape. He turned it down apparently. Imagine! Imagine if Tim Roth was Snape! Lily, James, Lupin and Sirius would have been better cast as well, they would have cast them around Roth! Cast them the right age! Had them all in their forties rather than their sixties! Ridiculous.

The Dictator (2012)

 My choice again. Best joke right at the beginning; "Your test results have come back, you are HIV Aladeen." Rest of the film; nowhere near as good as that.

An Appointment with the Wickerman, Edinburgh Fringe

 I managed to go back to Edinburgh to see my pals, I realised while I was there how much I missed them (as I always do!) and I managed to go stay with them for three days and see a lot of good shows, all the shows, bar this one, I saw were at the Sweet venue at the Apex International Hotel on the Grassmarket, what a lovely hotel and venue- great food too! I had a few meals there! Because all my pals were working, either at the venue, which they manage and run, or in the shows, I spent all my time there, and with a horrible rainy summer I didn't mind, I've done all of Edinburgh you can do, I really enjoyed sitting in the bar waiting for another chum to go on a break and have a meal or a drink with me! I saw magic and mind reading, drama, comedy and student theatre! They had a great mix of shows. Pierrepoint, a monologue with the condemned man acting out his last night silently behind the straight-talking yorkshire hangman was extremely good, both actors were brilliant, gripping stuff! The only show I saw outside the Sweet was An Appointment with the Wickerman, a show reccommended to me by Paul.


If you like Still Game, Fags, Mags & Bags, the boy who played Oliver Wood in the Harry Potter films and The Wickerman you would LOVE this show. I love all those things, and I loved that show. It's about a small island am-dram group putting on a horrendously camp and inappropriate musical version of the Wickerman, their lead actor mysteriously disappears so a young professional actor (off of a naff Scottish tv cop show) takes the gig and while rehearsing starts to wonder if the islanders aren't hiding something sinister from him... It was friggin amazing. I hope they film it.

Dandy Dick, York Grand

Maria and I went for my burfday down the road to see Nick le Prevost doing his latest. I'd had to see the posters of his face all over the posh end of town for a month, we even had one up in the bookshop! "I must work in a middle-class shop, there's a picture of you on the wall. Arf arf." I quipped, he groaned. No, it was nice to have a silly show to see for my birthday and have a drink with the cast afterwards, that Irish boy who played the violin was a lovely chap. As for the play well the first twenty minutes were rather slow but after that Nick was in every scene, lighting it up, a joy. And it was a good giggle, I liked the Frankenstein bit where the vicar creates the horse tonic in the lightening storm, good and silly, that's what it was, good costumes and I really liked the music!

Hercules, York Uni Pantosoc

(Audience of summer outdoor panto)

 Last year I went to see the York University Panto Society put on Treasure Island and it was amazingly good, clever writing and excellent songs, funny talented cast. This year it was ok, not nearly as good as last year, let down by the songs, but still a reet good laugh- and I didn't get sunburned this year!

Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound and Sheridan's The Critic (Double Bill at Chichester Festival Theatre)

When I was seventeen I was almost in a production of The Real Inspector Hound, we rehearsed it and had a good time and it was the first play I'd been in since I was about five, but in the end it was cancelled because the school decided to go with another play and a less giggly bunch of actors. I have to admit that we were shite, me especially as I'd never kissed anyone and my character had to make out with two of my teenage friends in the play so I was a bit inhibited when those scenes came along. When I sat watching Chichester's current production and watched actors Joe Dixon and then Nicholas le Prevost make out with the character I had almost played I thought; now there's a couple of people I wouldn't have a problem with.

At Chichester this summer there's lots going on, Rupert Everett is in Pygmailion, there's a stage version of Yes Minister with David Haig, 42nd Street is the big musical and over from the main building at the smaller Minerva Theatre there is a double bill of one-act plays both along the theme of plays within a play- and their critics.

The Real Inspector Hound was acted exactly the way I had imagined when I read it at school, it was ridiculous, campy, silly and just brilliant fun. The Critic was a little longer than Hound and I think was much better, strangely spot-on despite being written so long ago and it was riotously funny. I wasn't drunk but I hadn't laughed that much in years, I laughed so much that I was actually in pain.

Both plays were wonderfully staged with beautiful costumes- especially in The Critic, I do like the old powdered wigs etc. everyone looked so beautiful while they were being so stupid! Excellent direction, brilliant physical comedy from all the actors. Yes, it is of course the combination of sharp writing, clever direction and excellent ensemble that made these plays really shine. Joe Dixon, who I saw two years ago in the RSC's A Midsummer Night's Dream was brilliantly OTT in both plays, I was pleased I got to tell him afterwards that he had really made that Shakespeare because he was really really excellent as Bottom. I also met Sean Foley who was just as good in these two! I really love silly. I think that would be the best word for the sort of acting I appreciate. Nick le Prevost, of course, was super silly but he disguises it well by being completely natural throughout the farce, this is very good acting- but I also know that maybe he's a bit of a cheat because he's naturally a very silly man in real life -which is why I adore him. Una Stubbs cracked me up constantly in both plays and the two girls; Hermione Gulliford and Sophie Bould were so sweet, but not sickeningly so- only in a very silly way!

Yes, it hasn't been a very critical review, but I'm not a critic, this is my diary so I can remember what plays I've seen and why I loved them. I don't think I've enjoyed myself at a comedy play so much for years, I actually can't remember the last time I laughed so much. The sight of Nick dangling from the rafters hanging off a giant globe while screaming was a brilliant high to end on, and if they'd have left him up there and I hadn't got to tell him how much I enjoyed it afterwards I don't think I would have minded too much, it was perfection.

Mr Bean's Holiday (2007)

I went to see Mr Bean's Holiday at the cinema when it came out and I loved it, it was just so French! It made me desperately want to go to France.

I saw it for the second time a couple of days ago, it was very sweet, I still liked it. Mr Bean is unique, he is in a genre of his own; he is a silent movie- universally accessible. It's ridiculous that no one else has picked up on that. I should think it's made Rowan Atkinson a lot of money over the years.

I lie though, the French have a lot of stuff like this going on in film, that's why France was the perfect holiday for Mr B. The French still go for mime and physical comedy, that film Micmacs that I wrote about a couple of months ago, I don't know if I mentioned it but the lead character hardly says a word throughout... And of course Mr Bean in this film- harking back to the original series rather than Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie(1997) (which I also love)- has a vocabulary of about 6 words, one of them being "Bean".

Micmacs a tire-larigot (2009)

And now by comparison a brilliant and beautifully designed French film!

Now here was a nice surprise from the library. A French revenge comedy that featured an ensemble of homeless circus-freak-types (strong man, contortionist, human, cannonball, etc.) and yet it was not in the least bit grotesque, as sometimes these things can be- I found the freaks in The Vampire's Assistant(2009), a shit American kids film, too much - no this film knew what it was from the beginning, it was a bit of light relief. It was sensitive and sweet and most importantly it was very French; heavy on the traditional slapstick and mime, wonderful assortment of character actors, surreal plot and fabulous design in costumes and mad machines- think Wallace and Gromit but it's real!

Very obviously from the director of Amélie(2001), so if you loved that but you're sick of seeing it now, try this one, it's got one up on Amélie for me, it had a political message: satire on the world's arms trade!

Bedroom Farce (The Rose, Kingston)

So last night I went to Kingston which not including waiting for connections only took an hour and forty mins from Cambridge, not bad for a nice theatre! I have had the pleasure of seeing Bedroom Farce by Alan Ayckbourn before, possibly the worst production of anything I've ever seen, but I was not dreading it again because I know that under Peter Hall's instruction, in a nice theatre and with a good cast (almost completely made up of famous actors' children, Judie Dench's daughter, Ron Pickup's daughter and Richard Brier's daughter.) that all would be well.

And all was well!

Bedroom farce is very gentle comedy, it is comfortable comedy- maybe it's seeing all those beds... The stage is split into three bedrooms, a nice design from where I was sitting right in the middle of the front stalls, one bed has Tony Gardner in it throughout the whole play, the middle bed, at the house of Finty Williams (who is too cute for words) is full of everyone and all sorts and the final bed contained the heart and soul of the piece, the older couple played by lovely Jane Asher and lovely Nicholas le Prevost.

To be honest the two of them were in a league of their own, it seemed so much more natural than any of the other couples (or the other actors to tell you the truth) even the writing for their parts seemed tighter. I say it's just their masterful delivery, they were both brilliantly funny. And Jane Asher is just gorgeous. Oh, and of course you know how I feel about Nick.

There was a free Q&A afterwards and I cringed throughout all the questions- Lucy Briers got sort of furious a few times and I don't blame her, Q&As should not be allowed when the audiences are toffee nosed twats... The final question was a complete farce, horribly racist, Nick handled it perfectly. "Sometimes a West End theatre can be full of Spaniards or people who don't speak english and so miss the point, is it more rewarding doing a play somewhere like this where the audiences are-" Nick stood up at this point and looked out at the audience "WHITE?!"

PS Nick says 'The Keria Knightley Play' (as it's officially known) is going well.

The Hypochondriac (ETT at the Cambridge Arts Theatre)

Moliere again, Le Malade Imaginaire was his final play. Liverpool poet Roger McGough has adapted Tartuffe in the past but steered clear of The Hypochondriac because he wasn't too keen on the scatalogical. I have to say I wasn't too keen either. Anyway, McGough wrote this translation that was first performed at the Everyman and the silly sod decided to write it in verse.
Yes verse. Rhyming that sometimes got in the way and not like the amusing half-crap-rhymes that were only there for a laugh. The audience was clearly impressed by the rhyming and at first just laughed at the end of every line because amazingly it rhymed with the last. I found that more irritating than the rhyming itself. Anyway, I got into it more than Anna because I do like silliness and I do like rhyme!

But, perhaps because it was Moliere's last play it seemed very very familiar, same old same old. It was a bit disjointed I thought, there were some excellent characters that were only cameos; at the beginning we were presented with the scheming wife's moustachioed lover- he was excellent but then never seen again. The wife herself, once found out was not seen again. The idiot was underused, he was hilarious, instead there was too much of the young (wet) lovers and the sense-talking brother. But Clive Francis and Leanne Best (as the Hypochondriac and his clever maid) were consistently good and Miss Best especially was very funny though at first her very deliberate delivery of the rhyming verse annoyed me I found that in the end it worked best for what was of course just a silly farce.