The Wars of the Roses

Over the past week I've finally managed to catch up with the brilliant BBC adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry VI and Richard III plays, ie The Wars of the Roses.

I've seen Richard III several times (with Anthony Sher, Ian McKellen and Kevin Spacey playing the king): each was brilliant in very different productions: traditional, a fascist 1930s, and mid-Atlantic. However these were standalone productions and it is only when you see how Richard develops over the three parts of Henry VI that you can fully understand all the historical background. Having also recently visited Laycock Abbey which was used as a location it was interesting to see how well it worked on screen.

It was no surprise to discover that Benedict Cumberpatch was brilliant in the lead role, but the production had casting in depth with Judi Dench and many other superb actors in supporting roles.

However having watched it at a time when news of the US presidential elections is flooding media as I watched the plays I began to see a strange and unexpected counterpoint to the drama. And then this morning I read this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/09/opinion/sunday/shakespeare-explains-the-2016-election.html?_r=0

Years ago I read a book called Shakespeare Our Contemporary while studying A Level English. Now I know that Shakespeare will always be our contemporary.

Kevin Spacey in Richard III

We bought our tickets the day booking opened but last Saturday was the earliest we could get tickets to see Spacey in Richard III.

Having seen him in both Speed the Plow (excellent) and Inherit the Wind (outstanding) and then having seen the reviews we knew we were in for a treat - and we were not disappointed.

I've never studied the play, although I've seen it twice before (with Anthony Sher and Ian McKellan in case you're interested) and apart from the outstanding performances by both actors and very interesting productions my main recollection is a complex plot governed by by a mass of intertwined dynastic relationships.

The Old Vic chose the "information light" route for the programme: as a standalone production there was more focus on the psychology of tyranny rather than the history of the War of the Roses, and as I watched it I realised that this silo approach worked and kept me focussed on the play.  The only element which I found slightly disconcerting was the Anglo American cast: the colour blind casting worked well - as it always does - but to me, with the sole and honourable exception of Spacey who gave a towering performance, the American cast members seemed to struggle with the text.

Spacey won the acting honours, but I'd also award prizes to Gemma Jones (as a witch-like Queen Margaret who haunted many of the scenes) and Haydn Gwynne (as the Duchess of York) who was more than capable to standing up to Spacey's elemental force.

As we drove home from the Old Vic we heard the sound of many police sirens, and as country bumpkins we thought this was standard for a Staurday night in Londeon; it was only when we checked the headlines on Sunday morning that we realised that there had been riots.  The play includes scenes where the citizens of London are persuaded to call for the Duke of Gloucester to assume the crown as Richard III; on Saturday evening their descendants clearly had other priorities.

Moon

These are my notes for our next film:

Moon


UK 2009 106 minutes

Director: Duncan Jones

Starring: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey, Benedict Wong, Matt Berry and Dominique McElligott

Nominations and Awards

• Won Carl Foreman Award for special achievement in first feature film

• Nominated for BAFTA (Best British Film)

• A further 17 wins and 14 nominations

“Moon is a superior example of that threatened genre, hard science-fiction, which is often about the interface between humans and alien intelligence of one kind or another, including digital... The movie is really all about ideas. It only seems to be about emotions. How real are our emotions, anyway? How real are we? Someday I will die. This laptop I’m using is patient and can wait.”

Roger Ebert

Towards the end of a solitary three year stint mining helium-3 on the moon Sam Bell (Rockwell) experiences a personal crisis. His sole companion is a robot called GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey) but just before his scheduled return he has a vision of a dark-haired young woman inside the base and then sees another figure outside on the surface of the moon.

The script is an original story co-written by director Duncan Jones. The film is in the tradition of the great science fiction films of the 1960s and 1970s that Jones watched as he was growing up and the film pays obvious tribute to such classics as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Silent Running (1972), Solaris (1972 and Alien (1979). In an interview Jones explained that the choice of the moon as a location for his story was deliberate:

"for me, the Moon has this weird mythic nature to it... There is still a mystery to it. As a location, it bridges the gap between science-fiction and science fact. We (humankind) have been there. It is something so close and so plausible and yet at the same time, we really don't know that much about it."


Duncan Jones is the son of David Bowie and his first wife. He made a deliberate choice to avoid the music industry and went to film school only after graduating from university with a degree in philosophy. He directed a number of commercials, including one for a controversial 2006 campaign for French Connection before making Moon as his first feature. The film had originally been intended for a straight to video release before its critical success at the 2009 Sundance Festival led to its commercial release across the US and in the UK. Following this success Duncan Jones has now directed Source Code, a big budget science fiction thriller starring Jake Gyllenhaal scheduled for release in April 2011, and has announced plans to make another science fiction film called Mute to be set in the same science fiction universe as Moon in which Sam Bell will make a cameo appearance.

Inherit The Wind

We've just been to see Inherit the Wind at the Old Vic, a dramatisation of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial with Kevin Spacey and David Troughton giving brilliant performaces as the defence and prosection attorneys.


When the play was first performed in the 1950s it was seen as a critique of the anti-communist witch hunts (it appeared at the same time as The Crucible), but following recent news reports about the alleged support for the teaching of creationism in schools, it now comes across as a critique of the idiocies of biblical literalism. Philip Pullman wrote a facinating article showing how both political and religious totalitarianism fears knowledge, and seeing a play like this makes us realise that the battle with superstition will be never-ending.


I've recently been reading Darwin, and his "theory" is substantiated by examples gleaned from years of detailed research and observation. For the record I'm not against the teaching of creationism in schools: just so long as it forms part of a general session on creation myths and no one makes a claim that there is the merest iota of truth in it.