Tuesday, 7 January 2025

Wicked – wickedly good

Well, the film year started with a surprise – a BIG surprise! Wicked was far, Far, FAR better than I expected. I’m arguably a bit of a Wizard of Oz puritan, having played the Munchkin mayor in a girls’ grammar school stage version back in the 1970s, and then, the following decade, the Wicked Witch of the West herself in a quality non-pro production.

So I am rather attached to the ‘original’. Except, what is The Original? I’m also rather fond of the wonderful graphic novel versions of Frank L Baum’s Oz books by Eric Shanower and Skottie Young, which straight away reveals that I am prepared for adaptation and development of source material.

And besides, the iconic 1939 film with Judy Garland was ‘based’ on Baum’s book – it wasn’t a faithful version of it.

But something about the idea of Wicked (what little I had bothered to find out about it) had prevented me ever feeling a desire to see it on stage. Possibly because, by and large, I’m not a fan of many modern shows. Gimme Gershwin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Kander and Ebb, Bart and, of course, Sondheim.

However, as the film release neared and the hype built, I realised that Cynthia Erivo was playing Elphaba (The Wicked Witch of the West) – and I seriously rate she as an actor and singer.

The late OH and I caught her first two films at the cinema. They were released in reverse order, so we saw Bad Times at the El Royale (her second film) in early autumn 2018 and were blown away. Hence our going to see what was actually her first film, Widows, a short while later – which we also massively too (it’s got the magnificent Viola Davis too).

Last year, I finally caught up with Harriet, where she starred as anti-slavery icon Harriet Tubman. Whatever faults the film has, her performance is not one of them.

And in 2022, she gave a solo Proms concert – which you can watch here. 

I then discovered that the show had come from the pen of Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman. Another connection. In my time as a theatre critic, I reviewed two of Schwartz’s shows – The Baker’s Wife (penned in 1976, but I saw it in 1989 in the West End) and Children of Eden (1991). Both had very short runs.

 

In the case of the former, I still have the double album soundtrack. It wasn’t helped by director Trevor Nunn casting his wife as the female lead, but it was helped by Alun Armstrong being the male lead. I continue to regard it with real affection.

 

In the case of the latter … one of the worst musicals I’ve ever had the misfortune to see (with the possible exception of a Robin Hood show, theh exact title of which I can’t remember, and which seems to have been erased even from Google entirely).

 

My intrigue levels rose. Perhaps this might be worth seeing?

 

On the basis of the length – well over two-and-a-half hours – and because screenings were being packed, including by fans who apparently wanted to sing along, I decided to wait for it to stream. Well, it’s available to buy or rent on Sky now.

 

Briefly, it’s the first half of the stage show, which gives a back-story to Elphaba. Was she always wicked? How did she become wicked? We get act two in November.

 

I really enjoyed it. It’s lush to look at, with a steampunk aesthetic in places. The music holds up far better than I expected. Erivo is fabulous – and I was really pleasantly impressed with Ariana Grande as Galinda (later, Glinda, The Good Witch), who I essentially was only really aware of because of the Manchester terrorist bombing – that is some vocal range she has!

 

Then, of course, you have Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum, with Peter Dinklage topping the voice talent credits.

 

The stage musical premiered in 2003. It is astonishingly current in its themes as the world faces a new Trump presidency and we see the increasing rise of the far-right in so many parts of the world. It’s great entertainment – but it also has a really serious message about othering and more, and why we end up with authoritarian regimes,

 

But then I’ve spent years saying that musical theatre can often do what mainstream, populist theatre won’t do in such a sense. Make the attacks on democracy simple and clear to understand. This does it.

 

And all hail Elphaba!

Friday, 3 January 2025

A look at 2024 in films

Since 2024 is now history – and since I watched more films then than in any previous year of my life – it seemed like a good idea to look back on what I appreciated most.

Most were seen in cinemas, but a few here I saw for the first time either on disc or by streaming.

So in no particular order, other than chronology of viewing …

The first big hitter of my viewing year was Poor Things (above). Given that I saw it twice in eight days, that’s probably a clue as to just how much of an impact it – not least for Emma Stone’s wow of a performance.

Next on this ‘best of’ list is The Holdovers (just watched again as part of the actual festive season).

In some ways, such a small film, but it’s a bittersweet heart-warmer, with three cracking performances at the heart of it.

Next up chronologically is Blue Velvet, which I had never seen before – indeed, I’d avoided it largely on the basis of how that iconic scene with Dennis Hopper made it look horrific. But my niece had given me a copy as a present, so I decided to give it a go – and was surprised to find it vastly better than I had been expecting.

Perfect Days (left) is an absolute gem from Wim Wenders, following a toilet cleaner in Tokyo (and thus giving the German auter, with an astonishing performance from Kôji Yakusho.

As with Downfall, one viewing is enough, but Zone of Interest is a really important work that probes the attitudes of Nazis toward the industrial murder of the Holocaust.

By complete contrast, I also watched My Neighbour Totoro for the first time (my third Ghibli after The Boy and the Heron on Boxing Day the previous year). It is an utter joy. Indeed, I saw it again, later in the year, at a cinema during an anniversary re-release.

A similar catch-up viewing came with Mädchen in Uniform, an extraordinary piece of Weimar cinema, where Prussianism meets lesbianism in a girls’ school. It was a fascinating discovery for LGBT+ History Month.

Another personal discovery came with Rashomon, having only ever previously seen Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.

April brought the charm of Robot Dreams (left), the subtle, affecting and sensitive Monster, and the stranger than strange Evil Does Not Exist – the most enigmatic ending of all time? – all of which have stuck with me since.

Summer saw the taut sexiness of Rose Glass’s Love Lies BleedingCrossingGeorgian-Swedish writer and director Levan Akin’s tale of a retired Georgian teacher who travels to Istanbul in search of her missing trans niece and, in complete contrast, Kensuke’s Kingdom, the hand-drawn adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s book.

Another piece of catch-up cinema that really grabbed me was A Taste of Honey, with Dora Bryan in majestic form as the horrifying mother and Rita Tushingham extraordinary on her screen debut.

Finally, my film viewing year was effectively bookended by another cinema outing that I repeated in short order, with Conclave (left), a cracking piece of entertainment, aimed squarely at an older audience, and one that has been very successful.

I made it past the 100 films in a year for the first time ever  – after re-totting and double-checking between a personal list and the Letterboxd app, it came in at 103.

Its interesting to see how many of my choices have appeared in some of the lists Ive seen in the last couple of weeks or so. Obviously, a lot of this is down to personal taste etc, but I was surprised that Monster didn't seem to be getting any mentioned – only to discover that was initially released in 2023 and appeared on a number of top 10 lists at the end of that year.

I also feel quite chuffed at the variety of films – not only in this list, but in my list for the whole year. I feel Ive really taking my viewing habits to new levels. So here's to 2025’s viewing! 


Wednesday, 1 January 2025

Inspiring call for LGBTQI people to be authentic

Admittedly I started it in December, but New Year’s Day found me with the mental space to read 230 of its 287 pages, so filing this as the first read of the year really does count.

Life as a Unicorn – Amrou Al-Khadi’s memoir, first published in 2019, is the story of a non-binary, gay, British-Iraqi writer, actor, drag artist and filmmaker, and their struggles to find a way to live as their authentic self.

 

While their parents are not fundamentalist Muslims – in the sense that (much, if not all) Western media likes to portray Muslims – they still inherited a belief from quite early in their childhood that their queerness was going to send them to a fiery hell.


And what signs they gave off in terms of that queerness, their parents policed heavily.

 

Indeed, there are elements of this where Amrou’s story is like reading that of any dissenter in a dictatorial society, where they are being observed and reported at every turn.

 

How they eventually come through this is inspirational and deeply moving.

 

As a white, essentially middle-class English person, I clearly cannot appreciate the racist elements of Amrou’s experience, but there’s a huge amount from the homophobic aspects of their story that I felt that I could relate to (I was blubbing at the end) and also to the religious aspects, given my background.

 

For those who don’t already now, my father was an ordained, evangelical Methodist clergyman, who was homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, antisemitic, misogynistic … and just about every other kind of phobia that suited a white, English exceptionalist, cis, straight, male Christian (even though he’d come from an essentially Cornish peasant background).

 

I have thought for some time that, if I had ever come out to my parents, I would have been exposed to some form of conversion therapy. Indeed, I arguably was – being taken, in my early teens, to four evangelical ‘crusade’ meetings within a couple of weeks, with the explicit intention of being ‘converted’ – ‘born again’. And of course, it happened. The emotional blackmail of it was too much to eventually resist.

 

Life as a Unicorn is ultimately a wonderfully uplifting read about how to live as your own, authentic self. The section about marine life is staggeringly informative – I learned so much!

 

Al-Khadi is also absolutely spot on about the patriarchy, throughout the world and across cultures. It’s not just misogynistic, but also homophobic and transphobic. It’s no coincidence that we see the far right in Britain and the US, from Badenoch to Trump, engaging in ‘culture wars’ and taking particular aim at trans people and drag culture.