Sour Grapes

MD and I run the Forest Rec parkrun this morning while L is a tail runner and Daughter makes her parkrun début. It’s quite a family affair. Naturally Daughter picks what is a fast week to do her first one but still does brilliantly.

Its also the day she get the keys to her new flat which is over in almost posh Mapperley Park. You could be pedantic and say it’s only just in Mapperley Park but in it is. We start moving some of her things in but we’ll need the man with the van again to move the big stuff.

Tonight we are at the Nottingham Playhouse for the first time in ages to see The Grapes of Wrath. This is a special request from L, who is struggling to get through the book along with the other 100+ novels on her book pile. It is a shame then that I have to keep nudging her awake throughout and her me.

The story concerns the Joad family who, in the 1930s, travel 2000 miles from poverty struck Oklahoma to hopefully find a better life in California. It is a journey that takes it toll on everyone, mentally and physically including a few deaths. So it’s quite a harrowing story or it’s supposed to be. However this production sees a bit of a rewrite of the story and is, I assume, intended to be a critique of the current migration situation.

This means that the dress code for the Great Depression era is relaxed and alongside characters in 1930s-esk dungarees we have others in tracksuits, jeans, Lycra leggings, a full superman outfit and (possibly the one good pun in the production) an ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ t-shirt.

This re-jigging of the story even included real jigs and there was a lot of unnecessary singing and dancing, including a very puzzling song about user car sales. All of which took time away from the actual story and some meaningful character development.

Those underdeveloped characters were large in number and extremely diverse. This included a multi-racial casting within the same family, which of course I understand the intent of but it really didn’t make things very easy to follow. Nor did the lack of attention to the ages of the family members who were meant to be siblings, parents and grandparents etc.

Then there was the sparse set which comprised of two large transparent containers which I think were supposed to signify their assorted means of transport and lodging but it was generally difficult to keep track of what they were supposed to be at any one time. For me it looked like the play was mostly set in a carriage on the London Underground. The real live river at the front of the stage was a nice touch though.

In the end, the production came over as neither contemporary nor true to the gritty realism of the original novel and I do like a bit of grit. I’m really not sure what John Steinbeck would have thought but he would most probably have hoped for something a little more coherent. It was just a bit of a mess that left you coming out of the theatre feeling neither entertained, educated nor inspired just confused.

I certainly needed the bottle Springhead’s Robin Hood ale they now sell there as well as the drinks afterwards in the Room With A Brew and the Blue Monkey.

(Saturday 1^st April)

Don't Blink

Derby 3 Millwall 0. I don’t really understand this. Six wins out of eight and third in the league. It’s encouraging if nothing else and a sign that perhaps we should avoid relegation more easily this year but I’m not reading anything more into it. The more testing run of fixtures that we have coming up will be very interesting.

Now I remember the 1970’s BBC TV Series of John le Carre's 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy'. I vaguely recall it at the time but have re-watched it since, although even that would have been some time ago. I found the series fascinating but it also baffled the hell out of me and that was a seven part series that had over five hours to tame the meandering plot. The new film version however intends to do this in just over two hours...

So perhaps they’ll cut out those long pregnant pauses of unspoken dialogue and those lingering meaningful stares that didn’t convey very much... Nope.

Like the TV series the film nonchalantly tosses little bits of raw information or ‘hints’ at it’s largely unsuspecting audience and says make of that what you will. It is not big on explanations. In fact so little is made of the revelation of some vitally important points that you’re likely to miss them. So concentrate, don’t blink. Don’t even think about going to the toilet.

Essentially there is a double agent, a mole, amongst the heads of British intelligence, known here as the ‘Circus’. At the time all this was very current affairs, now it’s a 1970’s cold war history lesson. Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) is sent to Budapest by boss man ‘Control’ (John Hurt), to bring in a Hungarian General who wants to defect to the west and will reveal the mole's identity but the meeting is a set-up.

The meeting at a Budapest cafe ends with Prideaux shot and taken away to endure months of vicious interrogation, cue a particularly shocking scene, before he is eventually returned to Britain where he is ‘retired’ to live in a tatty caravan and to teach at a public school. Which is very 1970’s, these days even public schools don’t employ shady men who invite young boys into their caravans.

Back at the Circus, Control has died and his deputy George Smiley (Gary Oldman) has been forced to retire in shame at the botched operation. Yet the investigation is reopened when agent Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy), a loose cannon if ever there was one, turns up with pillow talk corroboration of the mole theory gleaned from a love affair with the wife of a Russian intelligence officer he was tracking. Smiley is subsequently drawn out retirement to track down the mole.

Tarr promises to help Smiley, if he can reunite him with his Russian blonde, a promise he cannot possibly keep. Smiley’s suspicions fall on four men:- Percy Alleline (Toby Jones), who is now head of the Circus and three other top ranking officials, Bill Haydon (Colin Firth), Roy Bland (Ciaran Hinds) and Toby Esterhase (David Dencik).

I’m giving a more linear version here, which the film does not, instead relying on the dreaded flashback. You soon lose count of how many times we end up back at that Lenin themed staff Christmas party.

Assisted by Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch), Smiley investigates. Talking to the increasingly bitter Prideaux and the sacked head of research Connie Sachs (Kathy Burke) who suspects that the Soviet Cultural Attaché in London is really a spy. Smiley discovers that pages have been removed from the duty officer's log book for the night Jim Prideaux was shot. So he speaks to the duty officer himself, who tells him who was the man in charge that night...

The Circus's Russian intelligence source ‘Merlin’ is looking increasingly dodgy as indeed is the entire operation coded name ‘Witchcraft’. Now who was the man responsible for that, and could the same man simply be shagging Smiley's wife to make any accusations levelled at him by Smiley look like sour grapes.

Having gleaned enough, Smiley set a trap and catches the traitor. If you’ve not blinked the mole’s identity is no great shock and perhaps that’s part of the problem with the film. I think perhaps the film makers knew it too and jazzed up what happened next.

Some say this is a masterpiece. So you're supposed to describe it as compelling, tense, absorbing, involving etc etc and in some ways it was. Some would say dull. In reality, it's probably somewhere in between. It’s well made with strong performances all round. Gary Oldman's portrayal of Alec Guinness, sorry Smiley is excellent. Just gen up big time before you see it.

(Saturday 24th September)