strange and random happenstance

When I was in grade school and high school Les Misérables was everywhere. In grade school the t-shirt for the musical was a badge of honor that your parents had taken you to a big city to see the show. In other words, that you had money. Just like winter coats with ski lift tags. In high school it was the cool music and theatre kids who wore them as a coat of arms. I, being the misanthrope that I have always been, took it as a mark of how cool I was that I had never seen the musical and had no desire to. Cats ALL THE WAY! I continue to revel in the fact that I have never seen Les Misérables and have no plans to ever see it. I know some of you are shocked and even some of you who I consider my close friends are planning on disavowing me, but you're not going to guilt me into seeing it. EVER! Therefore hearing that Masterpiece was doing a no singing, no dancing adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel made me very happy. I could finally see an adaptation without hearing "One Day More!" Even better, Andrew Davies was adapting it. I know a lot of you have issues with him, to that I say you're hypocrites. Davies can have a moistened Colin Firth but any other sex is off bounds? How do you think say the Bennet's had children in the first place!?! Sigh. Some people would rather live in cloud cuckoo land than the real world I guess and "modern" adaptations have, for the most part, succeeded by grounding them in reality. I also liked Davies attitude going in that he was going to adapt the book to show the lesser known storylines, the plot points that weren't worthy of the musical. Plus casting Dominic West as Jean Valjean and David Oyelowo as Javert was genius. I will watch anything with Dominic West, I ever finished out the shit show that was The Affair because he was in it and am really looking forward to the new adaptation of The Pursuit of Love. As for Les Misérables itself... it showed a very bleak and at times incomprehensible world. There is a lot of death and so much of it is unnecessary... but then, that's life. None of us get out of it alive. Though most of us don't just randomly die in a garden with no ovious cause of death. Could we get a crossover with Masterpiece Mystery and bring in Poirot? 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Andrew Davies, Cats, Colin Firth, Dominic West, Fifty Years a Masterpiece, Les Misérables, Masterpiece No Longer Theatre, Masterpiece Theatre, Musical, Poirot, The Pursuit of Love, Theatre, Victor Hugo

Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Published by: Doubleday Books
Publication Date: March 23rd, 1782
Format: Hardcover, 497 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

The Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont were once lovers. Yet their rupture wasn't acrimonious, in fact they are now perhaps closer than ever before. They have a voluminous correspondence telling each other of past, present, and future conquests. Salacious details pepper their letters that they know only the other will appreciate. Though the Marquise is already tiring on Valmont's most recent project. He has sequestered himself out in the country with his aunt because he is trying to bed his aunt's houseguest, Madame de Tourvel. Only he doesn't just want this devout young wife's body, he wants her body and soul. To speed up his conquest the Marquise de Merteuil offers a night back in her bed if he were to quickly accomplish the task and return to her in Paris because she has a job for him. The Marquise's former lover, the only one to ever jilt her, is to be married to the virginal Cécile de Volanges. She thinks it would be just if this young girl just out of the convent weren't so innocent when she reaches her wedding bed and for that she needs Valmont. Yet Valmont stalls and drags his heels, could this cad, this supreme seducer be falling for a little church mouse? Luckily the Chevalier Danceny comes on the scene as Cécile's music tutor. The two young ones fall madly in love and yet neither knows what to do! It will take all the cunning of the Marquise de Merteuil to pull this off, but when Valmont learns that Cécile's mother has been writing vitriol against him to Madame de Tourvel he instantly joins in the plan to take the virtue of young Cécile. Passion, love, seduction, the lives of this small and scheming group are about to change forever with Valmont joining the fray and not all will survive.

If you are a fan of Colin Firth who is a completest, one day, after you've worked your way past such oddities as Femme Fatale, where he stars opposite Billy Zane and Billy's sister Lisa, you will stumble upon Valmont. In fact I would go so far as to say that only those attempting to watch Colin Firth's entire back catalog have seen this misfire of a film. Needless to say this addlepated film was overshadowed by the big screen version of Christopher Hampton's stage adaptation the year before starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich. A film that spent so much money on miscasting that their budget was stretched so thin that all those closeups that were thought artistic were really to hide the fact that they didn't have money for anything beyond a few nice costumes. Combined, these two adaptations left me scratching my head because I could not for the life of me understand why Les Liaisons Dangereuses was a classic, with or without Keanu Reeves. But then I saw a broadcast of the National Theatre Live production of Christopher Hampton's stage adaption starring Janet McTeer, Dominic West, and Elaine Cassidy and everything changed. I finally connected to these characters in the intimate setting of the Donmar Warehouse. I would even go so far as to say of all the "live" theater broadcasts I have seen over the years this one was hands down my favorite. This inspired me to finally read the book and all I am left with is the knowledge that Christopher Hampton is a genius given proper casting, and these characters need to be brought to life by talented actors in order to illicit any kind of emotional response.

The problem is this book is one of the most famous epistolary novels that wasn't written by Samuel Richardson. It's not the fame that's the problem it's the form. Epistolary novels over the centuries have expanded to not just be diaries or letters but here we're limited to the letter and Laclos likes to leave a little bit of a mystery. So instead of being extremely intimate, which is what a successful epistolary novel does, letting us into the character's innermost thoughts, the letters purposefully muddy the waters. Characters say one thing to one person and the exact opposite to another but they are both written in the same voice so there is no way to tell what the truth is even if there is a truth. This means you take the characters at face value, what they say is who they are, there are no lines to be read between and you're only sure of one thing, they all come across as dicks. On top of that these characters are interacting with each other between their correspondences and we never really hear what happens except in passing. This leads to the reader being distanced from the characters because of the elliptical way their story is being told. So if you weren't alienated by the characters being assholes, you're alienated by an author who thinks he's being clever. That is why this book works better adapted into another format. Taking the best of the material at hand and making it into conversations instead of having characters sitting in chairs on stage or screen and just reading and writing letters. Giving the story definition and having actors that are able to sell it. Because a good actor can make you root for a bad character any day.

The transference into another medium also helps in eliminating the book's other problem, it's overwritten. Seriously, send an editor in STAT. Again and again the characters go back to the same things, the same arguments, the same platitudes of love, on and on and on and if I read the word chimerical one more time I will scream. If you've read one letter from Valmont to Madame de Tourvel you've literally read them all. Valmont: I love you! Madame de Tourvel: Please don't say that. Over and over and over. The forward progress of the narrative is so infinitesimal that after a time you think nothing is going to happen. I mean, I knew that Valmont was to seduce naive young Cécile and it took FOREVER to get to that point. I'm not joking when I say that took HALF the book to happen. All told there are 175 letters over five months and almost all the action happens at the very end. In fact the big moments are almost swept under the carpet! Valmont's death is just, and he's dead! The Marquise de Merteuil's fate is basically a postscript! This book needed someone like Christopher Hampton to come along and slap it into shape, because Miloš Forman and Jean-Claude Carrière sure made a hatchet job with Valmont. Oddly enough the only forward momentum is not momentum at all but reminiscences. The stories of past conquests and bizarre take-downs that the Marquise de Merteuil and Valmont share are the only lucid and succinct storytelling in all 500 pages of this book. And those stories don't exactly make for the best reading, as it's the destruction of lives and the stealing of virtue.

And virtue is indeed stolen. That is my biggest hangup with Les Liaisons Dangereuses, does consent mean nothing? Again, this is why seeing it on stage or screen works, because the actors can give a look, perform an action, that changes what is being said. Yet here the correspondence is in black and white, there is no middle ground, and to me Cécile is forced into a sexual relationship with Valmont, both from his actions and the Marquise de Merteuil's peer pressure. While Laclos is again elliptical, what you gather is that Valmont rapes Cécile and then she enters into a relationship with him against her will and her heart's desire. This isn't cool people. This isn't right. While I said that an adaptation can create a middle ground to what is happening I want to make it VERY clear that in life there is no middle ground when it comes to consent. I think this was the most shocking discovery to me in reading this book, I knew the lead characters were not likable people, but I thought that their liaisons were based more on seduction than blunt force. The number of times that poor Madame de Tourvel says no and is ignored? What I took to be the central love story that reformed Valmont is nothing more than a man not realizing that no means no and his target becoming so worn down she gives up. And while reading this book at any time would have made me point these problems out, in this day and age with the Time's Up movement and #MeToo, I was struck by how this book revels in the very worst in humanity. Consent should be enthusiastic and no should always, ALWAYS, mean no.

But I wonder if perhaps that's why it was so controversial at the time. Did people behave like this or were they scandalized to think people could behave like this? Or was this just showcasing the lax morals of the previous generation that was about to be overthrown through revolution? That notion actually playing into the recent revival by the National Theatre. While this book is still very scandalous, I don't think that is the reason why it is a classic. The reason why Les Liaisons Dangereuses has lasted is that it's humor, underneath all the horrors, is wry and arch. The book has a humorous self-deprecating style wherein the characters actually comment on Danceny being the hero of the tale, and oh, such a dud of a hero. Like Thackeray's Vanity Fair it's a book where the anti heroine and hero are the compelling characters. You get a vicarious thrill to think of someone destroying another for sport, but in the end you get the added thrill that the assholes get their due. Because THAT is the key when you have unlikeable characters. If these reprehensible examples of human life don't get what's coming to them it's just glorifying their existence. Because they pay for their sins the scales balance in the end. Which makes me really want to sit down with Laclos and ask him what his personal opinions were on issues of consent because you have to wonder, what with Valmont dying and the Marquise de Merteuil getting smallpox, losing an eye, and being shunted off to Amsterdam where something too horrid to mention happens, if he was actually just wanting to write something salacious that would sell and in the end it rather ambiguously states his real opinions through death and disfigurement.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: #MeToo, Colin Firth, Consent, Dominic West, Epistolary, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, National Theatre Live, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Rape, Sweet Reads, Thackeray, Time's Up, Valmont, Vanity Fair

André Jaouen's dream casting has been a thorn in my side now for several years. I just couldn't alight on just the right actor who had the looks, the brains, and the chops to take on this role. Then, after mistakenly thinking I had found my André I started my re-read of The Orchid Affair and Dominic West showed up hijacking my planned casting and doing a fabulous job of it I might add. So here's to an actor that showed up when I least expected it.

Name: Dominic West

"Dream" Character Casting for the Lauren Willig Miniseries: André Jaouen

First Impression: I remember the new adaptation of Richard III was really hot when I was taking Shakespeare in High School (yes, it's been awhile). What everyone was talking about though was a young actor who was stealing the movie, that young actor was Dominic West. He was fine, but overall the adaptation felt flat to me, like it was trying too hard to reinvent the wheel. Dominic's next Shakespearean appearance would be more successful in my mind. It was A Midsummer Night's Dream if you must know. 

Why they'd be the perfect actor for the Lauren Willig Miniseries: Because my subconscious obviously thinks he's the one. But more then that, he is an actor that excels at whatever he's cast in so there's no doubt he'd be an amazing Jaouen. There's also an elegance to him while still not being upper crust, which wouldn't do for our favorite lawyer cum Royalist. Also, I just can so viscerally see him backstage performing in that absurd Commedia dell'arte costume pulling off his eyebrows to rush to his son's aid, it's not even funny how real it is to me.

Lasting Impression: If, like me, you knew Dominic's work and respected it but are still not wowed by him, check out The Hour. He seriously blew me away with his performance of Hector Madden and how he could be arrogant and vulnerable and sexy all at the same time. The house party where he seduces Romala Garai's character Bel Rowley, just wow. Why did they cancel this show again? Seriously. I want it back.

What else you've seen them in: Seeing as he's been acting since I was in High School, Dominic has amassed a seriously impressive filmography. For the BBC addicts there are the Shakespeare adaptations, the Dickens adaptations, the miniseries The Devil's Whore, the spooky movie The Awakening. For the chick flick fan there's Mona Lisa Smile, Spice World, Burton and Taylor. For the action adventure type, how about 300? There is literally a movie or show or miniseries to fit every mood from musical, Chicago, to drama, The Affair. Though, when in doubt, he's in one of the most highly regarded television series of all time, The Wire! Also, how could I let the chance to have a picture of Chalky White, aka the actor Michael Kenneth Williams, pass on my website?

Can't believe it's them: He was in Star Wars - The Phantom Menace? Seriously, I can't stop laughing. Make it stop, the tears, the pain in my side. Look at that outfit. Hahahahaha.

Wish they hadn't: I'm sure when he signed onto Star Wars - The Phantom Menace it was a good job, not the joke it is today, but still. Could we expunge this from his rather stellar record?

Bio: Oh, posh, Dominic went to Eton before going to Trinity College in Dublin, and then going to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where my choice for his Miss Grey also went, coincidence? I think not! Despite starting on stage at the young age of nine he spent some time in Argentina as a cattle herder! Because, why not. He has rarely been out of work and is always well regarded, but his recent performance opposite Ruth Wilson in The Affair has once again put him in the spotlight garnering many award nominations and laurels. Catch the laurels Dominic! He is also known for turning down a role in Game of Thrones! Of course while he might have been a better Mance Rayder, he is the definitive Noah Solloway.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Andre Jaouen, Charles Dickens, Dominic West, Dream Casting, Game of Thrones, Lauren Willig, Mance Rayder, Miss Grey, Richard III, Shakespeare, Star Wars, The Affair, The Hour, The Orchid Affair, The Wire

Requiem for a Mezzo (Daisy Dalrymple Book 3) by Carola Dunn
Published by: Kensington Books
Publication Date: 1996
Format: Paperback, 249 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Daisy Dalrymple has some interesting neighbors in her little bohemian community of artists and writers, like Daisy herself. Out back her roommate has set up a photography studio, while right next door is the famous opera singer Bettina Westlea, who lives with her spinster sister and her older vocal coach of a husband who has students coming and going all the time. While fixing a cake for her roommate's birthday she runs out of flour and rushes next door to ask Bettina's sweet sister Muriel for the loan of some. Daisy walks right into a house full of divas, with Bettina practicing for her big performance that coming weekend of Verdi's Requiem at Albert Hall, while her husband coaches Miss Olivia Blaise, the talented singer who was up for the part Bettina snagged, and then in walks their conductor, Mr. Eric Cochran. To get Daisy off the front line, Muriel plies her with tickets to the performance, as well as the flour she so desperately needed.

Daisy knows exactly who she wants to take to the concert. Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher. Sure she tends to nose in on his cases... but it gives her a chance to see him. This would be a first outing for them without murder and mayhem, until Bettina drops dead on stage right after the interval. Alec takes charge of the scene but he knows, no matter how hard he tries, that Daisy will worm her way into his case and take someone under her protective wing. The suspect list is very fixed, but they are all of an artistic temperament and therefore have drama and secrets born in their very bones. From Bettina's cuckolded husband, Roger Abernathy, to conductor Eric Cochran and Olivia Blaise, the object of his affection, to Bettina's sister and her secret love interest, the Russian Jew, Yakov Levich, too the other soloists, the Spanish soprano Consuela de la Costa, the Welsh tenor Gilbert Gower, and the hostile bass, Dimitri Marchenko... to various spouses... well, Alec will have his job cut out for him untangling this mess. Luckily for him Daisy is there to help him, even if he doesn't see it as such.

While I really enjoyed the first two mysteries in Carola Dunn's Daisy Dalrymple series, they were very much more in the traditional vein of Golden Age "Manor House" Mysteries. Daisy arrives at a grand estate and murder ensues and Alec is called in. While this is all well and good and enjoyable, for the purpose of a series, setting each book up like this, well, the plot would get old fast. That's why I love how Carola has stepped it up a notch with Requiem for a Mezzo. In the previous two volumes we had heard how Daisy had bucked the conventions of her "honourable" and gone working girl, but it's one thing to hear about it as just a part of her character's background, it's another thing to get to be a part of that life as we see her typing away on her behemoth typewriter on the gorgeous Georgian writing table from her ancestral home in the heart of Chelsea while her roommate is out back in the mews cum photography studio taking portraits of the neighbors Opera students. You get a firmer grip on who Daisy is. In the manor houses we saw who she was, the honourable that can blend into any social setting, but here, here is the life she has chosen for herself. The beans and toast meals, the struggling to get by. The life that she has made for herself makes it far more likely that her and Alec are compatible. Which for me is a strong yeah.

What takes the cake, sponge of course, is the artistic temperaments and the petty jealousies, secret affairs, grudges, and just plain hatred that live within the world of Opera. For many years I worked in theatre, even on a few Operas, backstage of course, doing the painting and the props. I had minimal interaction with the actors on the whole, but I did have many classes with them, and while there were dramas backstage with the crew, it was really the dramas and intrigues of the actors that trickled down to us that we fed off of. Who was seeing who, which of the men was a real whore, who was the biggest diva, which actors weren't talking to each other, sadly never a murder in the lot, but one can see how that could easily happen. They are high strung and I wouldn't say they are all promiscuous, but within a fixed community, you will get some bed jumping, as Gilbert Gower shows with his predilection to international beauties. So, what struck me is that Carola was just spot on with showing the inter dynamics of her cast of characters. I lived in that world and she took me right back there.

While I was reading this book, one thing struck me, and that's this. Requiem for a Mezzo NEEDS to be made into a British TV Movie. It can even be a one off instead of a series, because seriously, I have the dream cast in mind. Firstly, Gilbert Gower, the Welsh playboy... who has the voice and the talent and the raw sex appeal and is Welsh? Tom Jones! Tom Jones as Gilbert Gower, and really, my job here is done. But, I will take the time to round out the cast. While she can't sing, that I know of, I think Consuela de la Costa needs to be played by Sofia Vergara. She has the diva attitude and the sex appeal, plus her and Tom Jones, I KNOW you want to see that. Now for the starring role as our murder victim... Katerine Jenkins. Such an amazing and gorgeous voice, and a real opera singer to boot. I think it would be totally spiffing to have her play against her sweet demeanour by being a bitchy diva. As for Daisy and Alec, I've always pictured Alec as Dominic West... I don't know why, but I always have. Perhaps he just lends himself to being a cop, or he has those expressive eyebrows of Alec's, or is just wonderful in period pieces, but anyway, he would be perfect. And then, after recently watching The Hour, I think we need Romola Garai to be Daisy. First, she has the chemistry with West, second, she has the dirty honey blond hair that would look so cute in the bob Daisy gets, as well as being an amazing actress. So I want and need this to happen, so minions or whomever at the BBC reads this, get this going, ok?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Albert Hall, Carola Dunn, Daisy Dalrymple, Detective Alec Fletcher, Dominic West, Golden Age of Detection, Katherine Jenkins, Opera, Requiem for a Mezzo, Romola Garai, Sofia Vergara, The Hour, Theatre, Tom Jones