Blanche

 "I don't want realism. I want magic!" - Blanche Dubois in "A Streetcar Named Desire"

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Blanche DuBois is one of the most significant female characters in modern drama and she is central to Tennessee Williams's 1947 play - "A Streetcar Named Desire".

Following a month long run at The Crucible Theatre here in Sheffield, the very last performance of Josh Seymour's version occurred this very evening with Joanna Vanderham playing Blanche. Shirley and I saw the show yesterday evening.

Blanche is a flawed character who finds it quite impossible to fit in. She is vulnerable and dreamy, partly aware of her weaknesses and partly in denial about them. It is almost as if she is not really of this earth but is perpetually seeking a higher plane of existence. She says, "I live in a world of fantasy, and it’s a much safer place to be" but she also recognises that she is a social being: "I need people to validate my existence."

Joanna Vanderham as Blanche

In The French Quarter of New Orleans, she come up against the aggressive obstinacy of her brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. He is not prepared to pander to her whims and treats her like an unwelcome intruder, challenging her domestic habits and just about everything she says. His wife, Stella, begs him to be kinder to her sister but his cruel taunting persists. It is as if he can see right through her.

Oddly, in the Sheffield production, Stella Kowalski (née DuBois) was played by a black actress - Amara Okereke when she is meant to be Blanche's sister. I think that Tennessee Williams himself would have been surprised about this even though Amara Okereke was a very capable  performer.

The performance we witnessed definitely did justice to the text and to the spirit of the play and Joanna Vanderham certainly fitted the role of Blanche very well. However, I think that if I had been the director there would have been some subtle changes. 

Remembering that the setting is New Orleans in the summer, I would have had an electric  fan whirring silently and Blanche would have dabbed away perspiration with a handkerchief or cooled herself with a paper fan. That southern sultriness should contribute to the conditions in which the often  heated dialogue takes place. I would have also had a slightly older more battle-worn actor playing the part of Stanley Kowalski.

Imagery

 

Last weekend, Ian's girlfriend Sarah took a photograph of the three little cousins together. They were in our front room round the coffee table. From left to right there's Zachary, Margot and Phoebe. Sarah uploaded the image into an A.I. facility and requested a Japanese Anime version of it. This charming picture is what emerged a few seconds later.

There are one or two significant differences between the anime version and the original image. For example, the A.I. facility has turned Phoebe's cuddly sloth friend Monty into a rabbit and Margot is now looking at the camera when in the real picture she was looking down at the book on the table.

I have tried to use a similar A.I. facility. This slightly dated but happy photo of Shirley and the little ones...

became this monstrosity...

I can see me wasting away yet more hours on the computer playing around with this kind of online software. Who needs real life artists any more?

Nearby

Just four miles out of Sheffield, Hathersage is a substantial village set in the lovely shelter of The Hope Valley. St Michael's Church is located just outside the main village - a brisk walk away. Famously, the churchyard contains the grave of Robin Hood's loyal lieutenant - Little John whose cottage was close by. 

Above, I spotted that lone daffodil when I was perusing the graves in the churchyard extension. I guessed that I could achieve an eye-catching image with the church spire and an old yew tree as the scenic backdrop. Though I say it myself, I think it worked.

Below, you can see the same church snapped from Baulk Lane with some crows in flight. The house on the left is the old vicarage. It was here that the writer Charlotte Bronte stayed for three weeks in the summer of 1845. She was visiting her old friend Ellen Nussey whose brother Henry was the vicar of Hathersage for three years.  Charlotte and Ellen got to explore some of the nearby countryside together. It is pretty clear that those three weeks impacted upon the creation of "Jane Eyre" which was first published in October 1847.

Our spring weather has been quite perfect in recent days. On Tuesday, I decided to scratch an itch that had been in my mind for quite a while. When driving out of the city towards Fox House, I had frequently spotted a lone gatepost on the skyline and I wanted to get close to it.

Clint was duly parked by Blacka Moor Plantation and very soon I was vaulting clambering over a chained five bar gate into rough pastureland. Up the slope and I soon arrived at the finger of gritstone .

Out there, most of the drystone walls were tumbledown affairs. At the edge of one field, I spotted a large sarcen-like stone laid upon its side. It made me wonder if it had once been a standing stone, toppled by early farmers who sought to tame the wild landscape of Houndkirk Moor.

There are several significant ancient sites in the immediate area and just two hundred yards away, old maps suggest the presence of an ancient standing stone called "Fingerem Stone" but nobody knows anything about it. No sighting of it has ever been written down as far as I know. It's so tantalising.

Quiztime

 

The Quiztime theme on this occasion is the moon - as the image above suggests. As per usual, there are ten questions and the answers will be given in the "Comments" section.

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1) About how far is our moon from Earth?

(a) 238.5  miles (b) 2,385 miles (c) 23,850 miles (d) 238,850 miles

2) Who is this guy? 

Clue:- He was the Apollo 11 Command Module pilot who did not get to step foot on the moon on July 20th 1969.

3) What is the Swedish word for moon?

(a) månen (b) lunen (c) moon (d) stjärna

4) Which one of the these is NOT one of the "seas" of the moon?

(a) Sea of Fecundity  (b) Sea of Islands (c) Sea of  Dollars (d) Sea of Tranquility

5) What is the surname of Mary - creator of the award-winning Florida blog "Bless our Hearts"?

(a) Jupiter  (b) Moon (c) Magdalene  (d) Neptune

6) Around half the height of Mount Everest, what is the tallest mountain on the moon?

(a)  Mount Hegseth  (b) Rainbow Mountain  

(c) Mons Huygens  (d) Montagne Grande

7) One of the founding members of The Who, who is this crazy drummer? (He died in 1978 at the age of 32)

8) The moon has eight phases but which phase comes immediately before a full moon?

(a) waning gibbous (b) first quarter (c) waxing crescent (d) waxing gibbous

9) In total, how many American astronauts have walked on the moon?

(a) five (b) nine (c) twelve (d) twenty three

10) In which 1961 film did the song "Moon River" first feature?

(a) "West Side Story" (b) "Breakfast at Tiffany's"  

(c)  "The Young Savages" (d) "The Guns of Navarone"

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That's it folks! How did you do?

"Flow"

At one thirty this afternoon, I set off walking to the city centre. It is about two miles from our house. I opted to walk purely for the exercise. Along Psalter Lane, down Cemetery Road then under the inner circular road.

My destination was The Showroom Cinema. The film I had in mind was "Flow" as recommended by John Gray over at "Going Gently". "Flow" won the Best Animated Film Feature award at this year's Oscars, becoming the very first Latvian film to win any kind of oscar.

There are no human voices in "Flow". No words. But we do hear the wordless voices of the nameless central characters - a cat, a lemur, a secretarybird, a Labrador dog and a capybara.

They find themselves together in an old boat, sailing over a flood  which keeps rising - inundating most everything. There is incidental music which enhances the action and is never obtrusive. Later, the flood subsides and they are back on terra firma.

There is joy in "Flow" as well as terror. It was meticulously crafted. At times, the visuals are breathtaking but I noticed that the animals never seemed to get wet  even when they had been swimming in the flood. Was that a purposeful choice or a technical challenge too far for the animators?

"Flow" has a magical, very beautiful quality about it and it is easy to get lost in the artifice. Is it about anything? Does it have a purpose? Why was it made? I am not sure that I could answer any of these questions but what I can say is that it provides a unique cinematic experience. I guess that you just have to go with the flow of "Flow".

Portraiture

 

What a fine portrait of Donald J. Trump was created by  artist Sarah Boardman. It hangs in the Colorado State Capitol Building in Denver. Through this well-executed portrait, Ms Boardman has disproved the old saying, "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear". 

Cunningly, the artist has taken years off the sitter who in real life appears much more haggard and confrontational. Any photographic close-ups of his facial complexion reveals a surface that is not unlike our moon but through Ms Boardman's brushwork, his skin appears as smooth as rendered fat.

...Oh drat!  While creating this blogpost, I have now discovered that President Trump has railed against Ms Boardman's painting. He doesn't like it, saying this: "Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before."

He has demanded the removal of his portrait. Oh what a shame for Sarah Boardman! Perhaps he will prefer my picture of him - made with some of our Phoebe's felt tips and crayons. Though I say it myself, I think it genuinely captures something of the true essence of the man...

Running

Ian on the way up - dispensing with his training top

Today was the day of The Sheffield Half Marathon. Plenty of roads in our sector of the city were closed off to enable some 8,000 runners to stride out safely into the nearby countryside before swinging back to the finishing line in the city centre..

I stood in the middle of Ecclesall Road and watched them coming up the hill. Great waves of competitors and  I was struck by the obvious realisation that each one of those runners was different from the next. Tall and short, fat and thin, male and female, black and white, young and old, dressed  in running gear or dressed like bananas. On and on they came, their feet thundering on the tarmac.

Amongst them was our forty year old son, Ian. He had travelled up to Sheffield for his mother's birthday and decided to squeeze in this half marathon as extra preparation for The London Marathon at the end of next month. He is not a competitive runner but his training has been building well and he finished in the middle of the field today.

Sheffield is Great Britain's hilliest city whereas the London marathon route is as flat as a pancake. Getting up to "The Norfolk Arms" pub at Ringinglow will have been demanding for all of today's runners but at least the descent would have been a comfort. What goes up must come down.

There's Ian on the way back down  waving at me.

I am very proud of our Ian's effort today but sorry that my photos of his participation were pretty poor. I just didn't see him coming. I am also pleased that I got to see 86 year old John Burkhill bringing up the rear -  pushing his pram up Ecclesall Road. He has raised well over £1,000,000 for Macmillan cancer nurses in the last fifteen years. What a legend!