Living, a film by Oliver Herman’s at Picturehouse at FACT, Liverpool

This compact film is based on a 1952 Japanese drama Ikiru by Akira Kurosawa, with a screenplay by Kazoo Ishiguro. 

The setting is post-war London where we observe the London County Council civil service in action: the workforce mainly male, conventional and comfortable in their daily routine from suburb to office. With a uniform of dark suit and tie and bowler hat, they work closely together in their self-contained departments (Parks, Planning, Drainage etc.) and yet continue to address one another formally by surname and know little of their colleagues’ personal circumstances.  A senior member of one of these teams, Mr. Williams (played by Bill Nighy), is particularly remote. One day, however, he has a medical diagnosis that gives him less than six months to live. The film explores how someone of that disposition deals with such a situation.  He is clearly faced with a huge conflict between his reticence to depart from convention and his desire to ensure that he makes what he can of the time he has left. 4*

Abdullah Ibrahim at the Barbican Hall, London

Possibly one of the last concerts of this renowned South African jazz composer and pianist, now aged 88, whose work I didn’t really know. He previously used the name Dollar Brand, Brand being his true surname.  His work is influenced by Ellington and Monk but also, primarily, traditional gospel and church music of the multicultural areas of Cape Town. 

The Barbican Hall (2000 seats) was packed with an enthusiastic audience of supporters. Ibrahim was performing without his usual band.  He was escorted to the piano on the stage, and back off, giving the impression that he would have been unable to do it alone.  It was difficult without knowing his other repertoire to know to what extent what he played related to his other work. The overall impression was that we were hearing a meditation on his past career. 

The concert was billed as lasting one and a half hours, but barely lasted one hour.  There were effectively two separate sessions, the first lasting about 35 minutes, the second about 15 minutes, with a vocal episode between, where Ibrahim half-recited, half-sang a sort of reminiscence of traditional lyrics. His playing was fragmentary; one was always expecting a cadence to be resolved, but it always fell short, moving on to a new theme, or a new improvisation of the same theme.  I found it difficult to extract a satisfactory melodic or harmonic line. The fault lies in my lack of familiarity with his particular idiom, but I did not enjoy. 1*

Baghdaddy, a play by Jasmine Naziha Jones at the Royal Court Theatre, London

Like much of the Royal Court’s programme, this play emerged from an Introduction to Playwriting group at the theatre.  It tells the story of a half-Iraqui, half-British young girl, first seen as aged 8 and later as a teenager and how she lived with the realisation of the consequences for her family and for her country of Britain and America’s war on Iraq. Many of her family were killed and her father, who remained in the UK, was traumatised by the many years of war and the devastation of his country. 

This was a serious subject that was well acted by the main characters but, for some reason, the serious issues were constantly counteracted by three clowns, who caricatured the events with mime and jokes and ludicrous over-acting.  Many of the audience found this hilarious; those who did not left at the interval, I suspect. We stayed, but regretted it. Awful. 1*

The Rape of Lucretia, an opera by Benjamin Britten at the Linbury Theatre, London

This new production, first seen this year at Aldeburgh, has a superb musical contribution from the Aurora Orchestra and the music, composed in 1946, is Britten at his best. 

The plot is simple and brutal. The setting is an unspecified conflict, with the story based on the Roman/Greek war with the Roman army led by the son of the Etruscan conqueror of Rome. Lucretia, the wife of one of the Roman generals who have been fighting away from home is alleged to be the only wife who has not been unfaithful to her husband Collatinus.  Tarquinius, the son of the king, is a misogynistic brute who takes it upon himself to prove that he can break Lucretia’s vow of chastity. 

The tale is narrated by a male and female ‘chorus’ — in effect a male and female soloist —who outline both the background and provide commentary on the events that take place.  The critical incident is that Tarquinius, unable to seduce Lucretia, rapes her. Collatinus returns to the scene and recognises that Lucretia was not at fault, but Lucretia is unable to bear the shame and commits suicide.  Tarquinius shows no regret for his crime and even the neutral male soldiers display misogynistic behaviour. 

This is a grim and tragic story that might have been a valid commentary on the destruction and dehumanisation of the Second World War.  However, a kind of epilogue sung by the ‘chorus’ suggests that belief in the healing power of Christianity can lead to forgiveness and redemption even in the case of such inexcusable criminality. Britten was a devout Christian, I know, but this is a weak element of the plot. 

The singing from the small cast was superb, in particular Anne-Marie Stanley as Lucretia and Richard Gibson as the male ‘chorus’.  Unfortunately, the female chorus was indisposed and her part was (superbly) sung from the score, with the original soloist taking only an acting role. It seems that we were very fortunate that the performance took place at all, as the whole opera was cancelled the following night. 5*

The Makropulos Affair, an opera by Leos Janáček at the New Theatre, Oxford

A performance by Welsh National Opera of one of Janáček’s strangest operas.  It is based on the play by Czech author Karel Čapek and tells the story of Emilia Marty, seen initially as a contemporary (1920s) opera singer, who is involved in a legal inheritance case between two families.  The details of the case are complex, but it becomes clear that Marty has information that is relevant to the decision.  How she has such inside information is a mystery at that point, but the men involved with the case are clearly attracted to Marty and are enthusiastic about her involvement. 

It emerges that Marty also needs to obtain a document that is relevant to the court case and is willing to engage in relations with one of the litigants in order to do so.  Gradually it becomes clear that Marty has inside knowledge about several women who have played a part in the history of the two families contesting the inheritance and eventually she confesses that she has been alive for the past 376 years, taking on the identity of several women, all of whom have initials E.M. This was a consequence of a magic potion that was tested out on her in the 16th century. The effect is finally wearing off and it becomes clear that the document she is seeking is the recipe for this potion.  However, when she finally gets hold of it, she confesses that it eternal life has become a burden and chooses to embrace mortality and die.  

Although like most operatic heroines, E.M. dies at the end, she is an unlikeable character, whose attractiveness to men she uses to their disadvantage. We only finally feel pity for her when we realise that her character is a consequence of life circumstances that are beyond her control. 

The part of E.M. is an extraordinarily challenging one, more so, one would think, as it was being sung in Czech by the amazing Spanish Ángeles Biancas Gulin, who almost entirely dominates the final act.  All the other parts were beautifully performed without exception and the orchestra, conducted by Tomáš Hanus brought the music fully to life. 5*

White Noise, a film by Noah Baumbach at Picturehouse at FACT, Liverpool

I started off being very disappointed with this film, which looked interesting on paper and had high-star reviews.  It looked like another example of the genre of a cookie American family with unrealistically bright and amusing children who do outrageous things. We start by seeing the family as consumers in the supermarket where they act out exactly those parts and that’s how the film ends too. However, in between, it provides some serious material.  

Firstly, there is a satire on academia: the adult male in the family is an expert on only one subject — Hitler — and knows about little else, including the German language.  This plays out in a comic episode between himself and another academic in the same minor institution, who knows only about Elvis. Then, more seriously, there is the incident in which a tanker explodes and threatens the neighbourhood with toxic fumes that are presented as being carcinogenic some years henceforth. The chaos of the abortive evacuation procedures is well done, no doubt a reflection of the inability of local US services to cope in such an emergency. And beyond that, the film, and the novel by Don DeLillo from which it is drawn, makes serious comment on our general inability to deal with impending disaster, whether it is unpredictable economic hardship, the climate crisis or one’s own death. 

The book was published in 1985 and the film set in that period.  There is a glimmer of false hope in the film where the younger members of the family seem more capable than the parents of handling the various crises and possibly creating a better future, but of course we in the audience realise that, like their parents, they too have subsequently gone on to ignore the need to take action. So they carry on as consumers having fun in the supermarket. 4*

She Said, a film by Maria Schrader at Barbican Cinema, London

This is a dramatisation of the work of New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey to uncover the criminal abuse that young actors and movie employees suffered at the hands of director Harvey Weinstein.  The plot exposes the difficulties in working on a theme where the victims are unwilling to talk on account of shame or fear or, more shockingly, because they have previously agreed to accept a payout with a non-disclosure agreement attached.  What is hard to accept is that Weinstein continued to rape and assault his female employees even after he had been successfully sued; it seemed that he considered his behaviour to be an acceptable part of the film director’s role. 

Yet obtaining enough evidence to convict was not easy, even at a time when such behaviour was no longer acceptable (not that it ever should have been).  The screenplay is based closely on reality and so we see how the evidence was gradually pieced together and how, once clear evidence emerged, other victims were suddenly willing to talk and contribute to his conviction. 

A straightforward and well produced film. 4*

Aftersun, a film by Charlotte Wells at Barbican Cinema, London 

This film justifiably received enthusiastic reviews, coming as it did from a new director/ writer. It employs interesting cinematic techniques to tell a simple tale: that of a recently divorced young father (played subtly by Paul Mescal) who takes his 11- year old daughter on a down-market package holiday trip.  It’s clear from the start that the relationship between father and daughter is sound but that the father Calum has made a serious mistake in thinking that the experience will be enjoyable. The daughter Sophie is an extrovert near-teenager who would like to be considered part of the teenage crowd at the resort but is intelligent enough to realise that she is just too young.  And Calum soon realises that a holiday with a child as his only company does not live up to the potential, however slight it might be, for an enjoyable experience for a relatively young single man.  In fact, it highlights for him the misery of his current existence; it becomes clear that he is seriously wounded by the breakup of the relationship with his former partner. 

The tension in an otherwise potentially uninteresting plot lies in not-fully-explained flashbacks to previous holiday relationships by Calum and to flash-forwards of Sophie recounting the holiday to a future partner or relative. At several points in the film there is a potential for a dramatic incident that might have been included in a lesser screenplay, but then gets resolved. This is sophisticated film-making, yet I felt that somehow the build-ups to these non-events were too concentrated for them to be resolved with little explanation (it would be wrong to give more information about this without revealing the plot.)

Overall, a reasonably good film.  We should expect some interesting work from the same director in future. 4* 

Watch on the Rhine, a play by Lillian Hellman at Donmar Warehouse, London

Written in 1940 and depicting contemporary events, the play deals with the role of the United States in assisting the emigration of Jews and other persecuted people from Europe during the early years of the Second World War.  A wealthy American widow, Fanny Farrelly, played magnificently by Patricia Hodge, welcomes home her daughter Sara, who has been living in the Germany for the past 20 years and now has three bilingual children.  She is accompanied by her German husband, Kurt Muller who, it becomes clear, is an anti-fascist activist and so is escaping the German regime. In the original play, whether this character is being persecuted for his Jewishness or his Communist sympathies is only very loosely referenced. This was the author’s choice at the time; yet, despite that, she was subsequently subject to legal challenges and major anti-semitic and anti-communist criticism of her work. 

The dramatic progress of the play is fairly conventional and typical of plays of that period: two previously unknown family secrets are revealed and a death occurs. However, its emotional content is fully explored and given real impact by the superb quality of the acting and the cleverly constructed script, containing both pathos and humour. Hellman wrote several more plays that are rarely performed but, on the basis of this performance, may be due for revival. 5*