Number Seventy News

Subsidiary delights of going to Newcastle are the excellent Roots Music, which always has a good selection of jazz and a suberb section of British folk albums,  and the ever-expanding Eldon centre which gets less attractive and more confusing and less like anywhere I want to be every time I make the mistake of going into it.  Stick to Grainger Market, JG!

But the Royal Shakespeare Co doing As You Like it was excellent.  Very bare staging, compared to the sumptuous Kaffe Fasset set of a previous production, but it very much suited the hard, black-clad court of Duke Frederick, the usurper, and the wintry, few-leaved Forest of Arden.  I found myself thinking that the main players were all extremely competent but none stood out. On the other hand, Jacques, played as Billy Connelly by Forbes Masson, Touchstone (Richard Katz) and Corin (Geoffrey Freshwater) brought real meaning to the parts, Corin’s honest working man well emphasised, Touchstone really mad, and Jacques a melancolic with a good line in satirical humour.( I don’t think it does to play Jacques too seriously).   And the RSC always speaks the lines so clearly, they always have, so understanding is made easy.

You’d think a band that come on looking like a set of undertaker’s coffin bearers, with a pianist that crouches over the piano like someone was going to steal it and a bass player who looks like his day job is an embalmer, would be pretty gloomy fare.  But no, even with a trio Gustavsen built up to lots of impressive moments and now that he has added Tore Brunborg on the saxophone it’s all more upbeat and really beautiful. Jarle Vespestad plays around the drum kit delicately and inventively.  Mats Eilertsen didn’t get too many solos on the bass but was solidly there all the way through.   I hope Brunborg is a fixture.

Sorry about that, Jackie.  But you don’t actually need my approval.

The concert was competent, very nice, had some interesting songs and excellent musicians but somehow there was a spark missing.  Nearly but not quite. Some little extra pizzazz needed – hard to define.  The nearest to real excitement was actually in the entirely instrumental numbers.  She plays a mean fiddle.

Turning 70 has obviously been stimulating for Pete Morgan.  He gave a superb, witty and moving reading at the Bar Convent – starting with his back catalogue and finishing with readings from his recent volume “August Light”.  He seemed more relaxed than at his birthday gig at the University in May.  Apparently he attempted to interview W.H. Auden for the radio once – and was completely defeated by the old curmudgeon’s lack of co-operation.

Amongst the supporting poets, there were excellent deliveries by, inter alia, Pauline Kirk, Oz Hardwick, and Andy Humphrey.  York is doing pretty well for accomplished local poets these days, of whom Pete Morgan is one of the brightest stars.    (Other stellar talents are Anthony Dunn, Carole Bromley, Mairie McInnes and the great unsung-outside-York local hero, Don Walls).

How pleasant to stroll along Filey’s wide sands on a sunny September day.  Enough breeze off the sea to keep the temperature pleasant for walking.  A retreating tide, few waves in the shelter of the Brig, a few more as we went South.  Along the unstable cliffs several houses too close for comfort.

At Filey the fishing boats come in close to shore and are then heaved onto a trailer and hauled up the beach by a tractor – there is no harbour but the Brig must provide protection from the worst of the weather.  Mussel shells abound on the beach but few really interesting pebbles, and fewer fossils.   Some brief patches as the tide ebbed, of the lugworms tiny spiky cities.

So far, I’ve only read “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” by Stieg Larsson so am not fully qualified to pontificate, but this Swedish thriller is brilliantly plotted, the characters satisfyingly bizarre, though not one-dimensional, and the detail convincing.  A very slight acquaintance with Sweden is sufficient to be able to visualize the type of location.  The main female character, Salander, has Bond-like, superhuman powers, which are not totally explained (or not yet) and the author does seem to have an unhealthy fascination with sadistic sex (though to oppose it for its violence towards vulnerable women).   And thoroughly 21st century in the use and abuse of IT to both commit and solve crimes.

I’m always astonished at how Vesaas gets inside the thoughts and feelings of his characters- usually young people, adolescents. In Spring Night the main character, a boy, is on the brink of sexuality, without knowing it himself.  His older sister is all too aware of her sexual power, with which she teases her suitor.  And into the household (their parents are away overnight) erupts a dysfunctional family, the parents at war with each other, a younger pregnant woman, a ferocious son, and a pubescent girl, the counterpart of the main character.  The boy barely knows what to think, can’t identify what he’s feeling, has to interact with all these people and steer through the vicious family tensions and unstated sexual tension.  It’s brilliantly done.