Review: A Week In December

BOOK
A Week In December
by Sebastian Faulks
Hutchinson, £12.99
4/5

IN A NUTSHELL
In an authoritative and biting state of the nation novel, the author aims to capture turbulent times through the eyes of seven characters that typify the times, including a Muslim extremist, a hedge fund manager and a Premiership footballer.

REVIEW
With this commanding state-of-the-nation book with rotten finance at its core, Sebastian Faulks looks to emulate Tom Wolfe without the literary tics.

He takes seven days in the life of the capital in December 2007 and he takes seven characters. He walks in their shoes awhile and watches where their paths cross and, tellingly, where they find no common ground.

Faulks' journalistic background is wonderfully in evidence here, as he negotiates the complex patterns of London, probing a myriad sub-cultures and illuminating strangers with delightful detail. He picks upon the scourges of our age - a hedge fund manager, a druggie, a suicide bomber, a Premiership footballer - and uses their lives to paint a grander picture of end-of-empire indulgence.

Although he is dryly efficient in his prose Faulks rouses himself to glorious indignation to unleash a bitterly comic satire, savaging contemporary betes noires like education, reality TV and the internet. Yet amid his wicked comedy, he still finds the warmth in the heart of even the most deluded and venal of his septet.

Faulks dances across the big themes of the day with such thoroughness there is little doubt this will become required reading when future generations come to wonder where it all went very wrong.

Review: Breakfast At Tiffany's

STAGE
Breakfast At Tiffany's,
Theatre Royal Haymarket
4/5

IN A NUTSHELL
Sean Mathias directs a playful Anna Friel in the iconic role of good-time girl Holly Golightly.

REVIEW
Anna Friel is a conqueror of worlds. She conquered TV, here and in the US, she conquered movies and now she has magnificently conquered the West End.

Unquestioned acting talent aside, this may be because Friel has a sweet and winning way. She is not boringly beautiful, instead she is an attractive, feline and playful presence. This ensures the role of generous good-time girl Holly Golightly fits her like a rather stylish hat atop a perfectly tailored dress.

That's not to say her performance does not require work - she sings, she plays the guitar, she dances, she maintains a Texan accent, she traipses around naked - but such is her rich accrual of experience, she trips through this multi-tasking with winsome ease.

Against this star turn, William Parsons has a far more arduous and gritty job, forever twirling in the perfumed wake of his enigmatic love.

Joseph Cross puts in the hard yards to keep up. He deserves great credit for supporting the structure of the play on his shoulders and from an overwrought beginning, he brings light and depth to the young writer.

Sean Mathias's production is closer to the Truman Capote original novella than the spritely Audrey Hepburn remake and Friel is perfectly adept at drawing out the heartache behind the smile that is Holly's crowded secret.

Notable among an army of support is James Dreyfus as Hollywood schmuck OJ Berman. Dreyfus gives a broad and entertaining comic cameo perfectly attuned to the '40s screwball motif running through the piece. Dermot Crowley is a neat portrayal of battered desire as barman Joe Bell and Suzanne Bertish gives Madame Spanella a fruity edge for laughs.

Special mention also to Jasper the cat which, although required to do very little, did what it was supposed to do and, crucially, didn't do what it wasn't.

The story centres on the writer's enchantment by a Texan rose with a prickly past who has come to New York seeking excitement and glamour.

Her freewheeling, carefree flirtation with dangerous cads is destined to catch up with her but she keeps her inevitable - and moving - downfall at bay with a balancing act of evasion, charm and puckish high jinx.

The plot is urgent and demanding, and Antony Ward's design requires jack-in-the-box tricks to keep up the frenetic pace of the story.

Two zig-zag fire escapes waltz across the multi-level stage and there's forever something going on, up there, down here, over there. Cinematic in structure, scenes collide, come and go in an instant and nothing lingers for long.

This is, I suppose, to capture the elusive and teasing nature of the minxy main character but, boy, do you have to keep your wits about you.

The early scenes are crammed to the gills and it is only later that everything settles to an accommodating pace, allowing for a more measured exploration of the relationship between Parsons and big-hearted Holly.

Breakfast At Tiffany's is wonderful West End fare - a spectacle, an occasion, a night to remember - with Holly's dashing blonde bob leaving a long comet trail in the memory.

Until January 9.

Review: An Inspector Calls

STAGE
An Inspector Calls, Novello Theatre
4/5

IN A NUTSHELL
Director Stephen Daldry's award-winning and visionary revival of JB Priestley's classic chiller returns to London for a short run.

REVIEW
A dilapidated telephone box stands at an angle, like a drunken grenadier, and, to its right, the boards of the theatre splay and bow, hit by some unseen bomb. That's the first clue that this revival of JB Priestley's classic is going to be emphatically askew.

The curtain rises. Downstage, rain-swept cobbles where Lowry-esque urchins kick through puddles in the gutter. Upstage, a glittering doll's houses on stilts erupts from the street, a Faberge egg opening to reveal its treasures.

It is a staggering set, designed by Ian MacNeil, and one itching to show off its panoply of dramatic fireworks but for now, this one will do - for silhouetted under a street lamp stands trench-coated Inspector Goole, re-creating the iconic image from The Exorcist. He's out to snare him some devils.

Stephen Daldry's ambitious, award-winning, punctilious production, back once more in London, is the reason "revival" is in the dictionary.

Re-imagined, polished, expanded (the core cast of seven is supplemented by a dozen or so silent extras) and choreographed to within an inch of its life, the Billy Elliot director gives the hoary am-dram familiar a miraculous new sheen.

The story is well known - and flawless. A comfortable Midlands family, the Birlings, celebrate the engagement of daughter Shelia to Gerald Croft giving dad Arthur (David Roper) the chance to expand on his theories of wealth acquisition, self-reliance and social division.

Into this cosy pomposity sidles Inspector Goole who tells them a girl has killed herself hours before. He proceeds to examine their foibles and prod their self-satisfaction until they unwittingly reveal how each of them had, in turn, contributed to her downfall. The twists and turns are shattering.

In this overtly political piece (written after the second world war when Priestley was advocating a Labour government's egalitarian agenda), the Birlings one by one descend from their lofty home into the muddy gutter.

Daldry finds comedy too, notably in the figure of the matriarch Sybil (a glorious Sandra Duncan) whose bickering descent from stately galleon to sunken paddle steamer is tweaked neatly for laughs.

Goole (Nicholas Woodeson) and Sheila (Marianne Oldham) hold the moral centre of the piece with affecting power and subtlety. The Inspector rages wildly at the thoughtless mores of the me-first capitalists while the erstwhile prig of a daughter performs the only genuine transformation of the piece.

They are more than ably supported by Roper and Duncan while Robin Whiting (Eric) keeps his performance the right side of indulgent adolescent self-pity.

Daldry's tics and additions - the mute presence of a phalanx of common folk to watch and judge, the direction culled from film noir and the silent era - settle the era and the politics but it is the house on stilts, bowing under the weight of the guilt (and gilt), that makes this the definitive modern revival.

Until November 14.

Review: The Fastest Clock In The Universe

STAGE
Fastest Clock In The Universe,
Hampstead Theatre
3/5

IN A NUTSHELL
In this revival of Philip Ridley's black comedy, a mock birthday party is laced with menace.

REVIEW
Early on in this production, Captain Tock screams out the window. He frightens the birds that occupy the decaying former fur factory in the East End where he lives with narcissistic psychopath Cougar Glass. The screeching of the birds is exquisite and irritating, frantic and menacing.

It is, therefore, typical of Philip Ridley's 1992 unsettling black comedy.

Ridley's portrayal of the destructive homosexual relationship between the middle-aged and balding Tock (a compelling Finbar Lynch) and the self-involved peacock Glass (Alec Newman) has echoes of Orton/Halliwell as imagined by Pinter.

Tock is revolted by his role as the monster's aid yet he is unwilling to rid himself of the hunk of beef sizzling under the sun lamp who lends to him a fleeting sense of worth. Glass requires only to be serviced in his delusion of eternal youth.

As they prepare for Glass's latest 19th birthday party with fake cards, cake and bottles of vodka they fence and bicker like a sick Steptoe And Son in the darkened junk shop of a home surrounded by Tock's stuffed birds and knick-knacks.

Atrophy and cruelty are everywhere, not least in Glass's black heart but also embodied by ageing lank-haired neighbour Cheetah Bee (Eileen Page), wrapped in her fur coat like a '40s Miss Havisham.

In contrast, guest of honour at the mock celebrations is the youthful and exuberant 15-year-old Foxtrot Darling (Neet Mohan) whom the predatory Glass has groomed with sick efficiency.

But Foxtrot has a birthday surprise of his own, bringing in tow the teetering, screeching Sherbert Gravel (a pitch perfect Jaime Winstone). Her fearless unpicking of Glass's fragile self-deception is the comic heartbeat of the production which manages to be both pitch black and gaudy at the same time.

Until October 17.

Review: Turner And The Masters

ART
Turner And The Masters
Tate Britain
5/5

IN A NUTSHELL
JMW Turner pits himself against the great names of art in a blockbuster exhibition that tells a compelling story.

Picture: JMW Turner, Dutch Boats in a Gale (The Bridgewater Sea Piece) Exhibited 1801. Private collection

REVIEW
It might on paper sound like a Channel 5 pop doc or a high-brow fantasy fiction mash-up, but JMW Turner going head to head with the Old Masters in the ultimate brush-off may well just be the 19th century painter's dream realised.

For as this blockbuster exhibition confirms, Britain's favourite artist actively sought comparison with the icons who went before. Less reverentially, he fostered a keen sense of rivalry with his contemporaries - sometimes coming off a poor second.

While he professed he paid homage to the past "con amore", there's no escaping the sense that Turner was constantly measuring his worth against the greats in a calculated strategy to fix his own immortality.

If you want evidence, there's evidence. John Constable's Opening Of Waterloo Bridge and Turner's Helvoetsluys are placed side by side for the first time since their unveiling in 1832.

Back then Constable was still feverishly adding colour as the painting hung on the wall at the Royal Academy when, with a flourish, Turner arrived and added a circle of red to his own more muted seascape as if to say - less is more, old friend. "He's been here and fired a gun," said Constable in response.

So there's drama in the juxtaposition of Turner and his heroes and rivals. But, away from the adrenalin of one-upmanship, the exhibition, room by room, offers a simple narrative on Turner's restless struggle to capture his trademark hazy style and his self-conscious challenging of artistic conventions.

From his slavish copying of his early days and his fidgety combative challenge to himself over technique, a singular voice begins to emerge. His attempts to emulate the Masters expose his weaknesses - form and figure - and his strengths - landscape impressionism - pinballing him towards the moment he fully flowers in an explosion of colour and energy.

"Atmosphere is my strength," he finally concedes, almost breathlessly, in the last of the six packed rooms once his long expedition through the history of art is done.

The Tate Britain has worked marvels to prise some heady masterpieces from the Louvre and other major galleries (Rembrandt's The Mill and Poussin's La Deluge are just two such coups). So, for the first time in many cases, direct and obvious comparisons can be made between Turner and Titian, Claude Lorrain, van de Velde, Canaletto, Rubens et al, just as he had wished.

This is close to perfect for the Turner newcomer, who can experience and understand what he was trying to do and when and why he was trying to do it.

The exhibition has been years in the planning and no doubt entailed lengthy emails, lots of arm twisting and sleepless caffeine-fuelled nights. Worth it, worth it, worth it.

This combination of beauty, context and big name art makes for a substantial exhibition and, crucially in its quest to capture a wider audience, a compelling story of feuds, trials, triumph and magnificence.

Turner And The Masters is undoubtedly the real thing.

Until January 31, 2010.

Review: Sure And Certain Death

BOOK
Sure And Certain Death by Barbara Nadel
Headline, £19.99
1/5

IN A NUTSHELL
An East London already subject to the Luftwaffe's attentions fears that the Ripper is at work once more.

REVIEW
East London is rife with rumour - there's a new Ripper at work, using the cover and indifference created by the Blitz, a more effective and grislier killer, to pursue a bloody quest to do away with women of an uncertain age but with an uncertain connection.

A reluctant investigator fills in where the second rate police fail. His name is Francis Hancock and he is well placed to go a-hunting as a funeral director, although he is dogged with flashbacks of the trenches of the Great War and seen as an outsider because of his Asian background.

From this promising beginning and with an impeccably realised setting, author Barbara Nadel frustrates the reader, not by the usual means of red herrings, blind alleys and the steady accumulation of evasive clues, but by doing nothing much for 200-or-so pages before wrapping the piece up neatly with a loosely-tied melodramatic bow.

Pity that such a great background is wasted with vague plotting and indistinct characterisation.

Francis Hancock is a case in point - a theoretically interesting construct - his supposed psychological flaws are no more than irritations. He resorts to reminding us he's bonkers in case we should be unconvinced by his timely bouts of anguish.

Review: Who's Afraid Of Jane Austen?

ESSAYS
Who's Afraid Of Jane Austen? by Henry Hitchings
Published by John Murray, £7.99
2/5

IN A NUTSHELL
The author aims to bring the big beasts of literature down to a size snug enough to fit in your frontal lobe.

REVIEW
So many books, so little time. Henry Hitchings has an idea to tackle the imbalance.

This premature stocking filler is a collection of mini essays on the big hitters - the Austens, the Joyces, the Homers - with the stated aim of bringing the blighters down to size.

The book is subtitled ... "How To Really Talk About Books You Haven't Read" and the temptation to point out that a work aspiring to the affectation of literary snobbery should perhaps think again about the deployment of a split infinitive is too easy. So I won't go there.

Instead, I'll point out another flaw. The author talks about how books are talked about and talks about the "dangerous high-brow types" and how they talk about the books they talk about but fails to give the lowdown on the books themselves. No help there then.

However, these essays are broadly entertaining and informative in a general way.

Unfortunately, they also have the tone of a well-meaning school special assembly in which some colourfully-jumpered loon blows a raspberry and shouts "Hey kids, I'm Christopher Cannabis. See what fun I am." Pause. "But I'm deadly serious too."

Spiral Notebook: Lists # 4

Actual butterfly names that could also be symptoms of the strange disease caught on an exotic tropical holiday
Black veined white
Orange tip
Green hairstreak
Clouded yellow
Speckled wood

Kojak episode titles (true or false)
1. Die Before They Wake
2. Dead On His Feet
3. Dying To Meet You
4. Hush Now, Don't You Die
5. Cross Your Heart And Hope To Die
6. Deadly Nightshade
7. Life, Liberation And The Pursuit Of Death
8. When You Hear The Beep, Drop Dead
9. Died In The Wool
10. I Could Kill My Wife's Lawyer
(T: 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10; F: 3, 6, 9)

Possible presenters for the new BBC programme, Perils In The Woodland
Jakki Brambles
Frank Thorn
John Nettles
Emma B
Sting
John Craven

Actual spider species that could double as terms of abuse in a particularly bitter divorce case
Starbellied orbweaver
Yellow bandied tarantula
Agrarian sac spider
Thin-legged wolf spider
Spined micrathena
Goliath bird-eater
Hammer-jawed jumper
Robber baron cave meshweaver
Mumbasa baboon tarantula

Inadvisable balloon animals
Hedgehog
Porcupine
Electric eels
Octopus

Answers to last week's Sudoku (in numerical order)
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Actual types of toasters that could also be code words in specialist adult contact magazines
Percher
Pincher
Slider
Drive thru
Flopper
Pop-up
Flat bed

Billy Joel songlist as drawn up by a prisoner pleading for legal representation to revisit his case
You Can Make Me Free
Got To Begin Again
Ain't No Crime
Get It Right First Time
Honesty
A Room Of My Own
An Innocent Man
We Didn't Start The Fire

Review: Churchill's Wizards

NON-FICTION
Churchill's Wizards by Nicholas Rankin
Faber & Faber, £9.99
4/5

IN A NUTSHELL
An accessible and entertaining study of the "the British genius for deception" that helped win two world wars

REVIEW
It was Winston Churchill who said: "In war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity." He could equally have added: "And, at all times, a little trickery."

For Churchill was a most mentally dextrous foe, prepared to consider any means in his quest to preserve Britain and empire.

While he loathed war, there was no doubt that the Boy's Own hero was never more engaged and alive than bringing wit, subterfuge and inventiveness to its execution.

In Nicholas Rankin's fascinating and brilliant book, anecdote, fact and explanation jostle for attention as he lays out the years 1914-1944 as the triumph of the British garden shed amateur with wheezes, bluffs, ruses and deceptions that foxed their opponents.

They were brilliantly outrageous and outrageously brilliant. From camouflage, inflatable tanks and fake airfields, to propaganda and the good old double-cross, this comprehensive work chronicles the unknown warriors who, egged on by Churchill, turned papier mache into a weapon of mass deception.

The book has an air of a military history but it reads like an extended Ealing caper with wags, wizards and, at the heart of it all, the redoubtable Winston.

Review: Adam (12A)

FILM
Adam (12A)
2/5

IN A NUTSHELL
A loner with Asperger's syndrome and his new neighbour make a fragile connection in this off-beat New York romance.

REVIEW
Adam is a star-gazing loner with Asperger's syndrome. Teacher Beth has been scarred by life and is having a stab at solo flight. Flung together in a New York brownstone, this pair of winsome drifters collide in that awkward manner that lovers must do in Act One.

But here's the flaw in the big idea. Adam only appears to have Asperger's when it suits the plot. When a crisis is due, Adam comes over all Rain Man and starts cracking his head against things and banging his temples like a baboon dislodging Lego from its ear.

When the plot demands that Adam (Hugh Dancy) reaches out to Beth, he's suddenly that super-sensitive geek who takes his wounded paramour to see raccoons scampering around Central Park or spooning on their bed, "taking it slow". He's all cutesy smiles, thick brown jumpers and neat one-liners. ("I'm not Forrest Gump," he says when presented with a box of chocolates.)

And Beth? Well, there's nothing in Beth's (Rose Byrne) history to suggest that she would entertain the idea of becoming Adam's de facto mum just for some face time with a sweet guy. Especially when the face time is hallmarked by Adam's David Blunkett-a-like eye twitchery, as though he's forever tracing the flightpath of a mosquito on Magner's.

This is a slight tale, shot beautifully, using the burnished colours of autumnal New York and some stylish cinematography to good effect. Writer-director Max Mayer's movie is not without its interesting ideas and tender touches, not least because Dancy and Byrne make the most of wafer-thin roles by painting over the inconsistencies with daubs of sincerity.

But the overplayed subplots (a tacked-on tale of Beth's father facing fraud charges and Adam's hokey pal Harlan issuing life advice in handipack anecdotes) merely emphasize the paucity of genuine progress in the central romance.

So it's not Adam that has Asperger's (and shout if you've seen this coming) it's the movie itself, finding itself unable to engage, misreading minds and motives and preferring a sense of routine to exaggeration or excitement.