Theatre - Love's Labour's Lost - Northern Broadsides at the Lowry

Star rating – 8/10

It always amazes me, although I should know better by now, that comedies written so long ago can still delight and entertain modern audiences, and have me howling with laughter as much as the Northern Broadsides current production of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost triumphantly manages to do.

This is a delightful frolic through the King of Navarre and his three friends’ attempts to be studious and celibate academics for three years in his Spanish kingdom. They do not bargain for the delights of the Princess of France and her ladies arriving to tempt them away from their dry books. The comic timing is brilliant, and Matt Connor especially, as Berowne, gives a stand out performance. 

The colours and styles of the costumes are delightful, and the musical accompaniment to the merriment is great fun. Barry Rutter again shows how Shakespeare can be delivered in good, honest Northern accents, and still be appreciated for the genius he was, brilliantly accentuated by this hilarious modern adaptation.

Adam Foggerty is also great as the lumbering peasant Cotsard, who manages to get things wrong in all the right places. But it feels churlish to point out any more of the performers, as all round great entertainment and side splitting humour was delivered by each and every one. 

Film - Le Havre - directed by Aki Kaurismäki

Star rating – 6/10

This is quite a slight offbeat film from Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki, set amongst the working class people in the French port of the title. And it’s no advert for Le Havre as a place, but it is a heart-warming, and gently political story.  

Marcel (André Wilms) is an elderly shoe shine man who takes pity on a Congolese boy who has come into the country illegally, and managed to escape the authorities. He helps Idrissa (Blondin Miguel), to escape to his mother in London, despite his own wife being very ill. Most of his friends and neighbours pitch in to raise money for the escape, and it is an affectionate demonstration of people who have the least being most generous with what little they do possess.

There is quite an amusing performance by aging rock star ‘Little Bob’, and the characters are all quite touching. It doesn’t set the world alight, not is it meant to I suspect. And in its own way it’s a damning indictment of the way so called civilised nations treat people who are desperately fleeing from poverty and war in their native lands.

Books - Now All Roads Lead to France by Matthew Hollis

Star rating – 8/10

Matthew Hollis’s riveting biography of poet Edward Thomas was deservedly praised and awarded when it was published last year. It’s the very well researched story of a circle of adventurous young poets and writers just before the outbreak of the First World War. They set their stall out in the Poetry Bookshop in the then unfashionable district of Bloomsbury, and against the established poets of the day such Hardy and W.B. Yeats. The group serve as a magnet for fellow creative writers, and Hollis keenly captures the spirit of those heady days in his narrative.

Thomas led a bit of a hand to mouth existence as a reviewer and travel writer, but his heart wasn’t really in that. It was not until he, in small tentative steps, found a way to write poetry that his passion was really awakened. 

He suffered from almost crippling depression, which led to his neglect of his long suffering wife Helen and his three children. Although he did genuinely seem to care for them all, he preferred it, and could only seem to cope with life, if he spent frequent time away from them. His behaviour may seem a tad self indulgent, but his malady took him to dark depths, including thoughts of and an actual attempt, albeit half heartedly, at suicide.

His one significant relationship, at least creatively, seems to have been with another poet, the American Robert Frost. Their great friendship was forged during the summer of 1914 in Gloucestershire before the First World War changed all their lives irrevocably. The opinion of his friend on his first attempts at verse meant a great deal to Thomas.

Thomas’s poetry is not about the horrifying events of the war itself, like the more famous war poetry of Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon. Rather, it is about the country that was left behind, and the great gaps that appeared where the slain had once worked in the fields and country lanes. 

Thomas wrote beautiful poems about loss, and is all the more poignant following his own death in 1917 in Arras, France, at the age of 39. He was quite ambivalent about the war itself at first, but had got caught up in the general movement to enlist, even before it was made compulsory for able men of his age to do so. 

Hollis paints a beautiful picture of a gentle, fragile, and sensitive man, who struggled to cope with the world, but left behind a legacy of verse which is still just as haunting and poignant today. This is a thoroughly memorable, enlightening and moving biography.

Film - Headhunters directed by Morten Tyldum

Star rating – 3/10

I think I have just been cured of a near addiction to Scandinavian crime thrillers. After the pure pleasure of The Killing on TV, and the thrills of both film versions of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, even if they could not quite match the brilliance of the original Larsson novels, I was expecting much more from the adaptation of the Jo Nesbo book Headhunters. To put it mildly... 

So, should I start with the clunky, unbelievable plot? Or with the wooden acting? Or with the totally predictable ‘thrills’, accompanied by unnecessary gratuitous violence and gore? You get the picture. Roger is an unappealing character – a Norwegian executive headhunter, who supplements his income with a bit of high end art theft on the side. Apparently he feels he has to do this to keep his tall blonde girlfriend in the lap of luxury, but all she seems to want is to settle down and have a family. 

He comes a cropper when he messes with the Dutch CEO of a espionage technology company – which is lucky, as it makes for a readymade plot revolving around shootings, hidden tracking devices, and the protagonists stopping at nothing to get what they need. And lots of blood and brutality.

Not one of the characters has any redeeming features to make it worthwhile caring what happens to them. Aksel Hennie as Roger has to wear a ridiculous bouffant hairstyle for most of the time – if it’s not a wig then it’s just very bad hair. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as the Dutch baddie looks like he just stepped off an Armani ad – like a very smooth, younger version of Sean Bean with razor sharp cheekbones to boot. The story is ridiculous, and I’m not clear if it is a bad adaption of a good book, or if both are equally stupid. I haven’t read the novel, and am not likely to after this waste of a potentially good couple hours of my life that I will never get back. I’ll get off the fence now.

DVD - The Well Digger's Daughter - directed by Daniel Auteuil

Star rating – 7/10

Daniel Auteuil makes his directorial debut with a lovely rural French story of family honour and romance across the class divide - much like the ones in which he first made his name (at least in the UK): Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources in the 1980s. This time he plays the role of the father wanting to safeguard his beautiful daughter and even more, to vigorously defend the reputation of his family. 

It is gentle and warm hearted with beautiful scenic locations and matching cinematography. Spanish actor Astrid Berges-Frisbey plays Patricia, his innocent and obedient daughter. French heart throb Nicolas Duvauchelle plays Jacques, the dashing pilot son of a wealthy family, who no sooner wins her heart than he is whisked away to fight in the Second World War.

The plot is slightly predictable, and maybe not the most challenging French film you might see this year, but nonetheless it’s a lovely old fashioned picture to warm your heart, should it need it.

Theatre - Wonderful Town - The Lowry

Star rating – 8/10

Wonderful Town may not be the best known or even the best musical written by Leonard Bernstein, that honour must surely go to his glorious West Side Story. But it is nevertheless a slick and extremely entertaining light hearted production, with a simply gorgeous musical score. It is set in 1935 New York, with two sisters making their way from the Ohio to Greenwich Village to follow their dreams – one to be a writer, and the other to be a singer.

It is a very successful collaboration between the Hallé Orchestra, conducted by Sir Mark Elder, and the Royal Exchange Theatre, with direction from its Artistic Director Braham Murray. Put those together with the name of TV instant hit celebrity fame girl Connie Fisher in one of the lead roles, and this will surely be a hit.

In truth Fisher, returning from surgery on her vocal chords, is not the strongest singer in the cast as Ruth the smart would-be writer, and her voice now has a slightly strange deep quality that is nothing like Maria. But her performance skills are exemplary, with great timing, acting and musicality. The plaudits for the singing in this musical must go to Lucy Van Gasse as Eileen, who plays her blonde sister who has a winning way with every man she meets. And also to Michael Xavier, who is brilliant as Bob Baker, the magazine editor who slowly falls in love with the serious and determined Ruth. Both Van Gasse and Xavier have beautiful, clear, strong voices which soar above the stage.

It may not have the most memorable plot in musical history, and it may not have well known sing-a-long numbers either, but it is engaging and brilliantly choreographed, with great support from the ensemble cast with their perfect timing. There is one very funny scene featuring a load of New York cops doing Irish dancing – not a sight you will see very often I would hazard a guess. The sets are very effective, and give a great sense of the eclectic life to be found in their adopted artistic neighbourhood. 

And it felt very special to have the talents of the Hallé for the evening to showcase the sumptuous music, and nice to see Sir Mark getting right into the spirit of the show, even having his own lines. They will be replaced when this production goes on national tour so the Lowry audiences are especially privileged to hear them play. Overall this musical is one to savour in the light hearted spirit in which it was written, and that’s no bad thing.

Film - Carancho directed by Pablo Trapero

Star rating – 8/10

The backdrop for this thrilling Argentinean film noir is the appalling injury rate and loss of life through road accidents there every year. And inevitably where there’s an accident there’s a claim to be made, and people to exploit. Carancho shows that the corruption which has grown up around this claims industry has spread its dark tentacles into the legal profession, the police, and even the doctors who are meant to care for the victims and their families.

It’s extremely well made, with the muted brownish palette reflecting well the murky dealings of all those involved. Ricardo Darin, who must have one of the most attractive and lived in faces around, and last delighted in the wonderful Oscar winning The Secret in their Eyes, is perfect as Sosa, the lawyer who has lost his licence and gone over to the dark side. He is working for an extremely disreputable company whose business plan is to cream most of the compensation from the victims, and to go to any lengths to achieve it. Sosa finds himself spending his time chasing ambulances, participating in fake accidents, and getting beaten up for his trouble, so he is generally not in a great place.

On one assignation he happens to meet and fall for a young doctor, Luján, who works gruelling night shifts at the local hospital and is new in town.  Martina Gusmán is very convincing as the woman who slowly falls for the charms of Sosa, despite his black eyes and dubious work practices, and she is also the executive producer of the film, so clearly a talented woman in more ways than one.

As romance blossoms Sosa decides to become a sort of Robin Hood figure, trying to give the families back their rightful cash, and planning his escape plan from his miserable life. I did have a slight problem with the grimy dealings of Sosa, and how Luján could fall for him in spite of them, but then she is given her own dark secret to compensate for his.

It’s a very pacey film, with lots of drama, violence and, inevitably, car crashes. The direction is smooth, the acting is slick, and the lead characters are likeable, despite their flaws. It’s not faultless, but it is a great film, and I really could watch Ricardo Darin for hours and not get bored.