Most people have a working knowledge of the Dracula story-
or do they? There have been so many iterations, adaptations and interpretations
of Bram Stoker’s novel, first published in 1897, that many of us are largely
unaware of what the original book is like. This daring production aims goes
back to the source while also utilising strikingly modern production techniques
and an amazing performance by Cynthia Erivo to takes the audience deep into
those gothic pages.
Words: Chris Arnsby
Jakki Brambles: “Hello, good evening, and welcome along to Top of the Pops on BBC1 and of course we are live in stereo on Radio 1FM. We’ve got a right good rollocking show for you tonight, it’s a pleasure to be here. Will you welcome our first band of the night, with Sit Down, live on stage on Top of the Pops, it’s James.”
It
would be really interesting to find out when Michael Hurll stepped in to the
production cycle. Who took the initiative for the redesign of the Film Strip
stage? The big central circular element has been left in the scenery store. A
huge grey cyclorama has been hung behind the stage and on it Graham Rimmington
is projecting big colourful moving flower shapes. It looks really good. It
makes the stage look massive, especially in comparison to the normal look which
is designed to create an enclosed, performance space. This is a wide open
blasted heath that King Lear could really dig.
A few years ago, a group
of under privileged but intelligent pupils spent a period at Rugby public school
and it is that as well as his own experiences as a black pupil at a mostly
middle class, white University that inspired writer Daniel Lawrence Taylor to
pen Boarders. I would doubt
though whether a lot of the scenarios depicted in this lively and occasionally
riotous series actually happened which is a good call that pulls the series
a\way from being too over earnest. Set over three six-episode series, Boarders
charts the varying experience of five bright sixth formers who are plucked from
urban surroundings by an outreach programme and placed in the somewhat rarefied
country atmosphere of St Gilberts
school. It’s a place with a raft of traditions, some formal school activities
with Latin names, others exuberant and often weird student traditions. The
narrative tries to cover each of the pupils equally, their different journeys exploring
all the possibilities of the experience.
Words: Chris Arnsby
Words: Chris Arnsby
This new series, showing on BBC and on the iPlayer, adapted by Justin Young based on books by JJ Arcanjo and aimed at a family audience initially comes across as something of a cross between Alex Ryder and MI High. Yet it proves to be somewhat more complicated than the former and less comedic than the latter, dialling up conspiracies and double crosses aplenty. Its been a while since there’s been a drama for any audience with quite so many plot twists and turns. Neither does the series linger on its mysteries, for the most part answering them in an episode or two before moving on. The results are a strangely addictive show that benefits from bingeing if only to keep track of where the tangled plot is heading.
There have been many versions of the Robin Hood story on both cinema and television all of which have essentially kept within the familiar timespan. Richard Leser’s 1976 film however takes up the story twenty years after those events introducing us to older versions of the characters. I suppose it’s a sequel to all of those versions that had gone before and after. The concept is definitely an intriguing one with the potential to explore a hero after their heroics are over, facing middle age and different problems. As it turns out, this is not quite that film but it makes a bold attempt to be different from the Robin Hood story we know.
Words: Chris Arnsby
