MORE GREAT READS FOR
MARCH, 2017
Hag-Seed, the Tempest Retold, by
Margaret Atwood
Acclaimed Canadian author Margaret Atwood is following
in the footsteps of other eminent contemporary authors commissioned by the
Hogarth Press to write modern versions of Shakespeare’s timeless plays. So far the standard has been dauntingly high: I read ‘Vinegar Girl’ by Ann Tyler with great
pleasure (see review below)and was convinced no other writer, talented as they
are, could emulate it – until now.
Ms Atwood’s play-within-a-play has every Shakespearean
requirement: magic; villains most evil; young love;
comedy – and revenge, the over-riding emotion and reason for being of
‘The Tempest’, now given a depressingly modern setting at the Fletcher County
Correctional Institute somewhere in the Canadian province of Ontario. Felix Phillips, once the avant-garde director
and darling of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival, has been usurped by his weasely
assistant Tony Price, who has convinced the milksop Festival board to ‘let
Felix go – he’s past his prime’. Felix’s
current upcoming production of ‘The Tempest’ is abandoned, as is his projected
cast; he is powerless to object,
especially as he is escorted from the theatre by two bouncers courteously
bearing all of his theatrical life in cardboard boxes.
The stage is beautifully set for revenge which – as per
Will’s play – takes twelve years to materialise: Felix has lost everything; quite apart from his reputation, his beloved
little daughter Miranda also died shortly before his humiliating exit from
Makeshiweg. He has much to brood on and
finds a suitably lonely place in which to do it, not far from Fletcher
Correctional, where (after learning that one of his enemies is now the Minister
of Justice and the other the Heritage Minister) he eventually applies under an
assumed name for a job teaching literacy and drama to the inmates. He is a shoo-in for selection, especially as
he is the only applicant and finds that after several productions – Julius
Caesar, Macbeth, Richard III – he has had a degree of success unheard of in
similar programs. Crims are lining up to
be in his next production. Aye, The
Play’s the Thing! And what’s more, his
two Most-Hated want to visit the prison to see the next play: fortune is smiling on him at last.
And,
with his choice of ‘The Tempest’ as the perfect vehicle with which to bring
those MF*ckers down, Felix coaches his motley cast meticulously in theatrical
artifice, constantly surprised by what his players teach him in return,
especially his Ariel, a conman and computer hacker par excellence (he cooks up
unlimited technological magic), his Caliban, a huge Afghanistan Vet with PTSD
and addiction problems - ‘excellent actor, but touchy’ – the Hag-Seed of the
title, and Felix’s original choice for Miranda when his star was in the
ascendant: Anne-Marie Greenland, then
sixteen, a former child gymnast eager to act;
now an accomplished waitress – and still a great dancer and
choreographer. Well, she’ll have to be a
fast mover to keep out of the way of his woman-starved cast.
Those
two crooked Ministers haven’t a hope: Felix’s
faithful players follow all his directions to the letter (including rewriting
some of their speeches in rap-talk and staging what the Ministers think is a
murder and riot), and Ariel’s expertise with recording equipment exposes them
cooking up more dastardly schemes, unaware that all their planning is being
stored on a memory stick.
Ms
Atwood gives all in her brilliant cast a happy ending, not to mention the
feeling that the reader has at the end of this sublime adventure into theatre
craft: Shakespeare’s brilliance at
harnessing every human emotion, good or evil, hilarious or sad shines again in
Ms Atwood’s superb modern version. SIX STARS!!
Vinegar
Girl, by Anne Tyler
Who
could possibly top that? Well, no-one
really, but Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Tyler has elected to tackle ‘The
Taming of the Shrew’, the Bard’s paean to misogyny, and the bane of feminists –
and ordinary women – since it was first written. She does a sublime job.
Italy
becomes the American state of Maryland, specifically Ms Tyler’s beloved
Baltimore, the setting for most of her lovely stories. Kate Batista is twenty-nine, a college
dropout and reduced to keeping house for her largely absent father, a revered
scientist researching autoimmune diseases, and her vacuous, empty-headed (but
pretty and popular!) younger sister Bunny.
She knows that life is passing her by but she feels powerless to change
her circumstances, until her father, desperate to keep his brilliant Russian
research assistant whose visa is expiring, presents her with a request which
she finds utterly outrageous: marry
Pyotr Cherbakov so that he can stay in the country and get a Green Card! Her reward?
The knowledge that she has contributed to the unimpeded advance of vital
scientific research!
Needless
to say, Kate is furious – she is a shrew, after all, something that Pyotr in
his clumsy attempts to court her recognises early. Not that it deters him: ‘You are crazy about me, I think’, he states
when Kate’s body language (not to mention her mouth) informs him of just the
opposite. He does not care; he needs his Green Card, and the thought of
having to return to Russia without finishing the exciting work he is doing with
the world’s foremost researcher on autoimmune diseases fills him with dismay. Besides, there is nothing for him to go back
to: he was a foundling, left on the
steps of an orphanage in a box that held cans of peaches (brand name
Cherbakov). No: his life must continue here in the U.S.A,
where he has a chance to permanently
belong to a community – and a family.
Ms
Tyler was a finalist in last year’s Man Booker Prize (the first year it was
opened to American writers) for her lovely novel ‘A Spool of Blue Thread’; once again she beguiles the reader with prose
as simple and natural as breathing, and she leaves no-one in doubt as to her
mastery of Shakespeare’s comedic style, striking a blow (subtle though it has
to be) for women everywhere with Kate’s wedding speech, in which she
rationalises in the most charming, authoritative way Pyotr’s caveman tactics
leading up to their hugely unceremonious marriage.
This
is a little gem, and does the Hogarth Shakespeare Project proud. SIX STARS!
Nutshell,
by Ian McEwan
‘So here I am, upside down in a woman.’ This is Ian McEwan’s unforgettable
introduction to his masterly modern interpretation of Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’,
specifically the murder of the King of Denmark by his brother Claudius and wife
Gertrude.
Hamlet is still in his mother Trudy’s womb, and space is
getting more limited by the day;
however, he is quite comfortable for the moment and takes a keen
interest in the sounds around him, especially the radio interviews, lectures
and podcasts he listens to (Trudy believes in keeping up with the play,
globally speaking); his only complaint
about unborn life so far is that his soon-to-be father, publisher John
Cairncross, has been evicted from the crumbling family home because mum is
having a very carnal and energetic affair with John’s brother Claude. The frequent battering ram assaults by Claude
on various parts of his tender anatomy infuriate our little narrator; he hopes that his silly mother will soon see
the huge differences between the brothers before he sees the light – he is astonished
that his kind, intellectually superior father has been supplanted by
property-developer Claude, whose claims to sophistication and intelligence are
negligible – but he does know how to choose a wine!
And a lot of wine is consumed, lulling the unborn to
sleep most of the time, until he wakes up and hears a conversation which
horrifies him: Trudy and Claude have
decided to remove John permanently from their lives by Murder Most Foul. Because the decaying, filthy house in which
Trudy lives (John and Claude’s childhood home) is in a very fashionable part of
London, Claude knows that the site is worth millions, and because John is
showing a marked and shameful reluctance to end his marriage (For Heaven’s
sake, stop grovelling – where’s your self-respect!) there is only one solution: he’ll have to go. Claude intends to win Fair Lady and the loot.
Baby is agog at their duplicity, especially when it
becomes painfully clear that he will not figure in their futures, but will be
‘put somewhere’. To add insult to injury
his own father appears to have no interest in his imminent birth either, intent
as he is at abasing himself at the sandaled feet of his faithless wife. What can he do? What awful fate awaits him?
Mr McEwan’s book extends to just under two hundred pages,
culminating with the birth of our fretting little narrator. The author likes the idea of a novel that one
can read in one or two sittings, ‘an intense experience’ – always assuming that
it will entertain the reader sufficiently enough to do just that. I have to admit that I have found some of his
works to be of a much lesser quality than this one; however, he has certainly achieved his
objective with ‘Nutshell’. His
scintillating prose illustrates treachery, betrayal and murder in grand
Shakespearean style and baby Hamlet’s family has never seemed more real. FIVE STARS
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