Small can be beautiful

Dream of the Dog by Craig Higginson is billed as 'a richly textured and complex story of South Africa's emerging democracy, and its continued negotiation with its past in order to find a workable identity for its future'. That does the play a disservice really, making it sound like a slice of worthy but probably defiantly unentertaining liberal soul-searching.

Actually, it is a gripping 75 minutes of intimate theatre, in the none-more-intimate surrounds of Trafalgar Studios, a venue so cosy that when I was last there one of the actors trod on my foot during a particularly crucial moment.

Janet Suzman plays an elderly woman living with her unpleasant but senile husband in the South African bush. The farm has been sold and she is preparing for a move to Durban to be by the sea. On the eve of the move she is visited by the mysterious 'Look Smart', her former garden-boy who has come good and has returned on a mission to dig up the past and reveal a terrible crime.

Dream of the Dog is a brilliantly acted piece with Ariyon Bakare (who was clearly wasted in his previous credits in Family Affairs and Doctors) as Look Smart matching Suzman all the way. It's exactly the right length for the subject matter and whilst it does indeed have something to say about South African society and history, it's a good, solid drama in its own right.

The other production at Trafalgar Studios - Holding the Man - is also worth a look, although this true story of a gay relationship in 70s/80s Australia does suffer a little from a jarring if understandable shift in tone from a comic first half to a tragic second act.

Put them in the right order, and you can give the world a little nudge

There's a line in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing (currently at the Old Vic) that made me smile in recognition - 'I don't like artists, I like singles' - but having seen Stoppard's Arcadia last year, and now this revival, I may reconsider that philosophy.

The Real Thing is a play about love, and also about writing. The protagonist, Henry (superbly played by Toby Stephens) is an intellectual smart-ass playwright with more than a passing resemblance to Stoppard himself. He leaves his wife Charlotte for actress Annie, who in turn cuckolds him with a young lover. Henry is a man who uses his command of language as a weapon, but he also defends the use of words as a means of advancing ideas. He compares them to cricket bats, which are made out of several pieces of wood balanced in perfect proportion so as to send a ball on its way at just the right velocity.

This is a fine play, the real thing in more ways than one, with excellent acting, witty dialogue and a literary style that is unusual in modern theatre but never quite tips over into pretension. As a humble creative writing student myself, it's when one watches a play like this and then struggles even to write a short review, that one realises the gulf that exists between we aspirants and the truly gifted. But it gives you something to aim for, even if you're having a little trouble getting off the launch pad.

Remakes

I've always been sceptical about remakes, especially the recent trend to remake comparatively recent films like Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street (franchises that only actually ended the first time in the last decade or so), but this latest atrocity surely takes the biscuit.

Death at a Funeral is a moderately amusing comedy directed by Frank 'Yoda' Oz that came out in 2007.

Death at a Funeral is a remake directed by Neil la Bute, that is coming out in 2010.

It even features one of the same actors reprising his role!

If Death at a Funeral Mark One was in Korean or Swahili then there might be some small justification for such a piece of filmic depravity but the film is in English, was directed by an American and even features some American actors in the cast.

There have of course been a few justified remakes, a surprising example being the Clooney/Pitt/Damon Oceans Eleven which was a big improvement on the Rat Pack's original, but really the way things are going we can envisage a day when the remake is released before the original...

Ghost Stories....

This may be one of the first full-length reviews on the net of Ghost Stories, now showing at the Lyric, Hammersmith.

Ghost Stories, billed as 'a truly terrifying theatrical experience' comes with a strong pedigree, being written by Jeremy Dyson (the non-acting member of the League of Gentlemen) and the versatile Andy Nyman, a writer, actor and magician who excels in portraying dislikeable characters.

Nyman also takes the lead here; an arrogant academic and professional sceptic who presents to the audience three spooky case studies which he intends to debunk. The episodic style is a homage to the classic 40s horror film Dead of Night, the poster for which makes a brief appearance during proceedings. The portmanteau format was also used in the 60s and 70s in such hokey treats as Asylum and The House That Dripped Blood, and more recently by the League of Gentlemen themselves in their 2000 Christmas special, and by League alumnus Mark Gatiss in Crooked House (which also, incidentally, featured Andy Nyman in a supporting role).

So although the format may be quite unusual for theatre, it's nothing that hasn't been seen before, but then horror is quite a cosy genre in its way, with familiar tropes delivering comfortable shivers. The individual stories themselves also feature such standbys as a lonely nightwatchman, a car breaking down in the woods and a haunted nursery but are no less enjoyable for that. The first story in particular does a nice job of building tension and giving the audience the jitters.

Ghost Stories is not quite a 'terrifying' experience, but it has its share of scary moments, cheesy moments, and chuckles, and builds to a clever, and surprisingly thought-provoking climax. What more can you ask for?

Random writings....

Some vague need to self-publish leads me to ABC tales, a rather nice site where writers can get feedback on their ramblings

http://www.abctales.com/story/houndtang/her

A flicker of hope for film comedy...

The Barbican. What a strange place. A maze-like 70s housing estate in the middle of the City, with a charming if semi-deserted (on a Sunday afternoon anyway) cultural centre. If Land of the Dead had been made in Britain, it would have been set in the Barbican. Still, who'd say no to a flat situated on the edge of the central lake, waking up every morning to an avenue of fountains and the water lapping just below your window?

But I digress; in one of the Barbican's cosy cinemas I saw Youth in Revolt, that rarest of things - a funny film comedy. Incredibly for a recent US effort it does not feature Seth Rogen, Steve Carell, Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Paul Rudd or any of the funny-five-years-ago but now dreadfully over-exposed Frat Pack. Unless you count Michael Cera, who I suppose is the thin, thinking man's Seth Rogen.

Cera, an actor in his 20s doomed to play 16 year olds for a good few years yet, plays a geeky loser called Nick Twisp who devises a cool, criminally inclined alternative persona to help him win the beautiful Sheeni. There's nothing amazingly original here, although some of the dialogue is pleasingly quirky, but there's a freshness and amiability about this movie - a massive contrast to the bloated and self-indulgent Funny People which I also saw recently - that makes it well worth a look.

All the world's a stage...

Talking of theatre (dear boy), I had a stab at a stage play recently for my OU course. A short one obviously. I'll try and post it somewhere.

My tutor told me I had an ability for writing dark comedy about dysfunctional relationships. Now I don't know s**t about relationships, dysfunctional or otherwise, so I guess I must have a decent imagination or good observation skills. The old cliche - write what you know - doesn't necessarily hold water. I mean Stephen King has probably never met a vampire, a ghost or a serial killer but it doesn't stop him churning out books about 'em. Likewise JK Rowling didn't go to Hogwarts and John Grisham... oh well I'll let that one go.