Talking Shakespeare Kaksi (Two)

Like a potter’s wheel (Coasters, Stockings and Nativities)

My thoughts are whirled like a potter’s wheel:

I know not where I am, nor what I do.

The valiant Talbot’s words in Henry VI Part One are a potent reflection of what my mind has felt like during 2020. At times, the effects of the pandemic (on me) have produced clarity, joy and hope but more often confusion, frustration and despair (the negative emotions mostly caused by the UK government, I have to say.) Time has seemed elastic so pre-Covid times feels like two months ago and also two years ago. 

• Local walks continue on most days,
• jigsaws keep the left brain/right brain synapses twanging,
• freshly-baked mulled wine and mince pies have now been sampled and
• posh takeaways from La Rue restaurant provide a once-a-week luxury oasis, providing a time to scrub down, dress up and light candles.

Whatever it takes to cope in this strangest of times…. In the collage below there is evidence that our Advent Stockings (from Sue) have continued to yield treasures at morning coffee time. You can also see the creative endeavours of our Badby friend, Alex Thompson, honorary daughter and sister to the Allard-Johnsons, who has used some of her time at least to design beautiful coasters. These are all evidence of “clarity, joy and hope” – as is the glimpse of an ambitious Nativity scene (see collage above) constructed in a neighbour’s garden, along with child-friendly story sheets telling of those days in May or September (likely) between 4 and 6 BC (probably) when a stable in Bethlehem became the centre of the universe. The centre of my imaginative universe at the moment is re-reading, re-listening to and re-watching Shakespeare plays – it stops my thoughts whirling and helps me avoid becoming frustrated by the news bulletins. I introduced the RSC Talking Shakespeare series in an earlier post (here). PS Kaksi is Finnish for Two so the information below is my record of the second “batch” I enjoyed.

Paterson Joseph and Sir Simon Russell Beale

• Paterson Joseph almost became a chef before turning to acting. All of the interviewees were asked about their earliest introductions to the national poet and Paterson Joseph delivered a classic line that chimed with my own experience: “I didn’t come to Shakespeare – Shakespeare came to me.” I first “noticed” Joseph in 1990 as Oswald in King Lear, and suddenly realised – because of his performance – what a brilliant and significant role Oswald is. I was also lucky to see his shattering Othello (with the evillest Iago I’ve seen in Andy Serkis) at the Royal Exchange in Manchester. I loved Joseph’s Patroclus in Troilus and Cressida and, most jaw-droppingly, his tormented Brutus (pitted against Ray Fearon’s Mark Antony) in Julius Caesar. He didn’t talk about his many non-Shakespearean roles (including the recent Kamal Hadley in the BBC’s Noughts and Crosses and one of my favourites, his role in Survivors; plus on stage his compelling Atahualpa in Shaffer’s Royal Hunt of the Sun at the National Theatre) but then the point of the series is to talk about Shakespeare and I’ll never forget the Channel 4 documentary in which he directed a group of disaffected teenagers in London in a moving production of Romeo and Juliet.
• Simon Russell Beale first exploded into my theatrical knowledge in a series of Restoration plays at the Royal Shakespeare Company playing gut-wrenching comic grotesques with painful vulnerabilities. He has spoken to the RSC Summer School a couple of times and it became obvious that comedy was not his only skill. Seeing him in Ghosts and The Seagull made it clear that he was “one of the greats.” He extracted every moment of impact from his appearances as Edgar in King Lear and his Thersites in Troilus and Cressida was truly disgusting. Then as a toad-like Richard III, an extremely strange Ariel in The Tempest and (at the Donmar) a heart-breakingly buttoned-up, pinched and pained Malvolio from Twelfth Night it became clear he could tackle anything Shakespeare wrote with clarity, intelligence and heart. He triumphed at the National with Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet and surprised (inevitably) with his Cassius in Julius Caesar and Macbeth at the Almeida. I thought he was tremendous as Leontes in The Winter’s Tale at the Old Vic but it was his Timon in Timon of Athens at the National (and broadcast to cinemas) that blew me away, reinventing the play anew as a Play for Today in these no-such-thing-as-society Thatcherite times. Of course he’s done Falstaff on TV (a more vicious one than usual) and (brilliantly) King Lear himself at the National. But his Prospero, on his return to the RSC, in a multimedia Tempest was a revelation – here was a guilty Prospero, as tormented as Ariel and Caliban, struggling to forgive himself never mind anyone else and finally breaking the audience’s hearts as he parted from the island.

Paterson Joseph in Julius Caesar, Othello, Noughts and Crosses, Royal Hunt of the Sun, Simon Russell Beale in The Tempest (as both Ariel and Prospero), The Winter's Tale, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida (with Paterson Joseph), Juliet Stevenson in Measure for Measure, As You Like It, Truly Madly Deeply, Troilus and Cressida, Antony Sher in King Lear (as both The Fool and King Lear), Falstaff and Richard III

Juliet Stevenson and Sir Antony Sher

• Juliet Stevenson confided that she peed on stage during a spear-carrier scene (alongside Ruby Wax) in her first appearance at the RSC in a production of The Tempest. She paid tribute to early mentors in her acting career (well known like Peter Brook and less well known like David Perry) – sometimes by saying or doing things that she reacted against. Her insights into language and space were marvellous to hear as she discussed in detail her approach to Isabella in Measure for Measure, Cressida in Troilus and Cressida and Rosalind in As You Like It. The season in which she played the latter two roles was a significant one for me as I was living in Stratford-upon-Avon during that year teaching English as a Foreign Language to groups of adults who I would accompany to the theatre so I saw those two productions a great number of times, each time spotting more and more depth and detail, especially in Stevenson’s performances. Of course in later years I got to know her screen work such as Truly, Madly, Deeply and Life Story in which she played Rosalind Franklin, the scientist who contributed to the discovery of the structure of DNA.
• (Sir) Antony Sher, one of the most powerful presences I’ve seen on stage in plays like Tartuffe and Tamburlaine the Great, had a plethora of breakthrough roles to discuss, not to mention aspects of his own biography (growing up a Lithuanian-Jew in South Africa, being gay and working at the Liverpool Playhouse.) His famous Richard III (on crutches with a prosthetic back), Shylock (in Merchant of Venice), Titus Andronicus (in a production which started in South Africa where audiences were unsurprised by the anarchic violence in the play which was given a contemporary political context), Leontes in The Winter’s Tale (where he researched and brilliantly portrayed the psychological condition of morbid jealousy), and the warrior-like Macbeth, in a Swan production that he and Harriet Walter infused with a palpable and terrifying sense of panic - all these performances were memorable and mesmerising. In recent years he famously portrayed Falstaff with equal doses of bonhomie and arrogant cruelty in the History sequence of Henry IV and a monumental King Lear arriving on an elevated wheely-throne.

Greg Doran Talking Shakespeare with Paterson Joseph, Simon Russell Beale, Antony Sher and Juliet Stevenson

4% African (where birds fly, so can I)

Spot the Finn, the Italian, the Nigerian, the North African, the Englander, the Celt....

Temba Dance Company
At some point in the mid-1980s, in my first teaching job, in the middle of a sweaty, hectic, inspiring dance workshop at Leek’s Westwood High School, an African performer spoke prophetically to me. She was an older, hefty, charismatic woman who was a senior figure in Temba Dance Company (now sadly disbanded I believe). We’d just run through some energetic routine and she had been a circling observer, wandering around the room, encouraging, cajoling, cheering, whooping at the staff and teenagers – all age groups, all abilities – who were being put through their paces. She clasped my hands and, publically and loudly declared as the room felt silent – “My God, My God, Mr Johnson, I swear you have African blood in you.” People laughed. I laughed. We carried on. But it lodged as a significant moment in my life and, yes, I’ve told it as a story many times since, especially at times when my moves on a dance floor have been on the agenda…. and usually as a story to amuse. But I hardly dared tell people that I believed her at the time in a weird supernatural way.

She was telling the true truth
And so to our DNA tests. (I have the right to believe what I want to believe!) I expected to have Scandinavian DNA because of my Viking surname. I thought there might be Celtic in me from an instinctive set of feelings. I romantically hoped there’d be Italian because of my love for that country’s history, food and drink. And what came up? (See above.) 4% African (3.2% North African and 0.9% Nigerian.) The wise Temba dancer was right all along…. I always thought Sally and I were drawn together by our love of Yorkshire, shared political values, sense of humour, instincts for generosity and open-mindedness and desire to build a nest…. but looking at our DNA results, could it have been my ancestral 0.9% Nigerian DNA calling to Sally’s 1.2% Nigerian DNA?

Endeavour and Hadrian’s Wall
There was a great moment in a recent Endeavour on TV at an imagined Oxford Union debate where a black student invited the racist person who was arguing that all people who were not originally in England should be repatriated to their country of origin and the black student delivered the punchline “after you!” Humans are migratory animals. History, archaeology and anthropology have all proved this long ago. Accents and language demonstrate it. Customs and religion colour it. If President Trump were to send all the immigrants in the United States back to their own countries, then only Native Americans would remain. In the UK the earliest people we know about definitively were the Celts and we know they bred with Belgians, Germans and French before the Romans arrived. But Hadrian’s Wall had a massive impact. For over 400 years, troops from all round the Roman Empire manned the Wall (and womaned the settlements around the Wall.) Many bred. Many never left when the Romans retreated. We’ve been a mongrel, immigrant nation from the very earliest times. (Any alt-right readers who want to argue this point should read this hyperlinked article first which has its own links to supporting evidence.) So I’m proud of my African ancestry. It shows I belong. Here on planet Earth. Where boundaries and borders are imaginary human constructs. Where birds fly, so can I.

Celtic/English woods (at Bolton Abbey), candles imported from Scandinavia, vinegar and oil and wine from various parts of Europe and textiles and table mats from Africa....?

Fish Finger Butties

Back in Yorkshire
After a week on Anglesey it was good to touch down in time to catch the final afternoon of the Saltaire Festival. The beaches, castles, walks and bridges of north Wales will appear in a future blog but, for now, I’m commemorating the joys of tucking in to a Fish Finger Butty (with a glass of prosecco!), listening to the music and soaking up the atmosphere of my adopted “village”, Saltaire. (I noticed I was not alone in gravitating towards the Fish Finger Heaven stand….)

A sense of place; images of Saltaire including the day of the Tour de Yorkshire

Sense of place
I’ve written elsewhere about the concept of “home” (having felt roots in Wakefield, Manchester, Stratford-upon-Avon, Helsinki, Sheffield, Leek, Bingley, Badby, Dorking and even in Sorrento, Italy and Wengen, Switzerland….) One good thing about Saltaire, though, is that it has risen to a sense of itself through a series of cultural and entrepreneurial decisions. When Jonathan Silver invested in the purchasing of Salt’s Mill in 1987 he boosted the local economy, leisure and work opportunities and promoted David Hockney’s work through gallery space in the converted mill. Regular events like the Advent Windows or the Open Gardens ensure there are often reasons to walk around the World Heritage site. So it’s always good to come “home.”

2017 Saltaire Festival - band at top = the excellent Backyard Burners

Soaring Tethered

Breakfast, dinner, tea
School dinners were always school dinners during the 1960s and 1970s. You gave the teacher your “dinner money.” I can’t remember when I started talking about lunch when I meant dinner. I haven’t graduated to dinner to mean tea and still say “what’re we having for tea?” (meaning what many call dinner.) Supper was always supper. Then a few years ago I learned some people talk about “kitchen supper” but I always thought of supper as being in your pyjamas sitting in front of the coal fire….(usually bread and dripping or a crumpet toasted on a toasting fork.) I can’t imagine sitting in the kitchen having supper….

Class
I imagined as a child I would always be working class. Then I did A Levels, went to the University of Manchester, lived abroad in Finland for a year and became a teacher. At what point on that journey did I become middle class? Does it matter? Why even think about it? Is it a social invention to keep people in line and control them? Does class exist? It clearly obsesses the British nation, and often troubles, niggles and unsettles me. I think it confuses and divides people. Two related memories have stuck in my mind.

Memory One
The first memory was on the night before being taken to university (in my older brother, Mick’s, car; my parents never owned a car.) I sat on the stairs in my house on Eastmoor Estate in Wakefield and wept like a baby – barrels of snot pouring down my chin – wishing I wasn’t always called the “brainy one.” Within a month or so at university I’d got over that feeling and was reading like a madman and writing essays that were competitively brainy (so brainy that when I came across one recently I didn’t understand the argument one bit.) So my grief about leaving home was short-lived. Something drove me on to devour education and aspire to be as brainy as possible. (Though lacking in common sense, as I think my wife, daughters and sister might testify….)

Burst balloon – memory two
The second memory I have is of listening to one of my favourite writers, Alan Garner, lecture about his own dislocation from his “class.” He was lecturing about writing and mental health and being honest about a personal experience when he felt he had had a nervous breakdown. He saw education and moving away from home akin to being blown up like a balloon. The balloon gets bigger and floats away, getting bigger, seeing further and wider, getting perspective, gaining height. Sometimes the balloon bursts. (How he felt about his own nervous breakdown.) The balloon needs sticking back together. Patching up. Before it can be inflated again. Sometimes, though, the balloon floats but it remains tethered to the ground, to its base, to where it came from. And it can be pulled back to its roots and bounce back again freely when it wants. And soar. And return. And soar again. Soaring tethered.

Pearl

Slippers

Nothing lasts forever. Everything changes. But one thing that has never changed for me is that I have always loved wearing slippers. In the past. In the present. I imagine well into the future. I’ve got them on now. I sometimes take them to other people’s houses. I take them abroad. I love my slippers. I have a vivid memory of being pretty young and hoping that one day I would live somewhere I could call my own and wear slippers.

Broad St, Leek; Charles St, Bingley;

Bromley Rd, Shipley....

I have lived in Wakefield, Manchester, Sheffield, Stratford-upon-Avon, London, Helsinki and a few temporary places but the three addresses in the sub-heading are my previous “grown-up” homes. As I’ve said in an earlier blog “home is where the heart is” so I do have a sense that “home” is all over the world but my slippers currently reside in Victoria Park, Saltaire.

Victoria Hall, Saltaire

Pearl

And there, in Saltaire’s Victoria Hall, later today, I’ll be celebrating 30 years of being married to Sally. A Pearl Anniversary, apparently. Anniversaries are random markers, making very little sense in absolute terms, but they are always good times to reflect on who you are and where you’ve come from and maybe where you’re going next. I started this blog in August 2014. I was wearing slippers. I’m wearing slippers now. Some things never change.

Except they do.

I’m older than I used to be. Retired from 33 years of teaching English and Drama.... A parent of two extraordinary daughters.... Wiser, maybe? (Not so sure....) Most remarkably, on this day in July 2016, I'm two stone lighter, statistically, thanks to Slimming World’s hearty eating formula. I will blog about the anniversary party in the future, an occasion when I expect to gain some of my lost poundage, but for now, my feet are firmly planted in my slippers.

Leap Day 29th February 2016

Famous "Leaplings" Rebecca Johnson, Rossini, Sabato Jr, Ja Rule

My niece, composer Rossini, actor Antonio Sabato Jr and rapper Ja Rule are all looking forward to next Monday (Feb 29th)
Rebecca Jade Johnson was born on February 29th, a Leap Day, along with the others in the above picture. “Leapers” or “Leaplings” have an official birthday only every 4 years – what a bummer!! Or, does the rare circumstance give Rebecca a sense of being super-special since her birthday only happens when the calendar has to be disrupted and tamed because astronomical forces are gravitationally stretching the earth’s orbit? Does she sleep on Leap Day’s Eve knowing her birthday has cosmic significance? That it is bending to the will of Julius Caesar from around 2000 years ago when he started to invent the modern Western calendar in order to control the sprawling Roman Empire?

365.242
There are 365.242 days in each orbit of the sun. I think primary school children should be taught that number from now on, as well as the fact that Leap Days will be missing from some future years, for example 2100, 2200 and 2300, but not missing from the year 2400 for mathematical reasons that are way too complicated for me to understand.

Marriage Proposals
On Leap Day, of course, there are likely to be marriage proposals from women (unlike any other time because normally it is against the law for women to propose to men!!) Men who say “no” to women who propose on Leap Day suffer dire consequences: in Finland men who turn down women offering them engagement rings on Leap Day have to buy lots of skirt fabric for the disappointed lady; in Scotland men have to offer a present of leather gloves and hand over one pound; in continental Europe the “fine” is 12 pairs of gloves!

Marriage Proposals and Eddie the Eagle taking a LEAP!

To Leap
To Leap Into The Dark, To Take A Leap of Faith, Look Before You Leap. Leap is a useful word for imaginative expressions that all involve making a big jump into a new place, crossing from one place to another place, going where you have never dared before. At New Year we make resolutions for the year ahead. Perhaps on Leap Day we should begin a Four Year Plan. Where will we all be four years from now? Will I still be writing this blog? Watch this space!

A Leap of Faith

There And Back Again

One Ring To Rule Them All

It would be hard to resist visiting some of the film locations of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit if a dream visit to New Zealand ever happened…. My understanding is that New Zealanders have embraced the tourist, creative and employment opportunities resulting from Peter Jackson’s films of Tolkien’s works. Weta workshops are now firmly established as an international leader in 3d modeling, costuming, armour, weaponry and special effects of all kinds.

From Hobbiton to the Dead Marshes….

I imagine that travelling is a key aim for most retirees. “All we have to do is to decide what to do with the time that is given us.” (I imagine Ian McKellen’s voice as Gandalf intoning those words….) I have been lucky over the years to travel to some unusual places: Kenya, China, Finland, Milledgeville (in Georgia, USA.) I hope that retirement will feature some further memorable experiences, before Shakespeare’s seventh age of man kicks in.

Seventh Age: "second childishness and mere oblivion."

There and back again.

It can feel uncomfortable being adrift, as Bilbo Baggins tells his nephew: “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

I blogged earlier about my idea of home being where your loved ones are. I’ve always taken the subtitle of The Hobbit to heart - There And Back Again; after a journey, it’s always satisfying to return to hearth and home. Going out, coming back. Ebbing and flowing. In the middle of a holiday, it’s good to know that your slippers are waiting at home (unless you took them with you, of course.) Would New Zealand feel just too far away? Perhaps I should stick to walking along the local canal?

Into the Wild

Journeys into the wild are good for putting personal concerns into perspective. When I lived in Helsinki for a year, I undertook a road trip with two Japanese men and a son of one of them; and en route to Nordkapp we called at Hammerfest, the most northern civilian settlement with over 5,000 inhabitants.

Hammerfest in northern Norway

I’ll blog about my year in Scandanavia in the future, but what I’m remembering now is the sense of being on the edge of the world at the mercy of nature. When faced with the spread of cosmic existence, evident in the sight of the galaxy of stars in remote places like Hammerfest (or, I expect, New Zealand), human anxieties can seem insignificant. Worries can gain perspective. “All we have to do is to decide what to do with the time that is given us.”

Cate Blanchett as Galadriel and Elijah Wood as Frodo, image created by vanderstelt-studio

The Smallest Person

Galadriel tells Frodo “Even the smallest person can change the course of history” to reassure him that he has the strength to endure on his quest. The quest goes on. Excelsior!