Ballet Shoes – National Theatre At Home

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  I’m disappointed that this hasn’t been taken round the country – and, on that subject, when is the Paddington musical being taken round the country?! – but was very pleased to have the chance to watch it online.  It was made available for viewers in the UK yesterday, and you can rent it for £7.99.    It’s a lovely way to spend two and a half hours.  Obviously the book’s had to be cut down to fit the story into a stage show; but the gist of the story’s there, especially the characters of the three Fossil girls, and their vow to stick together and be known for their own achievements and not “because of our grandfathers”.

I do not get this obsession with “updating” things, though.   Why do people seem to think that kids today can’t relate to anything that isn’t set in their own time?   Is that not rather insulting to kids?!   And no-one seems to think that kids might have a problem relating to, say, Hogwarts or Narnia, so why on earth would they have a problem relating to something set in the 1920s?   Was it really necessary to have Sylvia wandering around in dungarees (which actually looked more 1980s than 2020s)?  It was particularly daft as most of the music and dancing clearly *were* 1920s.

Does this happen anywhere else?   I somehow can’t imagine, for example, a Canadian theatre company showing Marilla Cuthbert and Rachel Lynde wearing dungarees.

The dungarees irritated me.  As you may have gathered.  But Nana, GUM and the three girls all came across much more as they were in the books.

Which Fossil are you?  I usually say Petrova (despite my annoyance at the fact that she’s given a surname for a first name).  I’m worse than useless at anything practical and haven’t got a clue about cars and aeroplanes, but I like the fact that she’s different.

Posy is irritating.  She’s realistic enough, because you do have to have a streak of selfishness to succeed in any sort of showbusiness.  But Streatfeild seems to like showing her ballerinas as being exceptionally self-centred: don’t get me started on Lydia Robinson in the Gemma books.  But, still, like most little girls in the 1980s, I did imagine myself being a ballerina.  More of a Veronica Weston than a Posy or Lydia, though.  Or maybe a Caroline Scott: I waited hopefully to “lose my puppy fat” and magically blossom into a beauty at the age of 15 or so.  Still waiting!   *And* Caroline got to be swept off her feet by a handsome Spaniard (hooray for the start of the European clay court season!!).  Anyway.  Unfortunately, my ballet teacher, like a lot of school PE teachers, was only interested in people who were any good.  Clumsy fat kids like me got shoved in the back row and weren’t allowed to do anything other than walk in a straight line, leaving most of the dance floor free for the “good” kids to do the polka.  I so wanted to do the polka!  I never got to do the polka.  I gave ballet up after a year or so.  Oh well.   But I never, ever, identified with Posy!

But then there’s Pauline.  She did come across really well in this adaptation, overcoming her early brattish behaviour and becoming the responsible one whose work ended up being the family’s main source of income.   The scriptwriters/producers rather tied themselves in knots with the financial issues.  Heaven forfend that they should say that the girls were at a fee-paying school, so the reason given for them going to Madame Fidolia’s school was that they’d been expelled from several previous schools due to bad behaviour!  (No, me neither.)   And they also played down all the stuff with the Devoted Servants working for nothing: we just got Nana saying that she hadn’t been paid but that she was really one of the family.  Also, Sylvia’s wussiness was played down.  Sorry, I know that it wasn’t Sylvia’s fault that her great uncle dumped three kids on her and then disappeared, but could she (in the book) not have at least tried to get a job?!   But, despite all that, they made the point that it was Pauline’s earnings that were keeping things going.

On the subject of finances, what about the lodgers?  Well, they’d been “updated” as well.  Theo had become an American jazz artist.  Mr Simpson had become an Indian man called Mr Saran – and he got together with Sylvia.  No Mrs Simpson, and no Dr Smith either.  However, we were told that Dr Jakes was there because she’d been evicted from her previous home after her female partner died and the house passed to her partner’s brother … who got her sacked from her teaching job by telling her headmistress that she was a lesbian.  A sadder story than the two female doctors living happily together, but one that certainly could have happened.   Pauline immediately twigged that Dr Jakes was a lesbian.  That is *not* shown in the book, but I’m sure she did.  Most readers do.  And the way in which the lodgers helped the girls was portrayed very well.

Some of it was a bit exaggerated and pantomimish, and adding to the pantomime feeling was Madame Fidolia being played by a man (er, and then dropping dead), but it was originally intended as a Christmas show.   And there was plenty of music and dancing, which added to the entertainment.  All in all, it was very enjoyable.   “Updating” notwithstanding!

 

 

 

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

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  I’m not a great fan of time travel novels.  I appreciate that the Outlander series and the TV adaptation thereof are both extremely popular, but, TBH, I found this book rather silly.  I lost count of the number of times that either or both characters (Claire and Jamie) were captured and or nearly killed.  And that was in between Claire seeing the Loch Ness monster and being tried as a witch.  It certainly wasn’t boring, I’ll give it that, but it was just rather daft.

Also, some of it was extremely distasteful, notably one character’s weird sexual obsession with another and the trivialisation of his sexual assault of his victim towards the end.

In 1946, Claire and her husband Frank are on a second honeymoon in the Highlands, trying to get back to some sort of normality after the war, during which Claire served as an Army nurse.  On a visit to the Clava Cairns, Claire somehow gets transported back in time to 1743 (i.e. two years before 1745!), where she meets and later marries Jamie Fraser, a “tacksman” and fugitive from the government.   Everyone seems to be plotting against everyone else, chasing everyone else and threatening everyone else.

It’s a long book and, as I said, it’s not boring; but I’m not really getting what all the hype’s about!

Tides of Honour by Genevieve Graham

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  I appreciate that the idea of this book is to bring together the First World War and the Halifax Explosion, but the logistics of the story don’t really work.  Sussex-born Audrey, living with her miserable grandmother in a remote part of the French countryside, meets Canadian soldier Danny.  They begin corresponding and decide to marry.  So then Audrey hops across the Channel – as one does, in 1916 – gets a job in a munitions factory, saves up the money for her passage, and then takes ship across the Atlantic … as one does, in 1917.   All right, civilian travel didn’t stop completely, but the book makes it sound as if it were all as easy as pie!

The idea of the book is very good.  Danny, who comes from a rural community in Nova Scotia, suffers a life-changing injury during the war.   After he and Audrey fail to settle in his home area, they move to Halifax (the one in Nova Scotia, not the one t’other side of Rochdale), and are caught up in the Halifax Explosion – the collision between two ships, one carrying a large amount of explosives, which killed nearly 1,800 people and left thousands of others with severe injuries, many of them blinded by fragments which lodged in their eyes.  Audrey’s eyesight is unaffected, but she does suffer a permanent injury.  The idea of each of them accepting what has happened to the other, and helping each other to deal with it, *could* have worked very well.

However, there’s a stupid storyline about some kind of gangster boss, who fancies Audrey, telling her that Danny’s been killed and making sure that Danny thinks Audrey’s been killed, and Audrey taking up with him and becoming pregnant.  The book would have worked really well without that.  As it was, I just ended up feeling annoyed and frustrated, although I was interested to learn more about the devastating explosion.   Could’ve been an excellent book.  As it was, just so-so.

The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali

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  Hooray, I managed to finish this in time to post the review the night before Nowruz, the Persian New Year – which, this year, coincides with Eid, something which only happens once every 30 years or so.  This is a lovely book but also a distressing book, and follows the lives of two female friends from their primary school days, in the 1950s, up to 2022, when they’re in their late 70s.

The main theme is the position of women in Iran and the ongoing struggle for women’s rights – for which Iran is currently ranked 140th out of the 177 countries included in the study.   But there are also some wonderful descriptions of bazaars, of festivals, and of food.  Lots and lots of descriptions of wonderful, delicious food, a big part of every culture.

When Elaheh (known in later years, when she’s living in Massachusetts, as Miss Ellie, which may or may not have anything to do with Dallas)’s father dies, she and her mother are forced to give up their luxurious home in a well-to-do part of Tehran, and move to a poorer area.  There, Elaheh becomes best friends with Homa, who dreams of becoming a lawyer and changing the lives of women in Iran (then known to most people outside the country as Persia) for the better.   The two girls are top of their class in an all-female school where pupils are aware that they are the first generation of Iranian women for whom a career is a real possibility.  Elaheh envies Homa’s happy home life, but then Homa’s father, a communist, is arrested following the coup of 1953, and spends many years in prison.

Elaheh’s mother remarries, and she and Elaheh move away and resume their former position in society.  Elaheh attends an elite school.  Then – possibly not very realistically – Homa turns up there too.  Elaheh, now very much in with the in crowd, is briefly concerned that her old mate will embarrass her in front of her new friends, but Homa settles in well.  Another of their close friends, Niloo, is Jewish, and some of the other girls at the school are Christian.  There are still religious minorities in Iran: we all seem to forget that sometimes.   And there’s an ingoing clash between the westernised culture of the teenage in crowd, Homa’s radical ideas, and the traditional ideas of Elaheh’s mother.

They go on to university, and Homa is involved in radical circles.   Jealous of Homa’s friendship with another girl, Elaheh, who’s studying English, offers to help out by translating Western pamphlets.   Then a friend’s husband, whom it turns out is a spy for the regime, tricks Elaheh into telling him about Homa’s political work.  Homa is arrested.

Until this point, everything’s been told from Elaheh’s viewpoint, and in the past tense.  It then changes, with some of it told from Homa’s viewpoint, in the present tense.   And there are a lot of big gaps in time.  We learn that, whilst Elaheh’s got her degree and made a happy marriage with a wealthy and successful man, Homa’s life has fallen apart.  She was raped in prison, and, as a result, gave birth to a daughter, Bahar.  An old admirer married her and saved her from the shame that would otherwise have surrounded her.  But, later, he’s killed in an Islamic fundamentalist attack on a cinema.  The character’s obviously fictional, but the attack on the cinema did really happen.

The two women lose touch.  Elaheh’s overwhelmed with guilt, and Homa is struggling to deal with life.  But they do move on.  Homa becomes a teacher.  Elaheh and her husband move to New York.  It’s meant to be a temporary move but, after revolution sweeps Iran in 1979 and Ayatollah Khomeini takes control and imposes fundamentalism on the country, they remain there.  They have no children: Elaheh suffers three miscarriages but, sadly, never has a living child.

And then Homa, unexpectedly, gets in touch, to ask if Elaheh and her husband will take Bahar.  Somehow (again, possibly not realistically, but never mind) a student visa is arranged, so that Bahar can go to high school and then university in America.  Homa remains in Iran, continuing to work for women’s rights.  She hopes at one time to join Bahar in America, after a visit during which she told Elaheh that the reason she was assaulted in prison was her refusal to give the name of the translater, i.e. Elaheh, but is arrested, imprisoned for a while, and then forbidden to leave the country.

No grudges are held.  There’s a lot of use of the phrase “In gozasht”, meaning “It’s in the past”.  Being a fan of The Proclaimers, I often tell myself that things are “Over and Done With” … but I tend to cling on to them anyway.  And there’s a lot of talk about not tempting the evil eye.  I get a bit obsessive about that.  (Er, OK, it’s not all about me.)

When the book ends, in 2022, Elaheh/Miss Ellie is running a cafe in Lexington, Massachusetts, regarded as a grandmother by the children of Bahar and her American husband, whilst Homa takes part in the protests which follow the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini.

They all hope that things in Iran will, one day, improve.

A couple of minor whinges, but these are due to the author not being from an English-speaking country.  Bahar, born in the mid 1960s, would not have had a schoolfriend called Madison, as the name (as a first name for a girl) was only invented in 1984, for the film Splash!  And, AFAIK, no-one said “passive-aggressive” in the 1970s.  /whinge

In a different world, it would have been wonderful to visit the fascinating, historic city of Tehran.  In a different world, Homa would have achieved all her dreams.  Women like her deserve so much better.

This book is well worth reading.

 

 

 

The Other Bennet Sister – BBC 1

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  I’ve got very mixed feelings about the plethora of “re-tellings” of/sequels to classic novels which has emerged in recent years; but I did quite enjoy the Janice Hadlow book on which this was based, and I’m quite enjoying the BBC adaptation of it as well.  All the characters come across pretty much as Jane Austen wrote them, although I think Mrs Bennet gets a bit of a raw deal.  Give the woman a break.  She’s got five daughters with almost nothing in the way of dowries, and her husband doesn’t seem even remotely bothered about the fact that they’re all facing destitution unless suitable husbands are bagged.

Nothing’s been “sexed up”.  And Mary hasn’t suddenly realised that she’s actually beautiful or charming or witty after all.  Most people aren’t, when all’s said and done; but Mary’s the only plain one out of five sisters, and that’s not easy.  She tries to become the accomplished one, but Jane Austen just makes fun of her piano playing.  Mary’s worked hard to become technically good, but everyone prefers the playing of Elizabeth, who doesn’t play nearly as well.  Bleurgh.  Don’t you just hate it when things like that happen to you?!

We know that Jane Austen said, in a letter, that she envisioned that Mary only “attained” one of her Uncle Phillips’ clerks.  We know that, in this book, things are going to turn out differently.  And bring it on!   Jane Austen’s rather mean to Mary, after all.   And Mary doesn’t deserve it – she’s annoying, but she’s not a complete cow like Caroline Bingley.  If anyone deserves a “re-telling” of their story, Mary does.

A Woman of Substance – Channel 4

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  Oh dear.  I really was prepared to give this a chance, but it was just so wrong in so many ways.  It jumped the shark in the very first episode, when Emma got involved in a brawl with one of the other maids, on the steps of Fairley Hall.  Emma was desperate to be considered ladylike: she would never in a million years have done that!  Who on earth dreamt up that bizarre bedroom scene with Adele Fairley, who appeared to have metamorphosed into Bertha Rochester, and Adam Fairley, because it certainly wasn’t Barbara Taylor Bradford?   Why were Big Jack Harte and Frank discussing the football results – are we supposed to imagine that they went all the way from a remote part of the moors to Valley Parade and back once a fortnight?  (And where was Winston?  And where was Mrs Turner?)

Should *Squire* Fairley and his family not have sounded, you know, upper class  – think Michelle Dockery & co in Downton Abbey?  Edwin was too old, and why on earth did he smash an egg over his own head?  Gerald was too slim!   And Blackie (who’d been renamed Mac) had, for no apparent reason, become a chimney sweep rather than a builder/navvy.

And will people please stop describing the book – of which I’m very fond, one of the first “grown up” books that I ever read – as either “a bonkbuster” or “a bodice ripper”?   It’s not Jilly Cooper.

Jessica Reynolds as young Emma and Brenda Blethyn as older Emma were both excellent; and everyone else did their best with the parts that the scriptwriters had given them.  But the whole thing was just a mess.  Ugh!

It was a blockbuster novel.  There used to be a lot of those.   There aren’t so many these days, more’s the pity.  The new mini-series – which, so far, does not compare favourably with the 1980s mini-series, which I re-watched quite recently, because it was repeated on one of the Sky channels whilst I was confined to barracks due to illness – suggested that it was all about revenge.  Well, yes, there’s certainly an element of that.  But it’s more about “rags to riches”, if you want a trope.  It’s about class.  It’s about gender.  A working-class woman succeeding in a rich man’s world.  It’s about ambition and hard work.

It does not deserve to be reduced to the level of “bonkbuster”!  What was all that stuff about Adam and Adele?  And what was all that stuff about Gerald and Polly?  Polly, the sickly maid who was always off due to being “badly”, was suddenly now having an affair with Gerald, and a cat fight with Emma because Emma had tried to pinch her job!   No.  Emma became Adele Fairley’s maid because poor Polly died.  There was no need to “sex up” any of that.  And Emma and Edwin bonded over their mutual care for Adele, and then ended up in the cave whilst sheltering from the rain: they didn’t sneak off together for a bit of pre-planned illicit nookie!  Again, the obsession with “sexing up” everything.

Also, Edwin, rather than being a schoolboy preparing to go to university, had been turned into a graduate – presumably so that the scriptwriters could marry him off to the daughter of the Indian family with whom they’d got Fairleys trying to do a business deal.  No, no, no.  Edwin married the daughter of a British earl.  But I get that Channel 4 were over a barrel there.  If the entire cast were white, as is the case in the book, and as, realistically, would have been the case in Edwardian rural Yorkshire, then they’d have been criticised.  The same with Frank Harte having dwarfism, which wasn’t in the book – although the book did include representation of physical disability, when Winston Harte loses a leg during the First World War.

I also get that there’d have been a hoo-ha if they hadn’t changed Blackie’s name.  “Black Irish” has been used in a number of senses over the years; but, in Edwardian times, the idea that dark-haired, dark-eyed Irish people were descended from shipwrecked Spaniards from the Armada, was popular, and it’s quite realistic that Blackie would have referred to himself as a “Black Irishman”, and thus got the nickname.  But, all right, even though changing the name of a major character is irritating, that was something that probably hasn’t aged well.

However, decades before before people started going on and on about “diversity” and “inclusivity”, A Woman of Substance was about that.   Irish Catholic Blackie, and his wife, English Catholic Laura, became Emma’s closest friends, at a time when there was still a lot of sectarian feeling.  And Emma didn’t get her first job in Leeds through being ruthless or ambitious: she got it because of the kindness and bravery she showed when rescuing Abraham Kallinski from an anti-Semitic mob.  Emma would not tolerate prejudice, at a time when many people did.  Obviously Emma was the main character, the woman of substance, but there was also a sense of her and Blackie and David Kallinski, a Protestant, a Catholic and a Jew, as three musketeers, three working-class people *from different backgrounds* who all achieved huge commercial success.  There was a wonderful line … which unfortunately I can’t remember exactly, but it was something to the effect of “a handful of Jews and Gentiles contributed to a city’s greatness”.

I’m a Mancunian, OK.  I’m a Lancastrian.  I cannot sit here and write about the civic pride of Leeds, LOL!  But a major theme of this book was northern pride.  Emma might have deliberately lost her accent, but she never forgot that she was a Yorkshirewoman.  We saw older Emma in New York at the beginning and end of the book, but her home was Penistone Royal.  And it’s nice that most of this has been filmed in Yorkshire.  Broughton Hall (also featured in All Creatures Great and Small), which I pass if I’m driving over to Ilkley or Skipton or Bolton Abbey, as I sometimes do, is Fairley Hall.  And I gather that the rose garden scenes were filmed at lovely Brodsworth Hall, where I like to go in early May, when the stunning flower beds are at their best.  (Someone please tell me that those horrendous roadworks on the A1 near Pontefract have finally finished.   Let’s try Google.  Ooh, hooray, they have.  After two years!)

So they got that bit right.  But most of it made my hackles rise.

Will I be watching the rest of it?  Of course I will.  But, if it continues in the same vein, I shall moan and moan and moan!

 

 

 

 

 

The Odessans by Irina Ratushinskaya

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  I appreciate that reading a book doesn’t exactly help anyone, but it’s my way of trying to show a bit of solidarity with a country now into its fifth year of war.  I went to Odessa/Odesa in 2008.  At that time, English transliterations were usually from Russian, so Odessa with a double s.  This book, published in 1996, uses those transliterations.  Were a new edition to be issued today, it would probably be “The Odesans”.  That’s one thing that’s noticeably changed over the last few years.

This book goes from 1905, the year of the 1905 Revolution (think the Battleship Potemkin) and the major pogrom which followed, until just after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.  I have to say that that seems like a very odd place to end a book.  I thought that there might be a sequel, but there isn’t.   So it takes us up to and through the First World War, the Revolution and the Civil War, the repression of the 1920s and 1930s, and the war against Finland.  The Holomydyr does feature, but not in much detail as it didn’t have a significant effect on Odesa.  And I have to say that the complex events of 1918-1921 don’t come across particularly clearly – although the author clearly had a very negative view of Petliura.  (So have I, so that worked for me.)

We’ve got three families – the noble Russian Orthodox Petrovs, the Teslenkos, of mixed Ukrainian Orthodox and Polish Catholic heritage, and the Ukrainian Jewish Geibers.  The book assumes some background knowledge of all four cultures.   They all get tangled up together, and various different family members find themselves on different sides during the Revolution and the years that follow.  But no-one really comes out of it very well.  Some of the characters end up in exile in Paris.  Some are sent to Siberia by Stalin’s forces.  Others remain in Odesa, but struggle economically and mentally.  The author herself spent three and a half years in a Gulag.

I felt rather sad at the end of it.  The characters had been through so much.  And the reader knew that, at the end of the book, worse was to come.  But I think we were supposed to feel positive as well, because the characters, especially the women, had supported each other through everything that had happened.   And the unique culture of Odesa, complete with the cliche/stereotype of Odesan humour and optimism, does come across well.  But the city hasn’t half had a rough time, and I just hope that its future looks brighter.

This isn’t the best-written book I’ve ever read, but, especially with most eyes currently on the Middle East, reading it was my way of showing some support for a place much in need of it.

 

 

 

Mother’s Pride

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  This is a “feelgood” film.  It’s a bit corny, a bit cliched, more of a sitcom than an intellectual challenge, and very predictable; but it’s nice.  And, sometimes, nice is just what you need, especially after a week of war news.

I love the fact that “prawn sandwich brigade” is now such an established part of the English language that it features in a film.  Rather apposite, given that Ratcliffe the Rat has just whacked up ticket prices for ordinary fans like yours truly, whilst leaving those for the prawn sandwich brigade unchanged.   I also love the fact that this was filmed in the Somerset village of Norton St Philip, in which I made a stop-off whilst in that neck of the woods a few years back – which I did because it’s where Pamela Belle’s Wintercombe books are set..  And I’m not quite sure why lovely Karthi the tennis presenter was in it, but I seem to remember that she was also in Fishermen’s Friends, which was made by the same team.

A lot of it seems like a plug for the Somerset tourist board, but all the panoramic shots of the countryside, with the sun always shining (which, obviously, is a very accurate reflection of the Great British Weather!) are rather beautiful.   The hopeless Morris dancers are a bit too OTT sitcom-ish (It has to be said that quite a few bits of the film reminded me of The Vicar of Dibley, on which I was never keen because  too many of its scenes were more stupid than funny); but it’s, for the most part, intended to be a light film – although there are some references to mental health issues – rather than a deep and meaningful one.

So, what was the plot?

Well, we’ve got Martin Clunes as the recently widowed owner-manager of a failing pub in a Somerset village.  Living with him are his son Jake and Jake’s teenage daughter Romy.  They are then joined by his other son Cal, who left the village to pursue a career in music but, after having one hit, never managed another and is now down on his luck.  It would have been helpful if any of the people playing the parts of this Somerset born-and-bred family had made even the slightest attempt at a Zummerzet accent, but never mind.

The pub is in deep financial trouble.  It has just had a scathing review from CAMRA, and most all of its customers have abandoned it in favour of the pub over the road, which is one of a large chain owned by a baddie called Ed, who is going out with Cal’s childhood sweetheart, Abi.   You already know that Abi is going to dump Ed and get back with Cal, don’t you?   You can see it coming a mile off!

Cal comes up with the idea of brewing their own beer, using his late grandad’s microbrewery.   Ed the baddie pays someone to break into the pub and smash it up, whereupon all the villagers turn on him and offer our struggling family their life savings – which they keep either under the bed or in piggy banks, because obviously that’s what country yokels do – to buy a new one.

Their home brew, of course, qualifies for the finals of the Great British Beer Awards.  And the two brothers decide to dress up as drovers (the pub is called the Drovers Arms) and drive to London in a horse and cart – which would have been just a bit too silly were it not for the film telling us that it’s won them a huge following in social media, which is the sort of thing that would actually happen!  (BTW, I bet that the Guardian’s film reviewers absolutely pull this to pieces, for doing this and showing lots of shots of green and pleasant landscapes, rather than spending an hour and a half coming out with claptrap about the countryside being racist and going on about whether or not pubs have gender neutral toilets. But they are best ignored.)

What happens?  Does the top prize go to the horrible Ed?   Or does it go to our brave underdogs, attracting immediate interest from investors and saving the pub?   Or does it go to a third party, which would be the realistic answer?   Er, well, what do you think?   It’s nice!   It’s just … nice.

 

 

King’s Ransom by Jan Beazely and Thom Lemmons

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This is back to the Second World War in Bulgaria, and the true story of the cancellation of the deportations.  The authors have created two fictional characters and partially turned the story into a romance-cum-adventure, running alongside the story of King Boris’s attempts to placate the Nazis without sacrificing Bulgaria’s Jewish community.  The resultant novel is a bit daft, but it’s got a good heart and the two fictional characters are very appealing.

Lily Panitza, who appeared in fictionalised form in Acts of Courage, appears in this book as herself – but, here, she’s passing intelligence on to Daria Richetti, an Italian-Jewish girl (er, with a Slavic first name, despite being Italian) from an orphanage, who is Queen Giovanna’s lady-in-waiting and governess to Crown Prince Simeon and his sister.   (Ahem, how likely is it that a girl from an orphanage would be a senior courtier?!)   Daria becomes romantically involved with Dobri Dimitrov, a young military officer.   Then she’s kidnapped, and Dobri heroically rescues her.   They get married and live happily ever after.

As I said, it’s a bit daft, but some of the scenes involving King Boris and his struggles to keep everything together are really quite poignant, as are Daria’s fears about what will happen to her, and her feelings almost of guilt at being under the protection of powerful people.   There were some stirring comments about not letting bullies control you.  A lot easier to say on paper than in the face of Nazi persecution, but still.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad book.   I just feel so sad that we can’t seem to get away from wars and persecution.  Some Job’s comforter on Sky News has been going on about how maybe the war in the Middle East, the war in Ukraine and the conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan will somehow all combine.   Thanks for that, mate.

I’ve turned over to the tennis now.  But at least this book was positive, in that the Jewish community of Bulgaria was saved.

 

Operation Mincemeat – Lowry Theatre, Salford

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  Following the success of the film of the same name, the crazy, incredible true story of how the body of William Martin, “the man who never was”, tricked the Nazis into pulling out of Sicily and leaving the way clear for the Allies to land there is now pretty well-known.   This is a musical version of it – but it’s a send-up.  Like Daisy Pulls It Off sent up girls’ school stories, this sends up spy stories and the entire British intelligence system, to music.

Is it OK to send up the Second World War?   Well, yes, of course it is – within certain boundaries, obviously.   Those of us who grew up in the ’80s still use the catchphrases from the wonderful ‘Allo ‘Allo.   Even earlier than that, there was the famous “Don’t Mention The War” episode of Fawlty Towers.  The idiots who object to both of those would probably love this, because it’s the British, in particular the upper-crust British, and occasionally the Americans, who are being sent up!

It has its serious side, though.   There’s a poignant song about how one of the older team members lost her sweetheart in he First World War.   We’re frequently reminded that, however daft the plan is, hundreds of thousands of lives may depend on it.  We’re also reminded how credit often goes to those at the top of the food chain, not the ones who’ve actually done most of the work, especially if those who’ve done most of the work are female.  And, at the end, we’re told about the homeless ,man who died alone, many miles from home, and whose body was used.  There’s now a memorial to him in Spain, where he was washed ashore.

There’s a cast of only five people, all playing several roles – including a man whose main role is that of a woman, and two women whose main roles are that of men.  They do amazingly well: doing all that, twice a day, must be exhausting!

Are any of the songs memorable?   Well, I don’t think they’ll be joining the ranks of those musicals’ songs which everyone knows.   But it’s lively and it’s funny.  And it was a sell-out, even on a Wednesday night.  That’s some achievement for the first production by SplitLip, who wrote both the music and the words.   It’s been to the West End and to Broadway, and is now going on a world tour.   Don’t be expecting Rodgers and Hammerstein or Andrew Lloyd Webber, but expect a good night out, and you’ll get one!