vivdunstan

Onto another one, and this is a relisten for me. As I wrote on Gallifrey Base back in June 2010:

"Timeless Passages is indeed wonderful. I've only heard Benny on audio in some of season 3, Timeless Passages, the Diogenes Damsel, and the Companion Chronicle story. Of these Timeless Passages is easily my favourite, and requires no prior knowledge. And it's *so* timey-wimey :) I just love it."

And my feelings haven't changed, though I've now heard way way more Benny audios than I had back then. Timeless Passages is a quite superb Benny audio, and a brilliant piece of scifi storytelling. Totally standalone, so you don't need to have listened to any of the other Benny audios. As is often the case this one has a very small cast, but they are used superbly, very well acted and written, and the story keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout. A tightly plotted mystery box of a timey wimey puzzle set inside a giant library. What's not to love about that?

It's a rare Benny audio from this era still available to buy from Big Finish on CD, but also in DRM-free download. £5.99 plus shipping if ordering by post. If you hear just one Benny audio, this is the one I'd recommend by far.

On to my next audio, the first in the seventh series of Big Finish Benny audios. This story follows on from the upheaval of the previous one, before sending Jason off on a quest to rescue Benny who has vanished from time and space.

There are a lot of clever ideas in this audio. The aliens involved have a datascape virtual world that they inhabit. And they can also control time to go back in time. But I don't think I was in the right mood for this level of abstraction. It's also rather difficult to successfully achieve in audio alone.

The writing wasn't great. There were some particularly painful extended info dumps. Again very much the "tell not show" poor form of storytelling. And this wasn't even the huge back story elements of especially Benny but also to an extent Jason that the story relied on.

Stephen Fewell and Lisa Bowerman were acting their socks off as Jason and Benny though.

But ultimately not a great audio by a long chalk.

I do remember the next one is a fab story, so looking forward to that ...

Onto my next story, and it's the last episode of season 6 of Big Finish's Benny audios.

And it's a key story. I can't really say much even in spoiler space without giving too many important things away. But it certainly changes things up.

It's also impressive how full cast it feels, against so many Benny audios that feel too sparse. There's a key core cast here of Benny, Jason, Brax and one other. But then there are another eight or so cast members. And it just feels full of folk. But also very well paced in the writing. Joseph Lidster has done a fantastic job.

I do feel I'm missing out on some of the beats in this story by not having read the Big Finish Benny books around this time. Particularly some of the short story collections. However I have most of the books in house, so may dig out a few key short stories to read.

But, yes, epic, very moving, and a huge shake up to the status quo.

Bumped this up my viewing list, because the play is going off streaming through National Theatre at Home at the end of this month. It can be viewed before then by people like me who subscribe to the service (I was lucky to nab a reduced price offer before Christmas), or on a short-term rental view.

The play was staged in early 2024 and is a dramatisation of the life of Aneurin 'Nye' Bevan, who spearheaded the launch of the National Health Service in the UK in 1948. The play tells Bevan's life, looking back from his final days in hospital, as sedated he dreams back to his youth as a miner's son in Wales, early political life, his courtship of his wife, Westminster politics of WW2, and then the fight to found the NHS.

The staging is creative, being set largely in a hospital ward, but repurposing the props - including beds - as well as patients and staff to take on the various roles of people Nye encountered in his life. This staging took a little getting used to, and the play runs briskly along. But it certainly grabs the viewer's attention.

The central performance of Michael Sheen as Nye Bevan is riveting, and ably matched by Sharon Small as his Scottish wife and fellow Labour politician Jenny Lee. Their relationship feels vital to the play as a whole, but is surprisingly underdeveloped after their first striking meeting.

The foundation of the NHS happens near the end of the play, and feels surprisingly rushed, and a story only partly told. There is very effective staging of a group of doctors seen above, debating whether to join the new NHS. The toing and froing here between Bevan and the doctors is gripping. But then it's over, the NHS is founded, and the play finishes soon after.

An admirable theatre experience, though I think the play script could have balanced some aspects of the story better. However the performances are gripping, and the staging held my attention throughout. Recommended.

Just finished watching this production, starring Andrew Scott as Garry Essendine, and including in the cast Indira Varma (who, like Scott, won an Olivier award for this role) and Sophie Thompson (also Olivier nominated, but lost to Varma).

This is an old play, written by Noel Coward in the 1930s, centred around a successful actor and his immediate circle of associates. This 2019 version updated it in places, including gender swapping a key character, making it more true to the unspoken feeling but unshowable then truth of the original 1940s production. I think the ending has been tweaked too.

The acting is sparkling, very theatrical and over the top, but works so very well, and keeps you glued for almost 90 minutes. The staging is good too, set in a single room, with clever use of furniture, doors and other props. Often when the front door bell would ring, leading to another disastrous arrival, the audience would laugh out loud. Indeed there was just so much laughter from the audience throughout the whole play.

In the lead role Andrew Scott was superb. Yes over the top and camp for much of the time, but with a sad pathos running underneath, and superb comic timing. The rest of the cast were excellent, especially Varma and Thompson.

Highly recommended viewing. I watched the recorded performance via my National Theatre at Home streaming subscription, which I bought at a greatly reduced cost (thankfully!) just before Christmas.

Fun article in the Guardian today.

Finished watching theatre performances "London Tide" and "Prima Facie" using my National Theatre at Home subscription.

The former was a valiant attempt to adapt Charles Dickens's "Our Mutual Friend" into under three hours, but for me it was unsuccessful, stripping out too much of the plot, characters and themes, and changing the ending a lot. Some of the performances were excellent, especially Bella Maclean as Bella Wilfer, Tom Mothersdale as John Rokesmith, and a quite superb young Ellie-May Sheridan as Jenny Wren. But the songs by PJ Harvey and Ben Power were an overlong distraction, generally terribly dirge like, and I'd happily have done without them.

Prime Facie sees an ambitious defence lawyer finds herself on the other side of the court, as a rape victim. It's a one woman play, with Jodie Comer playing the lawyer, and also retelling and acting out the other characters. It is an utterly devastating performance, which is horrific to watch, and I marvel that she managed to play this night after night, without even a full interval in the middle. Unsurprisingly Jodie Comer won both the Olivier and Tony awards for best actress in this role. A quite astonishing 100 minutes of acting.

Note there are spoilers in this post. Scroll past if you don't want to know some quite specific details.

Earlier this year I mentioned here that I was intending to watch some of the animated Tolkien films from 1977-1980 soon. As I said then I'd never seen The Hobbit (1977) or The Return of the King (1980), though I have seen the doesn't-tell-the-whole-story The Lord of the Rings (1978), which I watched on Channel 4 one afternoon before Christmas in 1988 ...

It's taken us a while to get started. But first up last night was The Hobbit (1977), which I'd sourced a Spanish-released DVD copy of. After changing the settings to English language audio and no subtitles we were good to go with the 77 minutes long animated movie.

I knew going in that it was an extremely condensed retelling of the story. But I was honestly surprised by how much they packed into the running time. And the opening sections charmed me, with the pre titles sequence where Bilbo meets the dwarves and Gandalf, and the rather nice folk-inspired song "The Greatest Adventure". The other songs were more of a miss for me though. The dwarves are introduced phenomenally quickly, but that wasn't a problem for me. I find the original book overly long on this, never mind Peter Jackson's take on it.

The character design choices are a mix of good or curious to downright strange. Gandalf is as you would expect. Bilbo perhaps a bit Disney. The dwarves are a mix, some rather disturbing. Trolls ok. Elrond has a beard. Mmmm. Though I was pleased they managed to include that portion - I thought they'd skip it. Goblins suitably disturbing. Gollum very strange, but it sort of works. Wargs awesome. Ditto eagles. Mirkwood spiders suitably terrifying. Wood elves very very strange, and more scary looking than the goblins. Not sure about the Lake-town men. And Smaug looks more like a big cat (I've seen "bobcat" used to describe him) than a dragon, at least in facial features. Nice thrush though. The animation is generally good, with some particularly impressive visual moments. The animation work was done by a Japanese company linked to the future Studio Ghibli.

The voice acting is variable. Bilbo and Gandalf are fine. Gollum suitably disturbing. I liked Elrond's voice. But why does the elven king have an Austrian accent? And Smaug sounds strange. I wasn't familiar with the actor voices already, so didn't make connections with other roles. But just responded to how they sounded.

As I said I was impressed by how much they fitted in, including the trolls section, Rivendell and Elrond, the Misty Mountains and goblins and Gollum and riddles (good allowance of time for this key bit), then wargs (but no Beorn), Mirkwood spiders, the wood elves and barrel escape (to be fair that's phenomenally condensed into a couple of minutes), Lake-town, Lonely Mountain and Smaug, death of Smaug, Battle of the Five Armies, and Bilbo's return. The Battle bit was the only bit that dragged for me. I suppose after the hasty earlier sections its slightly more leisurely pace felt too slow. They also made a curious choice to depict some of the battle using dots viewed from overhead moving around. Which might be how someone at a distance - in this case Bilbo - might see things. But wasn't entirely successful.

They certainly missed other parts of the story, including some key moments, like Bilbo deciding not to kill Gollum. Nor did he steal the Arkenstone, and the emotional ending with Thorin was reduced as a result. Much was there though, just accelerated/edited hugely. And I'm still stunned by how much they did cover in the time.

The thing I liked least about the film is the ending, where Gandalf says some words to Bilbo, hinting that the ring he found is important, and in the future there will be more adventures involving other members of his family. Mmmmm. I can see why they did that. It's a quaint nod to them hopefully continuing the story (which the same team sort of did with The Return of the King animated movie in 1980). But to suggest that Gandalf has an awareness of or even hint of the importance of this ring at this time, never mind other foresight about its future, just feels so very wrong for this viewer/Tolkien fan at least.

However overall I enjoyed it. I think they got more things right than wrong. And I would far, far prefer to watch this 77 minutes version than the nearly 9 hours of Hobbit movies from Peter Jackson ...

This was a very tough listen. An utterly devastating account of a slave race striving for freedom from their oppressors. Brutal torture is described, accompanied by blood-curdling screams. I don't want to ever hear it again. However the story was well written, and the acting of the small cast strong. But too heart rending. It is a prequel of sorts to the First Doctor story "The Ark".

Jotting down some quick thoughts, after my latest rewatch.

( Going into spoilers ... )