GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY

After writing a post about 'actors (who) can bring a tear to the eyes of the audience. They do this by playing their role with soul . . .' and that 'audiences who are impressed by the technique and the learning of all those lines, by university actors, but half the time you don't believe them.'

And then I go to the theatre last night and at the end of the show there wasn't a dry eye in the house.

I went to see GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY at the Old Vic Theatre in London. It is what you have already guessed: a play with a title from a Bob Dylan song.

But not only that, it also uses his music. It was written by the brilliant Irish playwright Conor McPherson who conjures up a play, set in 1934 – which is before Dylan was born – and uses some of Bob Dylan's music.

It is a good play and it is peopled with some great actors from Ireland and Britain who use American accents. The fact that the piece is set in Duluth, Minnesota, didn't tempt any of them to try a Minnesota accent, like they use in programmes like Fargo, didn't distract from the evening of brilliance; in fact it was an evening of magic.

Even though I thought the play was brilliant I don't think it would have caught fire without the songs. What stands out is the genius of Dylan; not only are the lyrics outstanding but his songs are beautiful and they are beautifully performed by the cast. There are great singers and as some of the cast are well known I was surprised at how well they sung.

The genius of Dylan is of course in the words. They evoke all kinds of imagery and sometimes you wonder where he gets them from. For instance:

Idiot Wind Blowing every time you move your mouth
Blowing down the back roads headin' south
Idiot wind
Blowing every time you move your teeth
You're an idiot, babe
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe

I ran into the fortune-teller
Who said beware of lightning that might strike
I haven't known peace and quiet
For so long I can't remember what it's like
There's a lone soldier on the cross
Smoke pourin' out of a boxcar door
You didn't know it, you didn't think it could be done
In the final end he won the wars
After losin' every battle

There are many more, many more pieces of magnificence, and this is probably not the best, just something that came to me. It makes me think back to the naysayers when Dylan first came upon the scene and when it became clear that he had named himself after the poet Dylan Thomas they sneered and the same sneering started when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature but . . let them sneer.

There is a set of drums on stage, which various members of the cast play throughout the evening but . . . . it finishes on October 7^th.

I think it will be back soon in the west end and then the world – look out for it!!

Bye bye Sah-Peter!

     Peter Hall on the left and Trevor Nunn on the right.

It's amazing really, that when someone in the theatre, someone as important as Peter Hall dies, not a lot of people know him or have even heard of him. But he was important to the theatre and with all the tributes yesterday, including a whole programme dedicated to him on the radio, Front Row, the one that stuck out for me was the tribute by Trevor Nunn.

Both of them were knighted, so it should be Sir Peter and Sir Trevor, even though in professional terms they shouldn't use the title. They both came from Suffolk and if they ever worked together, those two posh boys reverted to Suffolk accents.

Trevor Nunn was from Ipswich and attended Northgate Grammar School for Boys (Now Northgate High School) and Peter Hall was from Bury St Edmunds and his father was the station master of Shelford Station, where the family lived – so two relatively humble starts to life.

He won a scholarship to The Perse School, in Cambridge before taking up a further scholarship to read English at St. Catherine's College, at Cambridge.

Trevor Nunn also went to Cambridge so the pair had a similar pedigree. 

This start in life, for them, may have changed the British Theatre because directors, and even actors and comedians, started to come from the Universities, both Oxbridge and others, as opposed to the traditional training methods such as drama schools and colleges or even ASMs (Assistant Stage Managers) in the theatre.

There are many great actors who used the university method and some used both, going to drama schools after getting an MA.

It gave rise to clever comedy like Monty Python's Flying Circus of which I was a great fan. I didn't mind sketches about Jean Paul-Sartre or having Mao Tse-Tung and Che Guevara on quiz shows in sketches, and sometimes when I watched these shows I found them uncontrollably funny. But they were funny because they were intellectually clever. 

Charlie Chaplin was intellectually clever. He would work out exactly what he wanted to do with a tramp, a cop and a park bench and then do it till he got it right. Sometimes, eventually, taking days to do one bit and even scrapping a lot when he couldn't do it up to his satisfaction.

Then this man would get on with his serious life of debauchery (let's face it) whereas his contemporaries, Laurel and Hardy, were just funny.

Laurel and Hardy could not go through a door, take a drink, start a car or anything else, without there being a great gag at the end.

Rather like Morecambe and Wise – whose spontaneity was brilliant.

I had a pal once who was working backstage with another double act, Mike and Bernie Winters, and he watched them do their act every single show and found it hard to believe what he was witnessing; so he went up to them after one of the shows and asked them about their spontaneity. I don't know what the answer was but, like everything else which concerns talent, they probably didn't know.

The university educated actor would probably know – but they didn't have it themselves half the time, and the university trained director might know - and that's where they came in useful.

It was strange that one of the clips on TV yesterday has a clip of Peter Hall directing Cilla Black, of all people! It was in a film called Work is a 4 letter Word.

A lot of times an actor can bring a tear to the eyes of the audience. They do this by playing their role with soul (ha ha I'm a poet); they would play it straight from the heart and, at the same time, hit their marks and, as James Cagney used to say, 'look the other fella in the eye and tell the truth'. That's, more or less it, I suppose, but when you think of it, people in real life don't always look people in the eye. They move their eyes, they shift. There are some false observances by psychologists that when you look away you are lying; I think people who are good liars look people straight in the eye and this is a good technique sometimes for an actor when they have to act innocent whilst playing the crook!!

But getting back to Morecambe and Wise – or should I say, Hall and Nunn – they're not funny; they may have been in real life when talking to each other in Suffolk accents and some of their actors may have brought tears to the eyes of their audiences but, by and large, it was the instinctive actors and comedians who move you; sometimes move you out of your seat and in to the bar, I have to admit, but I'm sure you know what I mean.

Sometimes the audiences are impressed by the technique and the learning of all those lines, by university actors, but half the time you don't believe them.

It's funny because the only reason I started this post was because I found it funny that Sir Posh and Sir Posh spoke in Suffolk accents when they got together and I was going to chip in with a bit of an anecdote about me but sometimes we have to take a back seat.

Bye bye sah-peter!

Brexit

Now this is for all my American friends who wonder what the hell is going on over here in the UK just as we wonder what is going on in America – the states, as some people call it to give it a ring of familiarity when they have never been there – bit like saying 'Frisco' for San Francisco when they locals would never say that. Someone once used the expression the bay area of San Francisco when in actual fact San Francisco is in the Bay Area; bit like saying the London area of Soho. 

In other words we don't seem to know much about each others countries.

The thing is some time ago (1974) Britain had a plebiscite – the first one in their history. It's when the plebs – the plebeians – have a popular vote for something which they eventually called a referendum (work that one out how one word became the other!)

Just before that (and I'm not looking anything up today so don't correct me on dates etc) in 1972 Edward Heath, the then Prime Minister, took Britain in to the common market. He was a Conservative and the opposition didn't like it so when the opposition, The Labour Party, were elected in the next election, they called a referendum, even though they (me too) were against a common market at the time but the population voted to stay in.

So the government went along with this and stayed in as it progressed and formulated in to what it is now The European Community or the EU as they got to call it.

In the meantime and over the years the right wing of the Conservative Party had members who were described as Euro Skeptics and they moaned about the EU making laws for Britain – even though they didn't impose any laws on Britain just stipulations about being a member the union: no capital punishment, being one of them and various standards for duty free exporting and importing; various rules as to how money could be transferred between countries, ability to be able to work and live in any of the EU countries and things like that.

But there still remained the Euro Skeptics on the right of the Conservative Party.

Now let me explain – there are three main parties here: the Conservatives on the right; the Labour Party on the soft left; the Liberals in between them. 

Unlike in America where the Liberals are on the extreme left. The Liberals here, having other titles like the SDLP, at one point and now they are called the Liberal Democrats.

One day, a piece of snot rather like a bogey (which the Americans call buggers) fell out of someone's nose and became the leader of another party; a party of extreme right persuasion called The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP).

There he is above, that piece of snot, when he was younger.

UKIP attracted a lot of the Euro Skeptics from the Conservative Party – in fact at one point it looked liked a hemorrhage and the Conservative Prime Minister was worried.

UKIP didn't seem to get any seats in Parliament in fact the only two seats they ever did have in the Commons were when Conservatives who changed parties in mid-stream and only one of them retained their seat at the next election and he has now gone.

Because of the hemorrhage of party members the Prime Minister promised a referendum as to whether the country should stay in the EU and the country voted to leave; he didn't want any more leaving his party.

That is the whole story really.

The laws of Britain, by-laws, common laws (jurisprudence) and the like were set up in the Magna Carta in the twelfth century or so. 

Bad King John was taken to Runnymede by the Lords of the Day – Dukes and Earls and other fingers - and they made Johnny Boy sign the Magna Carta (I think it means Magnificent Book) and that's how Britain has been ruled ever since. 

No constitution and nothing written down apart from by-laws etc so no arguments, as in America, as to what is constitutional and the constitutionality of this and that.

So no names or pack drill today – every name I ever mention on this blog goes out on the Internet and attracts readers no matter how small my blog is which is why I haven't mentioned any.

We have a bunch of politicians at the moment who are trying to negotiate something as complicated as Magna Carta and they don't seem to know what they're doing – and we are standing for it.