What We Did on Our Holiday

2014 - Dir Guy Jenkin & Andy Hamilton - 1hr 35min
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 26th September, 2015

It’s difficult not to enjoy this big-hearted and sweet-natured British family movie from Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin – effectively a feature-format development of their smash-hit BBC TV comedy, “Outnumbered”, which pioneered semi-improvised dialogue from the children. It creates a terrifically ambitious (and unexpected) narrative with a ton of sharp gags. It might have been expected that Hugh Dennis and Claire Skinner would reprise their roles as the mum and dad, but because TV viewers have seen their fictional children grow up on the small screen, that wouldn’t have rung true. The gentle direction does a good job of making the young characters look terrifically spontaneous, and the adult cast is rife with expertise: Ms Pike is both frazzled and dry, while Mr Tennant proves that his wide-eyed intensity works as well as a comic tic as it does when he’s playing an existentially tortured bloke in more serious fare…. and Billy Connolly is… well, Billy Connolly actually - a man doing a very good impression of a national treasure (having moved back to live in Scotland from California).

The original idea for tonight’s feature film sprang from “Outnumbered” which ran on BBC1 for 5 series between 2007 and 2014. This was the brainchild of Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin who had previously collaborated on “Drop the Dead Donkey”. The show was mostly devised and improvised in rehearsal and the kids were encouraged to be as spontaneous as possible.

Carmen from Sydney Harbour

A special deferred relay performance by arrangement with CinemaLive and Opera Australia
at The FeckenOdeon on 29th August, 2015


Opera Australia, not content with having one of the most dramatic and well known opera houses on Earth, decided to take advantage of the unique setting of Sydney harbour by staging summer seasons of operas on a floating stage moored in front of one of the world’s greatest backdrops. To one side is the famous bridge and the opera house, to the other the twinkling lights of the city centre - all given added sparkle by the water and punctuated by the ferries passing by. The specially constructed “theatre” seats nearly 4,000 people and there are bars and restaurants serving all sorts of food and drink.  The shows run for 4 weeks and they’re all sold out months ahead (55,000 people attended last year) - so we’re privileged to be able to offer you all front row seats tonight.

Producing opera on this grand scale - and in the open air - and on water - calls for a different approach to that taken in  normal opera house. For instance, you can’t see the orchestra but it’s there. The 80 musicians are in a humidity controlled environment under the stage - exposure to the changes in humidity in the open air would have made the instruments go out of tune. Opera singers don’t need amplification indoors but you’ll see the mikes tonight. Expert live mixing blends the voices perfectly with the subterranean musicians.

Similarly the scale of the event means that some liberties have to be taken with the content. If you’ve seen Carmen before you may remember that there’s quite a lot of spoken dialogue. Much of this has been cut and the director has concentrated on keeping the action moving in order not to lose the attention of those seated far from the stage. It makes for a crisp and fast paced version of the opera and the visual and aural delights more than make up for the loss of dialogue.


CARMEN IN PERSPECTIVE….
That this story is such a crowd pleaser is a little strange. It’s a dark tale of lust, treachery, infidelity and murder set against a background of crime and barbaric blood sports. The glorious music and spectacle sugar the pill but what it all boils down to is “man fancies woman, woman fancies a bullfighter, man kills woman…. and nobody lives happily ever after”.

The opera was first performed at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in 1874. The depictions of proletarian life, immorality and lawlessness, and the tragic death of the main character on stage, broke new ground in French opera and were highly controversial. After the premiere, most reviews were critical, and it was not revived in Paris until 1883; thereafter it rapidly acquired celebrity at home and abroad, and continues to be one of the most frequently performed operas.

Over the years the piece has been prey to all sorts of directorial distractions. Many (like our show tonight) concentrate on the spectacle with the central tragedy struggling to break to the surface (because of the power of the music it always succeeds to devastating effect). There have been Carmens set in the Bronx, in the desert, on the Moon… and a memorable WNO version set in a Siberian salt mine where Carmen made her first entrance tied up in a sack and riding on a rusty railway truck. Some directors have shied away from the decidedly non-PC profession of the factory girls and others have positively embraced it with entire choruses puffing away at Gitanes while the audience choked in sympathy. Whatever the treatment, the show seems to weather it and triumph. The music is glorious, the drama gripping and the ending is unfailingly moving… we trust you brought a hankie… unless you’re made of stone, you’ll almost certainly need it!

Sunshine On Leith

2013 - Dir: Dexter Fletcher - 1 hour 35 minutes
Shown in FeckenOdeon 2 on 14th August, 2015

“If aliens landed in the centre of Edinburgh tomorrow and asked us to tell them all we know of Scottish arts and culture, how on earth would we explain the Proclaimers? Are Craig and Charlie Reid, the Leith-born twins with matching glasses and accents thicker than yesterday’s porridge, an accomplished folk-rock duo of three decades standing, or a novelty pop act? I’m never entirely sure: any karaoke veteran will appreciate the mesmeric hold “I’m Gonna Be” (500 Miles) can have over a beery mob, and yet the duo’s lyrics ring with a blunt poetry that’s seldom acknowledged, let alone savoured. 
Well, there is plenty of opportunity to savour it in Sunshine on Leith! This musical film directed by Dexter Fletcher is built around 13 Proclaimers’ songs that leaves you with cask-strength, capillary-reddening tingles of happiness that run to the very tip of your nose.”  Robbie Colin, Daily Telegraph.
….and so say a whole host of reviews of this cheery adaptation of the stage musical of the same name. “Dundee Rep” was the theatre that commissioned, nurtured, and first staged this show, back in 2007, in a memorably inventive and joyous production by the then artistic director James Brining, now in charge of West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds. Mr Brining worked with writer Stephen Greenhorn to develop the show, and forged the script and the music into a fast-moving, beautifully staged production…. And it was the Dundee Rep that then took the risk – and the eventual financial loss – involved in scaling up the show for a UK main stage tour, which played to packed houses at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh at Christmas 2008, but did less well south of the Border. It’s interesting that, now that the seal of “international” financial interest has been stamped on the big screen transfer, southern English critics and audiences have suddenly become enthused. No matter - this is a movie forged in the north and celebrating life regardless of what the rest of he UK is worrying about. 
It has been said that this is the ultimate antidote to British miserabilism and that it  does the same job for The Proclaimers as Mamma Mia did for Abba. Part of its appeal lies in that it’s much better sung than Mamma Mia was on film, and combines a few actors we didn’t know could sing with young stars who have enough talent to storm the West End. It has the same quality that made something remarkable out of Alan Parker’s The Commitments: the power to mix working-class grit with a classless love of pop music, and an optimism about the way we’re going. Sunshine On Leith is not intended to be a political film, but it captures something all too rarely recognised about UK culture, which is far too obsessed with London and patronisingly depicts the rest of the country as dour and in decline.