The Anubis Gates

As I mentioned in my earlier post about LonCon 3, while I was at the convention I saw a performance of The Anubis Gates, based on the book by Tim Powers. I really liked the book, it was the first Tim Powers book that I read and I was very impressed, as you can see from my previous review. I knew I had to see the performance.

There was an enormous queue going in and the start time was pushed back quite a bit. However by the time myself and my husband got in we were able to sit about two thirds back, and the rear third of the massive auditorium was empty (this was the 2nd largest space used by the con). I expect many people got put off by the epic queue, which was obviously very long and thin, whereas the space we were queuing into was pretty wide and fit more than you'd think.

I'm going to put a spoiler section at the bottom, where I can go into details about the story. The book is great, so I don't want to spoil anyone who hasn't read it yet, but is hopefully encouraged to do so. The upper section will be general thoughts about the production.

The performance was not what I expected, but I enjoyed it. The set was very minimalist, black backdrop and a single table, and seemed at odds with the enormous space it was being performed in. The costumes were the main thing that evoked a sense of time and place. I felt that the production would have worked better in a smaller space, as the atmosphere and performances were diluted, but it's likely that the production was designed for a more intimate space, or else one within a traditional theatre set up. The stage and the action (when it went into the audience) was filmed and projected onto two huge screens either side of the stage, to allow people in the back some idea of what was happening. These screens were occasionally used to project other images relating to the action, and these bits generally worked well. There were also various puppets and some shadow play used sparingly during the production. These looked fine, but the shadow show was a little lost given the size of the venue. Plus they were used in parts of the story that didn't make as much sense because there was little explanation within the show (I'll go into more detail about that below). I also felt as though there could have been some more visuals to signify things, especially times when people were using magic. There was a lot of stuff done with body language and gesture that might have been flagged up more. Then again that could be another factor that would be improved in a smaller space.

I wondered how a story as complex as The Anubis Gates would fit into a stage production. A lot of the detail in the book is the historical setting, which can be quickly created/evoked in a performance using visual shorthand. The story was reduced mostly to conversations between the characters, usually in twos, or else someone's internal thoughts being performed as a monologue. This was fine and allowed for the basics of the story and the experiences of the characters to be shown and mostly explained. The performances were good, with the personalities of the main characters coming through well. The stage was miked but unfortunately the individuals weren't, meaning that when some characters left the stage and went amongst the audience they were hard to hear. The strong performances are really what made the show, as it relied so much on character interaction. Especially important in a play that features body-swapping, and the various actors that played multiple characters used accents and body language to make clear who was being who at different times. The humour of various scenes was good, and again relied largely on the excellent interactions and performances, it was all tied into the story and characters without gimmicks. I laughed a fair bit. The woman that played Jacky did a wonderful job, as did both actors who played Brendan (amongst other people). I especially felt that chemistry between the characters in the final scene was excellent and left me feeling very positive.

The production was fun with good performances and it simplified the story fairly well. It was let down by the massive space, which didn't seem to have been fully accounted for. The humour and drama worked emotionally. I really want to reread the book now. Also I've been humming bits of 'Yesterday' for over a week.

BOOK SPOILERS BELOW

It's been some years since I read the book, so I'd forgotten various bits and pieces, though I now want to reread it. I watched the play with my husband who hasn't read the book and it was interesting to see what he picked up. I managed quite well already knowing the plot and being able to fill in most blanks, whereas he enjoyed the play but realised there was more to the story that he didn't see.

The explanation of the time travel was clear and established early on. The situation with Dog-faced Joe and the body-swapping was also made clear. Of course this isn't surprising as these are central to the plot and the character's experiences. One of the transformation sequences were Dog-faced Joe bodyswaps wit Brendan had an amusing projection on the screens, where the picture morphed between images of Chewbacca, the actor playing Brandan, a bearded man and the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz.

All the other magic and supernatural stuff was very much left in the background. Doctor Romany is present as a malign force, however it's not clear what his connection to anything is. Horrabin is almost entirely removed and is referred to more than he appears, making his actual appearances confusing. There's little sense to the spoonsize boys, which were puppets that went into the audience. There's no sense of the other stuff that Horrabin is involved in. Of course this does mirror the experience of Brendan, who spends the early part of the book utterly lost and unaware of what's actually happening. Plus I seem to recall the book didn't overtly explain a lot of things, but gave you various hints. These may have been difficult to get across in the performance. I almost feel as though more of the wider magical stuff could have been safely cut from the play. The connection with Egypt and gods is never made clear, and although Brendan is taken there at one point my husband didn't know that was what happened. The Master appeared on the screens a couple of times as a doomy presence and another time is shown as a puppet, but the production doesn't make clear who he is. It's clear that he, Doctor Romany and Horrabin are linked, but the magicians' conspiracy is very much in the background of the performance. Similarly the journey further back to the 1680s was not clear to people who didn't already know the plot. This was a place where the magic could have been made more obvious.

It's understandable that a lot of detail was sacrificed to make the story suitable for performance. Focusing on principle characters and their experiences makes sense and it worked well. However this did mean that the references to wider story elements and background details seemed disjointed and almost unnecessary, if not perhaps confusing to those familiar with the story.

Recent Reading - and a bit of myth

The Assassin's Curse 

Cassandra Rose Clarke

 The Assassin's Curse in the first batch of books published by YA imprint Strange Chemistry, which is part of the Angry Robot imprint. Told in first person POV (as seems traditional in YA) it's about Ananna, daughter of a pirate captain, who escapes an arranged marriage and is chased by assassins for it. Due to a magical accident she ends up bound to an assassin, who must protect her from harm. They reluctantly travel together to find a way to break the curse.
The fantasy world is well drawn and not overly explained. Ananna is a great heroine, confident, brave, quick-witted and rather stubborn, she was born and raised in a world of thieves but has her own ideas of right and wrong. Seeing the world through her viewpoint means it's easy to be on her side, but it is also clear that her actions are foolish at times. The assassin is also a good character, proud, deadly and impatient he also has vulnerabilities, though these remain mostly mysterious. The interactions between the pair are beautifully done. The various characters they meet felt genuine and the situation is complex enough to absorb attention.
The story was a good one, the pace was brisk and events unfolded smoothly. I wanted to see more of the world and learn more about the characters and their adventures. My only complaint is that it ended too soon; in fact it's clear that the story has been cut in two. Weighing in at under 300 pages The Assassin's Curse is a shortish book, although that's not usual for YA. What confused me a bit is that the blurb on the back is clearly a description of the entire story, not just the half I have access to. At least one of the incidents mentioned on the back cover doesn't take place in this book, which is unusual I think. I read quickly but as I got closer to the end I realised that what approached wasn't an actual ending, just a pause in the story. I will definitely buy the next book, but just after I finished reading this one I felt as though I'd been promised more story than I actually got.

The Assassin's Curse is one of the books I bought at FantasyCon, in fact I bought it directly from the publisher, who was working the stall at the time. I only bought 5 books at FantasyCon, the other 15 or so me and my husband bought back from Brighton were all free, which is a sign of a good convention. This is how we discovered that our suitcase is not built to transport nearly 20 books, and how one of its wheels ended up disappearing somewhere on the hill between the seafront and Brighton train station.

The Song of Achilles

Madeline Miller

I don't tend to read books that have won mainstream prizes, often because there's not enough fantasy in them. However my husband bought this book for me because I love Ancient Greek mythology and it turns out this was an excellent choice on his part and contained more fantasy than I expected. It was an excellent and emotionally powerful read.
The novel is a retelling of the story of Greek hero Achilles, told from the point of view of Achilles' companion and lover Patroclus. According to legend Achilles was the son of human king Peleus and the sea goddess Thetis -whose son was destined to be greater than his father. This prophecy was the reason the Olympian gods (already plagued by inter-generational strife) married Thetis off to a mortal. In the book Achilles is destined to become the Best of Greeks and he will prove himself at Troy, the war that unites the squabbling Greek city-states. However the battlefields of Troy are also destined to be the site of his' demise. All the supernatural aspects of the story are kept (no wonder I liked it) with Thetis being a terrifying and unworldly presence in the book. Here we see powerful, alien, manipulative gods, not the melodramatic -if fun- squabbling family the Olympian gods are often shown as (and in fact were sometimes portrayed as such by the Ancient Greeks themselves).



The next bit of the review actually gets a bit long, since it's so tied up with a subject I love.

Frankenstein

A few nights ago me and a friend went to see the National Theatre's version of Frankenstein. What was unusual was that instead of going down to London to see it on the stage, we saw it at a local cinema.
This broadcasting of plays in cinemas is a clever move on the part of the National Theatre. It makes plays accessible for a wider audience, including those who cannot easily travel and those who might not normally go to the theatre. I believe it is also being done with opera, which makes me think I might actually go and watch an opera, something I've never felt much urge to do before.

It was an interesting experience, sort of a hybrid of going to the theatre and the cinema, which is to be expected I suppose.
We were only just on time so ended up sitting right to the side, but that was fine because it was being projected onto a big 2D screen, so perspective and sight lines weren't the issue they can be at the theatre. Watching a filmed version allowed for things like close ups and overhead shots, but it also took away the audience's ability to notice things for themselves as your view was constantly led. It hadn't really occurred to me before, but this is a major difference between filmed and live performances.
The film included shots of the theatre audience taking their seats before the performance, which was nice as it recreated that thing where you look around at other people in the audience (well I do that in the theatre anyway, don't know about anyone else). You also heard the noise of the theatre audience, which merged with the sound of us in the cinema. At the end people clapped, which made sense in one way as that's what the theatre people were doing, but it was also a bit strange because there wasn't actually anyone there to clap for.


Frankenstein
Directed by Danny Boyle, starring Johnny Lee Miller (from Eli Stone) and Benedict Cumberbatch (from BBC's Sherlock). In this performance Miller played the creature and Cumberbatch played Victor Frankenstein, but  the interesting thing about this play is that the two lead actors swap roles throughout the run.

The performance was very good. It is told from the creature's point of view and he is in almost every scene during the first part of the play. Escaping from some kind of artifical womb (no slabs here) we watch him learn to drag himself along, then crawl, then walk, all the while making unintelligible noises. It's eerily like watching a toddler in a grown man's body. The makeup made Miller look like he was covered in scars and stitches, especially some particularly bad scarring across his head. The first appearance of Frankenstein shows the scientist horrified by his creation and running away in terror, not a good start. Then the creature goes out into the world where he learns that he is feared before he learns to speak and read.
The actions switches to Victor Frankenstein only after his creation has tracked him down. The lonely monster makes a deal with his troubled creator, he asks only for a wife like him. The scientist, a reclusive character, once more leaves home and family to create life, however he is troubled by what he's dong and at the last reneges on his promise. Then the creature pursues Frankenstein to have his revenge.

I haven't read Shelley's original novel - although I expect I will do. From what I know of it the play is closer to the book than many of the film versions. In the films the monster often can't speak, but in the play he is allowed to be very articulate.

There were several things I liked about the production:

• The blind man befriended and taught the monster, even after feeling his head to 'see' him. In a film version I saw a lonely blind man befriends the monster and says how bad it is to be alone and how they should be friends, but then rejects him after 'seeing' him. That seemed unfair.

• The creature is the only one in the play to use a flaming torch, and he does it to burn down a human home. This seemed a nice reversal from the well-known film imagery.

• Victor Frankenstein's social skills seem almost as bad as that of his creation, he is reclusive and doesn't seem to react to things as other people would. There is definitely something odd about the guy, even ignoring the whole creating monsters thing.

• Frankenstein is initially as enamored with the idea of 'the bride' as the creature is. He seems to relish the idea of a second chance to make something flawless. I don't know whether he sees it as an intellectual challenge or something more. There's one bit where he pretty much measures up his fiancee, which is kinda creepy.

• The scienstist's idea of creating life involves reanimating corpses with lightning. He doesn't seem to have given any thought to the normal way of doing it, as his wife points out. When he fears his creations will breed, it doesn't occur to him to simply make sure they can't. I suspect there are some pyschological, sexual issues at work.

• Frankenstein projects his own worries and complexes about people onto the monster. The monster ignores them having his own very definite ideas about how people are.

• By the end the creator and monster are pretty much the same. Both chasing each other, neither being able to stop or do anything else, both in a sense living for the other whilst also desiring their destruction.

• The lighting rig. Suspended above stage and audience was a massive rig comprised of hundreds, if not thousands of bulbs. In the first scene these symbolise the lightning or electricity that brings the creature to life. They are also used to symbolise the stars. I though this was cool as I first heard about this production from the blog of author and lighting technician Kate Griffin.

I felt very sorry for the bride when creator and monster discussed her potential creation. The poor thing, had her destiny mapped out for her when she was nothing more than an idea, a wish and a fantasy. She would be made only to be a companion for the one that went before her. As I realised this I saw how very 'Eve made from Adam's side' it all is. She was the focus of two very flawed males and never got to achieve life at all. In the play she was paraded around to be looked at and admired but was then destroyed prior to her animation.
It also occurred to me that her identity is even less defined than that of the creature. She is commonly referred to as the Bride of Frankenstein, but that's erroneous, she's actually the Bride of Frankenstein's Monster. Her identity is entirely defined by her association to a creature who is also unnamed. She is two steps away from a name (as opposed to the Monster's single step) and the name is that of her creator and destroyer.

I see why people suspect Shelley was exploring feminist issues.

Tales of the City (again)

After reading Tales of the City last month, a colleague lent me his copy of the 4 episode mini-series made in the 90s. I've been watching it over the last couple of weeks.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the first episode more or less is the start of the book. Obviously being television there is less inner monologue, so the thoughts of the characters aren't as obvious. However the actors very quickly came to inhabit the blurry-faced spaces that Armistead Maupin's characters occupy in my mind. I soon got over my 'Look it's Laura Linney' or 'Oh, it's that guy from Dharma and Greg' reactions.
There were large sections of dialogue and whole scenes that came straight from the book, making it a very faithful adaptation. I had expected that certain parts of the plot would get streamlined or certain scenes might be pruned, but there was only a little of that. The beginning of the book is mostly made up of encounters between both major and minor characters, which means that the plot doesn't seem to get going right away. It would have been easy to drop some of these scenes, but clearly the makers appreciated their importance in introducing the cast to the viewers.

Subsequent episodes changed a few things, though the bulk of the scenes were familiar, and much of the dialogue was the same. There were times when I couldn't quite remember what order certain scenes were in, and whether that bit actually had been in the book. After all I read the novel about a month ago, and it's not like I memorised it.

The most useful thing about seeing the TV version was that it helped me get more of a feel for the setting. As I said here after reading the book, I don't know much about 1970s San Francisco. The novel was very contemporary and contained a lot of references to things that I'm not familiar with. While I could generally infer the tone being used, I found that it was the main niggle I had about the story. On television I could see what the bars, clubs and houses looked like, and I could hear the disco music and the street noise. I could see the clip-on ties, the lacoste shirts with the tiny alligators (or are they crocodiles?), and the sideburns. It all helped me understand the time and setting, without me feeling distanced from it.

The events in the book and series are the same, however due to the difference in medium I think there were times when the character motivations were less obvious. The viewer doesn't have the same intimate relationship with characters as the reader does. However I don't think there are any barriers for viewers who haven't read the book. There isn't much direct exposition in the novel, and with the programme so close to the original there are no real gaps to fill in.
I'm told that the same cannot be said for a certain boy-wizard film franchise.

The series does give away something that isn't revealed in the book -that scene was definitely added in. Of course it would have been unfair on audiences to finish a TV show without giving away what a whole part of the plot was about. Actually it wasn't that fair on readers either, but at least I know I can get the next book. In fact now I think I have to.

Pillars of the Earth

I've been watching the television adaption of Ken Follett's brick-sized book for the last 5 weeks. I'm just over half way through and enjoying it.

Confusingly it's both obvious and unpredictable. There are various tropes, which you can see coming from a great distance, and give the show a cheesy feel among all the violence and scheming. It's obvious who's going to murder who and who's going to be a really crappy husband. It's clear which character is particularly significant, we don't need a ghostly dream prophecy to tell us, but we get one anyway.

A present from my mother-in-law

That said, the fortunes of almost all the characters, from builders and whores to Empresses and Kings, see-saw from one episode to the next. You can see why this period of history was called the Anarchy. The plot has taken various turns I didn't expect, and I'm honesty not sure what will happen to the bulk of the characters, or the cathedral.
The only reason I know part of the outcome is history. Medieval history is not my strong-area, so I consulted my History Mug.* As you can see it told me that there is no King Eustace. In fact a fist-shaking King Stephen is succeeded by a lively young Henry II, who apparently enjoys leapfrogging small tables.

I've never read the book, so I don't know how faithful the miniseries is to the source material. Though wikipedia informs me that the incest and suspected witchcraft were added in for television, because who doesn't love watching that? I have vaguely considered reading the book, but there are so many other books to read, and then they put it on TV for me anyway. A similar thing happened with Lord of the Rings.

I thought the setting seemed pretty good. Medieval England is skillfully played by rural Austria and Hungary. There's plenty of dirt and muck, which is what history was like, although certain main characters (especially women) still look a little too clean and glamorous.


* Ok, so it's actually a Kings and Queens of England since 1066 Mug, but that is not as catchy.