'The Night That Autumn Turned To Winter'

Photo: Jack Offord

There’s something for everyone at Bristol Old Vic this Christmas, and while Sleeping Beauty works its magic in the main theatre upstairs, The Night That Autumn Turned To Winter has transported the downstairs Studio into a magical woodland world for younger theatre goers.

Produced by the reliably consistent Little Bulb Theatre Company, The Night That Autumn Turned To Winter takes us into the woods for the very final day of autumn as the animals prepare for the coming of winter and, squee, the much-heralded winter unicorn (no press pictures were available of this magical being, presumably because such a special creature cannot be captured by even the best of photographer’s lenses).

Dressed a little like Brownies, our three narrators are wardens of the woods: fairy creatures who keep an eye on the woodland happenings and make sure all the animals play nicely. There will be no fighting here (take note, fox and badger).

Photo: Jack Offord

In a softly woven woodland made of a thick carpet, fabric trees and archways, and wooden tree stumps, our cast (Clare Beresford, Dominic Conway and Miriam Gould) take on the roles of all the creatures, from rabbits who need to sing opera to earn their carrots, to a fox who cleverly disguises himself as a jazz musician (remember, you can never trust a fox so don’t give him your purse).

With plenty of songs, it’s fun to see them all ended with a rock’n’roll-esque jump by the trio. And the audience participation is all very gentle and inclusive - well done to the school teacher who was coaxed on stage to help with one bit of the play!

The hedgehogs are adorable, the fox costume clever, but the spider truly terrifying! Clearly the idea is to encourage children not to be scared of these eight-legged creatures… but alas it was too late for this writer, who has spent almost 40 years quaking at the sight of a hairy arachnid: so to be rather close to a human-sized spider and all of its eyes was absolutely terrifying. I’d like a badge for bravery please!

The Night That Autumn Turned To Winter is performed until January 10 with performances at a range of times. For more information and to book tickets, please click here.

'Sleeping Beauty' at Bristol Old Vic

Photo: Steve Tanner

Maybe I’ve had my head buried in the cultural sand but I managed to miss the hoo-hah that for this year’s Christmas show the Bristol Old Vic was turning the world on its head by, gasp, casting a MAN as Sleeping Beauty and, shock, a WOMAN as the person who wakes him from his enforced slumber. Will nobody think of the children?!

I’ll remove my tongue from my cheek to say that when I sat down to watch Sally Cookson’s Sleeping Beauty, I managed to do so without knowing this twist of casting. And it didn’t really occur to me as being A Thing while I watched the play for quite some time because, y’know, I was too busy enjoying the show.

Apparently Conservative MP Peter Bone is outraged at this gender role reversal, which he likens to being a bad April Fool’s Joke. Such is Mr Bone’s ire that he’s managed to whip up a storm of headlines and controversy in the national newspapers… generating a wealth of publicity for the Bristol Old Vic that was presumably far outside their marketing budget anyway. So good on him. 

From the Telegraph website

The only thing that depresses me about Mr Bone’s upset is that he’s not alone. In a poll on the Telegraph website, 75% of respondents agreed that they wouldn’t want to watch a gender-flipped pantomime (why not?). And there were several quotes from upset parents (who don’t seem to have yet even seen Sleeping Beauty) saying that their daughters would be devastated as they would look forward to seeing a fairy tale princess in her big white dress. Seriously? Really? This depresses me more than anything. Come on, girls, it's time to put some trousers on and play in the mud!

But when it comes to a Sally Cookson production we should know by now to expect the unexpected. Her previous Christmas shows for Bristol Old Vic include the absolutely staggering Peter Pan and the so-popular-it-ran-for-two-years Swallows and Amazons, as well as the open-air spectacular Treasure Island. She’s a director celebrated for her creativity, imagination and lack of fear when it comes to pushing the boundaries.

Photo: Steve Tanner

So she adds her twist to Sleeping Beauty by melding together the titular fairy tale with the lesser known story The Leaves That Hung But Never Grew. The result is a little awkward, and given Cookson’s past triumphs feels a bit confused and disappointing. 

In the first half, we follow Prince Percy (David Emmings) who is cursed by wicked Sylvia (Stu Goodwin) to prick his finger before his 16th birthday and sleep until he is woken by a kiss: the classic story of Sleeping Beauty. Backed up by a wonderful chorus of fairy grannies, or wise old women as the programme calls them, Sleeping Beauty in the first half takes on the tone of a Greek tragedy merged with an enjoyably silly geriatric sitcom and it works wonderfully.

For the second half, we meet intrepid explorer Deilen (Kezrena James) who is on a quest to fix her broken heart by finding the leaves that hung but never grew. Her story intertwines with Percy’s and the two set off on a series of adventures together, but the melding of the stories is not quite as successful as it should have been. If it was not for the fantastic force of theatrical pantomime dame-dom from Stu Goodwin as the multi-faceted evil Sylvia, it would be hard to maintain a consistent thread between the two halves.

The key issue with this production of Sleeping Beauty is that is lacks a clear main character. It’s neither Percy nor Deilen, and it’s sadly not Sylvia either. Meaning the audience is left a little uncertain about who to root for and quite where we’re going. But thank goodness for Stu Goodwin - who created a pantomime villain so wicked and so wonderful that I hope she gets her own spin-off show on the telly.

Photo: Steve Tanner

The music, directed by Benji Bowers, was as fantastic as you would expect, with a live trio on the corner of the stage who opened each half of the evening with a medley of modern classics, such as Living’ On A Prayer merging with Like A Prayer. And the costumes created by Katie Sykes were also fabulous - especially for the chorus of wise old women who later regenerate as a flock of sheep. But again, the thread of almost all of the characters in the first half wearing golfing socks petered out by the second half, somewhat confirming the feeling that we were seeing two entirely different plays.

Sleeping Beauty is, of course, a very fun show from Sally Cookson and Bristol Old Vic, and it is sure to delight all the families who go to see it this Christmas. But in light of the excellence of Peter Pan and Swallows and Amazons, it’s just not quite up there for me as a new modern classic. But bravo for shaking up the tired old idea of just who a fairytale princess can be!

Sleeping Beauty is performed until January 17. For more information and to book tickets, please click here.

'Maman, What Are We Called Now?' by Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar

Persephone Book No 115 is the real-life diary of Parisian Jewish journalist Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar written during the final weeks of World War Two while her husband André was imprisoned by the Nazis.

Betraying her experiences as a writer, Maman, What Are We Called Now? is a beautifully constructed series of heartbreakingly sad snapshots into the terrifying, traumatic and chaotic existence for those left behind by the war, desperate for news of their stolen loved ones. 

The book’s title comes from a question one of Jacqueline’s confused children, Sylvio, asks her not only what they are now called (as in, are they Jewish, are they French, what are they?) but also how old she is – the wartime experiences having snatched away all of her childhood innocence and simplicity. At the time, Sylvio was just 10 and unaware that asking such a question risked their dangerous situation being found out – they were living under assumed names and with false identities.

In the lengthy diary entry of August 6, when it is announced the Americans have arrived in Paris, Jacqueline’s initial optimism that war is ending is perilously balanced with her fears for André’s safety. The diary entry is so beautifully written and spells out Jacqueline’s steadfast loyalty to her Jewish heritage, along with her sadness that she has no fixed home anymore. The prose brings to mind sociologist Zymunt Bauman’s iconic book Modernity And The Holocaust.  

Jacqueline writes: “Being Jewish has become even more of an obsession than being French, an obsession which, like a hidden wound, has worked its way slowly and insidiously under our skin and right into our souls. Little by little it has made us into ‘foreigners’ in our own country, French but ‘different’ … It has turned us into outsiders.”

This echoes Bauman’s theory of understanding the stranger. First you try to make the stranger one of you, then you keep the stranger at a distance, and then you try to get rid of the stranger altogether. For Bauman the Jew is the archetypal stranger in society. Many Jews tried to assimilate into German society having emerged from the ghettos. They started wearing the same clothes as Germans, adopting the same religion, living in the same areas. But these attempts to assimilate the German way of life led to hostility. It stoked fears of the outsider coming inside.

The haunting internal questioning that Jacqueline goes through as she tries to make sense of what it means to be Jewish in this new world is particularly heartrending. Not least because she identifies more as French than as Jewish, and the Jewish identity has been thrust upon her by the Nazis as a reason to exterminate people.

"Suffragette" film, 2015

This post contains plot spoilers about the 2015 film Suffragette.

On one hand I was very excited to see the 2015 film Suffragette because this is a period of history I have long been fascinated and inspired by. One the other hand I was very nervous to see the film precisely because I know so much about the era - and I was worried that the film industry would either a) over-dramatise things for effect to distort facts, or b) invent one or two things to make the plot more ‘Hollywood’.

I always refer to myself as a supporter of the suffragists rather than the suffragettes. The suffragists (the peaceful ones who campaigned for many decades but rarely made the news) far outnumbered the militant suffragettes (the ones who got the headlines for the few years they were active), and it frustrates me that the law-abiding, peaceful and effective suffragists are so often overlooked than their more sensational sisters. So while it looks unlikely that a film about Millicent Fawcett’s lifelong campaign and petitioning will be made any time soon, Suffragette is the best we’re likely to get for now.

Directed by Sarah Gavron (Brick Lane) and written by Abi Morgan (The Iron Lady), there is a refreshing volume of women in key production roles here - which is of course very rare when still only about 10% of films released every year are made by women.

The dominance of Meryl Streep as Emmeline Pankhurst in the pre-release advertising for Suffragette is baffling considering she’s in the film for fewer than five minutes. Baffling… or a cynical marketing ploy to boost audiences? I would argue it would have been more impressive and significant to have a lesser known actor take the role of Emmeline for this film to avoid it derailing the narrative.

And while I’m normally a fan of Carey Mulligan, I felt her leading performance here as laundry worker Maud was unconvincing, especially when paired alongside the far more effective Anne-Marie Duff (militant worker Violet) and Helena Bonham-Carter (pharmacist and rabble rouser Edith). In fact Helena, whom I normally shy away from, was so good that I’d go far as to say that hers is easily the best performance in Suffragette.

But what about the menz? As hardened Inspector Steed, Brendan Gleeson is impressively cruel and conniving but with just the right amount of doubt in his heart. However, as Maud’s husband Sonny, Ben ‘Paddington Bear’ Wishaw gives the worst performance of his life. We have seen and enjoyed Ben playing all manner of fluffy roles over the years, from Pingu in Nathan Barley, to Q in James Bond and, of course, the new voice of Paddington Bear. So Ben was going to have to whip out the mother of all monsters to convince us as Maud’s tyrannical and cold-hearted husband… and he failed miserably.

Suffragette did not disappoint me for the reasons I had expected. Gavron and Morgan mostly avoided over Hollywood-ising the plot and inventing too much for the name of drama (as if there wasn’t enough drama in the suffrage campaign to start with). Instead I have two other. major issues with the plot.

The first is the cack-handed way in which the entirely implausible plot of Sonny giving up his and Maud’s beloved son George for adoption so quickly, and the tiny fragment of protest that Maud put up which is entirely at odds with the absolute devotion to her son she has shown until this point - the son whom she barely mentions again in the rest of the film. Yes, Morgan wanted to shoehorn in the issue that mothers were denied all legal rights to their children until 1925, but it was dealt with so clumsily and awkwardly that it made very little sense here.

Moreover, the bizarre narrative arc - or rather, lack of a narrative arc - across the entire film was disappointing. We start conventionally enough with Maud’s story, following her as a laundry worker, devoted mother, tired housewife, and we see her neatly fall into a prominent role in the Women’s Social and Political Union with some new and important friends. But then suddenly Emily Wilding Davison appears and her story takes over, and the film ends with Emily’s death under the king’s horse at the Epsom Derby. But what of Maud’s story? What happened to her son? Where did she end up living, as she can’t have stayed in that derelict church for ever? What did she go on to achieve in the WSPU? Her story is never concluded. It is a deeply unsatisfactory ending.

So while I wanted to embrace a film about the campaign for women’s suffrage because we have waited so very long to have one, I feel that Suffragette has fallen short in a huge number of areas. However, the trailer for He Named Me Malala made that film look extremely interesting. And on Monday I will be seeing the BFI’s newly curated strand Make More Noise: Suffragettes In Silent Film, which is a series of 21 original short films from the 1910s that document the suffrage campaign. So there is still hope that an excellent film about women’s history is out there. I will report back.