Howl's Moving Castle
I keep meaning to write about this and then forgetting that I haven't. Oh, my ageing brain!
Last Thursday we went to see a dramatised version of "Howl's Moving Castle" by the late Diana Wynne Jones at the Southwark Playhouse.
I had been looking forward to going to see this but at the same time rather concerned as I didn't see how easily "Howl's Moving Castle" would transfer to the stage. Turns out the concern was warranted but not for the reasons that I thought. Technically the production was a triumph with brilliant use of cinematic effects to show the castle moving through the air and into different landscapes. Calcifer the Fire Demon shot round the theatre space from fireplace to torch and back to fireplace in quite a dizzying way and the design of the castle was beautiful. Unfortunately they were obviously so in love with all the effects that they spent too long on them and forgot about the script. The book had been reduced so much that it ended up making very little sense and J, who's never read it, missed quite a few plot points because they were thrown away. Stephen Fry did the recorded narration as the voice of the castle but unfortunately the acoustic in the Vault (the smaller of the Southwark Playhouse's theatrical spaces) made it occasionally quite difficult to hear what he said. It was a great shame because Daniel Ings as Howl did a wonderful job of putting across Howl's contradictory character. If only he'd been served by a better script it would have been a fantastic evening. Very frustrating.
The What's on Stage review pretty much agrees with me here and there are some nice shots of the production here including the gorgeous castle design.
I've also been meaning to mention the fact that the BBC has released more of its archive of Desert Island Discs for download here. The great, the good, the not-so-great and the "who the hell are you?" all feature so if you want to find out what Stephen Fry took as his Desert Island luxury all you need to do is download the programme. I don't think the downloads feature the music due to copyright restrictions on the BBC making classical music available online but all the speech should be there.
Last Thursday we went to see a dramatised version of "Howl's Moving Castle" by the late Diana Wynne Jones at the Southwark Playhouse.
I had been looking forward to going to see this but at the same time rather concerned as I didn't see how easily "Howl's Moving Castle" would transfer to the stage. Turns out the concern was warranted but not for the reasons that I thought. Technically the production was a triumph with brilliant use of cinematic effects to show the castle moving through the air and into different landscapes. Calcifer the Fire Demon shot round the theatre space from fireplace to torch and back to fireplace in quite a dizzying way and the design of the castle was beautiful. Unfortunately they were obviously so in love with all the effects that they spent too long on them and forgot about the script. The book had been reduced so much that it ended up making very little sense and J, who's never read it, missed quite a few plot points because they were thrown away. Stephen Fry did the recorded narration as the voice of the castle but unfortunately the acoustic in the Vault (the smaller of the Southwark Playhouse's theatrical spaces) made it occasionally quite difficult to hear what he said. It was a great shame because Daniel Ings as Howl did a wonderful job of putting across Howl's contradictory character. If only he'd been served by a better script it would have been a fantastic evening. Very frustrating.
The What's on Stage review pretty much agrees with me here and there are some nice shots of the production here including the gorgeous castle design.
I've also been meaning to mention the fact that the BBC has released more of its archive of Desert Island Discs for download here. The great, the good, the not-so-great and the "who the hell are you?" all feature so if you want to find out what Stephen Fry took as his Desert Island luxury all you need to do is download the programme. I don't think the downloads feature the music due to copyright restrictions on the BBC making classical music available online but all the speech should be there.