Daring to question

Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee

The Old Vic, London

When Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee penned their fictionalised account of the infamous 1925 Scopes 'Monkey' Trial, they did so with the aim of making it a parable of the McCarthy hysteria that was sweeping the US in the 1950s.

But their play – originally staged in 1955 and regularly revived in the US – has been badly served on the British stage, with only one small-scale production until this major staging.

Here, the Old Vic, under the artistic directorship of Kevin Spacey, has taken on what has, in the UK, become familiar to most people via the 1960 film starring Spencer Tracey, Frederc March and Gene Kelly, plus three subsequent TV film versions, all of which have impressive casts.

What strikes you watching the play is that it is difficult to locate it as relating to McCarthyism in anything like the way that one can still do with Arthur Miller's 1953 masterpiece, The Crucible.

But what viewing Lawrence and Lee's play now does, to a far greater extent than Miller's magnificent piece – although they share the idea of using real-life examples of religious fundamentalism as their base – is emphasise the continuing present-day conflict between fundamentalism and modern life.

There is a view that the Scopes trial was where modern (a contradiction in terms, surely?) creationism began. For many believers, there was no essential conflict between the Bible and Darwin. Many, many Christians already saw the Bible as allegorical rather than a literal account: thus the seven days of creation could quite easily mean, for instance, seven million years. There was no conflict that affected faith.

In the play, this is what defence lawyer Henry Drummond (Clarence Darrow in the real case) attempts to show the court and his opposite number, Matthew Harrison Brady (William Jennings Bryan), when he describes the Bible as "poetic" rather than literal. But Drummond, of course, wants to stick to his belief – 'Young Earth Creationism' – which takes the Earth as being around 6,000 years old. Any evidence to the contrary is simply dismissed.

The first half of the play sets everything up for the trial scene. It's okay but not brilliant. The second half, which is set entirely in the court room, is far, far better. The writing is sharp and the conflict between ideas of faith and evidence crystal clear.

What the play also has, at the very end, is a very humane heart. Drummond does not take pleasure in Brady's downfall: when the cynical journalist Hornbeck (HL Mencken) derides him for 'faith', it is ultimately for a faith in humanity and human beings, and his refusal to condemn Brady – indeed, his refusal to forget Brady's early role for good, in helping to extend the suffrage.

There are uncomfortable moments: many in the audience seem to relish so much Hornbeck's biting dismissal of Brady and those who think like him, that they have forgotten the Act 1 mentions of his role in extending the suffrage. They enjoy only the bullying of the ultra-cynical Hornbeck. But then, bullying takes centre stage here. Brady himself bullies the clergyman's daughter, who is also bullied by her father. Drummond gets into the act, effectively bullying Brady in court. The attitude of the townspeople – apparently largely committed to a Bradyesque view of the world – borders on verbal lynch mob. They hide behind the safety of being a large and homogenised group that has an belief not simply in God, but in their own righteousness; their own certainty that they know the right way.

Indeed, Brady's downfall is caused by his 'sin' (if you will) of believing that he has a direct and utterly unchallengeable knowledge of the will of God.

The Old Vic's production was directed by Trevor Nun, with all the creativeness and energy that you'd expect from him, and stars David Troughton as Brady and Spacey himself as Drummond.

Troughton is good – very good. But having seen him already this year in the revival of Alan Bennett's Enjoy, you recognise some of the same physical movements. Indeed, going slightly further, my description of his performance in that said that his Wilf was "magnificent: bullying, bluff and frightened". And the same things are here in his Brady.

The writers make us wait for Drummond's entry. And it's late in the first act when he shambles on stage, weighed down by two heavy bags. For a moment, you don't realise who it is. Spacey's physicality in the role is astonishing. Darrow was almost 70 when he defended John T Scopes in Dayton, Tennessee. Spacey is 50, but everything about him is older here – except the mind. And while he might have gone to almost Method lengths physically (although I'd suggest it's more faithful to Stanislavski and less a slave to Strasberg), there are no mumblings here, but real relish for the script and the character and the situation. It's a bravura performance to thoroughly enjoy, and one where, at the end, he brings great compassion to the climax.

All in all, a very good production indeed – and enormously timely, as we find ourselves no further away from fundamentalist religion attempting to control our lives than in Dayton in 1925. It seems incredibly perverse that we seem reluctant to address Christian fundamentalism – the issue of creationism in schools is more an issue in schools in the UK today than it has been for many, many a year – even as we face what we are told is a clash of cultures with fundamentalist Islam.

Perhaps the former is apparently alive and well preceisely because of the threat of the latter?

Time for a traditional treat

After yesterday's almost apocalyptic weather warnings, the day actually hasn't been too bad. I did well this morning, getting to the market quickly and being an efficient shopper (for once), getting there and back between any major showers.

Today is a culinary event day – but not one that takes hours of prep. It's a day for good, old-fashioned fish and chips. Vicki sometimes has cod in – today was such a day – and as she gets it from a sustainable source, I can enjoy it without guilt.

I also bought big potatoes for the chips, plus a tin of mushy peas. This is proper northern fodder – it used to be England's favourite dish, but those times have gone, and with them, most chippies. Those that remain rarely seem to serve hand-cut chips anymore. So it's a treat to do this at home – and something that I do, at most, twice a year.

And for method, it's a classic case of 'in Delia I trust'. At present, the potatoes have been peeled and cut, and I've popped them all in a pan of cold water. That helps to get rid of some of the starch as well as plumping them up. In a while, I'll drain and then dry them carefully in a clean tea towel.

Batter for the fish is a doddle. Sift 110g plain flour and a pinch of salt into a bowl. Add 150ml water plus one scant tablespoon. Whisk together into a smooth batter. Bring your fish out of the fridge and allow to come to room temperature.

Then heat your oil or lard (I use vegetable oil). To test it's ready, chuck in a small cube of bread. If it browns in a minute, the oil is hot enough. Carefully pop your chips into the oil. If they spit, it means the potato is still moist. Give them around five minutes, then lift out with your chip basket or a large slotted spoon and drain them on kitchen paper. Bring the oil back up to your starting temperature.

Meanwhile, heat some more oil in another pan – the same temperature guide applies. When it's hot enough, dip your room temperature and dried fish pieces in the batter and then pop them carefully in the oil. That'll take about five minutes, but watch for the batter turning a lovely golden as a good guide too.

After the chip fat is heated back to temperate, add your chips for another one to two minutes. Then lift out, drain on greaseproof paper of kitchen towel and serve immediately. At this point, I'm afraid I diverge from northern tradition, and pop a great big dollop of mayonnaise on the side of my plate. According to people who know me, it's an indication of the corrupting effect of the Continent. I just love dipping my chips in it. The Other Half opts for the more usual malt vinegar.

And don't forget to gently warm through your peas. If you want to be really authentic, serve with slabs of white bread with butter on, and mugs of steaming tea. However you serve it, though, it's the perfect accompaniment for a Rugby League match – and tonight sees England take on Australia in the final of the autumn's international Four Nations tournament.

I don't hold a great deal of hope for England's chances, but you never know. And nothing beats beating Australia!

Astonishing picture of a threatened world

A Shadow Falls by Nick Brandt

I have a small collection of photography books, but not many. This was one that was reviewed in a photography magazine I'd bought during a work trip last month; it was that publication's book of the month – and it was not difficult to see why.

They published small reproductions of several pictures – they completely bore out the review that in so many other circumstances might have been seen as over the top and gushing: I went straight online to order a copy.

This is beautiful stuff; awesome stuff. Nick Brandt has given himself the task of 'memorialising' the natural grandeur of East Africa. This is neither landscape photography nor wildlife photography, but a combination of both. And it has a feeling of creating a mythology right in front of your eyes.

It would never have occurred to me to photograph such a subject (or such subjects) in monochrome or sepia, but the treatment works so well. Brandt works with film, not digital, and there is an astonishing depth of tone that you still find in top-notch film work.

But what stands out most of all is the dignity of the animals he has captured on film. A dignity – yes, I know that this is anthropomorphism – a dignity that makes you want to weep when you consider the fragility of their world, which faces so many threats, and mostly from our species. The pictures have an astonishing intimacy – you feel drawn right into the heart of the lives of his non-human subjects.

Brandt has certainly done a spot of the old dodging a burning – manipulation of photographs is not some new fangled creation of the digital age – but he has created some utterly astonishing images. The mother cheetah with her cubs on the rock is ... well, it's just beautiful. There is a magnificent empathy here and a great deal of power.

It's nearly Christmas: I don't usually do this sort of thing, but if you like photography in general, or if you like landscape photography and/or wildlife photography or if you like B&W photography, then get this book. It has a special something that is difficult to describe, but which lifts it way above most photography. I simply cannot imagine what it must be like to take pictures of this quality.

All the pictures I've reproduced here can be viewed larger by clicking on them. The book itself is printed on excellent art paper, and comes in large format (39.2cm x 31.2cm) that allows the pictures to be viewed easily.

Royal treatment for the boobies

The time is coming when I must pay a visit to Rigby & Peller. It's around five years since I last went – in the days when walking into such a 'posh' shop, in posh Mayfair, was still an intimidatory experience.

Rigby & Peller are no less than the royal corsetieres. The company, founded by a Mrs Rigby and a Mrs Peller in 1939, received its royal warrant in 1960.

They're famed for their quality, to be sure, but they're perhaps best known for the fact that they do not measure customers with a tape, but judge size simply by looking.

It's impossible not to wonder how this process came about – perhaps because the royal boobies must not be touched?

My boobies, on the other hand, have been touched many times by supposedly trained staff, in Selfridges and John Lewis in particular, in my eternal search for a bra that managed to combine comfort and support.

There is nothing worse than an uncomfortable bra. Okay – ill-fitting shoes are bad too. And I utterly loathe underwiring, but received wisdom always seems to be that the larger bosom requires such scaffolding.

I have vague memories of that awful experience that every girl undergoes as a sort of rite of physical passage: the trip to buy the first 'training' bra. I didn't have much to train at the time and found the whole thing embarrassing – followed by the realization that the discomfort of being strapped into something that felt simply restrictive was going to be a life sentence.

As my boobs grew, so did the embarrassment. In my early twenties, I did a bit of running, and tried to restrict it to night time so that I could decrease the number of 'be careful – you don't give yourself a black eye!' comments from passing motorists. I hated them – not the motorists, but my own tits. I very seriously considered trying to get a reduction done.

When I was playing scheming, predatory tart Janey Jenkins in Walter Greenwood’s wonderful Lancashire comedy, The Cure for Love, our director (a former regimental sergeant major) found himself having to regularly boom at me: "If you've got it, flaunt it!” Such an attitude was not second nature for me.

Later, he used to say that that production was his greatest achievement: getting a Methodist minister's daughter and a male nurse to present reasonable facsimiles of a tart and a soldier.

It's a mystery why, in those days, I was cast so often in strumpetty roles. Another memorable occasion saw me play Constanze, Mozart's wife, in an award-winning production of Peter Schaffer's Amadeus. Every night, after being strapped into a corset that took my cleavage to new heights, I faced a scene where I attempted to win work for hubby by offering myself to the court’s favourite composer, Salieri. I sat on a chair, untied the ribbons at the top of my low-cut dress, and spread my legs suggestively.

Salieri nearly gives in to temptation, then refuses. Constanze leaps up and goes to slap his face, only to be pushed away, falling to the floor, where she stays, stock still, while he addresses the audience.

Only after the production ended was I told that, every night, without fail, I fell out of that corset. And then, when I got to my feet, fell back in – hence my never realising what was happening. But a photograph, taken at dress rehearsal, proved quite clearly that nobody was kidding me. The audience never laughed either – I’m proud to say that the scene was far too dramatically intense for that.

My father's objections to my theatrical ambitions were primarily because he was convinced that 'actress' was a synonym for 'whore'. My mother was less against the idea, but would ask, with a worried expression, as if I were contemplating crime: "What would you do if you were asked to do ... nudity?" After all, is there anything worse?

Well, Mother – unconsciously perhaps, but been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Well, got the picture at any rate.

Mind, my mother’s ideas about nudity mean that she finds it astonishing that I can quite comfortably go into a communal shower in the altogether – even in women-only environments – without being struck down by total mortification. It’s an example of the total illogicality of the obsessive British fear of the human body.

But I digress: back to the subject of the purchase of over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders.

I tried the lingerie departments in both Selfridges and John Lewis a number of times over the years. If you want mortification, that was it. Snooty, unpleasant women poking and pulling at you and then instructing you in what you required. I wonder if the attitude was jealousy?

I spent a small fortune trying to find something that offered support AND comfort. To little avail. And then, at one point when I was reasonably in funds, I remembered Rigby & Peller from a programme I’d seen at some point.

I swallowed hard, summoned up some courage, and headed to Mayfair.

It was a revelatory experience. First, it was relaxed and friendly (does one do “relaxed and friendly” with the Queen when one’s fitting her for a brassiere, I wonder?). It’s strange to be ‘measured’ by a visual assessment alone – but goodness, it worked.

And after you reach a certain size, the whole underwired thing ceases to have any great impact.

I ended up with bras that were comfortable, actually gave me superb support and looked good.

It wasn’t cheap. But at almost five years since that visit, the four bras that have given me brilliant service have worked out as far better value for money than those that were purchased over the years – and then thrown out because the underwiring snapped or because they were just uncomfortable.

The fear that I might require something so vast that I couldn’t wear low-cut tops was also misplaced. Now I can do some serious décolletage – and love the impact.

Only a short while after that first purchase, I was striding confidently down a street, wearing a rather low-cut top, as a man on a bike cycled toward me. Women have better peripheral vision than men, apparently. It certainly makes unseen lechery rather easier. This cyclist couldn’t take his eyes off my chest, head swiveling as his angle of sight changed.

I was tickled pink. Thank goodness I never gave in and had surgery!

Some years ago, TV makeover duo, Trinny and Susannah (who are generally pretty unbearable) took on comic Jo Brand for charity. The first thing they did was cart her to Rigby & Peller.

Since I went there, I’ve met other women who have ‘given in’ (which is how it feels initially) and tried them. Not one has regretted becoming an R&P woman. And a return visit will be a pleasure in itself.

Letting the dark in

The nights are pulling in and the temperature is dropping. After almost six years of never dreaming of doing such, Boudicca has started clambering into bed for brief snuggles, and is also clearly stocking up on food for the winter to come.

In just over a week, we’ll hit Halloween, with Guy Fawkes shortly after on 5 November.

I may put on Mussorgsky’s Night on a Bare Mountain or the fifth movement of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique – the deliciously evocative Songe d'une nuit de sabbat (Dream of a witches’ Sabbath.

Or perhaps it’s time to pull down MR James’s ghost stories or some Stephen King – or even scour my DVD collection for something to make the spine tingle pleasantly.

Winter days might be shorter, but autumn nights seem to be the darkest in other ways.

I always loved autumn. It was the time when the football season started again, when the new school term finally ended lonely summer holidays and when the darkening, cooling days made it easier to hide beneath layers of clothing.

Brought up, as I was, in a religious environment, it almost goes without saying that we had no Halloween celebrations. Indeed, for many years, I really believed in witches. One summer, holidaying in Cornwall, the entire family visited the Boscastle witch museum. I remember finding the atmosphere dreadful. My father gave me his little olive wood cross to hold – because I was threatening not to go much further than the threshold and my entrance fee had been handed over.

Not, of course, that there were any spectacularly horrible exhibits or anything particularly sensational that I can recall. The sensation that day was my being allowed to have a half pint of scrumpy – proper Cornish cider – with my lunch after our visit.

It was a childhood – in theory at least – dedicated to keeping us in the light and away from the shadows. The dark was the devil, witchcraft – sin. But the dark, as the last decade has revealed to me, can be fun. And without the dark, the light becomes unrelenting and boring.

Come to think of it, ‘sin’ is rather fun too.

After spending so long trying to keep the dark at bay, I embraced it. Sometimes it can be a forbidding place inside me; even a little disturbing – but that is, as much as anything, I think, the result of that process of thinking. And when there was nothing but trying to keep the dark at bay, I hardly thought at all.

But often it’s a velvety darkness. The pleasure of ‘unconventional’ desire, say. Of wanting to whip or be whipped. Of wanting to hide in the shadows and watch.

And autumn seems to bring an itch for that. Or rather, the darkening seems to increase the itch that is always there.

I want to dip my toes in the darkness. No. I want to dive into it. And every time I do, I swim further and further from the shore that was my parents’ idea of light and dark, sin and goodness. And in doing so, the guilt of years spent in fear of not being good enough is washed further away.

Welcome autumn. Welcome the dark.

Epic and true to the spirit of Brecht

Mother Courage and her Children by Bertolt Brecht

National Theatre, London

The Thirty Years War might not sound like the perfect setting for a night’s entertainment, but Bertolt Brecht’s 1939 play, Mother Courage and her Children rises to the challenge.

It tells the story of Anna Fierling – Mother Courage – a businesswoman who, with her cart, travels around the battlefields of the 17th-century conflagration with her sons Eilif and Swiss Cheese, and her mute daughter Katrin, acting as a merchant to the various armies.

But in her desperate desire to make money from the war, Mother Courage loses all her children as it drags on and on. The prospect of peace is not one that this one-woman military-industrial complex relishes: there is no commercial promise beyond war.

It’s too easy to simply describe the play – which was written on the eve of WWII – as an anti-war one. One of the few uplifting moments comes when a moment of self-sacrifice warns a sleeping town that is about to be attacked, and the townspeople rise.

But Brecht was very sure about the commercial benefits of war and his protagonists all wearily and cynically reflect that belief.

The play is superbly served here in Deborah Warner’s new production. Using Tony Kushner’s 2006 translation, Warner restores the life to Brecht.

The writer himself, before a 1956 production of the play in London by the Berliner Ensemble, warned his company of two things: first, that very few in the British audience would understand German and second, that “there is in England a long-standing fear that German art (literature, painting, music) must be terribly heavy, slow, laborious and pedestrian.”

Indeed, in Theatre in Britain (1984), influential critic Harold Hobson noted that “the poverty of British productions of Brecht, heavy, sententious, and void of life, was exposed by the Berliner Ensemble when it came to one of Peter Daubney’s World Theatre Seasons and played The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui with verve, vigour, and regard for theatrical effect as well as doctrinal orthodoxy.

“To the Berliner Ensemble had been revealed a truth hidden from their British rivals, namely, that Brecht and entertainment are synonymous.”

I first saw Mother Courage way back in 1990. It was at the now sadly departed Mermaid Theatre and starred Glenda Jackson, in her final stage appearance before going off to become a Member of Parliament.

Little of that production has stuck in the mind – apart from the iconic final moments as the eponymous heroine drags her cart around after her, and that it was long and ‘traditionally’ costumed.

It would be easy to say that there is nothing remotely traditional in Warner’s production – but that would be wrong. The staging is pure Brecht; stripped back as far as possible, with stage crew visible and subtitles, hand painted on white sheets that are lowered at various times from above.

But from Mother Courage’s opening entry, atop the cart, vast skirt ballooning around her, helmet on her head and microphone in hand, there’s something thoroughly rock and roll about this production.

A new score, written by Northern Irish indie songster Duke Special sees most songs sung by him, together with various members of the cast. He weaves in and out of the action, looking for all the world like a lost little drummer boy with dreadlocks (which is, admittedly, how the Duke looks all the time). His choirboy voice provides a marked contrast with the violence around him.

The script crackles, the laughter comes, the energy carries the audience through three hours plus without ever flagging. And at the centre of it all is Fiona Shaw, a magnificent Courage. Pragmatic to the last, keeping her emotions just beneath the surface – although only barely – she deals with each new disaster by wrapping herself in the belief that she has to carry on, that commerce demands it.

And at the end, as she pulls her cart singlehandedly into an everlasting night, you realise that, for all the laughter, the knife has been well and truly twisted, and your heart is breaking.

As noted above, Brecht wrote this in 1939, and it’s been said many times that WWII is comparable in many ways to the Thirty Years War.

But recent history leaves the audience with other points of reference – the Balkans and Iraq in particular. And whilst the religious aspect of the Thirty Years War might not have been Brecht’s dominant idea when he was writing, here it comes into greater focus in terms of modern conflicts.

There’s a nice touch in the subtitles being read out when they descend: by Gore Vidal, the US writer and political commentator. Quoted in the programme, Vidal notes: “Why do governments pursue wars? Loot. They want to balance the budget.”

One could, thinking of Halliburton in particular, note that they also like to give themselves and their mates a share of the loot too.

This is truly epic theatre. And it is magnificent.

It takes the biscuit

Today was the first time this autumn that the cool permeated the flat. The weather forecast was for bright skies – and temperatures as low as 6˚C by as late as 10 o'clock this morning.

There's been a little more cloud, so it might have been warmer than that, but a chill was still evident.

I had a moment yesterday when I suddenly wanted to bake. It started with a random thought about biscuits: there I was, ready to make a cup of tea and wishing suddenly that I'd bought some biscuits when shopping earlier in the day. From that it was an easy step to: 'why don't I make some?' followed by a musing on the notion (read or heard somewhere recently) that biscuits are often the first thing that children learn to make.

I had no such experience, but pulled out Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess from the shelf instead and sat down to educate myself.

To be honest, I'm not much of a Nigella fan – my tolerance of her took a major dent when she presented a whole programme about cooking beetroot, while wearing a white denim trouser suit, for goodness sake.

Anyhow, the book in question gave me no major suggestions – and certainly there was nothing to be found that I had all the ingredients in the house for. So I left it.

But then earlier today, The Other Half mentioned ginger biscuits. Aware that I have some very good quality ground ginger in a cupboard, I surfed for a recipe and, in short order, found one for which everything was available to hand.

So off I went to bake.

The instructions started with creaming together equal measures of soft brown sugar and margarine (125g each). Now, I draw the line at the latter, so replaced it with decent butter. What on Earth is the point of making indulgent food if you cut quality corners with artificial rubbish?

Then beat in an egg yolk and a tablespoon of Golden Syrup. A bit of indulgence really is good for the soul.

Then sift the ground ginger (a good teaspoon at least) and some flour (180g) into the mix. Combine gently (or it'll get hard, apparently) and if it doesn't hold together, add a very little milk.

Then put walnut-sized dollops onto a lightly-floured baking tray, pat them flat with the floured back of a spoon and pop the tray into an oven that's been pre-heated to 180˚C.

And at that precise moment, I had a thought.

'What flour have I just used?'

Yes. Plain flour. I'd simply reached in and grabbed the most generic flour I have in.

And the recipe said self-raising flour.

Bugger.

But the more that I thought about, the more I found myself wondering just why you'd use self-raising flour to make biscuits anyway. After all, you want them fairly flat – not blown up and fluffy; more like a cake.

They had 12 minutes before I checked, then about another four or five until nicely golden and getting a little crisp around the edges.

Then, after a brief rest, they were carefully transferred to a cooling rack.

I might have made a clumsy error in terms of reading the recipe – but I promise, there's nothing whatsoever wrong with this first effort at biscuits. And they're not going to last very long either!