Peter Viney's Blog

Review of ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL at the RSC, 2022 (follow link).It’s a rarely performed one. In 2013, the RSC did it so incredibly well that I couldn’t understand why this “problem play” was under-rated. Now we’re in 2022, completing the RSC’s trawl through the complete works of Shakespeare (minus a couple). So how did they do? IS the play under-rated? Read on … Picture is Jamie Wilkes as Paroles, the boasting soldier and Rosie Sheehy as Helena.

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This is a review of something everyone can access. The new version of Chekhov’s UNCLE VANYA (link to review) opened in London in February 2020. It starred Toby Jones as Vanya, Richard Armitage as Dr Astrov, with Aimee Lou Wood (from Sex Education TV series) as Sonya and Rosalind Eleazar as Yelena. Covid killed it after a few performances. They had to replace Ciaron Hinds (who had played Alexander Serebryakov), because he was filming. So they re-cast with Roger Allam, then they went back onto the stage, the set was still there, and they filmed it in the empty theatre. It was hailed as a 5 star version of the play and it is. It’s on blu-ray and DVD and must be streaming too. Well worth it … the blu-ray was a fraction of our tickets for the Harold Pinter Theatre cancelled performance. The close-ups improve it.

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There hasn’t been an addition to “REVILED! The Albums Critics Love To Hate” at Around and Around for a while. Now we add (Sweet) Gene Vincent. Released in January 1970, Gene Vincent’s penultimate album, I’m Back and I’m Proud (FOLLOW THIS LINK) had major session musicians and a state of the art studio, but sometimes you just can’t improve on an artist’s classic era. The article has a great deal on Gene Vincent in general.

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At AROUND AND AROUND: Dandelion was John Peel and Clive Selwood’s short-lived 1969 to 1972 record label, named after Peel’s hamster. John Peel was an icon at the time, but displayed a remarkable lack of acumen in choosing artists for his label. It’s quite a story, full of acerbic quotes from co-owner Clive Selwood on the artists. LINK TO DANDELION ARTICLE.

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I’m getting through the 2022 film releases. The latest review (Follow the link) is THE PHANTOM OF THE OPEN with Mark Rylance, Sally Hawkins and Rhys Ifans. This is based on the real person, Maurice Flitcroft, who wangled his way into the Open Golf Championships several times, and did so badly that he was known (to his annoyance) as The Worst Golfer In The World. A genuinely heart-warming comedy. Seethe review. No plot spoilers.

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Review of CRAZY FOR YOU at Chichester Festival Theatre (LINKED). It’s on to 4 September if you can get tickets, though it seems a certainty for London transfer. The musical was written in 1992, based loosely around songs from Gershwin’s Girl Happy, with a new ‘book’ and additional Gershwin songs from elsewhere. This production has the original New York choreographer, Susan Stroman, choreographing and directing thirty years on. It’s perhaps the best musical we’ve ever seen!

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Just published. Now available from any amazon store as Kindle or Paperback, or as an iBook. This is a prequel to the Dart Travis “Sixties Series” set in 1966, so perhaps the best place to start the series. The paperback copies are large format ‘Trade Paperback’ size designed to be a pleasant reading experience, like a hardback novel.

It’s 1966, and times are not so much changing, as starting to change. Steve Bury is in limbo between school and university, and is on a steep learning curve on love, life, drama and the way the adult world works. Steve has ended up at a local college while applying to university. The story revolves around temporary jobs on the beach, and in a bizarre museum where all the other staff are in their 60s. Then there’s a misguided student drama production of ‘Richard III’ which his new wealthy girlfriend lures him into joining. He’s experiencing the generation gap (the generation before him is still living in the 1950s), the gender gap, and also the class gap, with a girlfriend and people so much better off than him. The story mixes comedy and romance, tinged with background tragedy. It’s also meticulously researched on the factual background and music of 1966.

AVAILABLE ON KINDLE

AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK from AMAZON

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Chichester is on a phenomenal run of plays this year. The latest is SING YER HEART OUT FOR THE LADS by Roy Williams. (LINKED). The play was written in 2002 and set in a pub, watching the England v Germany World Cup Qualifier in October 2000. It’s an incredibly dramatic fast moving evening … don’t worry about football, the real theme is racism. Rarely has a play had this many five star reviews. We were in the pub seating around the stage area. One of the most dramatic dramas I’ve seen. It played in Chichester in 2019, and was due to move to The National as Covid started. The revival has 10 of the 14 cast.

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