Since we got back from Scotland at the weekend we have spent a great deal of time with Marion's mum. But we took a few hours off last night to go and see The Ladykillers at Liverpool Playhouse. We booked the tickets ages ago before Flo's memory started to deteriorate badly and it was perhaps ironic that the plot of the play we had chosen to see revolves around an old lady with a bad memory.
The show, which is moving to The Gielgud in London shortly, is a good old fashioned farce scripted by Graham Linehan of Father Ted and the IT Crowd fame. It is a resurrection of the famous 1950's Ealing comedy with Alec Guinness' lead role of Professor Marcus played here by Peter Capaldi who heads a strong cast. Being preoccupied with Flo's troubles we hadn't much time to read up on the cast before the play and, as we also didn't buy a programme, we failed to spot Ben Miller as the bearded Romanian gangster in the "string quartet". Miller has been a great favourite of ours since his wonderful BBC comedy The Worst Week Of My Life but even when we spotted his comedy parter Alexander Armstrong in the audience we failed to twig.
For me the star of the show was the set. This was a spectacular piece of workmanship which could surely never have been afforded if this was just to be a two week run at the Liverpool Playhouse. Revolving from terraced street to 50's interior to smoky rooftops and then to railway tunnel, it was worth the ticket price on its own - quite spectacular and beautiful. That's not to say that the cast were not stars too. Capaldi was a brilliant manic criminal mastermind and was matched with fine performances from Miller, James Fleet as the cross dressing major, Clive Rowe as the lovable dope One Round and Steven Wight as a cockney petty thief with a penchant for drugs. Marcia Warren plays the forgetful old lady very convincingly and Graham Linehan's script has plenty of laughs.
Sadly, for me, the audience had an average age of well over fifty and there was a distinct lack of young people amongst us. It was not as bad as the Gilbert and Sullivan opera we saw at the Lowry last year when we were probably the youngest there but it does not bode well for the future of live theatre. Perhaps with Linehan, Capaldi and Miller's popularity it may attract a younger crowd when it hits the West End. I hope it does as it's an enjoyable night out.
Having seen this and James Corden's One Man Two Masters in the past couple of months I think it is worth a comparison. Each is old fashioned in style, each has an excellent cast including famous TV names, each relies upon a degree of slapstick and farce but, much as we enjoyed both, Corden's One Man Two Masters is more in tune with the 21st century and, consequently, a lot funnier. I would recommend both but if you could only see one, my recommendation would not be The Ladykillers. It's funny (not hilarious), brilliantly acted, beautifully designed but, like Blithe Spirit which we also saw this year, it is very much a piece from the past.
We were back to reality today when we took our own forgetful old lady to start a new life in a care home. It felt a little like a bereavement as we left her flat for the last time and it was difficult for all of us leaving her, after settling her into he room, looking like a child on the first day of school. We won't be abandoning her and will be making plenty of visits but that doesn't assuage an underlying feeling of guilt that probably won't go away until we are sure that she is happy in her new environment.
Our two visits to the cinema this week were to see films that were as different as chalk and cheese. Johnny Depp's pirate blockbuster was all special effects and corny jokes whereas "Win Win" was a beautifully observed family drama. The latest of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise had a entertaining story to tell and Depp did his usual comic turn as Jack Sparrow but I felt that the film suffered from being over long and too dark (in terms of screen brightness). I know that this is a criticism often levelled at 3D films but so many sequences took place either at night or in gloomy places that I was yearning a dash of colour which only really surfaced at the very end of the film.
The swashbuckler is a bit of fun but there was really no need for 2 hours 16 minutes of it and Tom McCarthy admirably demonstrated how to direct more sparingly in "Win Win" which, at 1 hour 46 minutes, flies by. This is a tale of human nature starring Paul Giamatti as an unsuccessful lawyer who lets his financial worries cloud his judgement and get the better of his morals. I won't spoil the story for you by going into detail but the love of his life (apart from his happy family) is wrestling. He coaches the local high school team and when Kyle ,a hugely talented kid with a difficult past, turns up in town, things look up for the team. Giamatti is perfect in the role as too is newcomer Alex Shaffer as Kyle and with the strong supporting cast of Amy Ryan, Bobby Cannavale, Jeffrey Tambor and Burt Young, McCarthy has put together a wonderful group of actors who make this a poignant, funny and highly enjoyable movie which is well worth making a journey to see as, yet again, it's not very likely to hit any but the biggest of the multiplexes.
Another reader responded to my call for those old black and white photo booth snaps that were so popular with young couples in the sixties and seventies. Here is young Peter Eglin together with his sweetheart Christine in 1970. Like me, they used to work in the catering equipment industry. The couple married but tragically Christine died far too young leaving Peter unable to send me an updated snap of them together today. It's stories like Peter's that make me appreciate how lucky we are to be sharing our retirement and it's a spur to make sure that we make the very most of every day.
Whilst on our way to FACT in Liverpool yesterday we walked past The Playhouse which reminded us about the production of The Ladykillers that is being staged there in November. I am a big fan of Graham Linehan who is adapting the classic Ealing comedy and it should be great fun. So we popped in and bought a couple of tickets. Tickets only went on sale on Monday and the box office staff told us that it is their fastest selling production ever. We managed to get some decent seats but it's highly likely that the sold out signs will be going up on this one in the very near future.
Advertising a stage production of a completely different nature we came across this enormous statue in Liverpool One yesterday. We were arguing about who it was supposed to be from seeing it in the distance up to the point of reaching it when it became obvious (as there was a sign advertising the Queen musical We Will Rock You). Without that hint we would never have guessed it was Freddie Mercury as, apart from the stance, the statue looks nothing like him or is it a statue of the actor who plays him perhaps?
With films at the top of today's blog, I'll leave you with a funny and well made little movie about temptation.
