'Shakespeare in Ten Acts' at the British Library

I went to see the Shakespeare exhibition at the British Library the other day, 'Shakespeare in Ten Acts'. It's based around ten performances of Shakespeare plays that changed the way they were viewed or that changed the history of the plays in some way. It's a novel approach and there was some fascinating stuff there but it was a bit underwhelming. Darkened rooms with everything spotlit seemed a bit, well, odd. The exhibition was book and paper-based which I expected (well, it's in a library after all) with some of the later rooms using video of performances or costumes.

The first exhibit is, of course, one of the prides of the Library - its copy of the First Folio in a glass case opened at the title page with the portrait of William himself. Beside it is a note that says Ben Johnson certified the pen and ink portrait as a true likeness. Mr Johnson's plays don't seem to be performed very often these days.

It wasn't so much the theme of the exhibition that caught me, it was some of the objects on display and their historic significance. Such as this little book that contains the prologue specially written when a woman first took to the stage in a production of a Shakespeare play, in this case 'Othello' in 1660. The first woman is thought to have been Anne Marshall. Can you imagine a time when women weren't legally allowed on the stage and the female roles were taken by boys? How odd is that.

The rest of this room went on to show portraits of some of the women who took to the stage with potted histories of their lives. There were also extracts from newspapers that raised against the new-found habit of men buying tickets back stage to watch the new actresses get dressed!

Another book to grab my attention was a small copy of 'Hamlet' thats' been passed from actor to actor in the 20th Century who've played the role. It's signed by some of the actors including Michael Redgrave, Peter O'Toole and Derek Jacobi. The sign notes that the book is passed on to note particularly celebrated performances. Jacobi passed it to Kenneth Branagh when he did his film version of 'Hamlet' in the '90s. Now, that's what I call a great gift. I've not seen Branagh's film but I did see Derek Jacobi play 'Hamlet' back in 1978 so that made me smile. I wonder who Branagh will give it to to continue the tradition?

One of the odder exhibits was Vivien Leigh's dress from her performance of Lady Macbeth. It's a nice enough frock but it was odd since the main poster for the exhibition shows her all gossamer and fairy as Titania from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' but that frock isn't there.

And finally, here is a large red and white handkerchief that I coveted - I like the man bottom-right with the legend 'Ha! Ha! Hah! In places', presumably noting the potential response to one of the comedies.

'The Deep Blue Sea' at the National Theatre

'The Deep Blue Sea' is a play by Terence Rattigan from 1952 that doesn't seem to be revived very often but it may be better known as the 1955 film with Vivien Leigh and Kenneth More or the 2011 film with Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston. I saw the 1955 film a few years ago in a cleaned up print at the British Film Institute but haven't seen the 2011 version. Neither had I seen the stage play until this week at the National Theatre.

The play takes place over one day in the life of Hester Collyer, a supposedly middle class lady married to Freddie Page and is referred to as 'Mrs Page'. It's the early '50s (the timing is nicely signalled by reference to rationing) and is set in a down at heels boarding house at which the Pages rent the first floor flat. The place is dowdy and dismal and a far cry from what Hester is used to. It open with the landlady and a neighbour forcing open Hester's door because there's a smell of gas, rushing in and finding her on the floor beside the gas fire, apparently a case of suicide. Hester has failed at her suicide because she forgot to fill up the gas metre. And from there the story unfolds.

We learn that Hester is actually married to Judge Collyer, a famous High Court Judge but she's run away with Freddie Page whom they met at a golfing weekend outside London. Freddie was a dashing Spitfire pilot during the war and who made a living as a test pilot until he lost his nerve and turned to drink. Hester was perfectly happy in her loveless marriage - it's what women of her class do, after all - until she met Freddie and theirs is a passionate physical relationship rather than the rather staid round of dinner parties she's used to.

Hester is scared that Freddie is getting bored with her and, when he forgets her birthday, that's when she tries to commit suicide. That in itself reeks of a relationship gone wrong and, later that day, Freddie realises it too, that they're not right for one another and will kill each other eventually so he must leave. It's painful but has to be done and is, quite possibly, the most grown-up thing he's ever done in his life. This prompts Hester to go for suicide again but is interrupted by the blacklisted doctor who lives upstairs who somehow gives her hope by buying one of her early paintings and, when he leaves. allows Hester to pull herself together and look to a more positive future that she must make for herself.

The play takes you on quite an emotional journey, but it's restrained emotion, controlled with a stiff upper lip, very upper middle class and very British. I've seen a few Rattigan plays in the last few years - 'French Without Tears', 'Flare Path', 'The Winslow Boy' - and that's a characteristic they all share. He's a skilled story-teller and that shines through, despite the poshness of his work.

The set was truly depressing, with the big Lyttelton stage dressed as Hester's depressing flat, with sparse furniture, drab furnishings and see-through walls so you can just about make out other people moving in the other flats from time to time which made the very open stage quite claustrophobic. The atmospheric lighting added to that feeling as the play moves through the day. It was all quite bleak.

Helen McCrory plays Hester in what must be an exhausting role since she's on-stage the whole time. She was really quite excellent as the repressed housewife who's found her escape from a humdrum little life into a more exciting world only to have it crumble around her. She made me believe in Hester and want the best for her - and that's good acting. I saw Helen in 'Medea' as the witch-queen and in 'The Last of the Haussmanns' a few years ago, so she can easily go from dramatic and tragic to comedy and this role let her do a bit of both with everything in between.

I was less convinced by Tom Burke as Freddie who came across as boring and a drunk. Yes, that's partly the role but it's also how you play it. Freddie was exciting and a war hero before the booze so where's that aspect to him? Where's the charisma that Kenneth More captured so effortlessly in the film that attracted Hester in the first place. Missing, is where it is. On the other hand, I did like Nick Fletcher as the former doctor with a past who seems to be the voice of reason whenever he appears on stage and who ends up by giving Hester some hope for a future of her own. His performance was underplayed and touching.

It's a play that seems to make the small things big and belittle the big things. It's about love and lust, post-war depression, suicide and the future, but there are also some laughs in the production - it's not all worthy and depressing. It is definitely worth seeing, especially for Helen McCrory's performance and the growth of her character.

One Afternoon: Three Exhibitions

Sometimes one exhibition just isn't enough. The plan was to see 'Facing The Modern: The Portrait In Vienna 1900' on it's last weekend before closing. That's where we went wrong since the place was packed and, generally, the rule of thumb is the more people at an exhibition the less enjoyment. That was certainly the case with this exhibition.

It was an interesting concept, showing the portraiture over the years, how it was viewed in Vienna and how it changed over the years. The 'stars' of the show were Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka, all producing interesting portraiture and good art.

The first portrait that really grabbed my attention was Kokoschka's 'Portrait of Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat' with its use of colour and shapes. The hands seem to be something he was interested in as opposed to faces or anything else. Later in the show we also see his 'Portrait of Lotte Franzos' with a very different colour scheme but the same emphasis on hands, almost in hip hop stylee. Both paintings are dated 1909 so that might say something.

Another painting that grabbed my attention was the 'Portrait of Albert Paris von Gutersloh' by Egon Schiele. All of his paintings had vigorous, aggressive brush strokes and colour combinations and this portrait of a young man with his hands in the air was quite arresting. I like the detail of how the clothes fall and are exaggerated, of how one heel is higher than the other and the mystery of why both hands are in the air. It's a really striking portrait. I've no idea who Albert was but he is immortal.

The painting that made me stop and look again (and again) was the 'Portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl' that is used in the poster for the exhibition. It was painted by Klimt over 1917-18 and he died before finishing it. That is the first note of sadness about the painting. The second is that Amalie converted to Judaism to marry her husband and was sent to a concentration camp in the Second World War in 1942 and that is the last we hear of her.

I can't help but look into her wistful eyes and think that she's seeing her future. She sees what's going to happen to her and knows she can't do anything to change it. I see a brave and dignified woman.

I suspect one of the attractions of portrait exhibitions is that these were real people we're looking at, people with their own hopes and dreams and problems. Some would have been nice people, others not. But they lived their own way in their own time and we can look at them and wonder what they were like.

Just around the corner from the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square is the National Portrait Gallery on Charing Cross Road. It hosts our national portrait collection and, as well as endless portraits of Victorian grandees, includes photographs of the Sex Pistols and Poly Styrene in it's collection.

Over the next few months it's holding a small exhibition of photographs of Vivien Leigh as part of her centenary. There are a few dozen photos of Vivien throughout her career and anyone who's a fan of Vivien will enjoy it. While we were there a couple of old blokes seemed very excited to see a photo of Vivien in big sunglasses standing beside a rather mop-top Ringo Starr.

The third exhibition was about Stanley Spencer whose work I saw at the 'Crisis Of Brilliance' exhibition last summer. He's on at Somerset House for the rest of January and the exhibition is called, 'Heaven In A Hell Of War' and consists of his paintings from the Sandham Memorial Chapel in Burghclere, Hampshire, a purpose built chapel to house the paintings which were executed between 1927-1932. They are a mixture of war and domestic scenes, with troops in trenches and troops recovering from wounds in hospital.

The exhibition is free and is set out in three rooms, the first of which includes some paintings by Spencer (there's lovely painting of some poppies) and by his friend, Henry Lamb. There are two portraits of Spencer side by side, one a self-portrait and the other by Lamb. There are also two large war paintings by Lamb, one of soldiers bathing in Salonika and the other showing a camp of Irish soldiers being bombarded. Both are quite striking paintings with an interesting use of colour and shape. I haven't come across Henry Lamb before and would like to see more of his work.

The second room is laid out to reproduce the large paintings in the same way as they are in the chapel, with large arched paintings of war scenes on top and the more 'domestic' scenes of troops recovering in hospital below. It's very nice of Somerset House to give visitors a small and quite informative booklet explaining each of the seventeen paintings, especially since entrance is free.

We see scenes of the daily lives of troops in the First World War from wounded soldiers arriving in a truck at the gates of the hospital and soldiers getting washed and dressed in a bathroom to soldiers creating a 'fire belt' around their camp and soldiers relaxing while an officer on a horse reads a map. There is lots to see and puzzle at in the paintings, lots of detail to take notice of. For example, you'd never guess the officer was sitting on a horse if you didn't spot the horse's head sticking out the bottom from under the map.

None of the scenes are of battles or the blood and guts of war, that all happens elsewhere. The altarpiece from the chapel is in the third room. It's attached to the wall of the chapel and can't be removed so we had a photo of the painting projected onto the wall. It depicts the death and resurrection missing from the other paintings.

I think my favourite paintings were the more 'domestic' scenes of filling tea urns, having bread and jam for tea and changing the sheets on a bed while the occupant is bundled up in an eiderdown in a chair. Life wasn't easy or always pleasant in the hospitals for the wounded from the war and for every colourful painting of a bedroom there are also more grimy scenes of scrubbing floors and washing furniture, putting recovering soldiers to good use These days it would probably be more like physiotherapy.

It's an excellent exhibition, well laid out and managed. If you're in central London and anywhere near The Strand you could do a lot worse than pop along to Somerset House for half an hour and see these great paintings. You never know who might be visiting with you - Alan Bennet was there yesterday.

Vivien Leigh in 'The Deep Blue Sea'

On Saturday afternoon I was taken to see a 'lost' Vivien Leigh film, 'The Deep Blue Sea'' at the British Film Institute on the Southbank. According to the curator of the Vivien Leigh series no organisation claims ownership of the film, it's not available on DVD and can't be re-mastered until the rights are clarified, so we saw an early print of the film, flaws and all. It was a bit jerky in places and, in others, the colour went odd, but it was perfectly viewable.

It's from a script for a play by Terrence Ratigan about a middle aged woman who falls for a younger man and leaves her safe husband (a judge) for the more hand-to-mouth life with the younger ex-RAF pilot. Vivien is the woman and Kenneth More (in his first film) is the young lover. It's, ultimately, a destructive relationship but it serves to free Hester (played by Vivien) from her husband. From trying suicide and weeping buckets she emerges as the strength in the relationship as she frees the young More from a relationship he's not equipped to handle.

I can see why it wasn't a big hit back in the day, it shows life in London after the war as a bit run-down and a bit dreary but it also shows a spark of life. There are very few smiles or real laughs in the film and it rather wears you down with the honesty of it all and, oddly, with Hester's integrity. She's left her husband to shack up with a younger bloke but when it all falls through she doesn't go crying back to her husband, she has the integrity to recognise that it all happened for a reason. That reason was that she wasn't happy with her former life so she would be foolish to go back to it. I can respect that and Vivien's portrayal of it.

I saw another Vivien Leigh film earlier last week, 'A Yank At Oxford', which was an altogether different kind of film. She played the young wife to an older book seller in Oxford and Robert Taylor played the yank in the title. That was a much younger Vivien in the '30s before she played Scarlet O'Hara with none of the subtlety of her 'Deep Blue Sea' performance. This was a dour Vivien with all the feeling she'd acquired over the previous decade or so.

I'm pleased I saw it.