The Remains of the Day

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning ——

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s final section in The Great Gatsby is a reminder that we can’t escape the past. No matter how hard we attempt to steer an onward course, the tide of memory will pull us back.

Stevens in The Remains of the Day is a man that can’t shake his past. He is the butler assigned to tell the story. Unlike the clean precision he undertakes work, his storytelling is messy, less sequential; time periods fall in and out of one another, all coalescing to tell a tale of faint hopes, of vanquished dreams.

Ishiguro’s book is ostensibly set in 1950’s post-war Britain. The 1950’s was a period where for the first time in a long while the country could ask itself, ‘Who should we be?’ The years preceding were brutal bloodbaths with The Great Depression bringing the country to its knees and the second war pistol-whipping it to the ground. With the appointment of a Labour government, the old order had been shown the door – the proletariat would rule the world. Although the Conservatives of Churchill and Eden would reclaim office, there was a sense that Britain would never be the same again. This is the context for the novel. Stevens, the butler, whom has served Lord Darlington for thirty-five years must now work for an American, Mr Faraday. New money has replaced old. Formality is off the menu; informality the new order of the day.

The electorate showed Churchill the V. (They eventually let him come back.)

With Stevens new boss being unaccustomed to the old ways, he quickly demands his butler has some time off. For Stevens this is an unusual request: under Lord Darlington he was used to working all hours of the day with little rest. In fact, any allotted period of repose was spent studying, reading books that would aid deportment and conversation. Life for Stevens was an examination that he continuosly prepared for. Although he is somewhat bemused by the American concept of vacation, he sees it as an opportunity to visit the House’s former housemaid Miss Kenton- now the married Mrs Benn. Stevens purports the visit to be merely business: the House could again benefit from Mrs Benn’s expertise, and given her letter talked of marriage troubles, it appears she would be open a return. However, over the course of the book, we find this assignation may have an ulterior motive.

So Stevens leaves the gates of Darlington House, a metaphor you feel for the prison of his mind. As he drives west towards Cornwall, the open roads unspool Stevens, gradually disclosing his thoughts on work, class and leisure. A telling incident occurs at his first stop, where he looks out on the English countryside, eulogising: “What is pertinent is the calmness of beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it.” This is indicative of how Stevens sees people: he admires understatement, composure and subtlety. Anyone that offers anything more is crass, indecent, showy.

Stevens departs Darlington House.

We see Stevens’ ideal of beauty in the description of his work. Throughout the book there is the repeated noun of ‘dignity;’ Stevens sees dignity as a distinction few can claim. His father, a butler had it. He feels that he has it too. Dignity for Stevens is putting personal interest to one side in the name of service. His father’s anecdotes on great butlers have indoctrinated Stevens to believe that the people behind the curtain are as vital as the people in front. Yes, the main players get the cheers and glory, but it's the stagehands that make the performance possible. Even though they may never take a bow, the pleasure comes from providing the right conditions for the great and the good to excel. Dignity is knowing your station and maintaining it for the benefit of your superior.

This ‘dignity’ though comes at a cost. When Stevens recollects on his father’s illness, we see the human tragedy in his conditioning. Stevens recounts the story of Lord Darlington holding a conference to discuss the ‘punitive’ Treaty of Versailles. Whilst Stevens’ father lies dying in the upstairs room, a French dignitary requests assistance for a sore foot. Who Stevens attend to first is no surprise. In many ways Stevens is like Boxer, the workhouse of Orwell’s Animal Farm, embodying the mantra, “We must work harder.” Herein lies the genius of Ishiguro’s work, for Stevens isn’t working for a noble cause: the sympathy Lord Darlington holds for post-war Germany is just the start. When Stevens must sack Jewish staff and welcome Hitler’s foreign minister the maxim of a ‘dignified silence’ is put under the microscope – only Stevens refuses to look.

For Stevens everything must be 'just so.'

This rejection of self-reflection is not surprising. If you have respected someone for a large period of time, that reverence will not suddenly diminish when they're exposed. We’ve seen it recently with Louis Theroux’s Savile documentary. In it, his PA struggled to countenance Savile's crimes; to her he was a good, kind man. In the recent Bill Cosby documentary, a co-star couldn’t comprehend the star's abuses until other friends told them he did it to them. Stockholm Syndrome isn’t confined to people forced into captivity, sometimes it happens to people who walk willingly into it.

The journey Stevens takes away from Darlington House is we hope a metaphor for him getting away from a life of servitude and obedience. With Miss Kenton, a compassionate soul on the horizon, we the reader pray that Stevens is moving towards some kind of emotional liberation. Does he claim the green light like Jay Gatsby? Or is he borne back ceaselessly into the past? In these days of sun, locate the book and find out. 

The Remains of the Day is available from all good bookshops. 

The Trip

This week it was reported that Rupert Murdoch walked out of a Times Election Party after hearing Thursday's Exit Poll. Murdoch had run a corrosive campaign of hate against Jeremy Corbyn, portraying him as terrorist sympathiser, Marxist extremist and Jimmy Savile collaborator. (Ok, one of these isn't true, but what it says about The Sun is.) But that wasn’t the worst thing that happened this week to Mr Murdoch: all week I've taken advantage of my Now TV 14-day trial to take more free programmes off him. It’s not just democracy that’s given the proprietor a bloody nose, my inspired loopholing has left him short-changed.

It was The Sun that won it.

The last show that I watched using ‘Murdoch’s gift’ was The Trip. What’s funny about this is that in a recent Guardian interview, Steve Coogan remarked,  “It’s my theory that a lot of people who like The Trip are the very demographic who are resolutely non-Sky subscribers. So I think we might just be a cynical ploy by Sky to get them to adopt the platform.” You see the BBC broadcast the first two series of The Trip, but due to budgetary constraints the show moved to Sky, much to Coogan’s disappointment. You might remember that Coogan was part of Hacked Off, an organisation that represented victims of News UK's phone hacking. It’s a wonder that Murdoch, whom owns a lion’s share of Sky, would want to have a vocal opponent on his roster. I guess when it comes down to it money talks, talent walks. Unfortunately in a monopolised media, creative people will sometimes have to compromise their values to get their ideas out. It’s not just Steve Coogan that has had to leave his conscience at the Murdoch door: both Frankie Boyle and Stewart Lee, arch critics of the right-wing media, have worked on his newspapers in the past. In fact, out of all the leading humorists operating today, it’s perhaps only I that hasn’t been tempted by a job offer – you’re welcome.

Coogan the campaigner.

Needless to say, I was a bit pissed when the show moved to Sky as it was one of my favourites. Now in its third series, it’s important to remember just how daring it once was. The format really shouldn’t work: Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan playing exaggerated versions of themselves, wonder around beautiful locations whilst doing celebrity impressions in fancy restaurants. Compared to other comedies, there isn’t a multitude of characters or quick-cuts to new locations; the camera stays on the pair, allowing them to jam their skits into wondrous riffs.

The idea for The Trip was born out of a film the two previously worked on with Trip director Michael Winterbottom. A Cock and Bull Story was ostensibly about one of the first postmodern texts, the eighteenth century novel Tristram Shandy. Due to the authorial interjections and stylistic jolts, the book is often regarded as unfilmable. Winterbottom therefore chose to adopt a postmodern approach to the book by doing a film on the filming of the film. (You may look over that sentence and perceive the repetition wholly unnecessary. You may be right, but I believe it captures the playful spirit of Winterbottom’s approach.) In the film you see Coogan and Brydon in the dressing room, squabbling over their star-billing and place in the zeitgeist. Essentially then, with The Trip Winterbottom has taken the idea off the film set and planted it in the real world. It’s a triumph how such an innovative concept has been greeted by critics and fans.

It’s first series takes place in England and begins with Steve phoning Rob. Steve has been commissioned by The Observer to write a series of food reviews on t’North’s finest restaurants; he’s asked his girlfriend who can’t come; he’s asked everyone else and they won’t come, so he wonders whether Rob fancies it. The joshing has started early. Rob acquiesces, leaving our solo singer with a band to play with. Over the course of the series, the two trade blows on one another’s careers: for Steve, Rob is a populist entertainer, humorous but facile; for Rob, Steve is a victim of envy, destined to be unsatisfied with his own achievements. 

Alongside their barbed comments, there is respect as they collaborate with one another on sketches. In one hilarious moment, a hilltop panorama is the inspiration behind a sublime routine. Steve believes it would be the ideal setting for a costume drama; Rob concurs. Steve then imagines a medieval battle where the chief cries, ‘Gentlemen to bed for tomorrow we must rise at daybreak.’ The two pedants transpose modern time onto the past, imagining why it’s always daybreak and never an exact time. Steve then edits the line on Rob’s suggestions, making it into a playful routine that ends on talk of the warriors being up early for a continental breakfast. Amongst all this play though, there is sadness with Steve’s relationship and career in the doldrums. Remember the show was first aired in 2010: Coogan hadn’t revitalised Alan Partridge or screened Philomena. His career, other than some indie success, was in the wilderness. If anything Brydon at this point is the more successful of the two; his affable ease is at odds with Coogan’s restlessness, making for a testy dynamic.

In series two pair venture to Italy. Coogan, having just filmed Philomena, is a more gratified creature. Here, it’s Brydon who takes up the mantle of mid-life crisis, engaging in a fling with a tour guide. The first season had Coogan crying out for the domestic anchor Brydon had, whereas here Brydon questions stability. Is the pram in the hallway the enemy of great sex, his affair asks? Because much of the series is impression battles and friendly ribbing, these existential moments are made all the more profound. We’re not expecting a shiny panel show host to be dragged into life’s mess; the fact Brydon does it with such aplomb highlights his versatility as an actor.

Series 2.

The final series that I downloaded this week is set in Spain. Steve bills himself as Don Quixote, the eponymous dreamer of Cervantes’ comic novel. Rob is like Sancho, the character’s sidekick that follows him on the adventure. This time round Steve is having a crisis of confidence: the contentment of the second series has left him. You wonder how this can be, what with the Alan Partridge movie, Alpha Papa, and Philomena being such successes. (It’s important to add that the programme is fiction. There are times when I forget the characters are playing versions of themselves. In a recent interview, Coogan said he is much happier than his character.) Rob this time has gone back to being the comic stooge, constantly doing impressions, much to Steve’s chagrin. A lovely thing about this series is when it strays into self-referentialism. Rob tells Steve about a text from James Cordon, remarking that Carpool Karaoke has made him into a huge success. Steve is less than impressed, opining: ‘two people singing in a car. Who wants to see that?’ Later, of course, the two sing in the car.

Series 3.

 This quotation illuminates the joy of the show: it tracks two people doing utterly banal things: eating in a restaurant, talking on a walk, singing in a car; yet sprinkles it with a fairy dust, elevating it into being a mirror on life, an insight into the soul, a meditation on fame, family and friendship. The Trip is whatever you want it to be: a fun travelogue with two comic actors - or an existential amble around the psyche of middle age. Whatever your take, I recommend you take this trip.

The Trip Series 1 and 2 is available on Netflix. The Trip Series 3 is on Sky’s Now TV.

Romeo and Juliet

As a teenager I never enjoyed Shakespeare. For me, he was a dead guy I couldn’t comprehend. Confined to our desks, we’d struggle through each and every word. Simply, Shakespeare was a crossword puzzle without a clue. Indecipherable. The only happy moment I remember from studying him was the day Mrs Brown assigned roles for Romeo and Juliet. The first leading role was given to our mate; the second to the object of his affection. He had loved this girl from the start of Year 7. It was a love as boundless as the sea. He would have sacrificed everything to be with her: his friends, his family, his name, even his Radiohead CD’s. But unlike the titular characters these feelings weren’t shared. There was to be no leaping over garden walls; no recitation of Smiths lyrics to a bedroom window; no elopement to Gretna Green; no suicide pile up at her family's burial plot. This was a tale of more woe than Juliet and Romeo, for he hadn’t unclasped his heart to her; he hadn’t spoken those three words of clichéd heroism, “I love you.” Here in Year 10 was his chance to theatrically experience a relationship the real world cruelly denied. Aware that this was a transcendental moment for our friend, we supported him in the best way we could: by laughing at him until he was too embarrassed to go on. There is nothing more brutal than the banter of the adolescent.

BANTER!

At university my degree involved me taking a module, ‘Approaches to Shakespeare.’ Each week I read a new Shakespeare play and would then have to talk about it the following week. Finding the time to read in a week was difficult: what with drinking and Deal and No Deal viewing commitments, I would usually find myself in a position where I’d have to skim-read the text. Skim-reading a Shakespeare play is fine if you have read the aforesaid; but if you haven’t, then you’re essentially entering the battlefield with only pacifists for support. Consequently, all talk on Shakespeare would pass me by. He was for brighter people than me.

Then I took a year out before becoming a teacher. I thought, ‘If I’m going to be teaching Shakespeare, then I need to grow to love him.’ Over the course of the year I took from the library King Lear, Macbeth and Hamlet. Without the encumbrance of deadlines, I read them at my own pace; soon I revelled in the language, realised that every word didn’t have to be realised, that the feel was the thing.

Me in training for teaching Shakespeare.

Now I teach Shakespeare every year: from Year 7’s to 11’s. I fear that I don’t always do a great job. Now that Speaking and Listening isn’t formally assessed, there’s a risk that teachers won’t treat the play as a script but as a text. Previously, you might take more active approaches, given these performative skills could be graded. As it is, with the amount of material we have to get through, it’s hard to kick the desks to one side; to give children the opportunity to play at being players.  Shakespeare has become the ghost of Banquo: whereas before he stood by my side, he now hovers above: his severed head a reminder I’ve let him down; his anguished expression caused by my academic dissection.

It’s not just teachers that are wrestling with how to communicate Shakespeare, but The Globe theatre too. The Globe is Shakespeare’s home; although it’s 17^th century fire means the building that stands today is only a replica of what stood before, it is the site where his most famous works originally played. Last year The Globe took the bold move of hiring Emma Rice, the visionary Artistic Director of Cornwall’s Kneehigh Theatre, renowned for daring retellings of classic works. For all the excitement that greeted her appointment, there was consternation too. Rice’s works are a feast for the eyes, how would she fare with a playwright for the ears? Her version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was well received with high receipts and re-tweets. Critics were neither celebratory nor condemnatory, arguing that amidst the play’s riotous fun some depth was lost. The movers and shakers of The Globe weren’t happy at all, rumours emerged they were less than impressed by the sound and lighting Rice adopted. Just a few years earlier, Mark Rylance and Eddie Redymayne had starred in Twelth Night, an original practices production that used Elizabethan costume, make-up and candlelight to recreate the conditions of Shakespeare’s time. Rice’s view was quite antithetical: she didn’t want to look back, but forward. She would not invite the ghosts to the party, but put on her proton pack and blast them back to where they came from. She wanted to reboot Shakespeare for a digital age.

An Original Practices production.

This reinvention of Shakespeare has led to Rice falling on her sword. Next year will be her last as Artistic Director; for such a traditional space, perhaps it was inevitable her tenure would end in recrimination. Despite that, she refuses to go quietly, curating a Summer of Love season that promises to carry her idiosyncratic stamp of wild abandon.

Romeo and Juliet is directed by Daniel Kramer, a friend that Rice describes as ‘one of the most exciting directors working in the world today.’ Last year Kramer was appointed the Artistic Director of the English National Opera, an ascension that would be a compliment if it weren’t for the company’s dire position. With financial issues and board members resigning, Kramer had the unenviable task of reigniting the institutions fortunes. The juxtaposition of an inexperience figure leading a prestigious establishment is a contradiction shared with Rice. Joining forces with a kindred rebel is the surest sign that Rice will not go quietly into the night.

Kramer’s Romeo and Juliet is a crazy collision of sounds and scenes. Critics have described it as a ‘bellowing pantomime,’ some have gone further with the epithets ‘desecrated’ and ‘vandalism.’ When it comes to The Globe there is a school of reviewer that believes a production should be done in hallowed tribute to The Bard. Whereas Rice and Kramer don’t view the space as a Shakespeare’s mausoleum; instead they see it as his playground, a place where he invented, experimented and entertained. Kramer’s isn’t a candlelit vigil to the man, but a Day of the Dead celebration of his life and work. It is a mess, yet an exciting one.

Pic. courtesy of The Stage.

The performance begins with a recorded prologue sound-tracking Lady Montague and Lady Capulet giving birth to dead caskets. It’s a provocative opening that makes you aware this production will be singular and indelicate. Then, we’re into the fight scene where both sides trading of innuendo is brought to an abrupt halt by the Prince, voiced by an actor off-stage. Now herein lies the problem: the Prince in the play is a force for good, trying valiantly to keep the sides from killing one another; here, he sounds like a disembodied Dalek, ready to exterminate any character that doesn’t fulfil his request. This was the first moment when I thought the director had done something unnecessary to the play.

We’re then into Romeo being melancholic over Rosaline, the woman he loves that won’t love him back. Mercutio’s role goes against convention and is played by a woman. At first, I thought this was just to highlight the character’s effeminacy, but over time I realised that the director had traded genders and made the character a woman. This worked fine, adding another layer to Romeo and Mercutio’s friendship, suggesting there was an undercurrent of love to their relationship. From there, we’re into the party scene which like Luhrmann’s is presented in fancy dress: we’ve got witches, serial killers and a man in a giant dog costume. The sophistication of the masked ball is thrown from the balcony as the party becomes a den of iniquity with YMCA dancing and semi-clad gyrations. When my school went a few weeks prior, there were walk-outs and it’s easy to see why traditionalists would take umbrage at the overtly lewd approach. Kramer doesn’t do the suggestive dick jokes of Shakespeare, instead he rams them down your throat – whether you like it or not depends a lot on your attitude to sex.

Party scene. Pic. courtesy of The Globe.

More problems arise in the play during the balcony scene where it appears to be played for laughs. In film versions, the lovers lack self-awareness, they are too consumed by love to care about whether they’re doing the right thing. In this re-telling, they’re self-conscious, Juliet considers her stance: demure or coquettish? Women have gone from passive recipients to active participants in the game of love, so Kramer’s decision can be justified. However, with the relationship moving at breakneck speed it doesn’t seem in keeping that they would pause in self-reflection. By the end of the first half, I felt as though I had been thoroughly entertained, but at the expense of feeling anything for the characters.

The second half gives the story more room to breathe. With the focus turned away from the families onto the individuals, there’s space for the characters to grow. If I didn’t believe in how the characters fell in love, I know believed they were in love. Despite the pace slackening, inventive decisions are made with the structure to sustain the young audience’s interest. During Juliet’s fake death scene, the families reaction is put alongside the news reaching Romeo, and the Friar’s worry about what this might mean. In the script these are three separate scenes, the decision to unite them brings a jump-cut effect that modern TV viewers are familiar with. Kramer argues in his notes that shows like Six Feet Under prove that audiences can balance multiple narratives in their heads in a way that Elizabethan audiences may have found difficult. This Shakespeare is for a generation that thinks fast, but perhaps not carefully.

Although I’m in two minds about the play, I’m completely clear-headed in the belief that the music was utterly wonderful. As the play builds towards its climax, Washington and Richter’s This Bitter Earth soars with heart-rending, spell-binding majesty. Following the lovers tragedy, an actor sings Sinead O’Connor’s In This Heart, a gorgeous lament to ‘my love, my love.’ The argument that I was being emotionally manipulated by the soundscape holds water, yet there is no denying that by the end I was moved.

Ultimately, I came away from The Globe feeling I’d seen something unique, not always brilliant, but unique. The play has been in existence for over four hundred years, if people want to see a tights and earnest rendition then there is enough out there. In a play consumed by oxymorons (loving hate, heavy lightness, serious vanity) the production too is oxymoronic: it’s respectfully disrespectful, beautifully vulgar, emotionally emotionless, an ordered mess. It’s brilliant at times; terrible at others. A marmite production that the public has taken to and the critics taken against. 

Rice and Kramer have signed their suicide pact with The Globe but like the lovers their legacy might just live on.  

Romeo and Juliet runs at The Globe until the 9th April.