entranced with a Midsummer Night's Dream

Sometimes Shakespeare is best without words. The basics of his stories are universal. I experienced the twisted and oft times humorous course of love through all my senses at the recent co-production between Queensland and Royal New Zealand Ballets and the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. Mendelssohn's stirring music, together with gothic stage set the scene for a true midnight adventure. The magical woods created safe havens for the fairies, avid adventurers, Puck and Bottom, amidst magic potions, mistaken identities, and lovers trysts. These otherworldly creatures used only their faces and bodies, amplified by the music, and enlivened by wonderful costumes, to express this classic story of love and jealousy.

thankfully, I am (NOT) Pilgrim

There was a strong desire in our new bookclub for a thriller, and somehow we ended up reading the 700 page epic by Terry Hayes. It is an impressive debut novel by a former journalist and screenwriter of Mad Max and other movies. So I learnt from the inside cover that Pilgrim is the codename for a man who does not exist and then I spent the first 200 pages uncertain whether the writer or his key protagonist was Pilgrim. Then I realised that after Pilgrim retired in his 30's from high level US intelligence work, he wrote the definitive book about forensic pathology. And the journey of the book was to uncover the person and the motive for the perfect untraceable murder! Pilgrim must come back to solve the crime he unknowingly guided. I was confronted by an underworld of murder and deception that spanned the globe. The level of detail about changing identities was rather shocking. As were the links between a public be-heading in Mecca, a heroic act during the Twin Towers strike and a billionaire's accidental fall from a Turkish coastal mansion. It was difficult to put the book down, despite it requiring high levels of concentration, perhaps I will still retrieve hidden links as I reflect on it further. It will definitely make an interesting set of movies.

Confronted by the Lady in the Van

This film shares a kind of true story between the English playwright Alan Bennett and the single Miss Shepherd, a woman of uncertain origins who 'temporarily' parked her van in Bennett's Camden driveway for 15 years. It is both touching and confronting. Alan Bennet, played by Alex Jennings, is an introverted writer who seems to be waiting for his life to start. He feels responsible for his aging mother, and while he cannot live with and care for her, he seems to assuage his guilt by looking out for Miss Shepherd, played brilliantly by Maggie Smith. Alan is played by dual personas, the writer who sits and watches life and the one who lives the life to be written about. Ironically, this does not seem to work, because both seem afraid of really living. They are at odds with their colourful neighbourhood of superficial left-wing do-gooders, who prefer to give Miss Shepherd things they don't want, to keep her away. They really do care for her, but are still not at liberty to really live the life they want to.... On the other hand, we do learn a little about the rather twisted life of the eccentric Miss Shepherd, who in contrast, it transpires, is running away from her life. She had been a gifted pianist, was a nun and had been incarcerated in a mental institution. There was always some doubt as to what was causal, and as expected, the catholic church did not come out blameless...