Thoughts on Dancing Brick's 'Captain Ko and the Planet of Rice'

Thoughts on Dancing Brick's Captain Ko and the Planet of Rice

So I've just got back from Edinburgh's Underbelly, having seen Dancing Brick's latest piece, Captain Ko and the Planet of Rice. If you're looking for a review, this isn't it – this isn't a review, not as such. In fact, I feel pretty under-qualified to review it at all, because – and at the moment I'll hold my hand up to this – I don't think I really understood all that the company was trying to achieve. Although, at some point, I do need to write a review. At some point.

This isn't the review, this is more of a chance for me to try and hash out some thoughts about Captain Ko... and see where I end up. Feel free to join me, or to move on; up to you. There'll probably be spoilers.

So, Captain Ko. Oh, and the Planet of Rice. The title prepares us for a sci-fi voyage, and possibly a slightly quirky one. For the first twenty minutes or so, that's exactly what we get. But the play clearly divides into three distinct sections, and connecting them is the problem I'm currently having. Let's take them one at a time. [It turns out that these aren't sections at all – we're being shown a triptych of different plays, not one play at all, which actually makes quite a lot of difference – Ed.]

The first section is basically a loving homage to the age of classic TV sci-fi, ie. late sixties and early seventies. The sound effects are lifted straight out of the Star Trek memory banks, while the costumes (pastel blue space suits, optimistically lacking gloves) would be at home in an episode of Captain Scarlet or Thunderbirds. Captain Ko's mission is set up like a sixties TV show, with an opening sequence that harks back to an age when lunar landings were surely only months away and the rest of the solar system seemed within humanity's grasp. If you've ever seen Space 1999, you'll be right at home with the film sequences, which contribute to the very 'Gerry Anderson' feel to the whole section. It's full of a joyous optimism and confidence in humanity's prowess that seems naïve with the benefit of hindsight. But it's only naïve to us because we know that interest in the Space Race collapsed after NASA finally won, and funding dried up when competing with the USSR became defunct.

Even though that momentum fell off, a generation still grew up dreaming of the stars and hoping that one day mankind would reach out and walk on more distant planets. But of course, we haven't. The best we've managed so far is a couple of probes out in deep space, and – topically – an explorer on Mars. The Moonbase Alpha of Anderson's Space 1999 is no closer to reality than it was in the 60s, or even in the real 1999.

What's especially touching about this as a tribute is that it could be all about Gene Rodenberry and classic Trek, but it isn't at all. Perhaps it's the British nature of the company, or the slightly low-budget, home-made aesthetic, but this is much more akin to Anderson sci-fi, and the less obvious shows. I think the later soundtrack even had echoes of the Blake's 7 theme, but that could be coincidental.

Lieutenant Stark, Captain Ko and, er, terror.

Dancing Brick deposit Captain Ko and her Lieutenant on the Planet of Rice in the year 2063, when that's the only planet mankind has yet to bring into the fold of its peaceful planetary union. Remember what I said about the optimism with which classic sci-fi sometimes regards the future? The Planet of Rice causes Ko some problems (malfunctioning equipment, difficulty in navigating, that sort of thing) and she finds her self repeating moments, sequences, phrases – over centuries. She loses all celestial reference points, then loses track of her location on the planet and eventually time itself ceases to have any meaning for her. Her robotic companion is only vaguely aware of the discrepancy. She becomes trapped in a loop without realising, and gets excited on discovering evidence that someone has visited the planet before them (it's the map she discarded on arrival).

And then it gets a bit strange.

In amongst the rice of the planet, Ko finds an proper Grandma cardigan and some glasses. Naturally, she puts them on. Her lieutenant sweeps away the detritus of the Planet of Rice (including bits of their spacesuits) like a sweeper of dreams who, at dawn, clears away the clutter of the subconscious to leave the mind clear for the coming day – and Ko transforms into an elderly woman, pottering about her kitchen. The spacesuit remaining under the cardigan reminded me of that generation that grew up with an eye on the stars and the stories TV told them about what was up there. This grandma could well be the girl who, as a child, dreamt of being Captain Ko, exploring the Planet of Rice, but now she's here, in her kitchen, on Earth, alone.

The play's second section – again, about twenty minutes – consists almost entirely of the elderly Ko in a kitchen which is entirely mimed to a recorded soundtrack of sliding drawers, opening and closing cupboards and clinking plates, cups, saucers, etc. It's very domestic, it's hardly the Planet of Rice, and it's far from the dreams of those who watched Neil Armstrong's giant leap for mankind. And in a way, I guess that's kind of the point. Watch closely, and you'll see this woman repeat the same set of processes, roughly, without actually getting anywhere. She boils the kettle a couple of times, but – although she takes a cup and saucer to the table – never actually pours anything out. She moves plates and cutlery around, as if preparing for a (solitary) meal, but it seems that company isn't the only thing she's lacking as she prepares it at least twice over. She gets caught in a loop of recurring events, and gradually time loses all sense of meaning.

Theatrically, this is brave and, I think, shows just how highly Dancing Brick think of their audience. It's twenty minutes of tediously miming out a domestic setting – and there's a lot of kitchen for the audience to hold in their heads. Following it all asks a genuine mental effort, sticking with it and making sense of this section within the play requires an even greater effort. It was too much effort for the ten-year olds, who became restless, and many of the adults looked and sounded like they were struggling. I'll admit that I – with my critic's head in place, brow furrowed analytically – stopped following it and it's only really through writing this now that it's clicking into place for me.

Speaking of things clicking into place, the third section is what really threw the audience on the night I saw the play. The mime section ends when the elderly Ko is joined by one of the aliens from the Cantina band in Star Wars: A New Hope. I know, I know; my fanboy heart skipped a beat. And there once again were the dreams of that generation who thought mankind's first alien contact would be just decades away. Instead, they're waltzing with imaginary figments and preparing for meals they forget to eat. Thinking about it like that, it's actually desperately sad, but at the time it was quite funny, with the apparently random alien and all.

The Mos Eisley Cantina alien dances with an elderly Captain Ko

But what follows is much more down-to-Earth. Except it's on the Mir Space Station. So we're back with the earlier space exploration, although this is real. This time, a Soviet cosmonaut drifts around the Earth's orbit, discovering the effects of no-gravity and space on a human body. His regular updates and chats with Mission Control are charmingly filmed, accurately reflecting the sorts of transmissions often broadcast from space craft to viewers on Earth. The rapport with his Mission Control contact is sweet, and serves to remind him of the planet he leaves behind for over three hundred days. Unfortunately for him, he's up there when the Soviet Union collapses, and the idealogical conflict of the Space Race ceases to matter. Rather than recall their man, the Russians seem to forget about him – hence his longer-than-planned term aboard the Mir Station. Without his regular updates from Mission Control and the established routine, all reference points gone, time ceases to have meaning for the cosmonaut, and he forgets how to engage with anything outside of the station. He ends up just like Ko on the Planet of Rice and the elderly Ko in her kitchen.

Translations from the Russian for Sergei on the Mir Space Station

In the end, I think that's what binds those three sections together – it's the loss of reference points and of the relevance of time. Once that's gone, people disconnect and – outside of space travel, which, contrary to those dreams of classic sci-fi, most of us won't experience – dementia sets in. Read the show's program, and you'll discover that's the heart of the show: the loss of faculties arising from dementia, but explored through the sci-fi filter. Within each of those three sections, memories and time fold inwards and collapse, as dreams and hopes fade away and cease to matter.

Dancing Brick bring a very low-tech approach to their depiction of space travel, which pales beside some of the (also pretty low-tech) footage they screen, showing 60s TV shows doing a better visual job on low budgets. That's not to say Dancing Brick doesn't effectively conjure space, but there's scope for more. They could, for instance, have much more fun with the idea of low gravity.

All of which leaves me quietly pleased to have seen Captain Ko and the Planet of Rice, but perhaps more pleased with the intellectual tussle I faced afterwards. I think I've got somewhere with it all. Possibly.

Please note: a condensed, proper review version of this (after I'd sorted out my thoughts) appears on FringeReview.co.uk, for whom I went to see Captain Ko and the Planet of Rice. That gives it three stars, because the editors disagreed with my fourth star for bravery.

Artistic Director's Welcome to Merge2012: Our City, Our Story

Hello, and welcome to the third Merge Arts Festival - Merge2012: Our City, Our Story. Thanks for coming along.

This year's Festival has been inspired by the archives held at Hull History Centre. There's a wealth of information from Hull's rich past in there and it's well worth a visit.

We hope Merge2012 brings together yet more people in a celebration of the city's talent and heritage. You'll see the archives reflected in our centrepiece event, Merge @ Hull City Hall, our evening concert featuring a selection of local (Hull, the East Riding and Lincolnshire) folk songs housed in the archives. There's also Winifred: A Dramatic Portrait, which dramatises the life of local author Winifred Holtby. Other events in our program also go some way to celebrating local talent and local heritage.

This is our biggest festival yet, and once again I am grateful to a wide range of people for their support. Many of them are named in this brochure, but a few deserve a special mention. The University of Hull's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences has again been generous in their support, and we recognise generous support from the City Council in various guises. We'd also like to thank our venues, the City Hall, Hartley's Tap and NAPA, for their support and generous hosting. Other people worthy of special mention are listed along with Merge's staff.

We hope this year's program inspires and educates. If Hull is to be an aspiring city, a city worthy of pride, its youth has to be stimulated, involved and engaged in the arts, in culture, in sport and in education. With the way things are going, they’re going to need all the inspiration they can get.

I hope you find something of interest, something to make you think, or something you didn't know (or all of the above!). You can leave us feedback on our Facebook or Twitter, or email us on info@mergearts.org.uk.

Please, get yourself a drink, and enjoy the Festival!

Thanks,
Richard T. Watson
Artistic Director | Merge Arts Festival


Merge is:
Artistic Director: Richard T. Watson

Production Manager: Stefan Ward-Caddle

Publicity Director: Portia Ellis-Woods

Publicity Assistant: Becka Willougby

Education Director: Zoe Hughes

Design by: Becka Willoughby, Will Langdale & Richard T. Watson

With special thanks to:

Professor Alison Yarrington and the University of Hull’s Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences
Marianne Lewsley-Stier and iHull
Martin Taylor and staff at the Hull History Centre
Louise Yates and the City Arts Unit
Claire Balfour and staff at Hull City Hall
Barbara Dawson and staff at Northern Academy of Performing Arts
Staff at Hartley’s Tap
Paul Hunter and the New Adelphi Club
Steve Gardham
John Connolly and Bill Meek
Andrew Penny
Dr Jane Thomas & Professor Marion Shaw
Piaf Knight
Lisa Hey
Dale Christmas
Keira Walker
Professor John Stringer
John Morrison
Ian Watson
Felix Hodcroft
Jamie McGarry and Valley Press
Ashley Fisher
Will Langdale
Jonno Witts
Elizabeth Coombs Photography
Sarah Clinch and Hull CVS
The Tricycle Theatre, Kilburn

The Coronation of Poppea at Hull University

The Coronation of Poppea - Middleton Hall, University of Hull

The court of the Roman Emperor could be an opulent, gaudy place – one where hot Italian passions were indulged; a passionate, dangerous environment. Especially passionate and self-willed/selfish was the court of Emperor Nerone (in English, Nero, now infamous for allegedly playing his fiddle while the city burned), portrayed in Claudio Monteverdi's opera of 1642, The Coronation of Poppea.

In its earlier form, this was the first opera to be based on historical material instead of mythology, although it still had a couple of Gods (Virtue, Fortune and Love) come along to kick everything off. The English-translation (by Christopher Cowell) presented for two nights in the University of Hull's Middleton Hall had been edited down by conductor Dale Christmas, cutting out all of the supernatural elements, much of the instrumental sections, and giving us instead a trim, lean near-tragedy driven entirely by the self-will and passions of one man: Emperor Nerone.

Nerone's a posturing, bullying little man under Jake Smith's direction, played by Beatrice Acland – it's a soprano part, making the Emperor of the Roman Empire prone to almost shrieking and having temper tantrums at times. But then what should the Romans expect? When you concentrate political control in one man from a young age, as in Nerone's case, giving him the wealth to match his power over life and death, of course he's going to consider his will paramount over all other concerns. Even the high-minded, intelligent Seneca (James Robinson, bass, in appropriately magnificent form) recognises Nerone's life-and-death authority with little opposition. It's knowing that death can happen so easily, on Nerone's whim, that gives the later half of this opera its tension – although (spoilers!) it never actually lives up to that threat and is left groping for a climax. Oh, and that innuendo just then...entirely deliberate.

Seneca (James Robinson) on the virtues of solitude - oblivious to the orchestra behind him...

Nerone's passion is for his mistress, Poppea of the title (soprano Abigail Spear), who lounges around the 1920s art deco apartment to which Smith has (sort of) relocated this Tudor-esque storyline. If we imagine Nerone about three times fatter/rounder then his desire to divorce his wife (Ottavia, soprano, Rachael Nolan) and replace her as Empress with his mistress could work in Henry VIII's England just as easily as in Ancient Rome. Unlike Anne Bolyen, however, Poppea's seduction of the Emperor is all about giving him what he wants (Anne Boleyn preferred to tempt her king, but keep him wanting until he'd committed to their affair by divorcing his queen and breaking with the Pope). Likewise, when together, Nerone and Poppea can't keep their hands off each other, their duets filled with phrases like 'to posses you' and 'to be with you' – but this is a relationship where they've clearly already 'possessed' each other, as far as Giovanni Busenello's libretto is concerned anyway.

A cloying embrace between Nerone (Beatrice Acland) and Poppea (Abigail Spear)

The passion isn't quite there onstage though. Poppea's nurse, Arnalta (Pam Waddington-Muse, a concerned contralto, who produces much of the opera's comedy), is on to something when she talks about Nerone as a schoolboy; Acland's Nerone is all about lustful pawings without convincing anyone that he has done or can do the deed, even with Spear serving herself up on a plate. The vocal blending of their duets is a poetic and musical union of their characters, but it has no counterpart in the physical and visual relationship which seems to always be promising that same intimacy, but always delaying it. It's only in the opera's closing moments that these two (the lovers are both soprano parts, which may be inhibiting) actually kiss each other, and it feels like they've finally overcome whatever nerves or inexperience had been holding them back – though we know from the libretto that they've already slept together.

Ottavia (Rachael Nolan) listens to Seneca praising her good fortune.

Monteverdi's score, arranged specially for this production by Matthew Moore, is played by a medium-sized ensemble (of maybe twenty musicians), featuring a smattering of period instruments like the harpsichord and the eye-catching theorbo. They're one more element giving the piece a Renaissance feel (despite Smith's attempt to relocate to the 1920s), relying on strings and recorders for much of the opera. It's all quite light and rippling, rarely lingering on a phrase or theme. In fact, there's very little in the way of tunes, as such; the orchestra, conducted by Christmas, competently underscores the action with melody throughout, but you don't go out humming any arias. This is early opera, a century before Mozart, and in its day was redefining what dramatic music could be and do, so we shouldn't expect it to be hugely adventurous by more modern standards.

The decadence and passion of Nerone's court is never quite visible in this visually 1920s relocation, and the relationship between Nerone and his mistress feels like an extended exercise in delayed gratification. And so Hull University's Coronation lacks a killer punch, despite its musical successes.

Images thanks to Elizabeth Coombs Photography.

The Pickwick Papers - My Charles Dickens #12in12

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1836), Charles Dickens

The Posthumous Papers of thePickwick Club was the fictional publication that really made the name of Charles Dickens famous. After his reasonable success with descriptions and written sketches of London life (Sketches by Boz) in 1833-36, Dickens gained a popular following and the beginnings of a loyal audience thanks to the increasing success of The Pickwick Papers.

His publishers commissioned Dickens to provide the text for a picture novel about unsuccessful, bumbling sportsmen, with the pictures supplied by Robert Seymour. But rather than wait to be given illustrations to describe, Dickens began writing his descriptions before anything had been drawn and so, increasingly through The Pickwick Papers, his words took precedence over the illustrations. Seymour, who had originally proposed the idea of a series of illustrations of city-dwellers inexpertly hunting etc., shot himself before the second instalment's publication – though that probably wasn't just down to Dickens's increasing level of artistic control.

The collection of illustrations and story-captions detailing the exploits of the Pickwick Club eventually attracted a wide readership – and it's easy to see why. While not quite the soap opera of its day, The Pickwick Papers is a running light comedy, with each instalment dropping its increasingly familiar (dare I say predictable?) characters into fresh situations full of potential mishaps and fumbles.

Handily, the members of the Pickwick Club take copious notes of their bungled adventures and the mishaps they endure. A few select members, who seem to have unlimited reserves of money and free time, set out with Pickwick to discover curious things about England, people and life in general. The exception is Pickwick's manservant, Sam Weller, credited with much of the book's popular success – in part, no doubt, due to his down-to-earth worldliness, as compared with Pickwick's utter cluelessness. Think Jeeves and Wooster, but with a cockney Stephen Fry who doesn't have that smug, quietly superior face.

The Pickwick narrator's style is either naïve or sly, often telling us one thing and probably meaning quite another. Much of the comedy of the book lies in the discrepancy between, on one hand, the narrator's interpretation of the notes taken by the Pickwickians, and on the other hand, the likely reality of the situation. For example, while staying in the house of a regional newspaper editor, Pott, who spends the evening reading his editorials to Pickwick, Pickwick has his eyes closed in rapturous enjoyment of the prose...or has fallen asleep in boredom. Here is a narrator who, like the world of people he describes, seems to have fallen for the legend of Pickwick's intellect and popularity, interpreting his notes accordingly. In reality, Pickwick is a bumbling, inept man with more money and self-importance than sense.

Dickens' audience may have also fallen for Pickwick's charm, but either way the novel's popularity rose and made Dickens a household name. Not only that, but The Pickwick Papers gave Dickens his first experience of writing weekly instalments of novels – a pattern he followed for years afterward. It's a light read, quicker perhaps than some of Dickens' later work, but no weaker for it. While not so mature or impressive as, say, Bleak House, The Pickwick Papers is a solid debut into long-form fiction.

Everyman at Hull's Holy Trinity Church

There's something about a play's character crying to God for forgiveness that makes me veer between two thoughts. One, the distant 'At least I'll never be like that', the other, a humbler, and perhaps more realistic 'There but for the grace of God go I'. Of course, it's the second of those two that the original performers of this play were after; the audience is supposed to recognise their own fragile state of grace, their own dependence on divine mercy, and to repent sharp-ish before their fate catches up with them.

The title alone should give it away. Everyman. That character crying out to God, to mercy, to charity and to all the things he's held dear through his life? That's Everyman, and he represents, yep, you've guessed it, every one of us (in this production, he's played by three people, including one woman). We are each as guilty as him of the faults he admits by the play's end – it's the usual: greed, lust, anger, gluttony, sloth.

Though we aren't quite complicit in Everyman's sins, we (and I mean the play's immediate audience, rather than mankind as a whole) are drawn into his repentance all the same. He stands barely metres in front of us, asking that he be forgiven, asking who he can turn to, and it's that insistent questioning that raises questions for the audience. Questions like: what would I do if called to give an account to God? Of course, you might not be too worried, if your opinion of an afterlife is that it's non-existent, but just go with it for a minute. There's a value to questioning the balance and account of your life when near its end, even if you don't believe that anyone supernatural's going to check up on you in your grave. Everyman is especially concerned about the balance of Good Deeds in his own account, and finding the book empty (like he does) should be a cause of concern even for a hardened atheist.

Good Deeds (Mondé Sibisi) sleeps until Everyman repents

But Everyman is hardly aimed at atheists; it's aimed at Catholic believers, reminding them that they're going to be checked up on on death, and they'd best keep their house in order. So of course, it makes perfect sense to stage Everyman in the Minster, in God's house; here is the perfection of God, aspire to it, everyone. And the church is perfectly suited to being a performance space – what is the church mass if not an elaborate performance by actors before an audience? - with the acoustics and (mostly natural) lighting to rival many more modern theatres. Religious ceremony is the birthplace of theatre, the elaborate and stylised address to the masses, the faintly poeticised and increasingly stage-y message preached to an audience sitting in hushed rows.

The University of Hull Drama Department's production immerses its audience in Hull's Holy Trinity Church (increasingly being opened up as a venue these days), where the architecture serves to hammer home the message of obedience to the divine will and serves as a reminder of both God's majesty and God's grace. We follow the story through the church on foot, taken to four different stations along Everyman's journey from frail sinner to reconstructed penitent. As Everyman hovers close to death, we walk – fittingly, perhaps, gingerly, certainly – over the graves of past generations, the inscriptions and memorials a fixed and literal reminder of the the transitory nature of human life. Again, the church's architecture reinforcing the message Death has already given to Everyman: Life was but lent thee:/ for as soon as thou art go,/ Another a while shall have it and then go therefro.

Jack Fielding's Everyman is left with no doubt about the message from Death (Johnny Neaves)

The University Drama Department – and specifically Dr Philip Crispin – has produced this living examination of medieval drama, following on from Mankind in 2010. Mankind was declamatory, static (literally and figuratively) and in a theatre. This is a much more immersive, flowing piece. A series of strong individual performances give life to a poetic depiction of human life close to the brink of death – the great unknown, guidance on which can be found in the Bible and, of course, this morality play.

Images thanks to Elizabeth Coombs Photography.

Bleak House - My Charles Dickens #12in12

Bleak House (1852-3), Charles Dickens

Unlike previous entries in the #12in12 Charles Dickens project (The Chimes and Hard Times), March's (delayed) instalment is rather long. This month it's Bleak House, published in twenty monthly issues in 1852 – 1853 – in my defence, it took Dickens much longer to write it than it has taken me to read it.

Bleak House came just before Hard Times in Dickens' writing career, although it feels much more mature – like the achievement of a much more accomplished writer. Perhaps that's because any moral or ethical point Dickens is making with Bleak House is much more subtle than the hammer blows of Hard Times. This makes Bleak House a subtle, complicated and downright imposing book.

The house of the title, Bleak House in St Albans, is a warren of twisty, interconnected corridors, rooms heaped upon one another and obscure little windows. It's a convoluted jumble of a building, presided over by a pair of charmingly selfless characters – John Jarndyce and Esther Summerson – and is the ideal object for Dickens to use as a title. The house itself isn't all that miserable (in fact, it's usually quite pleasant, and the northern house named after it in later chapters is especially pleasant), but it is a perfect reflection of much the book's content.

The twisty corridors of Bleak House, which sounds like the sort of house where someone could easily wander about getting lost and going round in circles, are reflected in the goings-on of the Court of Chancery in London. Until 1875, the Court of Chancery was the part of the British justice system overseen by the Lord Chancellor and, in this case, often concerned not with criminal cases but with cases involving inheritance, commerce and land ownership. Complaints about the slow and drawn-out procedures of the Chancery Court had been common since Tudor times, and Dickens not only lambasts them in his introduction but also provides a mirror for them in not only the structure of the physical Bleak House, but in the structure of the novel Bleak House itself. It isn't without humour, and Dickens clearly takes delight in spinning out descriptions of just how long Chancery takes over resolving the now infamous case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce:

'Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made party to Jarndyce and Jarndyce without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suits. The little plaintiff or defendant who was promised a new rocking horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out; the legions of bills in the suit have been transformed into bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee-house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce and Jarndyce drags its dreary length before the court, perennially hopeless.'

Like the physical house, Bleak House the novel has two characters presiding over it: Esther Summerson and an all-knowing, all-seeing narrator. The two of them take it in turns to tell the story and so we see Jarndyce and Jarndyce from the perspective of a ward of the court (apparently orphaned and abandoned Esther) and also from inside the court itself, as well as from wide-ranging perspectives outside – parties to the case and otherwise.

It's this wide-ranging perspective that I really admire about Dickens' writing here, especially in Bleak House. I've said before that his ability to write a striking character is his great strength, and in Bleak House Dickens has excelled himself. There are a great many characters, in a narrative that spans England geographically and socially – from Jo the crossing sweeper to high society's Lady Dedlock – and yet every one of those characters is sharply drawn and memorable. Even with a few words, Dickens creates a loving portrait of some person, and that person can be recognised when they return ten chapters later (as they have a habit of doing with this twisty, jumbled narrative) and appear just as fresh.

There's much more to Bleak House than the Court of Chancery and the social satire Dickens lays in with (Chancery isn't the only thing to be satirised; do-gooding philanthropists so focused on foreign shores they neglect their own offspring also take some flak) – though whether it really needs to be so long is another matter. The middle drags somewhat, and I hope Dickens won't mind me saying that the introduction of a detective late on smacks of an author needing to quickly tie up several lose plot ends with a character deliberately setting out to discover and expose the truth. Even so, the detective, Mr Bucket, must be one of the most finely-characterised plot devices in Western literature.

Like the physical house, the novel Bleak House has a dozen or more little compartments and rooms, all huddled up on top of one another, and connected by twisting corridors; the reader may get lost wandering the house, but Dickens as guide makes sure each room is beautifully decorated and somehow reminds the reader of the route back.

The Breaker of Hearts (ENO Mini-Opera)

The Breaker of Hearts

The Chorus of Sleepers appear, shuffling, shambling, (un)dressed for sleep – sleepwalking. They could be all ages, all races, but they move as one, united in sleep. There is a low hum. When they sing, they are usually divided into either boys and girls, or men and women, depending on their ages.

GIRLS	Here he comes.
BOYS		Here he comes.
GIRLS	Here he comes.
BOYS		Hear his tread on the stair.
GIRLS	He comes.
BOYS		Smell his scent in the air.
GIRLS	He comes.
BOYS		Feel the twinge of despair.
GIRL	He comes.
BOYS		Know he is near.
GIRLS	Softly-slinky and grimly-gory.
BOYS		Heart-Breaker prowls in the witching hour looking out for joy to devour, never letting new hopes flower and turning every sweet dream sour.
GIRLS	Touting lies and the barely true he swigs a cup of witches' brew, takes a face you thought you knew and turns it into something new.
CHORUS	He comes – the Lurker of Dreams, the Breaker of Hearts. Closer and closer, rising up from Hell; The actor of the Id, he plays many parts and now you must fall for his spell.
GIRLS	He comes.
BOYS		He comes.
	Already, this Breaker of Hearts can be seen approaching
CHORUS	He comes. He'll bring your fear to you, it's a gift to you of his; it won't be anything new you know already what it is.
GIRLS	Hear him closer.
BOYS		He comes.
GIRLS	Getting closer.
BOYS		He comes.
GIRLS	Drawing closer.
BOYS		He comes.
CHORUS	Here he comes. He comes to play with your greatest fear; to hurl you from heights or drown you in ice, to scorch you, scald you, burn you. He'll chase you with dogs and with wolves, he'll chase you down flights, you'll get into fights; you'll murder, rape and maim. Here he comes. He'll show you the deaths of those you hold dear, make it your fault, make you feel the blame; it'll scar you, scare you, bleed you. He'll send his creatures to devour you, and takes a care to send your biggest scare - his snakes, his crows or his bugs. Here he comes.
GIRLS	He comes from the depths of deepest Hell.
BOYS			Nearer.
GIRLS	Even the angels fear his tread.
BOYS			And nearer.

CHORUS	He comes with: Legal writs and rich men's Wills, money bags and heart burn pills.
DREAMER 1	In my dream, my son is on trial for treason and starting a fire. I swear he's an innocent boy; and even the judge says I'm a liar.
	The shadowy Breaker of Hearts resembles a distant judge
CHORUS	He'll take your heart and he'll tear it.
DREAMER 1	I fall on my knees to beg for his life, 'He has a child just a few days old, please, won't you show him some mercy?' but the judge's smile is bloody and bold.
CHORUS	He'll take your fears and he'll make them real.
GIRLS	He comes.
BOYS		He comes.

CHORUS	He comes with: A dozen corpses, a deathly moan; a childhood terror, now re-grown.
DREAMER 2	In my dream I'm back in the camp, condemned once more to a lifetime of pain, back where the Jew should fear to be. And the Commandant is there again.
	The Breaker of Hearts appears to assume a military aspect
CHORUS	He'll take your memories and he won't spare you.
DREAMER 2	Every night he comes to take me back, back to Dachau where my people burned. Every day I must endure my life To which my people can never return.
CHORUS	There is no escape from the dread of sleep.
GIRLS	He comes.
BOYS		He comes.

CHORUS	He comes with: a diagnosis ready-made; his only hope is to get paid.
DREAMER 3	The doctor could have cured my sister. Now I see him every night, leaning over me in my dreams - I can't shake him from my sight.
	The Heart-Breaker now looks faintly medical
CHORUS	He'll take your trust and he'll snap it.
DREAMER 3	The operation was easy but not that cheap and we had no way to pay. Now she's cold and in the ground, and it's too late even to pray.
CHORUS	The Heart-Breaker grinds the bones of hope.

GIRLS	He comes.
BOYS		He comes.

CHORUS	He comes with: a cross in his hand, and a rosary, pouring on guilt and misery.
DREAMER 4	Sins and sinner you find here, clutching feebly at a cross. Twenty Hail Marys twice a day, else he says that my soul is lost.
	The Heart-Breaker now bears a striking resemblance to a priest, and looms larger than ever before
CHORUS	He sees your sins, he knows your fears.
DREAMER 4	I've tried to do as I've been taught, but I've fallen into a snare. Well you know, oh my God, women's beauty is not fair.
CHORUS	He'll burn your guilt right into your soul.

GIRLS	He comes.
BOYS		He comes.
GIRLS/BOYS	Touting lies and the barely true he swigs a cup of witches' brew, takes a face you thought you knew and turns it into something new.	Heart-Breaker prowls in the witching hour looking out for joy to devour, never letting new hopes flower and turning every sweet dream sour.
CHORUS	He's come!
	Finally, the Breaker of Hearts comes into focus. The Chorus, in their sleep, are probably terrified of him, though strangely immobile.
HEART-BREAKER	Sleep no more!
	They all scream, briefly, as if awaking from a nightmare.

Book Review - A Gambling Man: Charles II and the Restoration, by Jenny Uglow

Charles II faced some hefty challenges when he officially become King in 1660. The country had just spent ten years ruled by parliament without any royal authority, the memory (and threat) of civil war was still fresh and Charles himself was returning from ten years of exile with a court keen for revenge and a restoration of their former lands and privilege.

After the execution of his father, King Charles I, in 1649, Charles II was more aware than most of our kings that ruling a nation is a balancing act between different parties. Push one of them too far, or refuse to give way enough, and the whole system can erupt in your face. Charles I found this to his cost, when parliament tried and executed him for crimes against his people. The idea of a king entering into a contract with his people, a two-way agreement, became current and much more accepted – there was currency in the idea that a king only ruled with the permission of his people, as represented by parliament, and after 1649 a king had increasingly limited power without his parliament.



This balancing act is explored by Jenny Uglow in her book covering the first decade of Charles II's reign (1660-1670), A Gambling Man: Charles II and the Restoration. The infamous Merry Monarch of folk legend is shown as a human being, made wary of others by his years traipsing around European courts. Uglow shows him as an expert poker player; inscrutable, calculating and forever keeping cards close to his chest despite his outward shows of merriment. It's a concept running through the book's design, with the six sections named The Deal, Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, Spades and The Clearance.

It is this gambler's calculation that Uglow strives to bring to the fore, highlighting Charles' secret deals or risk-taking again and again. In this story, the court's habit of gambling vast sums begins to look like a symptom of following an easygoing, faintly irresponsible king, and not the other way around. For all of Uglow's striving, though, her Charles never quite comes across as a consummate gambler; it's an interpretation that is valuable, certainly, but seems to be missing something.

That's not to say that Uglow makes Charles look carefree; quite the opposite. His merry-making and pleasure-taking is merely a diversion from the many hours he puts into the work of state. Uglow's Merry Monarch is a man seriously engaged and concerned with the running of his country, a genuine public servant, aware of the new importance of the parliament – and constantly feeling its purse strings like a noose. But he can also enjoy his life and can be seen to enjoy it (special attention is paid to several of Charles' mistresses, and the eldest of his illegitimate children, the Duke of Monmouth). He works hard and plays hard, sometimes using his play as a means to arrange secret treaties and affairs of state.

Charles' method of rule – that balancing act – was in contrast with that of his cousin, Louis XIV, who, during the course of this book, manages to establish an absolute monarchy over France and becomes the dominant power in Europe. Louis acts as a weight in the grand scales of Europe, to be weighed against Holland (including the future William III) and England, but also as an example of what the people and parliament of England fear – a tyrant on the throne, with no representatives of popular opinion. It's what the people fear, but also a leadership style preferred by Charles I, and Charles II's struggles with parliament (mostly over funding his costly wars with the Dutch) indicate how attractive the concept must also have been to him.

Louis XIV wouldn't have tolerated the scheming and factionalism that is rife in Charles II's court. But this courtly intrigue, and its overspill into the parliament, makes A Gambling Man that much more fascinating – not only is this a biography of a king's reign, it's an insight into the politics of a decade, delving into the birth of modern party politics and the gradual demise of individual royal authority.

Uglow's book colourfully illustrates the the first decade of Charles II's reign, balancing the risks taken by a monarch holding onto power with documenting the rise of parliamentary politics and the gradual transfer of power.

Hard Times: For These Hard Times - my Charles Dickens 12in12

Hard Times: For These Hard Times (1854), Charles Dickens

More commonly known simply as Hard Times, Charles Dickens' shortest novel, Hard Times: For These Hard Times (1854), seems an especially fitting novel for Britain in 2012. The themes and ideas of Dickens' most socially-aware work resonate with a nation in the grip of austerity measures and tough economic decisions, knowing that the times ahead are likely to be even harder.



If you've read or seen Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South (1855), you won't be surprised that both novels were published in weekly installments in Household Words – a serial edited by our own Charles Dickens – before being published in novel format. Hard Times came from earlier in the year (April to August), while Gaskell's story ran through the later months (September – January 1855). Both are set in fictional northern English towns; grime-smeared and smoke-obscured, heaving with the belches of industrial productivity, busy with the bustle of faceless hordes of generic workers. The one, Gaskell's Milton-Northern, probably based on Manchester; the other, Dickens' Coketown, most likely to be Preston – both with names indicating their lack of individual character, functional natures and industrial purposes.

Hard Times is very much about that functional nature and the effects of the Industrial Revolution upon working people. From the very opening, the reader is accosted with the educational system (you'd call it a 'life philosophy', except that sounds a bit too fluffy and friendly) of Thomas Gradgrind Snr. This is a system he applies to his own children's upbringing, and to the children attending the school he pays for – a system perfectly suited to a town whose every movement is geared toward industrial manufacture and commerce, where people are expected to buy for the lowest price and sell elsewhere at the highest. It's a society that knows the price of everything, but has lost sight of the value of anything (sound familiar?): Gradgrind is ever-ready to 'weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to'.

Gradgrind's 'system' relies on fact: 'In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but facts!', a schoolboy is told. Fancy, imagination, wonder and other 'nonsense' are to be excluded from thought. Hard Times charts the failure of this system in two of Gradgrind's children – I say 'children', to him they're 'models of his system', but to anyone else they're his eldest son and daughter: Tom (Jnr) and Louisa.

Bustling around these children, and equally deprived of imagination, wonder and fancy, are the workers of Coketown. In referring to these people as 'Hands', Dickens simply highlights both the way the workers are regarded by their masters and the idea that the workers have lost any sense of individuality. In losing fancy (the sworn enemy of fact) to join the horde of workers, forced to work in order to live and scraping by on a wage thought too generous by their wealthy masters, they have lost that which made them human.

In writing Hard Times, Dickens didn't try very hard to make his point subtle or well-hidden. The cry for social reform and better treatment of the poor calls from every page, and readers should be left in no doubt as to the sorry state of the working class of Coketown. This is Dickens' sledgehammer to the dehumanising rock face of industrialisation and capitalism. Unlike the poor, the wealthy are individuals and their seemingly unbreakable influence over events (and the lives of the poor) is similarly under attack in Hard Times.

That's not to say Hard Times is unrelentingly bleak or, er, hard. Many of the characters have become hardened by circumstances, but humanity is not without redemption. There is at least one Hand, Rachel, who shines as a beacon of compassion and love – along with Sissy, one of the children from Gradgrind's school, she serves as the impossibly good-natured and loving women in an otherwise harsh, masculine world.

Josiah Bounderby - bully of humility and self-made man

On top of that, never let it be said that Dickens isn't funny. Hard Times has some wonderful moments of light and dry humour. Josiah Bounderby, the 'bully of humility', owner of banks and factories, is a case in point. He is the book's self-made man, a much-vaunted claim which Bounderby spends most of Hard Times vaunting, his pride at having improved himself from a situation far worse than that of the Hands is palpable and unbounded. It's also hilariously exposed as a lie, displaying and enhancing the disgraceful hypocrisy of the wealthy masters of industrialised Britain (and who says that ends in 1854?).

Hard Times is a plea for the human spirit, a warning against crushing the innate and vital spark of human existence. Even though it was written nearly 160 years ago, Hard Times: For These Hard Times is still pertinent, and has a perennial relevance to all post-Industrial Revolution societies.

The image of Josiah Bounderby comes from this site, which features a few comic extracts from Dickens' work.

The Chimes - my Charles Dickens 12in12

The Chimes (1844), Charles Dickens

You've probably heard of A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens; it's among his most famous works, and one of the most adapted. So even if you haven't read it, you probably know what happens. Just in case you don't, here's the basic story...in poor cartoon form.



This isn't a chance for me to write about A Christmas Carol – instead I'm going to write about Dickens' second Christmas story: the lesser-known The Chimes. Dickens wrote five short stories for the festive period, between 1843 and 1848, with A Christmas Carol being only the first. The Chimes is the second (1844), and although they aren't connected, it has some features in common with A Christmas Carol.

There are no ghosts, such a significant part of A Christmas Carol – and haven't ghosts always been an important part of Christmas? But even though it isn't the dead returning to life, The Chimes does involve some supernatural interference in the lives of mortals, and if that's not Christmas-y, I don't know what is. Rather like the earlier book, Dickens uses supernatural intervention to alter the attitudes of humans who've got the wrong idea about something. You can call it a cheap trick if you like, a failure to find sufficient psychological reason for his characters' actions, I'm saying nothing.

Our central character in The Chimes, Trotty Veck, unlike Carol's Scrooge, is poor and fairly sympathetic. He's a porter, who hangs around outside a church waiting for work carrying things – anything, really, but mostly boxes and messages. His two comforts while waiting and being bashed about by the wind are the friendly chimes of the bells and the thought that his daughter will be bringing his lunch later.

Already – nothing much has happened yet – Dickens has made his sympathies pretty clear. Here's a working-class, widower father struggling to claw together enough money for himself and his daughter, in contrast with the money-hoarding, bachelor Scrooge of Carol. What follows is hardly a hymn to the working classes, nor an outright attack on those wealthier than them, but instead something rather more subtle. More subtle and, of course, more supernatural.

The first two chapters (or Quarters, as Dickens names them) read as a satire of an upper-middle class that believes it knows both the working class and what is good for that class. The paternalistic (and, by modern standards, patronising) MP declares himself a 'Friend and Father of the Poor', while agreeing a harsh jail sentence for a poor man caught stealing bread for his infant daughter. The Alderman lists the things he is in favour of 'putting down', including the 'cant in vogue about Starvation'. He doesn't want to 'put down' starvation, of course, but the nonsense that the poor are anywhere near starving. These are powerful men, keen to show that they understand the sort of people they are dealing with, and have the power/ability to solve the problems of their lives. Alderman Cute is even at pains to appear to speak to the poor in their own language, or at least in a vernacular to which he has special access among the privileged classes. The MP (a baronet) criticises Trotty for owing a small sum at his local shop – it being bad form to owe debts into the New Year – while he goes about paying off his own rather larger debts. Both men make themselves increasingly ridiculous with their self-importance (accompanied by a failure to make a beneficial difference to any poor person's life).

In fact, 'the poor' take a bit of a battering in The Chimes, with Trotty left bewildered and confused by fast-talking rich men, and persuaded (by them) of his and his class' inferiority. He spends most of the book being told off by somebody, poor bloke. Here's something that I suspect is going to crop up fairly often in this 12in12 project; Dickens' support for the working classes and social reform, using his writing as his most powerful weapon.

Dickens' final two chapters/Quarters begin with that Christmas supernatural intervention, when the spirits of the church bells appear to Trotty and also tell him off. Trotty's failing is that he's lost faith in humanity and questioned Nature (by wondering what the point was in life, if people were so hopeless as he has been led to believe).

The lesson he has learnt – a little different to Scrooge's 'I should enjoy Christmas' – is:

'I know that our inheritance is held in store for us by Time. I know there is a sea of Time to rise one day, before which all who wrong us or oppress us will be swept away like leaves. I see it, on the flow! I know we must trust and hope, and neither doubt ourselves, nor doubt the good in one another.'

I can't help finding this message problematic. As he says this, Trotty is seeing his daughter standing by the Thames, ready to throw herself and/or her infant child into the murky waters and end their suffering. Trotty has been forced to watch this by the Spirits of the Chimes, to teach him a lesson for questioning Nature. But the lesson he's learnt seems to be much the same as the message handed down by Alderman Cute and his set: listen to us, don't question us and do as we instruct you. The Chimes are giving Trotty an injunction to keep quiet and accept the difficulties life throws at him, to acquiesce in his own oppression. That they have forced him, an old man, to his knees, weeping, to say this while seeing the suffering of his daughter and granddaughter is far more brutal than anything Alderman Cute says or does.

It's the poor taking a battering again; Trotty is as guilty of these wrongs as Alderman Cute and his set – in fact, he only fell into them because of Alderman Cute in the first place. And it's no wonder Trotty is so easily swayed, when he comes up against Baronets telling him that they will do the thinking for him. By rights, the Spirits of the Chimes should be going after the Aldermen and MPs with their warnings to stop harkening back to a supposed Golden Age.

Perhaps this serves to show us the wickedness of human actions in the story – they aren't as bad as the spirits' actions, but they could still be modified. That's what the MPs, Baronets, judges and Aldermen should be taking from Dickens' writing: modify your actions, and be more forgiving of the poor among us.

But Dickens' world was a world favouring the wealthy, the influential, over the hard-pressed, ill-educated and underfed. Can we really say that the world two hundred years later is much better?

12in12 - My Charles Dickens Birthday Project

Charles Dickens' books have been adapted so often we don't need to read them any more. Discuss.

Next month, February 2012, is a big birthday for Charles Dickens. How big? Two hundred. Two centuries since the birth of Charles Dickens. He won't be around for it, of course; he's been dead for most of those two hundred years. So we'll have celebrate the day without him (again). It's February 7th, since you ask.



Dickens has spent nearly two hundred years as one of Britain's foremost writers, Well, one of the English-speaking world's foremost writers, certainly of those last two hundred years. That's quite an achievement, and he's left a wide-ranging legacy, second only really to Shakespeare in the English language. What makes it more impressive is that Dickens wrote in so many genres, not just the novels he's famous for: short stories, travel writing, journalism, plays, poetry and general non-fiction.

His work has been adapted and reworked over and over again, working its way into the collective consciousness of the English-speaking world, again rather like Shakespeare. Dickens' Christmas stories have come to define the Victorian Christmas for those of us too young to remember the reality, made the festive season the popular holiday it now is, and still strongly influences our modern perception of Christmas. Adaptations of A Christmas Carol abound toward the end of every year, and Scrooge has come to be a widely-recognised term for someone like Dickens' infamous character.

Even before the BBC started rummaging through the Dickensian back catalogue for their current season of work devoted to Charles (or Boz, as he sometimes preferred), he was frequently the subject of adaptations. Not only have Dickens' books been adapted, but he himself often appears for public readings (as the man himself did while still alive) – the most famous perhaps being Simon Callow's portrayal alongside Christopher Eccleston in the new Doctor Who.

In fact, Dickens seems to have been adapted so often that it seems we don't really need to read his books any more. I've certainly seen A Christmas Carol on stage enough times that I know the story and characters as well as if I'd read it. And that's the curse of the writer of 'classics', of members of the canon of 'great' writers; people don't actually read their books any more. As Mark Twain quoted a Professor Winchester: a classic is something everybody wants to have read, but nobody wants to read. Mind you, I'm always wary of Mark Twain quotes; they're prone to being greatly exaggerated.

I thought I'd celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of Dickens' birth by actually reading some of these books that made his name and legacy. My birthday present to him will be to read twelve of Dickens' books in a year (I'm aiming for one in each month, of course). That's roughly eleven more Dickens books than I've managed to read in my life to date (1988-2011). For someone with an English Literature degree, I consider that a pretty poor effort.



To kick off my Dickensian effort (see what I mean? Dickens is sufficiently well-established that we have an adjective for him and his work which immediately conjours up a certain type of character and location, usually something Victorian and in London), I'll be starting with a Christmas short story: The Chimes.

So, welcome to my Dickensian sort-of extravaganza (can an extravaganza take place over twelve months? is that over doing it?). I call it 12in12, and I hope you stick around until the (bitter?) end.

So far I've covered:
January - The Chimes
February - Hard Times: For These Hard Times
March - Bleak House
April - The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
May - American Notes for General Circulation(coming soon...)

Thanks to Will Clayton for the birthday cake image.

The other images depict Dickens at a reading of his own, and Fringe Festival stalwart Pip Utton playing Dickens.

Then we've got the cover of the Complete Dickens Kindle edition, 99p from Amazon.