This Is Just To Say: William Carlos Williams

This is many people’s favourite poem and it has intrigued me why it has such a cheering effect. Is it the simplicity? Is it the mundane made extraordinary that makes it so sparkling? Is it the subject of a forbidden delight that we can identity with? What do you think? -

This is just to say


I have eaten
the plums
that were in the icebox

and which you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

Avenue Q: Play Review

Avenue Q Rating: ♥♥♥

I went to see Avenue Q a couple of weeks ago and it was certainly worth the ticket price for the laughs. The comedy arrives principally from the fact that cute, 90s TV show style puppets (Muppets, Sesame Street), with cheesy American accents, are up to all sorts of adult activities. (This is not a show to take little kids to, or Grannie, or anyone awkward.) It is set in a down and out street in New York and the set from which the puppets emerge is ingenious. Kate Monster, the lead female, has a beautiful voice and multi-roles superbly. It is typically American, which would’ve been very annoying if it weren’t so darn funny. The puppeteering is polished, though you have to get used to the fact that the actors make no point of becoming their puppets; they are very much separate entities. There is nothing like the connection one feels with the puppets in, lets say, War Horse.

Entertaining tunes such as ‘Everyone’s a little bit racist’ and ‘The Internet is for Porn’, exploit modern-day political correctness and taboo to produce some good comedy. The humour is principally confined to the first half, however. The second half becomes plot obsessed and the love story becomes a tad cheesy.

Don’t expect a compelling storyline and do expect overacting, belted choruses and cliché upon cliché. But I recommend the show for a night out with friends to have a good laugh.

Avenue Q is touring the country until July. www.avenueqthemusical.co.uk

Frankenstein at the National Theatre: Play Review

Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein ♥♥♥♥♥ Rating

A man emerges from a womb-like cocoon, helpless and naked. The monster is born. He grows up teaching himself to walk, run and make noises. There was an amazing moment as the sun rose, when the monster began laughing and clapping. I saw the monster played by Jonny Lee Miller and Dr Frankenstein by Benedict Cumberbatch. It was refreshing to have the story told from the monster’s point of view; Frankenstein is present for only a moment in the first half. The monster’s transformation from innocence to experience was presented like a bildungsroman. You will find the play troubles you; it is almost impossible to to decide who to sympathize with, though the monster’s original innocence is wonderfully portrayed.

No wonder The Times heralded the play with five stars: the literary allusions were plentiful. One of Blake’s pictures from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell appeared on a house; we had Milton, Marvell – all absolutely appropriate to the scientific questioning arising at the time of The Industrial Revolution and a brilliant way of emphasizing the monster’s ability to discuss and reason; conscious thought and awareness of our own death are historically thought of as distinguishing humans from animals. A National Theatre ‘classic’ moment was the arrival of a magnificent steam train on stage, with the ensemble creating the sound scape and bright lighting creating dark shadows – the grit and grime of industrialization.

The set was beautifully simple with rocky mountains about the sides and hundreds of light bulbs as an extruded chandelier flowing down above the audience to the stage, which were able to blind and create astonishing rippling light. Details such as flocks of birds flying up into the fly tower and Lake Geneva created using clever perspective all contriubute to this epic production.

Some of the dialogue in the more naturalistic scenes was shoddy, mostly due to poor scripting but not helped by slow paced, unimpressive acting by Elizabeth (Frankenstein’s fiancee) and William (his younger brother). These family saga moments seemed out of place after extravagant special effects, dramatic ensemble work and a moving score.

Nevertheless, queue up for day tickets. Today. Whenever you can go. This will be compared in stature to War Horse and the ending was certainly as moving. And listen out for the bell.
Frankenstein is at the National Theatre until the beginning of May 2011.
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/62808/productions/frankenstein.html

A Broken Appointment: Thomas Hardy

You did not come,

And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb.
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure lovingkindness’ sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,

You did not come.

You love not me,

And love alone can lend you loyalty;
- I know and knew it. But, unto the store
Of human deeds divine in all but name,
Was it not worth a little hour or more
To add yet this: Once you, a woman, came
To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be

You love not me?

From this beautiful poem came the title of Claire Tomalin’s biography of Thomas Hardy, The Time-Torn Man. The biography itself is delightful and certainly the one of choice for anyone interested in Hardy.  The plaintive, echoing lines that frame the stanzas capture his sense of loss. The certainty of the ‘you did not come’ in comparison with the progressively less certain second stanza increases the effect of this insecurity. I have quoted this poem from the Penguin edition of poems selected by Claire Tomalin, which The Sunday Times described as, ‘Some of the loveliest poems in the English language’. This edition is lovely indeed in itself, with a cream background and a flowing pattern of soft red flowers and leaves with gold writing. It is almost pocket sized – it certainly fits into my handbag – and is a lovely indulgence for a commute, break or tea time treat. 

Neutral Tones: Thomas Hardy

Hardy produced some of literature’s finest elegiac poems upon his wife’s death. His relationship with Emma, though, while she was living had been fraught with tension. This poem, even with this biographical detail, conveys a sense of a dead relationship. Note the images he repeats and the antitheses he sets up between words of opposite meaning.

Neutral Tones
We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;
     - They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles of years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro
     On which lost the more by our love.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
     Like an ominous bird a-wing. . . .

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.

Hardy’s poetry often excludes the reader with private details such as ‘the original air-blue gown’ in The Voice and the ‘tedious riddles of years ago’ in this poem. This privacy makes the poem feel intimate; it has a similar effect to reading Jane Austen – as though you are overhearing a secret conversation.
The passion of love, traditionally represented by the metaphor of fire, has destroyed the landscape into a wasteland of ash. Even the ‘white’ sun has been drained of colour. They images all convey a sense of a dead relationship. The succinct repetition of these same images in the last stanza creates a neat frame with the beginning to conclude the poem.

Dictionary:
chidden, scolded
sod, a lump of soil
curst, archaic spelling of cursed