Dirty Dancing.

Salome, Salome Dance For Me.I pray thee dance for me. I am sad tonight. Yes I am passing sad tonight. Yes, dance for me Salome, and whatsoever thou shalt ask of me I will give thee, even unto half of my kingdom; So begged horny old Herod of his step daughter. Sealing the fate of John The Baptist at the calculated whim of a diseased maniac in this Opera by Richard Strauss adapted around the play by Oscar Wilde.  It was bloody and it was brilliant and everything an opera or a piece of art should be. Northern Ireland Opera shone last night in the first of only two performances in Belfast at the Belfast Grand Opera House with a staggering central role as Salome by Giselle Allen whose voice rolled about the theater aisles with the resonance of a tsunami of sound. The accompaniment of The Ulster Orchestra turning it into a four D experience. It is a play which challenges and is at times both horrible and humanely tragic. Madness and desire and the absolute quality of a perfect faith in the face of brutality are at play in the words of Wilde but it is in the voices of the performers that it soars. It is a most modern looking interpretation of the play with a set that would not look out of place in a David Lynch play or some South American Gothic with Burl Ives as a grisly patriarch. John The Baptist is held not in some cobwebby dungeon in Judea two thousand years ago he is locked in a septic tank. When he emerges he is the very wrath of God. The dance of Salome is one of the highlights of the show.Hayley Chilvers takes over for this segment and she ably demonstrates the erotic assault upon the Court Of Herod and rapidly crumbles the last defenses of the mad ruler and any last ditch grasp of morality slip from his sweaty hands. Yet is even he ready for what follows?
             This evening was a birthday treat for me by a dear friend Noel, a patron of an art form not familiar to me. A night at the opera. An opera based on a play by Wilde that venerates hedonism but also sits like a scarlet blossom in a filthy trench in hell. It is one act long, no interval and no prisoners taken.
              An opera for our times.
              I will not look at things,I will not suffer things to look at me.
              Put out the torches!
              Hide the moon!
              Hide the Stars!

The Noblest Romana Of Them All.

Ah The Romance of Crime and The English Way Of Death. Two Doctor Who novels by Gareth Roberts I remember with such fondness(And so well written were they scenes still play out in the theatre of my mind as though I had watched and listened to them rather than read them.) During a great period for new and strong and frankly fantastic Doctor Who literature they managed to stand out. This new range from Big Finish bringing new life to some classic era fiction is another great idea from a company bursting with great ideas. And the standard of the releases, the lovely cover art and interior notes and photos are just a joy. Tom Baker's voice continues to resonate across the years and the lovely Lalla Ward slips back into the character of that period Romana with the ease of popping on a sunday bonnet.I never thought or see or hear this Tardis tea together again. Yet here they are and you can only sigh and think why has it not happened before, like so many of he best of Big Finish projects.The period settings and actual sound design on both stories remain loyal to the season they echo so beautifully.Although their presence is no surprise to anyone who has read the book (or indeed seen the cover art) the Ogrons speech is the clumsy monster speak of The Day Of The Daleks and our street games. The old egg factory in Ardoyne made for a great future world of BBC retro future worlds. Running up and down its haunted corridors pursued by Ogrons. My life has not really changed...

               

Object In Mirror Is Closer Than It Appears.

                                     (From my sketchbook)Like one that on a lonesome road
                                                          Doth walk in fear and dread.
                                                          And having once turned round walks on,
                                                          And turns no more his head,
                                                          Because he knows, a frightful fiend
                                                          Doth close behind him tread.
                                    Samuel Taylor Coleridge; The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner.

The Storied Life Of A.J. Fikry.

Have to mention this amazing book I just finished by the authoress Gabrielle Zevin; The Storied Life Of A.J.Fikry. Simply a joy. A slim but perfectly formed novel where the main protagonist is a Bookseller! Yes, a Bookseller, the noblest yet most misunderstood of vocations. A champion of literature and all that is good in this world who may be slight of frame but who bears the burdens of Atlas. A widowed bookseller rises from the rubble of a shattered life to re-engage with the world, in order to raise a little girl abandoned in his failing book store. It is Silas Marner by way of As Good As It Gets( for anyone requiring a sound bite to identify the genre and content). Yet it is not prissy or tawdry ,sad but not tragic and it is also very very funny.
For instance the main character struggles to grasp the meaning or worth of so many aspects of the current cultural zeitgeist. At one point he attempts to impress a loved one with his knowledge of her hot telly show True Blood;GIVING JASON STACKHOUSE VAMPIRE BLOOD IS LIKE GIVING HO HOS TO A DIABETIC.Boom! A sexy Ryan Kwanten reference!Another character in the novel has a cat called Puddleglum(The Marsh Wiggle from Narnia Tom Baker played on television.Boom!A Genius tom Baker reference!) These are only two tiny wee aspects of a book that reference my own shallow passions but there is so much more than them between its rewarding covers.
                     It is a book set on an island where the local, and only, bookshop represents the head, heart and soul of a community. A notion not difficult at all to embrace. A community without a bookstore is a home without a soul.
                     A joyous read.
                     A one sitting read.
                     A book to be shared.
                     Which is what I am trying to do here.
                     And while I am at it here is a picture of Ryan Kwanten from the television series True Blood.
                    

Good Craic Comics Gallery.

A Page From History.

OooH Saucy! first published art in America from way back in the day, fan art for an issue of The Betty Pages from Spring 1989. Back when the world had seasons.
                  Betty Page; a Page From History Worth Remembering.

The Back Of Love.

                                                                      Geronimo!