Alun Armstrong shines in, and lifts, a slight play

To Have and to Hold is the new play from Richard Bean, writer of the massive global hit, One Man, Two Guvnors, and takes place in the Yorkshire village of Wetwang – and yes, it’s a real place.

 

There, we meet Jack and Florence Kirk, a couple in their 90s, both struggling with ill health and the realities of old age. They are joined by Rob and Tina, their adult children, who live far away from Yorkshire. Rob, a novelist and screenwriter, flits between London and LA, while Tina, who runs a group of private GP services, is based in the south west of England and is contemplating a move to Australia.

 

The siblings have been invited home by Jack, who knows that they need to discuss, as a family, the failing health of both himself and his wife. He has already had prepared power of attorney documents.

 

Which is pretty much the plot – although that needed discussion never really happens. We do get a slight (very slight) subplot about a crime, while ex-copper Jack, when alone, spends time preserving stories of his favourite cases on an old tape recorder.

 

There are light references to the generational divide in such things as the internet – and Jack gets to have a very a good riff on smartphones and how people have stopped seeing the world around them because they’re always looking down at their small screens – plus nods to the difficulties the elderly face when, for instance, the local Post Office closes.

 

But the main idea of the piece seems to be how university education that was opened up after WWII for the likes of Rob and Tina saw them move away – not just physically, but in terms of class too. Flo and Jack are very much still working class, but their son and daughter have become very much middle class. The contrasts in their speech/accents reflect this.

 

The elderly couple rely for help – and company – on local character Rhubarb Eddie and vet’s nurse Pamela, Flo’s niece.

 

It’s funny – very much a two-hour sitcom – you have a sense what you’re getting with the first entrance: on a Stannah stairlift. There are running gags and word play, such as Flo getting ‘prostate’ confused with ‘prostrate’ – and it’s arguably at its best when she and Jack are bickering.

 

But in general, it all feels rather directionless. The characters of Tina and Rob are sketches and the subplot – like so much else here – is never really resolved.

 

What saves To Have and to Hold are, first, the performances (more of that in a moment) and James Cotterill’s absolutely magnificent set – a beautifully naturalistic and detailed living room (with front door, back door, stairs, and a serving hatch from the kitchen. All very retro and all with a sense of a home that has been loved and nurtured.

 

It’s quite a static play, and directing duo Richard Wilson and Terry Johnson do a good job keeping as much movement in it as possible.

 

But yes – the performances. Adrian Hood as Rhubarb Eddie is a vast man mountain (he was Norman, the bread delivery man in dinnerladies, but I had no idea just how big he is!) and is very funny and affectionate in the role. Hermione Gulliford (Tina), Christopher Fulford (Rob) and Rachel Dale (Pamela) do sterling service with limited help from the script. 

 

Marion Bailey was apparently a late casting replacement as Flo and that simply makes one admire what she does here even more. It’s a very good performance.

 

But the reason I booked (perhaps ironic given the subjects of age, infirmity etc) for my first live performance since The Other Half died in September, was Alun Armstrong, who plays Jack here.

 

He’s not – that I’m aware of – done much stage work in recent years. Having become aware of him first via the televised version of the RSC’s epic production of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (he played Wackford Squeers), I’d seen him on stage in the 56-performance West End musical The Baker’s Wife(revival next year!), as the Olivier-winning, eponymous Sweeney Todd in the magnificent 1993 National Theatre chamber opera version of the Sondheim classic, and then as Willy Loman in the National’s 1996/’97Death of a Salesman.

 

He should have won again for that too, in my opinion. I saw it – as a reviewer – in the Lyttleton stalls and wept absolute buckets.

 

In 1998, he was appearing as the editor in The Front Page at the Donmar Warehouse. As part of my long-term project to get The OH to see actors I very seriously rated, we got tickets. Hildy was played by Griff Rhys Jones, who was very good. Armstrong’s character, editor Walter Burns, makes his first appearance about half way through the three-act piece.

 

Around five minutes after Armstrong had arrived on the Donmar stage, Tony leaned into to me (he was sitting on my right) and said: “I get it”.

 

This is the first time I’ve seen him live since, so thanks so much to a friend for alerting me to this production. 

 

It is an absolute joy to see him back on stage. His comic timing is simply superb. But he also gives the piece its most genuinely emotional moments – Armstrong, who never had a formal theatre training, has real heft as an actor. He can go from making you laugh to making you blub in moments. One of the finest actors of his generation. 

 

So, in summary: the play is slight (very), but it’s important to note that that’s not necessarily bad. Set – brilliant. Cast – all of them do wonders with slight material. Alun Armstrong? Absolutely every bit as fabulous as the last time I saw him on stage.

A killer of a film ... if you've not watched the genre extensively

David Fincher’s new film, The Killer, is based on a French graphic novel and centred on an unnamed contract killer, played by Michael Fassbender.

It opens in Paris, where the eponymous assassin is stationed in an empty building opposite a posh hotel, waiting for his target to arrive. Narrated by The Killer himself, he explains his processes, the “logistics” of the what he does and his philosophy – essentially, that he must have no empathy whatsoever and that, in a world where few are able to be at ‘the top’, he has chosen to be one of those.

But when the contract arrives, it all goes pear shaped and The Killer must take action fast if he is to escape.

From then on, as his own life is threatened, he can no longer play by his own rules, but has to improvise.

The film has had mixed reviews – primarily because many reviewers note that the ‘cold-blooded contract killer’ has been done many times before – sometimes better and sometimes worse.

For me, that wasn’t a problem – I’ve not even seen The Day of the Jackal all the way through – so it never felt like a rehash of something I’ve seen countless times before.

Fassbender is utterly chilling – most particularly in the long opening scenes where he’s waiting and preparing – his face, physicality and voiceover mesmerising. I have seen reviews that regard the narration, which carries on throughout the film, as ‘pretentious’, but for me, it worked very well and helps illustrate just how much the character has cut himself off from humanity.

Or has he?

Part of the fun here is seeing where, in the circumstances in which he finds himself, he breaks his own ‘code’. And whether he really is as utterly emotionless as he likes to claim.

Erik Messerschmidt’s cinemaphotography is striking. The use of tracks by The Smiths throughout – The Killer finds their music helps him concentrate – should perhaps make one want to slit one’s own wrists, but (and I am no Smiths fan) I think it works really well here, with more than a hint of the ironic.

As already said, you can’t take your eyes off Fassbender. Kerry O’Malley is really good as the secretary to a lawyer, but Tilda Swinton, in a cameo late in the film is simply … well, Tilda Swinton! She absolutely crackles and brings humour to the film – albeit it in a very dark form.

So my very personal take is that it’s worth seeing on a big screen – it’s distributed by Netflix, is on at only a select number of cinemas (I saw it at a Curzon) and is streaming now – but if you’ve seen lots of those ‘cold-blooded contract killer’ movies, you might not be as impressed as I was. 

It’s so much not my usual type of film – and I really wondered whether it would be too violent for me. I can’t watch much of The Sopranos or Deadwood – even though I completely understand that they are superb works of TV drama – because the violence (physical and language-wise) becomes overwhelming for me after a short while.

Here, Fincher has made a violent film that reminds me of The Silence of the Lambs, in that the actual violence itself is clear – and not remotely celebrated – but also not filmed in ways so as not to make it gratuitous.

I’d also note that, at 118 minutes, it’s really tight and not self-indulgent in an era when many films seem to come from a starting point of having to be over two hours.

A much-needed examination of gender identity

Given how much trans people have been weaponised for the sake of the culture wars, it feels like an extraordinarily brave thing for award-winning Basque director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren to make her feature film debut with a story about a young trans girl exploring her gender identity.

Brave – and necessary. Solaguren – who also wrote the script for 20,000 Species of Bees – was inspired by the suicide of a 16-year-old trans boy Ekai Lersundi in 2018.

Here, we find a family that lives in the French Basque Country. The parents are on the cusp of splitting up and of the children (teenage Nerea, 10-year-old Eneko and eight-year-old Aitor) the boys seem to constantly fight, while Aitor – also known as the less gender specific Cocó – is clearly unhappy and constantly acting up.

Their mother Ane takes the children with her for an extended summer holiday in the Basque Country south of the Pyrenees, where they will stay with her mother, Lita. Gorka, their father, stays at home.

Ane has allowed Cocó to wear their hair long and use blue nail polish, and they are quietly pleased when the local old ladies congratulate Lita on having a lovely granddaughter, but the conservatively religious grandmother nags her daughter to go to a hairdresser and get Cocó a “boy cut”.

 

Wary of local children, Cocó increasingly spends their days with Aunt Lourdes – a local ‘wise’ women, who lives alone, keeps bees and uses them to cure neighbours of a variety of ailments. There, they start to open up, often describing themselves (unprompted) as behaving like a girl.

 

They question what went “wrong” with them in their mother’s womb and why they are “like this”.

 

But Lita is becoming more strident in her approach, trotting out tired clichés about Ane having over-indulged the child, and the great patriarchal one that the problem is that Cocó is surrounded by women (which doesn’t seem to have changed Eneko’s gender identity).

 

Ane is confused about the issue – but also hits back at her mother, who had done nothing to tackle a dirty little family secret about her late husband, a sculptor.

 

Cocó prays to become Lucía – and even asks her aunt if she can’t die and come back as a girl.

 

Essentially an all-female ensemble piece – it won an award for the best female ensemble cast at the Guadalajara International Film Festival – it’s moving, yet never mawkish or sentimental, and is tackled with great sensitivity and humanity.

 

To help ensure accuracy, Naizen, a regional association for the families of transgender children, worked with Solaguren and provided guidance for Sofía Otero, who plays Lucía.

 

Otero carries the film on her eight-year-old shoulders – a simply outstanding performance that saw her become the youngest ever winner of the Silver Bear for best leading performance at the 73^rd Berlin International Film Festival in February, just one of many awards that the piece has already garnered. In September, it was put forward for nomination for next year’s Academy Awards.

 

Patricia López Arnaiz as Ane and Ane Gabarain as Lourdes also turn in superb performances, while Gina Ferrer García’s cinematography is top notch.

 

If you can, do see it. It’s also on Curzon Home Cinema now. It is a film that will stay with you a very long time.

As Solaguren put it in an interview: "The girl does not transform. Throughout the film, she acquires the tools to express who she is. What is transformed is the family."

Sabrina – a troubled Billy Wilder pic that still does it

I've just watched Sabrina for the first time in years. Written, directed and produced by the legendary Billy Wilder, and released in 1954, I'd rather forgotten how good it is.

Humphrey Bogart was cast against type as a respectable, buttoned-up businessman who is trying to stop his thrice-divorced playboy brother (William Holden) from ducking out of an arranged marriage that would profitably cement a deal between their Larrabee family businesses and those of another family ... and running off with the family chauffeur's daughter, played by the eternally glorious Audrey Hepburn in the eponymous role.

But the machinations fail, as Linus Larrabee (Bogart) finds his heart melted by Sabrina and eventually decides to give life a try.

Bogart struggled to get on with Wilder and had little time for Holden.

He'd wanted Lauren Bacall to be cast as Sabrina. Now I adore Bacall, but that would never have worked ... Betty as ingenue? She was light years beyond that by To Have and Have Not, her film debut.

I do wonder if Bogart was not feeling confident in playing a romantic lead and would have hoped to rely on recapturing the on-screen chemistry and wise-cracking of To Have or Have Not and The Big Sleep.

It is not that, but it works – and that includes in the chemistry between Bogart and Hepburn, which is different to that between Bogart and Bacall, but very much still does the job.

Holden does the playboy brother to perfection. Hepburn is ... well, Hepburn. She's an icon for a reason. There is a lightness to her performance and yet utter conviction.

And the supporting cast is delicious – watch out for Ellen Corby as Bogart's chief secretary; she went on to play Grandma Walton in The Waltons.

But two things. First, it's an excellent reminder of just what a great artist Wilder was. Having penned a witty, engaging script – and in spite of difficulties on set (Bogart apparently apologised later to Wilder for his behaviour) – he then drew out of Bogart a genuinely nuanced and critically acclaimed performance – just watch his eyes; this is not a role done by rote.

Second: Bogart was a far better actor than is sometimes assumed. I said 'watch his eyes' for a reason. He's thinking the part, not just saying it. It's almost Stanislavski (granddaddy of 'method' acting).

And to conclude ... Wilder's ending is an understated, funny, brilliant joy.

I'm delighted to learn that, in 2002, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

A superb history of trans and non-binary lives

Before We Were Trans by Kit Heyam is a remarkable achievement. First published last year and now out in paperback, it is an attempt to map out a history of trans and non-binary people – not just within the white West, but taking in cultures around the world.

Heyam works scrupulously to avoid imposing contemporary, white Western values and ideas about gender onto people from different cultures and living in very different societies (and times), reminding readers that to do so is dangerous in terms of a meaningful understanding of history, but that it also risks colonising – or re-colonising – those lives.

 

It is full of revelatory information. For instance, I had no idea that in Swahili, “all pronouns are gender neutral”. Or that “The Daughters of Bilitis, an American lesbian activist group founded in 1955, described butch lesbians as ‘the worst publicity we can get’.”

 

Records from WWI internment camps on the Isle of Man provide a wealth of information from the German civilians imprisoned there for years with no ‘biological females’.

 

The author explains in detail how, in some cultures, from First Nation to South Asian ones, gender non-conformity is often intrinsically linked to spirituality. No matter how difficult some in the West might find it to understand this, we should not pretend it is not the reality for people who experience gender in such a way.

 

Heyam is also determined that we should not simply assume that in every – and there are plenty – historic example of gender non-conformity, we should assume that the person involved was trans or non-binary.

 

They point out that there could have been motives for being gender non-confirmative that could have involved coercion, the need to make a living and more. But as they point out, it’s also a major likelihood that at least *some* were what we would now describe as trans or non-binary.  

 

Initially, I found it a bit annoying to be reminded of these things quite frequently, but I came to understand the value of such reminders. I read history books on a reasonably regular basis, but have never read one like this, and ultimately it benefits from it. It has helped me think quite seriously about number of things I have not thought through before.

 

But Heyem also hits the proverbial nail right on the head in an understanding of why Western, non-binary people might be easily tempted to appropriate the experiences of non-Western, non-gender conforming people, given the assaults on trans and non-binary people currently being experienced – not least in the US and UK.

 

We need to construct a more nuanced dialogue in order not to appropriate, while still celebrating the range of non-gender conforming lives and understanding that in terms of our own relationship to the wider LGBT+ community.   

 

Heyam Is to be applauded for taking a complex subject and approaching it in such a way as to make it informative, challenging and, as they suggest at the end, ‘kind’, to those in the past as well as those living now and, indeed, those in the future.

 

A very different and valuable history – and one to be heartily recommended.

Trussed Up – how the Daily Mail screws with the national conversation

Trussed Up: How the Daily Mail tied itself in knots over the Tory leadership

 

On 7 July last year, The Other Half and I were travelling home from a holiday on Rügen, Germany’s largest island, which is on the Baltic. As we piled into the taxi from our holiday home to head to the railway station, we caught the radio news.

 

The words ‘Boris Johnson’ featured highly. Our driver told us that it was top of the German news cycle. “Boris Johnson ist total verrückt!” I exclaimed, finding it the best my limited German could manage (translation: ‘Boris Johnson is totally crazy’).

 

He howled with laughter. I rather like to think that he later shared this with friends over a beer, as an anecdote of what at least what one Brit thought of Johnson – and could even convey it in German.

 

It was four hours back to Hamburg. But on an excellent German train, with excellent onboard wifi, that ensured we were glued to the slow-mo car crash taking place back in London.

 

By the time we got home, Johnson was no longer the prime minister.

 

Hurrah!

 

Or perhaps less so.

 

For three utterly exhausting months, the country had to watch – helplessly – as The Conservative and Unionist Party first elected a new leader, then dumped her after she screwed the economy, and then found a quick way to choose a third leader (and second unelected prime minister).

 

And a crucial part of that farce was played by the Daily Mail – ‘the voice of Middle England’ – which loves to pretend that it represents ‘common sense’ etc.

 

Liz Gerard is “Long in tooth and sometimes claw, old poacher turns gamekeeper to watch the Press”, as per her Twitter profile. She has had a journalistic career of over 40 years, including 30 as a night editor at The Times.

 

Here, she has done a detailed analysis of the Daily Mail over that quarter of a year, illustrating its massive influence over Tory MPs and members.

 

It is, in effect, a diary, charting the opinion columns and leaders surrounding the issue.

 

Those of us who are aware of what the Mail is like might not be expecting to be surprised. However, what Gerard has done reveals the absolute precision of a real sub-editor (traditionally paid better that reporters on ‘The Street’ for being more literate etc) and shining a light on how the Mail works against democracy.

 

Concentrating on this specific, tumultuous time, she shows precisely how the Mail terrifies Tory MPs. And indeed, she hardly needs to make much extraneous comment – when you see/read the Mail content in this condensed way, it’s very clear what a danger this is and how much sheer hypocrisy there is.

 

I grew up in a rabidly Mail home; I know what this paper does. What Gerard has done here is brilliant in making it so clear just how the publication works against democracy, the public and political debate.

 

I have never read as many parts of Mail editorials as in the last two days reading this book – and never has it been clearer that so much of it is hysterical, pearl clutching with little relation to reality.

 

Gerard has done us all a favour – reminding us just how bad the Mail is, how and why. It is a malign influence on the country’s life. Read this – and spread the word about why and how.

You can buy the book here. 

You can follow Liz over on Twitter twitter.com/gameoldgirl.

Camping it up with a fascinating new history

Paul Baker’s latest foray into LGBT+ history, following histories of Polari and Section 28, takes a look at Camp! The story of the attitude that conquered the world – and it is both an extremely educative and entertaining read.

As with those two previous books, Baker’s approach is well-researched historically, but also includes autobiographical elements and observations, with a nice side of cheek. Also as previously, this recipe works very well.

 

The first chapter examines the origins of camp as we know it – in particular, its relationship to Louis IX in France.

 

I also had no idea about the origins of the cakewalk and the black balls, and therefore, voguing. Baker covers both these in good fashion. 

 

I’ve seen the Jimmy Cagney film Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942 a number of times, but I hadn’t a clue that the lyrics of the eponymous song were originally written in 1755 as a British pop at ragged Americans, who then turned it around.

 

Take these lyrics:

 

“Yankee Doodle went to London,

Riding on a pony,

Stuck a feather in his cap,

And called it macaroni.”

 

Had I ever considered what the pasta reference was actually about? No. But in fact, it was a nickname – and a pejorative one – for young British men who did the Grand Tour and returned with the fashion affectations of, in particular, Italy. Maybe not ‘gay’, but certainly you can see the link to ‘camp’ – and to gay. Fascinating.

 

Taking a leaf out of Baker’s own book, so to speak, there was masses here (particularly in the earlier chapters) that I recognised as tastes from my own earlier years. Agnes Moorehead in Bewitched gets a mention – my absolute favourite character in a show I adored as a child!

 

Paul Lynde was also in Bewitched, but for me, was most memorable and most deliciously enjoyable for his voiceover work on The Perils of Penelope Pitstop (camp in every way imaginable).

 

There are explorations of upper-class British (English) camp – the Mitfords in particular, plus the reach of non-aristo Noël Coward – together with a fascinating introduction to the black cakewalks and balls where voguing was created.

 

But while camp is easy to take as an unserious attitude, Baker illustrates that it is often a way of defiance. And how much more defiant than those at the Stonewall Riots who faced down the police down with a chorus line, singing a revised version of Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay, which, while details are not set in concrete, certainly involved black drag queens.

 

There’s a personal educational tip on that note – it also made me realise also why a version of Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay is used, in the way it is, in the film, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

 

Of course there are things that are missing here – as Baker acknowledges early on: everyone will have different camp (and campy – ie *knowingly* being camp) faves, but this a really good look at a cultural phenomenon. 

 

Paul Baker’s Camp! Is out now, published by Footnote Press

There are still tickets for an event with the author next week in central London – Bloomsbury, Queerness and Camp. Perfect for Pride Month.