Radio review - "Unmade movies - Mary Queen of Scots"

 Famous unmade script by Jay Presson Allen which almost got shot by Alexander Mackendrick before being cancelled in the great British film crisis of 1969. It was famous because Mackendrick pretty much retired soon after to go into teaching and because it sounded better than the 1971 Hal Wallis movie that was made on this queen.

The result actually isn't that great. It's fine. But it doesn't fix the problems in the story - Mary's state of mind. She gets knocked around too much - Rizzio gets killed, her husband hits her, her husband gets killed, Bothwell goes away, she winds up in prison.

I think Mary is one of those characters too complex to be a lead she might be better off as a support character. She feels real here and it's a good gutsy drama but it's unfocused. 

Radio review - "Unmade movies - Victory"

 The BBC do an adaptation of Harold Pinter's unfilmed script of Conrad's Victory. It's fine, nothing amazing. A bit rape-y. Vanessa Kirby plays Lena which is cool. Richard Eyre adapted it and directed. 

Play review - Ayckbourn#35 - "Man of the Moment" (1988)

 Really enjoyed this. It's "the one with the swimming pool" - set at a villa in Spain where a Ronnie Biggs style crim is reunited by someone who stopped his robberty. Based on Biggs' sidekick Buster Edwards. The satire of the media is a bit whatever now but I loved how the crim was still violent and threatening and it ended with a death, and how the "good" man exploited the robbery to get the traumatised and injured woman no one was interested in.

Play review - "You Never Can Tell" by George Bernard Shaw (1897)

 Shaw in a very light mode - shenanigans by the sea with a dim dentist falling for one of Shaw's sensible women. Main plot involves the woman and her siblings encountering their long lost dad. Comedy of errors and mistaken identities. Nothing solid underneath it but amiable enough.

Play review - "The Crucible" by Arthur Miller

 Listened to audio version with Stacy Keach and Richard Dreyfus. So powerful. Yes, Abigail is a bit conveniently evil she just wants to shag John Procter. There's another lying woman upset her children have died. But the torment of Procter is well done, the fantacism and legalities skifully conveyed and it has a knock out finale.

Play review - "Death of a Salesman" by Arthur Miller

 Listened to an audio version of this starring Stacy Keach. Very good. Tormented. Long. Biff and Happy are terrible names. The wife worries, gets great speeches but isn't much of a character. But the piece has such power - what's the point of a life? What do you do when you sell and not make? Gut punch.

Movie review - "When Time Ran Out" (1980) * (warning: spoilers)

 One of the movies that killed the disaster movie cycle despite writers including Carl Foreman and Stirling Sillipant and a genuine all star cast - Paul Newman as a rugged oil rigger, William Holden as a hotel owner, Jacqueline Bissett as Holden's secretary, Burgess Meredith as a guest, James Franciscus as a rich man, Veronica Hamel as his girlfriend. There's also Ernest Borgnine, Pat Morita, Barbara Carrera, Alex Karras, and others.

The original book was based on a real volcano eruption on Martinique which would have been far more interesting. I guess they had a failure of nerve.

Instead Allen pulls from his other hits - Paul Newman redoing his tough Toweing Inferno stuff, Fraciscus playing Richard Chamberlain in Inferno, a reprise of the crossing the gangway scene in Poseidon Adventure, a reprise of most of the people refusing to come along with the escapees in Poseidon, a reprise of Shelley Winters' death in Poseidon, the fact most of the film concentrates on a small group of refugees like Poiseon.

It's poorly directed and structured. I enjoyed people panicking and trashing the helicopter but it made no sense so many would stay in the hotel. And when they stay in the hotel it's unforgivably dull... everyone hangs around doing nothing and they're killed at the end. The opening location shots of Hawaii are nice but the volcano stuff looks cheap and studio bound. The action is dull - mostly walking over things and falling. Too many perms. Holden seems drunk, Newman looks bored, Bisset is trying. The only ones giving their all all the old character types like Meredith.