Lear, Tolstoy, Shakespeare and Orwell

The Play’s the Thing: Orwell and Drama (Last of Three)

by Richard Lance Keeble of the ORWELL SOCIETY

19th September 2020

Drama at the BBC: The next act

Orwell’s work for the BBC is not to end in November 1943. For through his friendship with Rayner Heppenstall, a producer at the corporation, he goes on to write two fine dramatic adaptations – of Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle, for the Home Service on 29 March 1946 (CWGO XIII: 179-201). The second, too often neglected, is of Little Red Riding Hood (ibid: 345-354). Just like the earlier adaptation of Andersen’s ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ for the BBC’s Eastern Service, this reflects Orwell’s deep interest in the fairy story genre – which finds its most famous flowering in Animal Farm – A Fairy Story, in 1945. And Orwell is to adapt his famous satire on the Russian revolution for the BBC in 1947. Crick describes it as ‘very stilted’ (1980: 493) while Orwell told his friend, Mamaine Paget: ‘I had the feeling that they had spoilt it but one nearly always does with anything one writes for the air’ (Lynskey 2019: 157).

ORWELL’s fascination with the theatre and Shakespeare in particular culminates in two remarkable ways. This first is his essay, ‘Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool’, published in Polemic, in March 1947. It has been strangely missed, or its significance downplayed, by the biographers.

There is no mention of the essay at all in either Shelden (1991) or Meyers (2000) while D. J. Taylor (2003) and Bowker (2003) only comment on it en passant. Crick (op cit: 438, 520, 522) first focuses on Orwell’s critique of anarchism and pacifism; in the third reference he points out Orwell’s ‘tempered pessimism’; only in the second reference is there any mention of Shakespeare as he describes it as ‘a profound comparison of the didacticism of Tolstoy with the tolerant humanism of Shakespeare’.

From British Library’s blog on Tolstoy and Orwell

Orwell bases his critique of Tolstoy on an obscure pamphlet in which he has damned King Lear as ‘stupid, verbose, unnatural, unintelligible, bombastic, vulgar, tedious’ etc. (1980 [1947]: 793). Tolstoy fails to consider Shakespeare as a poet. ‘Those who care most for Shakespeare value him in the first place for his use of language, the “verbal music” which even Bernard Shaw, another hostile critic, admits to be “irresistible”’ (ibid: 796). Tolstoy sees no justification for the presence of the Fool. But for Orwell it’s crucial. ‘He acts not only as a sort of chorus, making the central situation clearer by commenting on it more intelligently than the other characters, but as a foil to Lear’s frenzies. His jokes, riddles and scraps of rhyme, and his endless digs at Lear’s high-minded folly … are like a trickle of sanity running through the play….'

But Tolstoy’s essential ‘anti-human’ stance draws Orwell’s special venom. Indeed, what Tolstoy probably most dislikes about Shakespeare ‘is a sort of exuberance, a tendency to take – not so much a pleasure as simply an interest in the actual process of life’ (ibid). In other words, it’s a ‘quarrel between the religious and humanist attitudes towards life’.

An early English language edition of Tolstoy’s essay.

The plot of King Lear, Orwell argues, is essentially about renunciation. And this clearly resonates with Tolstoy’s own history. ‘In his old age he renounced his estate, his title and his copyrights and made an attempt – a sincere attempt though it was not successful – to escape from his privileged position and live the life of a peasant. … Ultimately, therefore, Tolstoy renounced the world under the expectation that this would make him happier. But there is one thing certain about his later years, it is that he was not happy’ (ibid: 799, italics in the original). Indeed, one of the morals of the play is that ‘to make yourself powerless is to invite an attack’. Moreover, all of Shakespeare’s later tragedies ‘start out with the humanist assumption that life, although full of sorrow, is worth living and that Man is a noble animal – a belief which Tolstoy in his old age did not share’. Against Tolstoy’s ‘other-worldliness’, Orwell celebrates Shakespeare’s worldly vitality, his love of life which he conveys, above all, in the ‘music of language’.

Orwell next moves on to Tolstoy’s pacifism – criticising it, along with anarchism, for being intolerant. ‘For if you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics – a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage – surely that proves you are in the right? And the more you are in the right, the more natural that everyone should be bullied into thinking likewise’ (ibid: 802).

In many respects, Orwell is presenting a very slanted view of Tolstoy. For instance, Peter Marshall offers a totally different picture of him in his monumental history of anarchism: ‘Although Tolstoy condemned the passions of greed, anger and lust as vigorously as any tub-thumping Puritan, he was no other-worldly moralist. He recommended the happiness which is to be found in a life close to nature, voluntary work, family, friendship and a painless death.’ Moreover, Tolstoy’s promotion of anarchistic pacifism stresses its impact on people’s well-being here and now. ‘He rejects the charge that without government there will be chaos or a foreign invasion. His experience of Cossack communities in the Urals had shown him that order and well-being are possible without the organized violence of government’ (Marshall 2008 [1992]: 370, 374).

Yet Orwell is using his picture of Tolstoy for essential rhetorical purposes – and as a foil against which he can deliver his wonderfully profound celebration of life – and the music of words of his hero, William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare not forgotten in Nineteen Eighty-Four

In Orwell’s last novel, the dystopian masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four (2000 [1949]), women are represented as both highly sexualised or the complete opposite – desexualised madonnas. In her essay, ‘Desire is Thoughtcrime’, Jenny Taylor highlights the novel’s ‘dichotomy between lust and utopian desire, between woman as Madonna and whore’ (1983: 28). Julia, the ‘girl from the Fiction Department’ – though perhaps also a Party spy engaged in a honeytrap operation – conducts a passionate, secret affair with Winston Smith. Yet in another crucial scene, Winston dreams of his mother, the good breast, as part of an Arcadian Golden age of plenitude. A girl comes towards him across the field. ‘With what seemed a single movement she tore off her clothes and flung them disdainfully aside’ (op cit: 36). But her naked body arouses no desire in him. Rather ‘What overwhelmed him in that instant was admiration for the gesture with which she had thrown her clothes aside. With its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm. That too was a gesture belonging to an ancient time.’ And he concludes the scene triumphantly: ‘Winston woke up with the word “Shakespeare” on his lips’ (ibid).

This split in the representation of women, then, is highly problematic. Yet is it not significant that Orwell brings together the worlds of the unconscious, utopian desire and High Art with his final evocation of the name of Shakespeare?

Conclusions

Orwell’s love of the theatre begins in his childhood and remains constant throughout his life. It has been too often missed by biographers and Orwell scholars. Theatrical plot lines are dotted about – often wittily and imaginatively – A Clergyman’s Daughter. For instance, when Dorothy, while recovering from her breakdown, teaches at Mrs Creevy’s appalling school, Orwell has a great deal of fun describing the hoo-ha and parental protests that follow her class on Macbeth with its oh so controversial/shocking line ‘Macduff was from his mother’s womb/Untimely ripp’d’ (1976 [1935]: 387). ‘I do so adore Macbeth,’ he writes to his friend Eleanor Jaques, on 18 November 1932 and is keen to take her to see a production at the Old Vic (Orwell and Angus 1970, 1: 130-131).

Orwell does not particularly distinguish himself during his stint as drama critic (1940-1941) but many of his reviews capture his sense of humour, his love of bawdy, Max Miller-ish jokes and show him playing with ideas later to be taken up in longer essays. Then while working at the BBC, his drama interests inevitably spill over into his output. Along with all his often inventive and highly original arts feature programmes and political commentaries, he designs thirteen courses based on Calcutta and Bombay University syllabuses in English and American literature, science, medicine, agriculture and psychology and runs a series introducing drama and the mechanics of production, backed up with shortened versions of Indian plays. According to Peter Davison: ‘This had a direct effect in that two participants, Balraj and Damyanti Sahni, set up a travelling drama company in India on their return’ (1996: 117).

Interestingly, his fascination with fairy stories is reflected in two dramatic adaptions he writes for the BBC – of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ and ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ while his own version of Animal Farm is broadcast in 1947.

Moreover, the work of dramatists such as Anton Chekhov, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde and William Shakespeare is constantly reflected upon during his writing career (though D. H. Lawrence’s short stories and poems especially interest him rather than the plays). The Collected Works, edited by Peter Davison (1998), indicates more than 120 references to Shakespeare, 96 to Shaw, around 30 to Wilde and 11 to Chekhov. Even while fighting in the trenches alongside Republican militiamen during the Spanish civil war in 1937, Orwell is reported by his comrade, Douglas Moyle, to find time to read his favourite dramatist: ‘I was surprised to find him sitting quietly by himself, sheltering from the cold wind, reading a little volume of Shakespeare’s plays. He didn’t speak, and I realized he would rather be left alone’ (quoted in Wadhams 1984: 80).

From British Library’s blog on Olivier and Leigh’s Macbeth

Davison even suggests that the concept of ‘Doublethink’ (the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time) of Nineteen Eighty-Four could have been drawn from Macbeth. In this play, the Porter refers satirically to equivocation. Standing at the Door of Hell, the Porter asks who knocks: ‘Faith, here’s an equivocator that could swear in both the scales against either scale, who committed treason enough for God’s sake, yet could not equivocate to Heaven: O come in [to Hell] equivocator’ (Davison 1996: 132). An intriguing idea.

One thing is certain, however: for it’s the Bard’s sexiness and love of life that Orwell, the theatre man, celebrates so movingly and memorably in his essay ‘Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool’.

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Brenda Christie: Stuart Christie's eulogy to his wife

Good morning everyone and thank you all for coming on this sad occasion to say goodbye to Bren, my wife, life partner, friend and comrade through fifty-one years of life’s vicissitudes, caprices and blessings — the beloved mother of Branwen — and Nanna to granddaughters Merri and Mo.

Brenda was an intensely private person who— although engaging, sociable and witty — disliked being the focus of attention, but I’ve no doubt she would have been pleased to see everyone here, sharing this day with us.

A baby-boomer, born in Shoreditch in London in April 1949, Bren’s formative years were spent in Gosport in Hampshire where her lovely dad, Bert, was a Chief Petty Officer, a ‘Sparks’ in the Royal Navy.

She hoped to take up a career in journalism, but despite her sharp intelligence, enquiring intellect, love of literature and creative writing skills, the breakup of her parents’ marriage and her tense relationship with her mother Eliza forced her to leave home at 15 and move to London where she became a copy typist, working in a variety of temporary jobs, including at the Treasury.

In 1967, her adventurous spirit took her to Milan where she worked for a time as companion to a glamorous American model, a job that introduced her to the dolce vita of Milan and Portofino, but it was a lifestyle that failed to satisfy her sense of moral integrity.

With news of the events of May 1968 in Paris and the radical political, musical and cultural turbulence that was taking place in Britain, largely provoked by the U.S. war in Vietnam, the feisty-spirited 19-year-old Brenda was drawn back to London to be part of the radical social and cultural revolution then taking place, which is where we got together on Bastille Day, 14 July 1968, shortly after my 22nd birthday.

We were together from then until the morning of her passing, just a month after she turned 70.

Those fifty-odd years of our lives together saw many adventures, good and not so good — laughter and tears — as happens in all relationships.

But it’s the treasured, shared and cheery memories that are the abiding ones.

On our first date in 1968 I took her to Jimmy’s Greek Restaurant, a carpeted sewer in Soho’s Frith Street which to me was excitingly cosmopolitan in character, but was also cheap with plentiful Mediterranean-style food. Brenda, however, was distinctly unimpressed, particularly when she spotted the column of cockroaches marching along the wainscoting by our heads.

We made our excuses and left for the more salubrious Amalfi in Old Compton Street. From there we went on to the theatre; Unity Theatre in Somers Town to see Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs for which I had wangled complimentary tickets.

I certainly knew how to treat a girl in those days.

After the performance we went back to my flat in Crouch End in North London where I further tried to impress Brenda with my skill in tossing a Spanish omelette, but my hand to eye coordination was skewed that night and it ended up splattered on the floor.

Brenda, who was precariously balanced on a three-legged chair at the time, laughed so much she leaned back, lost her balance and ended up on her back on the floor with the remains of the omelette, legs akimbo, unladylike, flashing her knickers.

Despite those early misadventures, and fortunately for me, Brenda shared my surreal sense of humour, and so began a tumultuous, lifelong, genuinely loving relationship.

Brenda was introduced originally to the Marxist-led International Socialists through her best friend Valerie Packham, and the pair were deeply involved in the staff and student occupation of the Hornsey College of Art in Crouch End, which took place from May to July 1968.

Later, during the final years of the fascist dictatorship in Spain, she became increasingly committed to the anti-Francoist cause, working closely with the clandestine anarchist First of May Group, which brought her under the radar of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch and the Security Service, MI5. That, of course, ran alongside her role as a co-founder of the anarchist publishing house Cienfuegos Press and her involvement with the Anarchist Black Cross and Black Flag magazine.

In the summer of 1971 I was framed and arrested on conspiracy and possession charges which led to me spending eighteen months on remand in Brixton Prison, which is when Brenda came into her own.

While holding down a job as a temporary copy typist, not only did she visit me most days throughout those eighteen months, she brought me cooked meals all the way from Shoreditch to Brixton on public transport.

She also played a crucial and pivotal role in helping to organise and coordinate my ultimately successful defence — that the only incriminating evidence against me had been planted by former Flying Squad detectives, with their superiors’ knowledge! — that and working late into the night typing up the barristers’ notes during the eight-month Old Bailey trial, one of the longest in British legal history.

Her character and integrity won her the grudging respect of the senior police officers involved in the case. One of them, Commander Ernest Bond, brazenly admitted to her — in the presence of a Chief Superintendent — that they knew I’d been ‘fitted up’, but they could live with my possible acquittal. As far as they were concerned they’d succeeded in keeping me out of circulation for eighteen months.

It’s at times such as those these that we come to really know people in ways of which others remain completely ignorant. Brenda, to me, exemplified the Sufi and humanist ideal of ‘faithful in loving friendship, kindness, compassion and solidarity’.

A few months after my acquittal, in May 1974, following the kidnapping in Paris by anti-fascists of a Francoist banker, a Special Branch officer visited our flat in Wimbledon and advised us to move out of London. Whether or not this was friendly advice or an implicit threat we decided not to put to the test. As Falstaff says in Shakespeare’s King Henry the Fourth, ‘The better part of valour is discretion’, and so we began our life Odyssey.

I may not always have been her Odysseus, but she was certainly always my Penelope.

Our first house was an nineteenth century mill house in Honley, Last of the Summer Wine country in West Yorkshire, in fact its exterior featured in a few episodes of that long-running series.

As well as typesetting our books and journals, Brenda and a friend opened a competitively priced teashop called Touchwood, which became a popular eatery for local mill workers and long-distance lorry drivers on the Trans-Pennine A6024 between Huddersfield and Manchester. Their home-made pies and pasties were to die for. On Touchwood’s last day, when we were preparing to leave Yorkshire for Sanday in Orkney, she and her partner Deanna gave all their regular customers free lunches. Many were in tears when they learned the teashop was closing down.

Our next home was the penultimate of the Northern Isles, Sanday in Orkney, where we lived for seven years with Bren’s beloved dad, Bert. It was idyllic for a time, especially made glorious by the birth of our daughter, Branwen, albeit in fairly dramatic circumstances.

Our wonderful lady doctor had been struck down by cancer and she had been replaced by a series of locums straight out of the animated cartoon Scooby Doo. When the one arrived who was to deliver Branwen he had clearly been drinking, as had the taxi driver of the Commer van that doubled as the island ambulance. To aggravate the situation, the only bottle of oxygen on the island had been used up that morning trying to revive a suicide who had jumped off the end of the pier, having filled his pockets with stones.

I lay on the bed beside Brenda dripping chloroform onto a tea towel covering a flour sieve, both of us breathing the fumes intended to ease the pain of the birth contractions, which somehow the doctor’s ineptness had caused to go out of synch.

In the end we had to call for the local inter-island aeroplane to airlift her to hospital on the Orkney mainland. Even that was problematic as a heavy haar, a sea mist, had enveloped the islands so completely that the pilot had to fly in dangerously low, just above sea level. Even the lifeboat couldn’t make it.

That and a few other run-ins with incompetent locums, some of whom had already been struck off the Medical Register two or three times, proved to be the writing on the wall, especially given our now elderly Bert’s deteriorating medical condition.

From Sanday we moved south again, to Cambridge where Brenda found a job as an editorial assistant with Cambridge University Press, working with the leading historian Albert Hourani and the noted Arabist Trevor Mostyn on a number of prestigious CUP titles such as the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Middle East and North Africa. Both men insisted Brenda was credited by name for her work on the encyclopedia, threatening to remove their names as authors and editors if the class-driven Press Syndics refused to comply, which they had done initially. To credit a lowly editorial assistant by name in such a distinguished publication was unheard of, and I doubt if it has happened since.

It was in Cambridge too that Brenda discovered what proved to be her true métier as a teacher, initially teaching Business Studies to 16- to 19-year-olds at Cambridge College of Further Education where her best friend Valerie was Senior Lecturer in charge of Secretarial Studies. Although to be honest she did think it was a thankless task trying to teach teenagers things they didn’t particularly care about — and to be somewhere they didn’t want to be.

However, after six years in Cambridge, Bert, Brenda’s delightful dad, who’d lived with us since our Yorkshire days, passed away. It was time again to move on, this time to Hastings where we settled for twenty years, largely to ensure that Branwen, our daughter, could put down roots and enjoy some stability with regard to her education and friends.

Among her talents Branwen had a predilection for drama. But it turned out that the principal of the local after-school drama studio she attended was not only a drama queen, but a complete chancer to boot, one whose knowledge and understanding of Shakespeare and his time and plays was embarrassingly superficial. Think Donald Trump meets Danny La Rue and you’ll get some idea of the kind of person I’m talking about.

The bottom line was that Brenda ended up teaching Branwen herself, and was so successful that she swept the board at the local Music and Drama Festival, as well as other festivals in East Sussex, Kent and South London, putting to shame the competing local drama schools. Other mothers approached her to teach their children, which led to Brenda setting up her own Rude Mechanicals Drama Studio. This lasted for almost 10 years and won the hearts and minds of her pupils, whom she enthused with her love of Shakespeare — to say nothing of winning countless drama festivals across the South East.

Our final move was to Clacton. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it coincided with a decline in Brenda’s health. A heavy smoker for more than 50 years, she had increasing breathing and mobility difficulties, but these were eased by the entry into her life of her two darling granddaughters, Merri — born in 2014 — and Mo, in 2017.

Their dynamic and irresistibly exuberant personalities boosted her spirits and recharged her morale enormously.

The end came much sooner than any of us expected.

Hardly a month had passed between her biopsy and diagnosis of small-cell cancer, the first chemo session, and her death.

It was sudden and unexpected — it came in the hour of the wolf, the hour between night and dawn.

What Branwen and I draw some small comfort from is the fact that it wasn’t a long and painful process. She didn’t suffer, she died at home, loved and cared for, not in a cheerless hospital ward or strange hospice room, and I was beside her, able to comfort her at the end. It was her time to go.

This morning we say goodbye to Brenda’s body, but not to her spirit or to the love we had for her and she for us. She has joined what some African societies call the ‘sasha’, the recently departed, whose time on earth overlaps with people still alive. They do not die, they live on in the memories of the living, who can call them to mind, and bring them to life in stories and anecdote. Only when the last person to know an ancestor dies does that ancestor leave the ‘sasha’ for the ‘zamani’; the generalised ancestors who are never forgotten, but are revered in memory.

Brenda was a feisty and spirited woman who found it difficult to pull her punches in her dealings with others. She didn’t suffer fools gladly — or even badly, including me on occasions. But despite our sporadic harsh but soon forgotten and forgiven outbursts of frustration, words can never express my own and Branwen’s profound gratitude to Brenda for bringing purpose, happiness and a sense of fulfilment to our lives — not least for her constant part in the general effort to alleviate the burden of the darker times we’ve shared.

Goodbye, dear.

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Brenda Christie died at home in June after a short battle with cancer. At the KSL we have always tried to commemorate the less famous comrades who made up the anarchist movement. Intensely private, she appeared only as ‘Marigold’ (the typesetter) in the Cienfuegos Press titles she helped publish. Later, the academic authors ensured she was thanked by name when she worked as an editorial assistant at Cambridge University Press.

Brenda worked with the First of May Group against Franco’s dictatorship. She also thought of the name for and played a central role in the Stoke Newington Eight Defence Group. Stuart Christie in his eulogy says Brenda ‘played a crucial and pivotal role in helping to organise and coordinate my ultimately successful defence… working late into the night typing up the barristers’ notes during the eight-month Old Bailey trial, one of the longest in British legal history. Her character and integrity won her the grudging respect of the senior police officers involved in the case.’ John Barker, one of those convicted, later thanked her for her work with the defence group saying that she had saved him several years of prison time.

Anarchists can have complex lives: Brenda loved Shakespeare and ran a drama school. In the eulogy, Stuart tells how she turned her back on the ‘dolce vita’ of sixties Milan because it ‘failed to satisfy her sense of moral integrity.’ Instead, she lived a life full and committed. Our thoughts go out to Stuart, Branwen, Merri and Mo and all who knew and worked with her.

[You can read Stuart’s Eulogy at https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/9kd6dm]

Image: Stuart and Brenda Christie, Paris, 1974: photo by Antonio Téllez (who also cooked the delicious rabbit á la Basque). With thanks to Stuart Christie. https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/djhc94

 KSL

Brenda Christie, who has died of cancer aged 70, was my wife, friend and comrade for more than 50 years. An intensely private person, though engaging, sociable and witty, she was a typist, editor, teacher and political activist; we met in London in 1968 on Bastille Day.

Brenda was born in Shoreditch, east London, daughter of Eliza (nee Evans) and Bert Earl, and grew up in Gosport, Hampshire, where her father was a chief petty officer in the navy. With a love of literature and a sharp intelligence, she had hoped to make a career in journalism, but the breakup of her parents’ marriage led her to leave home at 15 and move to London, where she became a copy typist.

In 1967 her adventurous spirit took her to Milan, where she worked as a companion to an American model, but the political and cultural turbulence of the time drew her back to London. Brenda was introduced to the International Socialists (which became the Socialist Workers party) through her best friend, Valerie Packham, and they were involved in the occupation of Hornsey College of Art in 1968.

She was also committed to the anti-Francoist cause, working with the anarchist First of May Group, which brought her to the attention of the Metropolitan police’s special branch and the intelligence services, as did her role as a co-founder, with me, of the anarchist publishing house Cienfuegos Press, and her association with the Anarchist Black Cross and Black Flag magazine.

When I was arrested and falsely charged with being involved in the Angry Brigade conspiracy in 1971, Brenda visited me almost daily in Brixton prison for 18 months, bringing home-cooked meals on public transport, and helped my legal team in my successful defence and acquittal.

In 1974, following the kidnapping in Paris of a Francoist banker by anti-fascists, a special branch officer visited our flat in Wimbledon and advised us to move out of London. We went first to Honley, in Yorkshire, where Brenda and a friend opened a teashop, Touchwood, which became popular with local millworkers and lorry drivers.

Our next home was Sanday in Orkney, where our daughter, Branwen, was born and where we continued our work on Cienfuegos Press. We then moved to Cambridge, and Brenda worked for Cambridge University Press on a number of titles with Albert Hourani and Trevor Mostyn including the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Middle East and North Africa.

In Cambridge she discovered her true metier in education, initially teaching business studies at Cambridge college of further education. After a move to Hastings, East Sussex, where we settled for 20 years, Brenda’s teaching extended to giving drama lessons to Branwen – who later became an actor – and setting up the Rude Mechanicals Drama Studio.

Our final move to Clacton, Essex, coincided with a decline in her health, the pain of which was eased by the arrival of our granddaughters, Merri and Mo, who survive her, along with me and Branwen.

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Review: The Northern Light Falls on Us

 'NORTHERNESS is an elusive thing to define' so says the playwrite Simon Stephens in the programme to his play 'Light Falls' at the Manchester Royal Exchange.  He says this as the current
Artistic Director at the Royal Exchange is about to step down to go down the London and become Director of the prestigious drama school LAMDA (London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art).  

Ms. Sarah Frankcom caused a bit of a stir in October 2013, when she said that she was ‘throwing down the gauntlet’ on the issue of female casting by choosing Maxine Peake to play Hamlet, and 'There is now a generation of women who are not going to put up with it anymore'.

She was reacting to research conducted by The Guardian in collaboration with Elizabeth Freestone, Artistic Director of Pentabus Theatre, Ludlow.  It seems that in contrast to the situation on stage, figures from Ipsos Mori revealed that on average 68% of theatre audiences are women.  But that when it comes to producing the works of Shakespeare there is an inherent gender imbalance due to the original male only casts, with 155 female characters compared to 826 male characters across the Bard’s plays.

Her experiment using Maxine as Hamlet worked a treat but her more recent production of a female dominated version of Macbeth bewilderingly confusion as did other who came with me and I saw it twice.

Maxine Peake is from Westhoughton, Bolton, and she has been pressed to drop her northern accent for some roles.   

One comment responded to Ms. Frankcom's feminist 'Hamlet' thus:
'That is ridiculous man!  How arrogant of Sarah Frankcom to feel qualified to re-write the work of a genius. Perhaps she should re-pen Beethoven's 9th while she's at it.  It is such a rare treat and luxury to see a Shakespeare play, and I'm sick and tired of the likes of Frankcom trying to give herself a name at the expense of what is a truly genius piece of literature.  Perhaps she'd like to paint the Mona Lisa as a man too.  What a load of self indulgent pseudo-feminist crap. Just give us the art as it was intended.  It really is that simple.  If you don't like it, write your own bloody play!'

But I think the play's writer Simon Stephens is a man.   When he asked people in his research for this play if they considered themselves northern, he said they all did.  When asked how they defined 'northerness', they seemed to hestitate and then suggest it was their capacity to deal with the rain or cold and deal with it with humour:  'We don't like umbrellas, up here.  We just put our hoods up.'

Mr. Stephens, who now lives in London, He claims:  'I think something has happened with kindness in this country.  It seems that suspicion and mockery are the default position in this county.  Kindness has, in a way that has taken me completely by suprise, become a politically default position.' 

 The current play shifts around the North from the high streets of Doncaster and Blackpool, and the farms of Ulverston and the shut-down shops and pubs of Warrington and Durham to Cheshire Plains and the foothills of the Lake Districts and the Yorkshire Dales.  Warrington and Durham he writes:  'shops and bars heaving under the weight of half a decade of austerity.'


Bill Bryson commenting in 'The Road to Little Dribbling' wrote about a Council's lack of funds to afford it to maintain a shrub planter and made a curious comparison with Durham Cathedral:  'Now I'm no expert on the matter, but I am pretty sure that we are a lot richer today than we were in the eleventh century, and yet back then they could find the resources to build something as splendid and eternal as Durham Cathedral an today we can't afford to keep six shrubs in a planter.'

Today we are better at tearing things down than in maintaining things. As when during the time of the last Labour government he had a mad scheme to set up the Pathfinder Initiative to tear down 400,000 homes, mostly Victorian and Edwardian terraced houses, in the north of England - see Bryson.

Bill Bryson can see this decline acutely because he can view it in relief and observe the changes after coming in from the States after being abroad.  Stephen Simon can come back to the North from London and spot 'the seen but unnoticed' features of what's going on in the North. 

The play struggles with the hyper-aspects of everyday life: a middle aged woman has a stroke and dies reaching for a bottle of vodka in a supermarket; a married man attempts to accomplish a three-some; a insecure student tries to please hie older boyfriend; a single mum tussles with the father of her baby.  The roundhouse stage struggles to fit-in these competing elements, and it just about manages to encompass the performances.

******************

  

HYMN to the NORTH

by Jarvis Cocker

Our Father who art down in the pub

Our Mother doing the washing up

Well that was then, an this is now

So you better listen up

Factories lia empty

Manuafacting emptiness

Life still needs to be filled none the less

So go and find something to love

But just promise me this one thing, yes

Please stay in sight of the mainland

I always know you've got to go

I don't want you to go

So before you go, there's just one thing you ought to know, yeah

there's just one thing you ought to know

there's just one thing you ought to know

there's just one thing

just one thing

You can fill your life with love

You can fill your life with hope

You can fill you life with food and drink or whatever floats your boat

I'll be be singing you this song 

There's a million things in store for you just beyond the horizon

But please stay in sight of the mainland

So stay in sight of the mainland

You're wiser than I'll ever be

You're beautiful smart, so funny

You fill my heart, you fill my dreams 

And my only hope is you succeed

my only hope is you succeed

 my only hope is you succeed

you're my only hope

you're my only hope 

 you're my only hope

So please 

Please
Please
Please
Please

Trust and believe

In you and me

Northern lights will guide you home

Northern lives just like you're own

Northern rain turning into a flood 

But Don't forget your northern blood

Do never forget your northern blood

And please stay in sight of the mainland

Yeah please stay in sight of the mainland

Pease stay in touch with me

In this contactless society

Anywhere that you may be

The northern star leads back to me
Yeah the northern star leads back to me

 Yeah the northern star leads back to me

 Yeah the northern star leads back to me

You're my northern star

*******************************

Boris Johnson & Bottom on a Midsummer Night!

Spot the difference?

by Brian Bamford

IT is difficult not to compare Boris Johnson's current plight and his lover's 'tiff' to that of the weaver Nick Bottom in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. Jan Moir in yesterday's Daily Mail wrote: 'Amid this velvety foliage, the star crossed couple sat at a teak table, one that was as weathered as time itself.' Of Boris and his lover Carrie Symonds, who following their altercation posed photographed playing footsie under the green wood trees in Sussex, Ms. Moir adds: 'Their secluded garden was suitably fecund with 50 shades of green, in a sanctuary that had grown as wild as their crazy stupid love.'

The scene is so remarkably reminiscent of the famous Shakespeare play!

Of Nick Bottom see what one pundit writes:

'Whereas Puck’s humor is often mischievous and subtle, the comedy surrounding the overconfident weaver Nick Bottom is hilariously overt. The central figure in the subplot involving the craftsmen’s production of the Pyramus and this be story, Bottom dominates his fellow actors with an extraordinary belief in his own abilities (he thinks he is perfect for every part in the play) and his comical incompetence (he is a terrible actor and frequently makes rhetorical and grammatical mistakes in his speech).  The humor surrounding Bottom often stems from the fact that he is totally unaware of his own ridiculousness; his speeches are overdramatic and self-aggrandizing, and he seems to believe that everyone takes him as seriously as he does himself.  This foolish self-importance reaches its pinnacle after Puck transforms Bottom’s head into that of an ass.  When Titania, whose eyes have been anointed with a love potion, falls in love with the now ass-headed Bottom, he believes that the devotion of the beautiful, magical fairy queen is nothing out of the ordinary and that all of the trappings of her affection, including having servants attend him, are his proper due.  His unawareness of the fact that his head has been transformed into that of an ass parallels his inability to perceive the absurdity of the idea that Titania could fall in love with him.'

Nick Bottom and Boris Johnson are, it seems, like as two peas in a pod.

*************

'THE PRODUCERS' Delivers 'HEIL HITLER' Roar

'Don't be stupid, be a smarty / Come & join the Nazi Party'

Review by Brian Bamford

I STRUGGLED to contain myself from waving a 'Heil Hitler' salute at this superb performance of THE PRODUCERS at Manchester's  Royal Exchange.  When the flighty dame Ulla does the floor show with 'When You've Got It,, Flaunt It', it's a randy Max Bialystock who declares:  .'We may both be seated but you've two standing ovations down here'.

It's now over 50 years since THE PRODUCERS was first released as a film in 1967.  It had mixed reviews with the New York Times reviewer Renata Adler saying:  'Some of it is shoddy and gross and cruel; the rest is funny in an unexpected way.'

It took off only when Peter Sellers, who loved the film. took out and paid for full-page adverts in trade magazines such as Variety, insisting it was the 'ultimate film...the essence of all great comedy combined in a single motion picture'.

In 1996, the film was selected for preservation as part of the US National Film Registry in recognition of the fact that it was 'culturally, historically or aesthetically significant'.

Anti-Heroes from Falstaff to Hitler

Leo Bloom is an accountant sent to do the books for Max Bialystock, a failing Broadway producer, and finds that Bialystock raised $2,000 more than he lost on his last failure. You could make a lot of money by overfinancing turkeys, he muses, a glint in his eye:  'The IRS isn't interested in flops.'

In 2000, the critic Roger Ebert described the film thus: 'The movie was like a bomb going off inside the audience's sense of propriety.  There is such rapacity in its heroes, such gleeful fraud, such greed, such lust, such a willingness to compromise every principle, that we cave in and go along.'

It has been argued somewhere that Shakespeare didn't want Falstaff to become such a popular hero as he did in his play Henry IV, part I and II.  Raz Shaw, the director of the Royal Exchange play, argues that Mel Brooks was a second-generation New York jew who in the musical only wanted to mock the Nazis:
'The only people it really bullseyes into ridicule is the Nazis.  Everyone else, it likes.  It tries to glory in difference.'

'Springtime for Hitler'

Their formula for failure is a musical named 'Springtime for Hitler', with a dance line of jackbooted SS girls and lyrics like, 'Don't be stupid, be a smarty! Come and join the Nazi Party!'  Their neo-Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind roars up to the opening night on a motorcycle, wears a Nazi helmet into the lobby, and tells them, 'It's magic time!'

Is Raz Shaw right to claim that the only people it ridicules 'is the Nazis' or to imply the doesn't have other targets?  After all Mel Brooks who wrote the play, told Susan Stamberg of NPR News:  'The comedy writer is like the conscience of the king.  He's got to tell them the truth, and that's my job-to make terrible things entertaining.'

Vitally Vulgar & Politically Incorrect

My partner who came to see the play at the Royal Exchange said 'It is just so politically incorrect!' 
Indeed it is, just as when somebody farts in Church; for 'The Producers' is cheerfully willing to go anywhere for a laugh.  Or as Mel Brooks responded to a woman who had said 'I have to tell you, Mr. Brooks, that your movie is vulgar':  'Lady' he said, 'it rose below vulgarity.'

And yet is Brooks right when he further tells Susan Stamberg:  'The way to deal with despots like Hitler is not to get on a soapbox and fight (then) with rhetoric, but fight them with ridicule, to laugh at them-laugh them into olbivion.'

I think we've got to grasp that even now, no especially now, that popularism, nationalism, religious bigotry and feudal loyalty are far more powerful forces than what some would regard as sensible politics.  As George Orwell remarked in his essay entitled 'Wells, Hitler and the World State':  'Creatures out of the Dark Ages have come marching into the present, and if they are ghosts they are at any rate ghosts which need a strong magic to lay them.' 

Sometimes ridicule may not be enough despite the seduction of the current Royal Exchange production of 'The Producers' and all the wit and cleverness of Mel Brooks.

***********

'Twelfth Night' at Manchester Royal Exchange

GENDER POLITICS, SHIFTING SEXUALITY AND SUBVERTING SHAKESPEARE

The Royal Exchange Theatre presents

TWELFTH NIGHT

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Jo Davies

13 April - 20 May – The Theatre

Press Night: Thursday 20 April, 7.30pm

An intoxicating comedy with gender, identity and love at its centre storms onto the Royal Exchange Theatre’s main stage this spring. TWELFTH NIGHT is directed by the award-winning Jo Davies who makes her Royal Exchange debut with Shakespeare’s whirlwind comedy. Faith Omole, Kevin Harvey and Mina Anwar return to the Exchange as Viola, Orsino and Maria, Kate Kennedy takes on the role of Olivia and Anthony Calf is Malvolio. Award-winning Manchester-based transgender artist and activist Kate O’Donnell makes her Royal Exchange debut in the role of Feste, the wise observer in this foolish, lovesick kingdom. Live music from the critically acclaimed folk musician Kate Young and lap-tap guitarist Joe Gravil adds to the complexity of this intricate comedy which probes gender-politics and ideas of belonging. The play runs from 13 April – 20 May.

Washed up on the shores of Illyria after a ship-wreck, Viola hides her true identity by disguising herself as a man. Finding a job – and love – at the court of Duke Orsino, Viola becomes muddled in mistaken identities when her disguise begins to cause more problems than it solves.

Fashion, exclusion, & renunciation in King Lear

Review of the new Manchester Royal Exchange production of King Lear

by Brian Bamford

DON WARRINGTON who plays King Lear in the performance at Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre says 'The focus {of the play) for me is the idea of madness, obviously, but also I've been thinking about age and whether Lear is content to be aging.  I don't think he is and it's fascinating finding his attitude towards getting older and facing the idea of death.' 

That shows that there are many readings to Shakespeare plays and in the case of King Lear, as Don Warrington says old age and dementia are all aspects of the play.  The play's director, Michael Buffong, has said:  'Counter to that we have some of the younger characters' attitudes towards old age and the idea that they actually need to seize power for themselves from the older generation in order for them to rise seems to be the natural order of things.' 

Besides this interpretation based on age this play evokes the additional complication of racial identity, because the Talawa Theatre Company* that is performing this production wants to say something about the fashionable identity politics of today.   Don Warrington said:  '...it made me want to explore the idea of a black presence in England in that time, of which I'm absolutely sure there was historially.'   To justify this he argues that '[t]he reality that black people have lived in, and contributed to, English society for hundreds and hundred of years but have been erased from the history books is only now being gradually uncovered and discussed.' 

These remarks merely show how diverse are the interpretations springing from Shakespeare's work.   But do we need this extra complication to understand King Lear? 

Mr. Buffong argues 'When I read KING LEAR, I instinctively felt it should be set where Shakespeare had originally set it:  in pagan England.' 

The notion of historical exclusion though now fashionable is not new.  In 1942, George Orwell in his essay 'Looking Back on the Spanish War' wrote:

'When I think of antiquity, the detail that frightens me is that those hundreds of millions of slaves on whose backs civilization rested generation after generation have left behind them no record whatever.  We do not even know their names.'

In contrast to what is said above about old age, dementia and perhaps madness in Lear, another interpretation of the play is that it is about renunciation of power.  As Orwell writes in another of his essays 'Lear,Tolstoy and the Fool' (March 1947):

'Lear renounces his throne but expects everyone to continue treating him as a king.  He does not see that if he surrenders power, other people will take advantage of his weakness:  also that those who flatter him the most grossly, i.e. Regan and Goneril, are exactly the ones who will turn against him.' 

This could well be a message from Niccolò Machiavelli, and it demonstrates how the play can be seen as being about power and its renunciation or about old age and dementia.  Despite these misgivings I have about the participants interpretation of the play, it is well worth trip to central Manchester to see it.

*  Talawa Theatre Company and its Wikipedia entry describes it thus:
Talawa Theatre Company's Mission Statement: 'Talawa is Britain's primary Black led theatre company. We create outstanding work informed by the wealth and diversity of the Black British experience. We invest in talent, build audiences and inspire dialogue with and within communities across Britain. By doing so we enrich British cultural life.'
The company's mission is to provide opportunities for black directors, writers and actors, to use black culture to enrich British theatre, and to enlarge theatre audiences seeing black work. Talawa's work embraces both literary and participation activities, finding and developing new writers and scripts, workshops for schools, colleges and corporate clients and presenting new work by emerging artists.

Film Version of Royal Exchange Hamlet

FILM VERSION OF ROYAL EXCHANGE THEATRE’S HAMLET TO BE RELEASED IN CINEMAS

 

SHOOTING has just completed on a film version of the Royal Exchange Theatre’s HAMLET, with acclaimed theatre and television actress Maxine Peake in the title role.

 

The unique and groundbreaking stage production played to sell-out houses throughout its run which ended Saturday 25 October. 

 

The stage production of HAMLET was directed by Sarah Frankcom, Artistic Director of The Royal Exchange Theatre.  Sarah and Maxine have a long and productive collaborative relationship, including their hugely successful MASQUE OF ANARCHY at Manchester International Festival.  Maxine Peake was BAFTA-nominated for her performances in THE VILLAGE and HANCOCK AND JOAN and is also hugely respected for her performances in SIK, RED RIDING and as Myra Hindley in SEE NO EVIL. 

 

The film version of HAMLET is directed by Margaret Williams and produced by Anne Beresford of MJW PRODUCTIONS LTD and Debbie Gray of Genesius Pictures.  This is the team behind a number of projects including the much-praised film version of Britten’s opera PETER GRIMES ON ALDEBURGH BEACH.  Margaret Williams is one of the leading directors in the field of stage-to screen; her film version of WRITTEN ON SKIN (Royal Opera House/BBC) recently won the Gramophone Contemporary Award and the Diapason d’or.

  

Producer Debbie Gray has had a major success in 2014 with the feature film NORTHERN SOUL which reached no 10 in the UK box office chart and no 1 in the DVD chart.  Anne Beresford is known for her work combining music, dance and film for feature film and television as well as feature films such as MOUTH TO MOUTH starring Ellen Page.

 

HAMLET will be distributed in the UK by Picturehouse Entertainment, one of the leading names in Alternative Content.   It is envisaged that HAMLET will open in approximately 200 cinemas in the UK in March 2015.

 

In 2016, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, the British Council will lead an international celebration of the UK’s most well-known cultural figure.  The British Council will engage audiences and learners internationally through modern and imaginative interpretations of Shakespeare’s work. 

 

The film version of HAMLET is supported by The Royal Exchange Theatre, Genesius Pictures, Quidem and the British Council.  The Royal Exchange Theatre gratefully acknowledges the generosity of the following in the making of the film: Oglesby Charitable Trust, Old Trafford Consulting Limited, Martyn & Valerie Torevell and all those who supported the theatre’s recent Catalyst project, including public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.  

 

For further details contact  ANNE BERESFORD (MJW Productions Ltd) on 020 7713 0400 / 07949 054789 or DEBBIE GRAY (Genesius Pictures) on 07708 407948 and JOHN GOODFELLOW (Royal Exchange Theatre Press & Communications Manager) on 0161 615 6783 / john.goodfellow@royalexchange.co.uk

 

MJW PRODUCTIONS: www.mjwproductions.com

Genesius Pictures: www.genesiupictures.com

 

Production photos from the stage version of HAMLET are available to download from www.royalexchange.co.uk/press

  

 SOME REVIEWS OF THE STAGE PRODUCTION

 

“A triumph of re-invention... remarkable, intimate and intense... without straining for shock value or raising voices unduly, Peake and co make this 400-year-old revenge tragedy come alive in a way you’ve never seen before”  (The Times)

 

“Maxine Peake strikes all the notes of intelligence, intensity and range displayed by the best Hamlets” (Financial Times)

 

“In her Chairman Mao suit and David Bowie hair, Peake uses every part of the stage, every prop, every poise of the body to deliver a 400-year old script as if the words have just come to her” (Manchester Evening News)

 

“Fresh-minted and funny, this Hamlet is compelling” (The Independent) 

 

THE ROYAL EXCHANGE THEATRE is situated in the heart of Manchester, and is one of the UKs leading producing theatres. The Company attracts some of the most original artists and theatre makers in the country to present an ambitious programme inspired by the world's greatest stories: stories that have the power to change the way we see the world.

Maxine Peake as Hamlet at Royal Exchange

MAXINE PEAKE TAKES TITLE ROLE IN BOLD RE-IMAGINING OF SHAKESPEARE’S MOST ICONIC WORK 

HAMLET

by William Shakespeare   

Directed by Sarah Frankcom

Designed by Amanda Stoodley 

The Royal Exchange Theatre,

St Ann’s Square, Manchester.

Thursday 11 September – Saturday 18 October  

 

PRESS NIGHT: Tuesday 16 September at 7.30pm

Acclaimed theatre and television actress Maxine Peake is set to star in a bold re-imagining of William Shakespeare’s HAMLET by William Shakespeare at the Royal Exchange Theatre - taking the title role in a new production which runs from Thursday 11 September to Saturday 18 October.   

Launching the theatre’s new Autumn Winter 14 / 15 Season – the production reunites her with Royal Exchange Artistic Director Sarah Frankcom following the huge success of THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY at last year’s Manchester International Festival.   

BAFTA nominated for her performances in both THE VILLAGE and HANCOCK AND JOAN, Maxine’s many other TV credits include SILK, RED RIDING and Myra Hindley in SEE NO EVIL.

Previous theatre credits for the Royal Exchange include RUTHERFORD AND SON, THE CHILDREN’S HOUR and, most recently, MISS JULIE.   

In Shakespeare’s most iconic play, Hamlet’s father is dead and Denmark has crowned a new king. Consumed by grief, Hamlet struggles to exact revenge with devastating consequences. HAMLET explodes with big idea and is the ultimate play about loyalty, love, betrayal, murder and madness.  

 

This stripped back, fresh and fast-paced version, will see Maxine Peake create a Hamlet for now – a Hamlet for Manchester.  

 

She said: 'Sarah and I have looked for a project that would stretch and excite us and HAMLET just seemed the next natural step to challenge us both in so many ways. I am so excited at how gender swapping can affect and throw up new ways of looking at this theatrical masterpiece.'   

Sarah Frankcom’s other recent Royal Exchange credits include A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE, MISS JULIE, ORPHEUS DESCENDING, THAT DAY WE SANG and BLINDSIDED.  

She said: 'Maxine started her acting career in our youth theatre. Her performances have thrilled our audiences and the Royal Exchange is her local theatre. HAMLET is a massively exciting challenge for any actor and director.' 

Also appearing are Claire Benedict as Player King and Marcella; Gillian Bevan as Polonia; Jodie McNee as Rosencrantz; Barbara Marten as Gertrude; John Shrapnel as Claudius and the Ghost; Katie West as Ophelia and Ashley Zhangazha as Laertes.   

The cast also includes Thomas Arnold, Michelle Butterly, Dean Gregory, Tachia Newall, Peter Singh and Ben Stott.   

Members of the Royal Exchange’s Young Company will also be appearing as the Young Players.   

The production is designed by Amanda Stoodley and music is composed by Alex Baranowski. The creative team is completed by Lee Curran (lighting), Peter Rice (sound), Imogen Knight (movement) and Kevin McCurdy (fights).  

 

• Maxine Peake will also be joining the Exchange as an Associate Artist this autumn.  Her new role will draw on her considerable talents as one of the nation’s best-loved actors and also as a writer. It will include opportunities for her to get involved in the theatre’s pioneering work with community groups and young people - and work with young actors from across the city.

Royal Exchange Full Casting for Hamlet

FULL casting has now been announced for HAMLET - which runs at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre from Thursday 11 September to Saturday 18 October 2014 and stars acclaimed theatre and television actress Maxine Peake in the title role.   

This bold re-imagining of Shakespeare’s most iconic play - which launches the Exchange’s Autumn Winter 2014 / 15 Season – will also feature Claire Benedict as Player King; Gillian Bevan as Polonia; Jodie McNee as Rosencrantz; Barbara Marten as Gertrude; John Shrapnel as Claudius and the Ghost; Katie West as Ophelia and Ashley Zhangazha as Laertes (see Notes For Editors for full biographies).

 

The cast also includes Thomas Arnold, Michelle Butterly, Dean Gregory, Tachia Newall, Peter Singh and Ben Stott.

The production will reunite Maxine Peake with Royal Exchange Artistic Director Sarah Frankcom following the huge success of THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY, Shelley’s epic poem written in the wake of the Peterloo Massacre, which was performed to over 6,000 people as part of last year’s Manchester International Festival.  

BAFTA nominated for her performances in both THE VILLAGE and HANCOCK AND JOAN, Maxine’s many other TV credits include SILK, RED RIDING and Myra Hindley in SEE NO EVIL. 

Previous theatre credits for the Royal Exchange include RUTHERFORD AND SON, THE CHILDREN’S HOUR and, most recently, MISS JULIE.   

She said: "Sarah and I have looked for a project that would stretch and excite us and HAMLET just seemed the next natural step to challenge us both in so many ways. I am so excited how gender swapping can affect and throw up new ways of looking at this theatrical masterpiece.” 

Sarah Frankcom’s other recent Royal Exchange credits include A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE, MISS JULIE, ORPHEUS DESCENDING, THAT DAY WE SANG and BLINDSIDED.

 

She said: “HAMLET is a massively exciting challenge for any actor and director. I am certain Maxine will be a compelling and extraordinary Hamlet for our time.”  

Maxine will also be joining the Exchange as an Associate Artist this autumn.  Her new role will draw on her considerable talents as one of the nation’s best-loved actors and also as a writer. It will include opportunities for her to get involved in the theatre’s pioneering work with community groups and young people - and work with young actors from across the city.

 

A Crazy Coup!

LESS than a week ago the leadership of Rochdale MBC was taken over by Councillor Richard Farnell when he displaced Colin Lambert, the leader of the Council since 2010.  Both are Labour councillors respectively.  Last Wednesday, we learned of the Cabinet members and the assistant portfolio holders appointed by Councillor Farnell:  Councillor Brett (Agent to Simon Danczuk MP for Rochdale) took over finance; Councillor Iftikar Ahmed Adult Care; Public Health went to Councillor Cecile Biant; Community, Culture & Tourism to Councillor Daalat Ali; Corporate Services & Neighbourhoods to Councillor Neil Emmott; Children & Schools to Counc. Martin; Housing & Environment to Counc. Beswick and Business, Skills & Employment to Counc. Williams.  Most of these seem to be allies of Simon Danczuk M.P. for Rochdale.

But what at first seemed like a triumph for Farnell and Danczuk by last weekend was looking more like a political tragedy akin to Shakespeare's Macbeth.  Even last Wednesday night, after the full council meeting, it is rumoured that several councillors did not stay behind for the Mayor making ceremony:  some, it seems, left in disgust at Councillor Farnell's take over.

This weekend in the Manchester Evening News, the Heywood and Middleton MP, Jim Dobbin, has hit out at Councillor Farnell saying it was the wrong moment for him to be taking over in Rochdale.  Richard Farnell, who took power last week, was also leader in the early 1990s when the Knowl View sex abuse scandal in Rochdale was first being investigated and when the controversial reports into sexual abuse of boys at the school were being produced.

A council-commissioned enquiry is currently looking at whether there was a town hall cover-up.

Speaking to the BBC, Mr Dobbin - who was Coun Farnell’s deputy at the time in question - said he had made a ‘bad move’ by taking over again now.

Sources close to Councillor Farnell have told Northern Voices that he is presently suffering nightmares, and hadn't anticipated all the attention from the media about what he knew about what was going on in the 1980s and 1990s, when he was last in power as leader of the council. 

Mr. Dobbin said:  'I don’t think it’s very wise at this particular time, particularly with the inquiry going on into Knowl View.  Richard was leader at the time these accusations were being made, so I don’t think it’s a very clever thing for Richard to do and if he had spoken to me about it I would have said so.'

Up to now Simon Danczuk the MP for Rochdale has defended Councillor Farnell saying that he is the object of a politically motivated 'smear campaign'.  But it is hard to see that the media are doing anything other than their job in asking questions. 

'Was Shakespeare a capitalist?'

The Cultural Banality of the British Left 

 

GILBERT Murray in the mid-20th Century once said somewhere that he had addressed a lecture on Shakespeare to a Socialist debating society, and in conclusion invited questions in the usual way, only to receive the sole question:  'Was Shakespeare a capitalist?'  The depressing thing about this comment is that it is probably a true story, and that some on the left would still consider that the answer to this question should govern how we regard Shakespeare as an artist, poet or playwright and even if it is worth going to see his plays.  One might equally ask 'Was Shakespeare a sexist?' or considering The Merchant of Venice and Shylock: 'Was Shakespeare an anti-Semite?'  

 

As Jonathan Swift once wrote: 

'When a man of true Genius appears in the World, you may know him by this infallible Sign, that all the Dunces are in Conspiracy against him.'  

 

Was Shakespeare a good writer?  George Orwell wrote in his essay 'Literature and the Left' (1943): 

'Most people would agree that he was [and] yet Shakespeare is, and perhaps was even by the standards of his own time, reactionary in tendency; and he is also a difficult writer, only doubtfully accessible to the common man.'  

 

Ought we therefore to gag Shakespeare and ban his plays; after all Leo Tolstoy declared him in a pamphlet to be an immoral writer?    

 

Since the defeat of the miners in 1984-85 there has been the development of a form of identity politics that dictates taste, style and even literary content according to certain standards in which you may discredit a writer or a publication by simply dragging out a set of 'correct' values imposed according to a mysterious political orthodoxy, and devised so as not to offend certain categories of people according to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or what-have-you.  Around 1930,  another change in the approach to literature occurred when literary content replaced technique, and a generation of writers tried to be actively useful to the left-wing movement and some joined the Communist Party but, as Orwell says, when 'it was found that they would not or could not turn themselves into gramophone records, they were thrown out on their ears.'  

 

Recently an anarchist historian told me that anarchist bookfairs depress him, and that he had ceased to attend the London Anarchist Bookfair, and when I then commented that they are very well managed and organised, he said: 

'Yes, but that is the only thing anarchists are able to organise!' 
 

The reason that anarchists are so passionate about bookfairs is that generally their publications are not fit for street or factory gate selling, and don't sell well commercially in bookshops and newsagents, thus they are happy to give them away to each other at their own bookfairs.  Fortunately, Northern Voices sells steadily in a wide range of outlets and doesn't need to depend on Anarchist bookfairs, although it is available at most across the country, excluding the Manchester bookfair of course which is controlled by a small political group or ghetto.

 

In 1943, Orwell wrote: 

'The illiteracy of politicians is a special feature of our age – as G. M. Trevelyan put it, “in the seventeenth century Members of Parliament quoted the Bible, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the classics, and in the twentieth century nothing” and its corollary is the political impotence of writers.'  

 

The illiteracy of the left in our age is perhaps best illustrated by the comment below which we recently received for the Northern Voices Blog: 

'It doesn't surprise me that Northern Voices nor the NAN are not allowed in to an Anarchist book fair [sic].  The publication has frequently been called out for homophobia, sexism, even bordering on paedophilia.'  

 

This writer, who is naturally anonymous, further writes:  'The publication itself lists people's names and addresses...'  Well yes, of course, one of the best known anarchists in the North West, Jim Petty, has both his name and address on each issue of NV, so people can write in their complaints and send their subs, and naturally 150 people gave their names on this Blog to condemn the conduct of the Manchester bookfair organisers in 2012 on the so-called Burnley declaration.   As many of our readers will by now understand that Northern Voices does not have a party line or conduct itself in the manner of a political gramophone for some tedious political orthodoxy, this will come as no surprise to anyone other than perhaps some strange sly and shifty Shakespearean modern-day Malvolio who, like our anonymous commentator above, is of such a serious disposition he cannot take anything light-hearted if it affects his dignity, and his dignity is always threatened unless there is someone to bow down to him.