Sutton Theatre Company present Scrooge

Dave and I will be overseas for Christmas again this year as we've got to quite like our sunnier winters! I'm not sure exactly where we'll be On The Day yet - probably southern France or possibly Spain and an outside chance of Portugal. Britain starts its Christmas countdown so early though that we are able to make sure we get our traditional treats before we go! There's a Christmas pudding steaming as I type this post and we've already eaten two boxes of mince pies between us (not all today!).

Also in the festive theme, you might have noticed my A Christmas Carol book review and giveaway post over on Literary Flits yesterday and that ties in beautifully with a show I am going to see in Coulsdon in a couple of weeks' time. Sutton Theatre Company are putting on what promises to be a fabulous production of Scrooge - and I am not just saying that because my sister and niece are taking part! I've blogged about STC shows before, Return To The Forbidden Planet being one that I especially enjoyed for its great sets and singing.

Scrooge has four performances at Hillcrest Halls from the 18th to the 20th of November and tickets are on sale via the STC website or by calling the Box Office on 07963 803434. Don't wait too long though! I know the Sunday matinee has already sold out and, at the time of writing, there were just 5 tickets left for the Saturday matinee. The two evening shows do still have some availability. Book now!

Watching @NTlive The Deep Blue Sea in Torquay

Did you catch the National Theatre Live broadcast of Terence Rattigan's play The Deep Blue Sea yesterday evening? Wasn't Helen McCrory superb?! If you missed it, there are a scattering of encore screenings in the next few days so do grab a ticket. I know of an Exeter screening on Tuesday 6th September and Teignmouth on Wednesday 7th and details of venues further afield are on this page of the NTlive website. The Deep Blue Sea was surprisingly understated compared to other production broadcasts we have seen. Most of the emotion was simmering just under the surface in that wonderfully repressed 1950s way. I loved the set which is a recreation of a whole boarding house complete with its lodgers in each room who we see through the paper-thin walls. For me, this made the centre stage, which is Hester and Freddie's flat, feel more like a zoo cage than a home which added greatly to the tension of the play.

As well as being the first time I have seen The Deep Blue Sea, yesterday was also the first time we had visited the Central Cinema in Torquay. We were worried that it might be as run down as the Curzon in Eastbourne had been, and not a patch on the Barn Cinema at Dartington where we saw A View From The Bridge in May. This would mean longish drives for our event cinema excursions whereas we can walk to and from the Central Cinema in about twenty minutes each way. The venue is a little shabby, but has comfortable seats with lots of legroom and good sightlines to the screen. For this screening anyway, it was also so quiet that we had no trouble choosing and buying our interval treats and getting back in time for the recommencement of the play. Very different from several Eastbourne Cineworld experiences!

I think our only real criticism - which is amazing for a cinema - is that the staff could have set the volume a little higher. Other people chatting in the interval remarked that event performances are often too quiet whereas standard films are expectedly over-loud! We like the Central Cinema though and plan to return there for the next NTlive production later this month: The Threepenny Opera. See you there?

One Man Two Guvnors @ToadsTheatre - we find great theatre in Torquay

One Man Two Guvnors in Torquay 

Those of you who actually know me in the real world might have been wondering when I would start talking about theatre in our new home town. Amazingly it only took just over a week from us getting the flat keys to sitting down in a beautiful little theatre for a well- deserved evening out! It wasn't a factor in the purchase, but we were both happy to discover the Little Theatre is a mere ten minutes walk away from our front door. We strolled down to check out the venue in daylight. It's a beautiful repurposed church (reduce, reuse, recycle!) and the resident company, TOADS (which I think probably stands for Torquay Operatic and Amateur Dramatic Society) have done a great job renovating the inside. There's now velvet drapes falling from the old stone arches all the way up the sides of seating which is proper cushioned theatre flip seats on a pretty steep rake so everyone gets a good view of the stage. I loved the monochrome paintings in alcoves high above the audience.

TOADS Little Theatre 

TOADS current production is One Man Two Guvnors, the farce which got such great reviews when it starred James Corden at the National Theatre. We didn't get around to watching the NTlive broadcast so jumped at the chance to see the play performed live here. It's a fantastic script and I thought TOADS did a wonderfully professional job. It's difficult to make such intricate chaos look easy and we certainly didn't feel like we were watching an amateur company. Everyone was perfectly cast and we loved the musical scene change interludes. I did start writing about my favourite characters, but soon realised I was going to be naming them all! As a story, One Man Two Guvnors is completely improbable which makes it all the more fun and we both laughed thoughout. I'd highly recommend this show to everyone, even if you don't really consider yourself a theatre person.

The TOADS production of One Man Two Guvnors runs until the 13th August so, if you're in Torbay, click through to the TOADS website and book your tickets before they all sell out!

#ThrowbackThursday - where we were on this date in Junes past

My first throwback for the 30th of June is a simple and

Delicious crumbly biscuits 

reliable biscuit recipe which I posted in 2013 having baked a batch in our Polegate kitchen. I had been baking these crumbly biscuits every once in a while for many years beforehand and the original go-to recipe is probably buried somewhere in my Good Housekeeping Cookery Compendium - either that or I saw it on Blue Peter!

By the end of June 2014, I had graduated to baking bread and we treated ourselves to a week of varied theatre trips, the 30th of June event being a performance of Shakespeare's The Tempest broadcast to Eastbourne's Cineworld cinema from The Globe Theatre. From the sublime to the ridiculous, the next night saw us at The Devonshire Park Theatre for a live performance of The Play That Goes Wrong. Our friend Linda had recommended this to us and it truly is hilarious. We loved every minute! If you haven't seen it yet, I think the play is still on in London and there's now a Peter Pan Goes Wrong play from the same team.

Another year goes by and we spent the last day of June

Dave walking in Northumberland 

2015 on a ten mile walk around Harthope Burn and Broadstruther in Northumberland. It's such a gorgeous part of the country and, although the sky looks cloudy in this photograph, was a gloriously hot summer's day. The walk was a mixture of quiet roads, burnside grass and narrow peat footpaths across bracken and heather moorland. We spotted our first oystercatcher which we were very pleased about, but still hadn't seen a red squirel although there were signs 'promising' that we would!

That's all for this month's reminiscing. If you want to share your own #ThrowbackThursday posts, feel welcome to drop a link in the Comments. Next month I'll be remembering 28th of Julys.

Arthur Miller's The Crucible and a brand new home for my book reviews

We were so impressed by the NTlive screening of Arthur

Miller's A View From The Bridge in May that we both immediately wanted to see more Arthur Miller plays. Of course we couldn't find any productions nearby, but were happy to find a cut price DVD of The Crucible (download from Amazon) when we visited Trago Mills shortly afterwards. Coincidence or witchcraft?!

Miller's play is set during the Salem witch trials of 1692, but was written as an allegory of the 1950s McCarthy-era witch-hunts. In Salem, accusations of witchcraft are rife. John Proctor (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his wife Elizabeth (Joan Allen) are innocent of any such charges, although John has committed adultery with their former serving girl, Abigail Williams (Winona Ryder). When witch expert John Hale is called in to investigate the reports of witchcraft, Abigail attempts to implicate Elizabeth, thinking that she will then be able to resume her affair with John. This film was directed by Nicholas Hytner whose work we previously saw when he directed the superb Timon Of Athens in 2012.

The Crucible is just as powerful a drama as A View From The Bridge and Miller had a fantastic talent for writing realistic and believable dialogue. The film is now twenty years old, but hasn't dated and it was fascinating to see how easily religious fanaticism can be manipulated for personal gain, especially in times of hysteria as it was in the 1690s and the 1950s and still is today. It was interesting to see similar themes explored in the different settings of the two plays. One such is the importance of retaining a good name when all else is gone, even at the expense of life itself.

On a different note, today is the launch of my new book

reviews blog, Literary Flits, which you can find at
http://litflits.blogspot.co.uk
It's a candy-coloured sweetshop of bookish delights!

Book review posts seem to have been taking over Stephanie Jane so I thought it was high time they had a room of their own. I am planning a daily book review with each post dedicated to a single book, rather than squishing trios together as I do currently. I've already got some great new books lined up including fiction from Sweden, Japan, Jamaica and Turkey. Plus I'll be interspersing my new reviews with the best of my book finds from over here. There might also be giveaways!

If you already visited LitFlits in the past week, you probably saw the countdown clicker. If not, you have got until noon today which is when the first review will publish. I'm all excited!

Views From Bridges part one - @NTlive Young Vic cinema screening

The first of a pair of tenuously linked posts today! I want to

talk about the superb National Theatre live production we saw at Dartington Hall's Barn Cinema on Thursday evening and our Dartmoor woodlands walk on Friday afternoon both of which incorporate views from bridges.

A View From The Bridge, the Arthur Miller play, was reimagined by Dutch director Ivo Van Hove for a Young Vic revival last year. I think we must have been travelling too far from a venue when NTlive first screened their broadcast so I was delighted to be within reach of several venues for Thursday evening's encore. We chose to patronise Dartington Hall's Barn Cinema which is beautiful. Finding it was a little tricky as we seemed to be driving through the Estate for a very long time, but once there there is plenty of car parking for just £1. The Barn is just that and I loved the thick wooden beams and whitewashed stone walls. Comfortable-enough tiered seating is thoughtfully offset so all seats have a clear view and, although the screen is smaller than we expected so we thought we might be too far back, this turned out not to be the case.

Ivo Van Hove chose to stage his almost propless production in a stark boxing ring style set. This meant we could focus entirely on the dialogue without distraction. The narrator-lawyer-referee Alfieri (Michael Gould) provides a bridge between the audience and the characters as we watch longshoreman Eddie Carbone's (Mark Strong) domestic life crash around him. Eddie and his wife Beatrice (Nicola Walker) agree to host two illegal Italian immigrants, Beatrice's cousins, in their home and one, Rudolfo (Luke Norris) begins a relationship with Eddie's sheltered niece, Catherine (Phoebe Fox). It's a very powerful story of jealousy and rivalry which is still incredibly relevant despite having been first staged some sixty years ago. I left feeling distinctly steamrollered by the emotional impact of the play. All the actors are perfect throughout especially Mark Strong and Nicola Walker. I liked the understated accents and was impressed with the pacing especially in a scene which resembled a communal meal - tough to know without props! - where the stilted conversation created unbearable tension.

Having not seen any other versions of A View From The Bridge, I can't compare this one, but I just feel so lucky to be able to experience theatre of this sublime quality from a tiny cinema in Devon. Dave and I have been talking about A View From The Bridge on and off since it finished two days ago and I believe this is the most discussed NTlive play we have seen. NTlive and similar broadcasting ventures are a fantastic innovation which I hope continue for years to come as we certainly wouldn't get to see such memorable productions without them!

Oedipus The King by Sophocles / Ishmael by Mary Elizabeth Braddon / The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain

Ishmael by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Buy the ebook from Amazon.co.uk
Buy the paperback from The Book Depository
Buy the hardback from Waterstones

My copy of Ishmael was another of the books I downloaded from ForgottenBooks, recommended in their daily email. It was highly praised and rightly so.

Set mostly in Paris from the 1840s to the 1860s, Ishmael primarily tells the story of Sebastien Caradec who is born to a woman of failing circumstances and strives to make his place in the world under his own steam. The novel includes lots of detail of both society living and extreme poverty of the period. Fascinating descriptions and several grotesque characters bring the seedier aspects of Paris to life. The complicated political situations are also vital to the story as the city undergoes a major change during the decades.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed Ishmael. The writing is dated in its style but fits with the period of the novel so this adds to the atmosphere. Sebastien is a perfect romantic leading man and I was intrigued to discover the lives of the people surrounding him. Perhaps Ishmael's only fault would be that it began to feel overlong with about a hundred pages to go, but then picked up pace again towards the satisfying conclusion.

The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Buy the audiobook download from Audible via Amazon.co.uk
Buy the paperback from The Book Depository
Buy the paperback from Waterstones

My version of The Postman Always Rings Twice was an Audible download read by Stanley Tucci whose style very much reminded me of Matt Dillon's reading of On The Road. TPART is a crime novella so there isn't a great deal of character development. Frank is a drifter who stumbles into a casual job and takes a shine to the owner's wife. Said wife, Cora, married to escape her previous life but doesn't like the one she's ended up in either. I didn't find them sympathetic at all until the point where Cora starts believing that she can make a go of the diner.

The intricate plotting of TPART is great fun to unravel so I mostly enjoyed the story for this reason. I wasn't convinced by Frank and Cora's frequent declarations of love though and this resulted in an interesting conundrum. Did either really care about the other or were they confusing need and want for deeper emotion?


View all my reviews on Stephanie Jane or on Goodreads