Coriolanus In The (Sometime) Rain

A rainbow arced over Robinson College and we sat stoically in the rain (for a short time at least) as the Cambridge Shakespeare Festival gave us its Coriolanus. It was pruned down to less than two hours but I have no intrinsic problem with that in the English summer rain.

and then it rained

Caius Martius Coriolanus (he earns the last moniker for his single-handed courage at Corioli) is a difficult part to cast. Angus Villers-Stuart (A Birmingham School of acting grad) was suitably muscular and believably martial but just that tad too young for the part. Another BSA alumni, Tim Atkinson, was impressive as Titus Aufidius and, old clever clogs, played both clarinet and guitar in the interval - though not at the same time. Best of the cast was Adam Elms. His Menenius was arch, even mildly camp, but, rather contrary to my expectations, he made this work.

So all in all a worthwhile trip. And in Cambridge even the pork scratchings are posh - mine came with Cornish sea salt. I washed them down with a muscular Coriolanus like Malbec.

A Day Of Continental Pleasures

It has been a remarkable first week of the Tour de France - eight stages down and five of them have been won by Britons. The teak tough Chris Froome won yesterday with a sequence of grinding climbs followed by an audacious final descent. He even found time to lamp one of those barmpot spectators who run alongside the competitors. For sustained drama and sheer bloody human endeavour Le Tour takes some beating. Allez Froome.

In the evening after a day of making some actual progress on my thesis (the mooted humanism of Bagehot and Shakespeare was bothering me) I followed the Tour highlights (introduced by the brilliant Gary Imlach - why does he not get more time on the major channels?) with a film I've been meaning to try for ages. The wait was worth it - Cinema Paradiso is a beautiful little movie. A peaen to the lost power of cinema and to the poignant imperfectability of first love, it is at its best in the scenes of Toto's childhood with Salvatore Cascio effortlessly stealing every scene he graces. 8/10.

The One Less Traveled By

(And by the way, for the curious, that is the spelling of 'traveled' that Robert Frost chose). The road less taken for me in my journeys to Anglesey is these days the one that I invariably took in our early years of ownership - the A5. The more prosaic M6 is a speedier route. But today I took my time and came up the old coach road. As I turned into the Ogwen Valley I was reminded of Snowdonia's majesty and the CD brought up some clamorous Verdi right on cue. Life's been good.

The road to somewhere

One For Us Lawyers To Bear In Mind

Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers. Luke 11:46

So that's me told then.

And Help To Set A Head On Headless Rome

With those words Marcus Andronicus seeks to persuade his brother Titus to accept the proferred empery of Rome in Shakespeare's oft derided but actually rather fun bloodbath, Titus Andronicus. You might have caught a whiff of my liking for this play in earlier blogs.

'Headless Rome' is rather apt today as a dead-duck prime minister ekes out his notice and the Conservative Party fight among themselves like rats in a sack. As for the Labour Party, well one really shouldn't intrude on private grief - 'internecine' hadly does it justice but it is a bloody good word.

I was doing a bit of close reading of Titus Andronicus this afternoon, a process I find easier if I have the piece playing in the background, ususally by means of the BBC Complete Works. The BBC Titus Andronicus is rather good. Some online reviews are critical of Hugh Quarshie's Aaron but these are wide of the mark - Aaron is designed to be gloriously clever, sexy and above all else, unrepentant. At the end the director chooses to suggest that Aaron's child has been put to death, a bleakly bloody end to a decidedly bloody play. Interestingly the gorier fimed Titus (directed by Julie Taymor and reviewed here previously) posits a mildly more optimistic conclusion. On balance I'm with Taymor but you pays your money and you takes your choice. One thing is for sure, "Rome is but a wilderness of tigers."   

I Wish I'd Said That

I have been searching around in an effort to master giving voice to the unease I feel as an officer of the Supreme Court about EU institutions. As is usually the case I find that someone esle has got there before me and done it rather better to boot.

The European Court of Justice uses its doctrines to expand EU law into 'ever wider fields' to coerce our courts into disregarding the laws of our democratically elected parliament. No other trading bloc in the world coerces its members in this way, or imposes a system of law which penetrates into national courts and overrules national laws. Our new relationship with the EU can end that and work towards true cooperation. We can now return to the well-trusted principles of the common law as interpreted by our own courts, applying statute laws made by people we elect.  Martin Howe QC

Tidy

Well who would have known it. It was as recently as 28 June that I was owning up to my Icelandic forebears and my lifelong support of the Icelandic football team. Of course what I omitted to say was that my full name is Dagbor Dafydd Overgraduatesonn, the middle name down to the strong Welsh lines in my heritage. Wales: 3 Belgium: 1. Enough said. Cymru am byth indeed. Next up the Portugese and, in particular, that preening twit Christiano Ronaldo. Is it vulgar of me to hope he gets kicked up in the air?

Mind you I have to confess that I didn't watch the game live. Instead we were binge watching the first series of Happy Valley. Very good.

Pretty good I thought was American Sniper when I watched it earlier this week. Bradley Cooper gives a monosyllabic and muscular performance as the decorated crack-shot Navy SEAL, Chris Kyle, fighting his personal battle with Iraq. Clint Eastwood directs. Some have damned the film as propoganda. That misses the point. It is about war and its after-effects on those who fight and those who stay at home. It is a tauter, less histrionic cousin to The Deerhunter. Not great but certainly not bad and Cooper is impressive. 6.5/10.