I first came across Persephone Books at the age of twelve, when an older friend at school who had just left for university told me that her favourite book outside the writings of Jane Austen was Mariana by Monica Dickens. Naturally, I had to get hold of a copy. I can't remember if I was surprised by its appearance or not, but I certainly now love the way they look- chic and understated. That said, I love the Classics editions too and if they bring Persephone to a wider readership, that can only be a good thing. The endpapers are all beautiful and are chosen with such care (the ones for Marjory Fleming by Oriel Malet have to be my favourites). I didn't get any more Persephones after Mariana for a long time (they are expensive and it was before everything was available at the click of a button), but found myself completely addicted to 'middlebrow' women's writing of the early to mid C20 about a year and a half ago. I wish I'd discovered it all a few months earlier as I could have done my dissertation on it. Oh well. I've had the most amazing luck finding them in charity shops (in London, Leamington Spa, Leicester, Kenilworth, Chichester), for which I am unbelievably grateful, and now have quite a nice collection (fifteen and counting). I don't always agree with everything Nicola Beauman says, but the books are consistently excellent and illuminating. I think they have an good balance of 'hot water bottle' reads (Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day was my refuge on my most depressing evening of the year) and more serious works. I think both can be equally satisfying. If I had to choose a favourite, it would have to be Saplings by Noel Streatfeild, which left me a little numb upon completion. It never should have gone out of print and ought to be on every Literature of World War II reading list. It must be the most wonderful place to work- it was hard not to feel a bit jealous of the (delightful) woman who served us when my mother and I went to the Lamb's Conduit Street shop to choose three for my birthday.
Dorothy Whipple is probably Persephone's flagship author, and it isn't difficult to see why. Her books are so readable and unputdownable. They're of their time in the sense that the world she knew is very different to what we're familiar with today, but they're also timeless. I flew through Someone at a Distance and They Knew Mr Knight even though the climax in both was inevitable. It's quite easy to underestimate the simplicity of her writing- it's probably just as tricky to do effectively as [insert complex literary form of your choice]. I wish I could be more like that, I have a tendency to write in sentences that go on forever. This style works very well in the short story form as there's nothing fussy about them.
The Closed Door and Other Stories is definitely not a comfort read- all the stories are rather bleak in their way and I've never encountered so much bad parenting in one book! Many of the stories are variations on the same theme- parents who use their daughters (always a daughter, never a son) as unpaid servants, and it really is quite horrifying and comparable to slavery. The title story for some reason reminded me a bit of an Eva Ibbotson novel ("Ernest and Alice Hart had not expected or wished for children and after ten years of uneventful matrimony, they viewed the birth of a daughter with dismay"). However, if it had been an Ibbotson novel, the daughter Stella would have been remarkably beautiful and accomplished and found some dramatic means of escape, but Whipple is too much of a realist to allow that to happen, as any possibilities (such as an encounter with a young man named Jimmy in a tea shop) are thwarted by her parents who realise that having a daughter isn't so bad after all, as they'll have someone to look after them in their old age. Her eventual marriage to a kindly, much older doctor starts off well, but turns sour when her widowed mother moves in with them, making life absolute hell. I like to think that Whipple is depicting a particularly extreme example, but it makes one wonder how common lives like this were, as it's certainly a point of fascination here. The second longest story, 'Family Crisis,' about a daughter's elopement with a con man, is shown from a rather Mr Collins-esque father's point of view (with a surprisingly hopeful ending) and 'After Tea' has a particularly interesting twist. Amongst the 'other' stories, I particularly liked the quiet devastation of 'Wednesday,' about a divorcée's (tricked into committing adultery by her ex-husband) monthly visit with her children- a mother who actually loves her children (a rarity in this collection!), but finds them gradually slipping away from her ("She was Mummy and her supplanter was 'Mumsie.' The children had jibbed it at first. They wouldn't say it. But they said it now without a thought"). Simple and heartbreaking.
The second book I chose for Persephone reading week is the Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum, which is very long and dense (perhaps I should have chosen something shorter...), and I probably won't finish it for a while, but a review will be forthcoming when I do.
The William Golding unpleasantness got me thinking about something- writers who were fairly prolific during their lifetimes, but are now only remembered by the public (and indeed the vast majority of readers) for one work. It seems as if every British schoolchild has to read Lord of the Flies at some point (I never took to it, personally), but I can't name any of Golding's other works, despite the fact he won a Nobel prize (of course, this might just be gross ignorance on my part...). A few more examples might be:
E.M. Delafield - The Diary of a Provincial Lady (I believe this has never been out of print...)
Stella Gibbons - Cold Comfort Farm (perhaps the most perfect example)
L.P. Hartley - The Go-Between
Winifred Holtby - South Riding
Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
Bram Stoker - Dracula
William Makepeace Thackeray - Vanity Fair (possibly controversial, but has anyone actually read Pendennis?)
You can throw as much social commentary and historical context into Oklahoma! as you want, but in its purest essence, it’s a love story about whether the farm girl will choose the handsome cowboy or sinister hired hand to take her to the party. There’s no use denying it- it’s the simplicity that makes it so beautiful. I always thought it was difficult to go too far wrong with it as it’s got a terrific blend of comedy and drama, a fairytale and a comic romance, and a happy ending for the survivors (well, maybe not for Ali Hakim…). Stephen Sondheim may have said that he would have written the show with Jud Fry as the hero, but Rodgers and Hammerstein did not. However, John Doyle is so concerned with making it all edgy and minimalist (no scenery! What a concept) that the romance is completely butchered. There’s no playful teasing and one doesn’t even particularly care when Curly and Laurey finally admit their love for each other (they don’t even look at each other during the wedding- some kind of love match!). That added to the clunky staging and general lack of charisma amongst the cast makes it an all-round disappointing experience, especially as Chichester did so brilliantly with its glorious production of The Music Man last year. It’s as if they’re shying away from the fact that it’s a musical so that critics who usually dislike musicals can praise the production’s ‘Chekhovian’ qualities. It is possible to bring out the darkness of the show without sacrificing the joy. Can’t they let the text speak for itself? Oklahoma! has a very special place in my heart as it was my companion piece to Carousel as more positive view of love and relationships when I was seriously getting into musicals in my early teens; I wanted to be Shirley Jones, and Gordon MacRae was my first proper crush. Whenever I watch the movie, I’m always astonished at the way it’s absolutely teeming with sex that went over my head when I was 13 (I’m quite astonished so much managed to get past the 1950s production codes). It’s got a bit of everything, and yet John Doyle seems determined to suppress the very heart of the show.
The staging is terribly awkward- having the whole cast constantly on stage when they weren’t needed, and Aunt Eller in her rocking chair looking on was a dreadful decision. It all looked so cluttered. The actors didn’t particularly play to the audience or to each other. Curly and Laurey were metres away from each other throughout The Surrey with the Fringe on Top and People Will Say We’re In Love involves Laurey rushing around the stage at breakneck speed. There’s no intimacy or warmth at all. The title song was the best sung number, but it had little animation or spirit. It’s also horribly over-mic’d. It’s a big theatre, but these people really ought to be able to fill it without too much help. Oh for the days when singers could actually project…
Leila Benn Harris is not a natural Laurey (she also doesn’t look right for the part- too exotic), and she isn’t helped by the terrible direction. This Laurey doesn’t even respond when Curly finally kisses her, and has a face like stone during the wedding. I’m also not the biggest fan of her Disney princess-ish voice. I prefer a fuller sound for this kind of singing (she can’t compare vocally or acting-wise to last year’s leading lady, Scarlett Strallen, who would have been perfect for Laurey). As for her frocks, I don’t mind Laurey being scruffily dressed whilst she’s doing her farm work (I realise that that’s more gritty and realistic than Shirley Jones looking gorgeous in all her pretty, spotless dresses), but for goodness sake, she needs a nice party dress. Even Josefina Gabrielle in Trevor Nunn’s production got one. At least she gets a wedding dress, but she should have been wearing lace-up boots, not anachronistic pumps- it wouldn’t have been noticable if her dress had covered her feet.
I have to single out Natalie Casey as Ado Annie for delivering the most embarassing, obnoxious performance I’ve seen so far this year. She has no singing abilities and shrieked and gurned her way through her lines with a bizarre half American, half Cockney accent. Louise Plowright (any relation to Joan?) makes nothing of the role of Aunt Eller (bring back Charlotte Greenwood…), apart from waving her legs in the air so that Ali Hakim can fasten her garters (Aunt Eller would never do that. She wouldn’t have permed blonde hair either). The most successful female performance was probably Amy Ellen Richardson as Gertie, who had the best comic timing in the cast- I remember my friend raving about her Cosette in Les Mis, so I think she really should have been cast as Laurey or Ado Annie. The men fare a bit better as Michael Xavier sings with the best voice in the cast (shame about the complete lack of chemistry with Laurey and he lacks the curls that give his character his nickname) and Craig Els is fairly menacing as Jud, but both could have been stronger under more competent direction. I wonder if it was intentional to have a Curly and Jud who looked similar. The choreography is uninspired (one of my favourite bits, the Many a New Day ballet is completely cut- Kansas City is the boys’ chance to show off, Many a New Day is the girls’ moment), and Out of My Dreams is particularly disappointing, without any real shock factor (the wedding veil covered with red rose petals that becomes Curly’s shroud- a metaphor for virginity? Never heard that one before…).
The Telegraph reading, lilac two-piece wearing audience seemed to love this. I did not. There was also a Tourette’s sufferer disturbing the first act- I know it’s very politically incorrect to complain about such things, but if they’re going to distract everyone else… Anyway, now this is how Oklahoma! should be done:
I've known for a while that I want to work in theatre. You could say an obsession with theatre is in my genes. However, if someone had told me that I'd be making my professional technical theatre debut (something I never did at amateur level- backstage was every bit as cliquey as onstage at school) with Les Primas, a drag ballet troupe in a pub theatre, I never would have believed it. It still feels a bit surreal. When I signed up at the Rosemary Branch Theatre as a sort of errands girl, I expected to sell tickets and deliver leaflets (which I did), but at the dress rehearsal I found myself put in charge of sound. I was probably more nervous than the performers on opening night (which was especially exciting as we were listed above the Mariinsky in Time Out). It's hardly the most complicated job (far less so than lighting), but I think being taken out of my comfort zone has given me a lot of confidence and I had such a high when everything went according to plan, and the show was received with enormous enthusiasm. I honestly hadn't felt so happy or positive in quite a long time. It's hard to overstate how good it felt to feel useful again.
I feel very lucky to have been able to watch the creative process, and to observe all the little details that make a show come together. The cast, led by the effervescent Joel Morris as prima ballerina Margot Funtyme (he's absolutely extraordinary in the sense that he dances- ON POINTE- and looks like a real ballerina- it isn't like watching a man in drag at all), are all remarkably talented. Joel is supported by Leigh Alderson (the perfect male dancer- I have no doubt that this young man has a very big future ahead of him and I may have nearly passed out on opening night when he delighted us with some surprise moves to 'I Get a Kick Out Of You') as premier danseur Rudolph Koklova, Ian Archer-Watters as Iamaya Plisetswanskaya (Margot's rival), actor and ballet newcomer (though you'd never guess...) Michael 'Tim' Heywoodas character dancer Irek Tchnyob (and also offers some stand-up and cake as Doreen, the Northern cleaning lady), and finally Gary Albert Hughes (one of the loveliest people I have ever met) as hostess and singer Misty Willow (the ultimate in glamour- a bit like a benign Norma Desmond). It's the most wonderful, affectionate pastiche of classical ballet (the bitchiness, the upstaging, the milking of applause, the bows that go on forever), and the cast know how to milk every single nuance for every laugh it's worth. I love the way that they manage to blend the high camp silliness and the beauty and intricacy of the dancing together so skillfully. I have to admit that I was originally expecting it to be very much a niche show aimed at a very specific audience, but I couldn't have been more wrong. It's perfect for anyone who likes to be entertained (I appreciated how the innuendo was kept to a minimum- it's much funnier that way). Tutus, glitter, false eyelashes and fairy lights- what could be better?
Les Primas ought to be recommended on the NHS to anyone who's feeling low. As one audience member commented, "It's better than Covent Garden!" I couldn't have hoped for a more fun first show to work on. If they return to the Rosie, I'll have to force everyone I know to come along. I'm never going to be able to watch Swan Lake in the same way again, but somehow it feels worth it.
