James Salter

A new Tennant moves in at the RSC

It can’t be often that visitors to the local chippie in Stratford-Upon-Avon are confronted by a Dalek when they pop in for their cod and chips with a side order of mushy peas. That, however, is exactly what currently greets them in jump-on-the-bandwagon style poster form. If only Doctor Who were around to rescue them.

Pause for a moment, young friend: what luck! For the tenth incumbent is in town, but not in his sci-fi geek-friendly Timelord guise. David Tennant has more lofty aspirations for his Bard-birthplace visit as he tackles the lead role in the RSC’s new production of Hamlet, playing at the Courtyard Theatre until November when it transfers to London.

I was lucky enough to win my battle against the legions of Cybermen frantically calling the box office or logging on to the RSC website when public booking opened last November, and was able to secure myself a ticket to the first preview performance last night. A bargain at £8 I feel, especially considering the £200+ they’re going for on eBay at the moment. (I wouldn’t bother bidding by the way, since you’re unlikely to get in with them). Admittedly I was right up with the/in the gods, but that proved not to be too bad a place at all. For example, I bet you didn’t know Patrick Stewart is going bald! Oh yes, he’s got a huge bald spot coming on!

You heard right, sci-fi geeks: two alien-battling turns for the price of one. Patrick Stewart is playing the nasty old rogue Claudius alongside Tennant. But that’s not where the special offers end, because when you cast Stewart in a role he ends up with two, becoming the Ghost of King Hamlet with the aid of some quick costume changes and a crafty helmet.

But it’s not just spacemen. The cast is full of faces you’ll be pretty sure you’ve seen somewhere before, and a few you’ll definitely recognise from various other theatre productions, films and TV shows.

Even despite having the right famous Patrick Stewart in the cast, most of the focus was inevitibly on David Tennant last night. So how was his performance? Well, he was pretty damn good, taking his portrayal of Hamlet at the beginning of the play as a bit of a hapless young lad still dressed in his funeral attire, transforming him into a man hardened by anguish and touched by death at the end. Yep, sounds a bit boring. But the great thing was it wasn’t. While not going over the top or being too similar to the good Doctor, Tennant managed to inject enough energy and jolly japes to give some great laughs.

Laughs were a common theme throughout the three and a half (or more like four) hour performance. Oliver Ford Davies had some brilliantly comedic moments as the slightly senile Polonius, although the pauses as his mind wandered off did get a little more tedious than amusing when they started to occur every other line. Relief comes when Hamlet shoots him … accidentally of course. Aside from the pausing, he delivers some lines in cracking style.

The award for surprising line delivery has to go to David Tennant though. He managed to get past the overly infamous “To be, or not to be” and oft-misquoted “alas poor Yorick” with no hint of cheese. There were a few gasps from the audience (which strong rumour suggests included the PM Mr Gordon Brown himself) with the emphasis placed on the first syllable of “countryside matters” as he attempts to lay his head in Ophelia’s lap. The loudest gasp seemed to come from a young lad about half way back in the front stalls, clearly shocked that The Doctor would know such a naughty word.

Don’t get me wrong: Tennant’s performance was top notch, but not the best of the night. And no, even though Shakespeare is his gig, even Patrick Stewart was outshone. Penny Downie, playing Gertrude, won it for me. Her balance of central character yet keeping in the background made her stand out all the more. Absolutely fantastic.

The production design is centred around the concept of a mirrored world, with the stage built out of a highly reflective floor and giant obilisquesque (if that’s not a word then it should be) partially transparent mirrors forming the backdrop. And chandeliers. Six of them, no less. And very whizzy they are too. In fact, the whole thing is whizzy and looks a lot better than the building site which the RSC has turned much of the Stratford riverside into as they embark on their major tinkering (or rather complete transformation of) the Royal Shakespeare and Swan Theatres.

Not only one of the best RSC productions I’ve seen to date (which isn’t many, which isn’t nearly enough) but one of the best productions of Shakespeare I’ve seen, the 2008 version of Hamlet comes highly recommended from me. Ignore the haters - they’ve been eloquently dealt with elsewhere - this is top stuff and most of the audience seem to agree.

Aside from the performance itself, my personal highlight was popping into the pub next door afterwards and seeing most of the cast turn up for their private end-of-first-preview-night party. David Tennant may not have appeared before we left (probably because he’d have been mobbed), but we got a Patrick Stewart walk-past and I got a smile from Penny Downie.

Thomas the Tamworth Engine

Drayton Manor may not quite compete with Alton Towers and Thorpe Park, but it doesn’t do badly for a family run business in Tamworth. It’s certainly worth a visit once or twice a year. And so it was on a rainy Monday at the beginning of July that I found myself in Thomas Land, Drayton Manor’s big new investment for 2008.

While a number of Drayton’s past installations have lacked the visual polish that they’d get at theme parks with larger budgets, Thomas Land looks fantastic. The level of detail is almost incomparable against the rest of the park.
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Because you can’t drink out of a person

Yesterday I drove down to Portsmouth to meet up with Tara and Shashi for a day trip to the Isle of Wight. Despite the Island’s reputation for being the bit of England where the rich go to retire, we still found more than enough to do (even if most of our planning didn’t take place until we were on the ferry!).

Isle of Wight in the distance

Our first stop on the Island was Osborne House, where Queen Victoria spent most of her time after Prince Albert died. Here we learnt a lot of interesting stuff: you can’t drink out of a person, walled gardens are exactly what they say they are, statues of humans don’t have pupils but dogs do, nine of the 18 children broke cups and disappeared, the antelope lived in a separate house, and they do sound like Brazilian pirates.

Osborne House

Taking pictures of the view from the terrace

After lunch in East Cowes we headed over to Alum Bay. Unfortunately a lot was being wound down at the end of the season, including the chair lift down to the beach which was closed. Therefore, our visit was quite short but we did stop to watch the glass blowing and pick up some pick n mix from the sweet factory.

Alum Bay

Tara had seen there was a garlic farm on the Island and we all thought it would be good to take a look. It wasn’t the easiest place to find, being way off the main road down a steep single track road, but was well worth the effort. Anybody coming around to mine for a meal in the next few weeks is quite likely to get garlic butter and garlic mint sauce (maybe with a few other ingredients thrown in too).

Garlic Farm

By then it was near the end of the day and we just had time to head off to Ryde for some Chinese before catching the ferry back across to the mainland.

Ryde Pier at sunset

If we don’t mention my mammoththree and a half hour drive home down the foggy back roads of southern England, the day couldn’t have been a lot better. Good fun, even if you’re not 80.

Tiltless in Tamworth

Today saw a visit to the home of the precursor to the end of the world, haunter of my dreams, the tower of doom: Apocalypse. Yes, today Tom, John and myself visited Drayton Manor.

The inevitable lowlight of the day was a ride (or should that be a stand) on their big nasty drop tower. As you may know, me and drop towers don’t get along. Me and slightly broken drop towers get along less well. Today Apocalypse lost its tilt, meaning the standup side didn’t lean out to let us face the ground.

But that was only the beginning of a rather tiltless day. Drunken Barrels, tipsy as it may have been, certainly wasn’t tiltsy either. Instead, it has turned into a flat bog standard teacup ride without so much as a wimper of a raised platform.

Other parts of the day were better though, aside from the equally inevitable crushing blow on G Force and bangin ride on Shockwave. We rode the cable cars which are never open and visited the old penny arcade.

Things we learnt today:

- ostriches voluntarily gave up the ability to fly
- waltzers in the dark aren’t very good if they don’t spin
- you can’t have enough piratical adventures

Tambogganing

It’s not been a spectacular summer weatherwise, has it? Then again, at least it hasn’t snowed. Well, not outside anyway.

In Tamworth, however, it snows every day at the Snowdome.

I’ve just got back from there after a spectacular tobogganing session this evening.

Courtesy of some rather nifty controls, the toboggans were steerable and brakeable (but where’s the fun in that?) down the length of the real proper cold snowified slope … hopefully slowing to a graceful stop at the bottom.

A bargain at just £8 for the half hour session - especially since we only shared it with 10 others instead of the usual 120 session capacity!

Still Delirious?

Last night’s slot on Mainstage at Greenbelt was headlined by Delirious?, following on from the slightly wacky Duke Special who turned out to be quite good too.

It’s got to be at least a decade since I first saw Delirious? in concert and they can still hold a crowd. Quite a wide ranging crowd too age-wise - all the way from 14 year olds, through those who used to be 14 year olds when they first started, to those who you wouldn’t really think were still capable of jumping quite as high as they did!

Their set was largely stuff from World Service and The Mission Bell, but there was time for the classic History Maker - does it make me old that I remember that when it was new? Martin Smith proclaimed it as the song that has never died (or maybe the song they’ve failed to kill off). Hopefully that’s how it will remain for a while yet.

Even though they began with Rain Down, the clouds luckily didn’t play ball and the evening remained dry. Highlights for me included Now Is the Time and Majesty. There were also a couple of new songs and some of the trademark taking-it-wherever-it-goes moments.

It’s been a few years since I last saw them play live, but yesterday reminded me of how good they are … and how far they’ve come since the Cutting Edge days and Littlehampton beach. It may not quite have beaten Wembley Stadium (what could?) but it was a spectacular way to end our couple of evenings at Greenbelt.