THROWBACK THURSDAY - HAMLET'S DRESSER by Bob Smith

This is a wonderful read from my recent past, it’s a memoir by Bob Smith, THE HAMLET’S DRESSER. Published in the English version in 2002, I read it in Italian  (  Il ragazzo che amava Shakespeare, edizioni Tea Due) in the summer 2007, more precisely in August 2007.
Throwback Thursday is hosted by Jenny at TakeMeAway.

Do you know what a Hamlet’s dresser does? It’s a job I had never heard about before reading this touching memoir. After that , since I love theatre but only among the audience or backstage, I added it to my dream job list ( first in the list: librarian!) I loved the human aspects of this book and the fact that it is permeated of Shakespeare’s world. This is in fact the true story of a boy whose life was saved by literature. Bob Smith’s Hamlet's Dresser is a portrait of a person made whole by art. His childhood was a fragile and lonely one, spent largely caring for his handicapped sister, Carolyn and longing for more attention from his parents . But at the age og ten, his local librarian gave him a copy of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, and it transformed him. In Bob's first look at Shakespeare's penetrating language -- "In sooth I know not why I am so sad" -- he had found a window through which to view the world. Years later, when the American Shakespeare Festival moved into Stratford, Connecticut, and Smith was hired as Hamlet's dresser, his life's passion took shape.

Read an excerpt from the book

Prologue


What should we speak of
When we are old as you? When we shall hear
The rain and wind beat dark December? How
In this our pinching cave shall we discourse
The freezing hours away?
— Cymbeline, 3.3

Zoe died. There'll be a service someplace in Jersey, but not until late April. Zoe was in the original group of old people who came to me for Shakespeare. She couldn't bear Cymbeline. She turned her nose up at all the late plays.

"I'm eighty-one," she'd scowl. "Time to say what's on my mind." What was on her mind was that, at forty-six, William Shakespeare'd run out of genius.

"What about The Tempest," I'd plead, "or Winter's Tale?"

"Robert, dear...." She'd twist her face into a mock sourpuss. "You are grotesquely sentimental." She was wrong about Shakespeare but probably dead right about me.

Zoe was no worshiper, except for dance. She adored the ballet. Her dreary one-bedroom apartment in the Penn South middle-income housing project was a grotto shrine of dusky ballet slippers swaying on shimmering ribbons. Whose? I always wondered. Zoe had never been a dancer. She was short and stout. By the time I knew her she had close-cropped snow-white hair and always wore a particular black dress. It was her uniform, and was usually a repulsive collage of food stains and dandruff. The dress was a mess but Zoe wasn't. She'd worked as some kind of math genius. Retired, she devoted her time to culture.

One day I made the mistake of telling her that I was on my way to see the movie Babe. She acted betrayed. "Talking pigs?" she winced. "Don't expect George Orwell." Zoe disdained the intellectually puny with an exaggerated roll of her eyes and an agitated pinch of her small wrinkled mouth. But despite the protest, an hour later there she was at the multiplex, propped up in an aisle seat in her awful dress and a worse shawl, waiting sour-faced to prove herself right. God, how I love old people.

For ten years I've been reading Shakespeare with seniors. I'm no scholar. I've got no formal education past high school. But in run-down centers and sleek over-air-conditioned Manhattan auditoriums, I pore over the texts with hundreds of unsentimental octogenarians.

Zoe was ringleader for a group of women who'd grown up on the Lower East Side. Seventy years later they still traveled as a gang. Navigating the crisscross grid of New York City bus routes, they transferred to movies, ballet, and Shakespeare. Eventually they found me and immediately started acting like a fan club. They'd show up wherever I was speaking. For a while, in restaurants, they'd huddle together a few tables away, mooning over me like bobby-soxers. The old ladies would have the waiter bring me a glass of red wine. They'd gesture a toast.

"We don't mean to bother you," they'd coo. "We're just so excited about the Shakespeare that we couldn't wait till next week."

It's almost impossible to say how much it meant to have those tart old women on my side. Love in the romantic sense has mostly skipped past me. I have no children, no witness who's been with me the whole way. My childhood was consecrated to a sick sibling and I never completely emerged from that darkness. Those geriatric cheerleaders gave something I hadn't had since my grandparents.

For a while Zoe acted like a smitten seventh grader. She'd shove bunched-up notes into my fist. They weren't personal in the ordinary way. They were about Shakespeare.

"Merchant?" was scrawled on an envelope she dropped into my bag. Inside, she'd neatly written an appeal.

Dearest Professor (Zoe got a kick out of ennobling my status),

What would you think of us reading the Merchant of Venice next? Many in the group are Jewish. Is the play anti-Semitic? Please consider this a respectful request.

Your admiring student,

Zoe

The morning we started Merchant there were eighty people jammed into the back room of the senior center.

Ten minutes into the play, Zoe's hand shot up, her patience already worn thin. "He's of his time," she pronounced. "William Shakespeare's no philosopher. He's not a deity. Shakespeare's depicting the world, not fixing it."

Eventually we landed on the scene where Shylock's daughter elopes. Knowing she'll break her father's Old Testament heart, Jessica steals his money, some cherished jewels, and at night, disguised as a page, runs off with a Christian boy.

JESSICA Here, catch this casket, it is worth the pains.

I am glad 'tis night — you do not look on me, —

For I am much asham'd of my exchange:

But love is blind, and lovers cannot see

The pretty follies that themselves commit,

For if they could, Cupid himself would blush

To see me thus transformed to a boy.

LORENZO Descend, for you must be my torch-bearer.

JESSICA What, must I hold a candle to my shames? —

They, in themselves (goodsooth) are too too light.

Why, 'tis an office of discovery (love),

And I should be obscur'd.

LORENZO So are you (sweet)

Even in the lovely garnish of a boy.

But come at once,

For the close night doth play the runaway,

And we are stay'd for at Bassanio's feast.

JESSICA I will make fast the doors and gild myself

With some moe ducats, and be with you straight.

— The Merchant of Venice, 2.6

When I paused, a woman at the back stood up as stiffly as a kid in parochial school and in a thick New York accent she said, "Salvatore Massuchi."

At first it sounded like a single word: "salvamusuchi." Italian? Maybe Latin? The room was packed with retired teachers. Was it some obsolete syndrome in rhetoric? My usual pang of undereducation pricked.

"He was a boy on Mulberry Street." The old woman smiled. "He lived right across the air shaft. My mother warned me never to look at him. We were Orthodox Jews. My father was strict. My little brothers wore payess."

The woman watched all of us watching her. "Salvatore Massuchi had beautiful eyes and shiny hair like chocolate. He was so handsome in his Saint Francis Xavier Grammar School uniform. We never spoke to each other, not even in July standing together in line at the ice wagon. Then one day my mother said that the Italians on four had moved to New Rochelle or Rye, some exotic-sounding place north of the city."

"What about Salvatore Massuchi?" I asked.

"My daughter married an Italian. I think I encouraged her because in 1919 I wasn't even allowed to look. My husband's been dead for ten years. I've never thought of another man, but while you were reading I kept picturing Salvatore Massuchi. I don't know anything about literature, but I think maybe Shakespeare's not mad at Jessica."

In the front row Sara raised her hand. I don't think I'd ever heard her voice. Zoe usually did the talking. "That's exactly how it was, just like she said, religious parents new to America, but trying to stay faithful to the past. Now that I'm old it's easy to see what a difficult balancing act it was."

She looked at me for a minute. "I'm on Jessica's side, too. Venice for a Jewish kid must have been a little like Mott Street." The old maid got angry. "Damn it, Jessica's got a right to her own happiness."

Everyone laughed, and for a few minutes some very old women said the names of little boys who hadn't quite faded into the abyss of memory, Salvatore Massuchi, Mike O'Rourke, Frankie somebody, Billy...

My heart, sweet boy, shall be thy sepulchre, For from my heart thine image ne'er shall go.

— King Henry VI, Part III, 2.5

It's eight years later and I'm starting to read Hamlet with a huge group of old people at the Ninety-second Street Y.

Enter Barnardo and Francisco, two sentinels.

BARNARDO Who's there?

FRANCISCO Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.

— Hamlet, 1.1

When I talk about the plays I unfold myself to myself, and sometimes hidden in the folds are forgotten events that can, for a moment, make the standing a little harder. Some days, discussing four-hundred-year-old words with the elderly, it's about ghosts. Zoe's dead, so's Sara, maybe even the woman who'd loved Salvatore Massuchi, and that's an important part of it, too. The impermanence of life is all around me. What's left is memory. It's such a huge part of Shakespeare, so many specters and resurrections, so much haunting from the past.

In its own way, my life is a resurrection and I am most certainly haunted by a delicate and undismissible ghost.

Right after I started reading Shakespeare with old people, I decided to move back to where I was born. I rented a tiny dilapidated house that was built before the American Revolution, 1770. I live near a river, a mile or so above where it meets Long Island Sound. I've come back hoping to find something I dropped in my first desperate need to leave. At twenty-one I had run from an unhappy childhood and, too young to know better, I thought I could hide from memory.

For almost forty years, it was as if I'd hidden something deep in the breast pocket of a coat that I no longer wear. Every so often, I'd put the coat on and tentatively reach into the pocket half believing my buried thing wouldn't be there anymore, expecting it to have crumbled with age and neglect or to have simply disappeared. It never has. It never will, because it's not a thing, it's a person.

When I was twenty-one and my retarded sister was almost eighteen, my parents decided that we could no longer care for her. The decision was made to find a place for Carolyn to spend the rest of her life. A "school" was selected that met with what my family could afford. It's a state institution.

The day she left, my father asked if she wanted to do her favorite thing — take a ride. She bounced toward the car with her bizarre, palsied gait, her hands — her beautiful long thin pale hands — twisted grotesquely around each other and held high just under her chin. She always shook with excitement at the idea of a ride. She's fifty-seven now and I'm told that she still shakes wildly when there's a ride and ice cream. I haven't seen her do it since that day so long ago, when she left our house and my life forever. It's like one of those late, melancholy, Shakespeare plays that mathematical Zoe never understood.

Six weeks after Carolyn went away to the Southbury Training School I was allowed to visit her. Until then she had to be acclimated to the place. It was a world she could not have known existed, and as the only world she did know, we couldn't interfere. The waiting passed painfully. The worst of my own terrors of abandonment haunted me. I couldn't stop the pictures in my mind of how afraid and lonely she must feel.

Finally the day came to see her. I was terrified. I felt sick all the way on the long drive. How could I just walk out after a visit? How could I see her often? Was it more hurtful to come and not take her home? It tore at me. I was young.

When we reached the Southbury Training School we drove up the hill to a tall, mock Georgian brick building. It was a cliché of the 1930s institution. I asked my parents if I could go in alone to get her. I needed my first reaction for just me and her. It was hard to see her again, here, to know that I would just stay awhile and then go back to New York and leave behind this person who in many ways I knew much better than I knew myself.

Inside I asked a friendly nurse for directions. As I went up the iron stairs and down the long white hall I could hear my sister. She was saying my name over and over. She knew very few words — car, go to bed, Bobby. Even now in my old red house by the river all these years later I can hear her voice, her young lost voice, singsong — "Bobby...Bobby...Bobby."

I took her carefully down the stairs and out into the October sunlight. We walked hand in hand to my parents' car and got into the backseat. We went for a ride in the beautiful Connecticut countryside, and at a certain point my father pulled the car off the road. I think it was somewhere on the school's property. There was a hill and a cornfield. I helped my sister out of the car. I took Carolyn's beautiful hand and together we carefully climbed the hill. The October air was wonderful. There was a warm wind. I remember thinking that my parents, in the distance below, seemed little and old and lost, standing by our car. I took Carolyn through the rows of corn. There was a stone wall to sit on with a view of the beautiful Connecticut valley with all its autumn color. I was overcome by sadness. I didn't drive. I couldn't get back on my own. I said out loud to no one, "Why did they give you a brute's haircut? I've always loved your hair. I've always loved you. I've always taken care of you. Please let me go!"

There is a willow grows askant the brook

That shows his hoary leaves in the glassy stream.

Therewith fantastic garlands did she make

Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,

That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,

But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.

There on the pendant boughs her crownet weeds

Clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,

When down her weedy trophies and herself

Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,

And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up,

Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds,

As one incapable of her own distress,

Or like a creature native and indued

Unto that element. But long it could not be

Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,

Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay

To muddy death.

— Hamlet, 4.7

(Italian book cover)

Blending tragedy and comedy, Bob Smith weaves together his childhood memories with his experiences backstage and teaching the plays. The result is a gorgeous, tender, infectious book about the restorative powers of literature and art.

WEDNESDAY NIGHT MISCELLANEOUS POSTING

1. IN MY MAIL BOX

It just arrived today from California, USA! I won a copy of EMMA in a giveaway at ttp://vvb32reads.blogspot.com/ some time ago and HERE IT IS! Thanks a lot!

2. AWARDS

I've just received three awards and I'm terribly flattered since they came from three terrific bloggers!Meredith at Austenesque Reviews awarded me with the Oh La La Award for the first time and Jane GS at Reading, Writing, Working...Playing  + Christy at Readin' and Dreamin' with the  Happy 101 Award for the second and third time (WOW! )

Thank you very much indeed to you all ! I'm so happy !

As for the Happy 101 , I've already listed the things which make me happy some time ago and also already received and passed the award to seven other bloggers.

It is instead the first time I got The Oh La La Award so I have a task to fulfil: answering a few simple questions:

Where is your favorite place to read a book?
In bed in the winter, on my balcony full of flowers in the summer.

What are the best books you've read recently?
The Age of Innocence, Wives and Daughters, Cleopatra's Daughter. These are the ones I liked best, at least.

Do you snack while reading?
No, I don't. I usually sip a loooong coffee while reading.

Are you a book borrower or book collector?
Definitely collector and proud owner. Even jealous.

Here are some bloggers and blogs that I adore!

1. Daily Words and Acts

2. November's Autumn

3. The Squee

3. TEACHING VICTORIAN LITERATURE CAN BE A DELIGHT

I have to be more precise: teaching Elizabeth Gaskell's NORTH & SOUTH, what a success! After introducing the historical context, we started reading and discussing some pages from OLIVER TWIST by Dickens,   but I didn't notice the same ... excitement.

Then, I prepared a series of lessons on Gaskell and her wonderful novel using PPT slides, fragments from the BBC adaptation (2004), photocopies of chapter XXII, a worksheet with questions about the text and the TV version . We have just started but it has already been a success! This morning, for example, we compared the riot at Marlborough Mill in the text to the same scene in the TV series. My students (19 year old, mostly girls, only 3 boys) were so interested and enthusiastic in the end that... I have to thank Mrs Gaskell for this miracle but also BBC, Richard Armitage and Daniela Denby-Ashe!

So many questions! And they didn't want to stop when the bell rang the end of my lesson...we are going on next Friday. They can't wait to listen to what Mr Thornton is going to tell Miss Hale to thank her, since she saved his life ... No spoiler, then!

MY LESSON ON LEARNONLINE

19th CENTURY ROMAN CARNIVAL WITH ... ROMANCE

Frenzy and craziness, loud music, masked, disguised, laughing kids and young people all around … Would you ever think this is the right setting for a romance? Have you ever lived one at Carnival?

A ROMANCE

Tonight, Shrove Tuesday, while (almost) everybody is partying to say good-bye to Carnival before Lent begins, I’d like to tell you about a romance dating back to the 19th century.

The setting – Rome

The time – 24 February, Shrove Tuesday, 1857

The protagonists: Elizabeth (46) Charles Eliot (30)

She, English, was there with her daughters. Her husband at home. She had arrived at Civitavecchia from Marseilles after an exhausting voyage which took more than expected. They reached Rome on 23 February, guests of the Storys, at the Casa Cabrale, at 43, Via San Isidoro, in the same district as the Spanish Steps, the traditional artists’ quarter where John Keats had died in 1821.

The sheer novelty of the scene, the gaiety of the crowds disguised as figures of high romance with their Travestia and masks, completed the spell cast of the spring morning. Mother and daughters were intoxicated with the mere sight and sound of Roman life before ever they tasted it. It was like nothing they had experienced before and they were, then and lastingly, profoundly affected by the place.

The Storys had hired a balcony on the Corso from where to see the Carnival processions and were settled there with their guests when Charles Eliot Norton entered the scene. Meta, one of Elizabeth ‘s daughters recorded the incident many years later:

“The narrow street was filled with a boisterous crowd of Romans, half mad with excitment at the confetti-throwing and horse-racing. Suddenly against this turbulent background there stood out the figure of a young man just below the balcony, smiling up at my mother, whom he knew he was to see there and whom he easily distinguished from the others. It is fifty – three years since that day, and yet even now I can vividly recall the sweet, welcoming expression on the radiant face. He was brought on to the balcony, but how little he and my mother thought m as they greeted one another, that until her death they were to be most true and intimate friends”.

It was instant sympathy what sprang up between those two elected souls: he was the perfect cicerone, she the ideal recipient for every beautiful scene or object he could bring up her notice. The experience can perhaps best be described by the rather old-fashioned expression, Platonic Love. Given the total frankness of her nature, she abandoned herself to it without reservation or scruple, because nothing could conceivably be wrong with it: “it was in those charming Roman days – she would write on her return to England - that my life, at any rate, culminated. I shall never be so happy again. I don’t think I was ever so happy before. My eyes fill with tears when I think of those days, and it is the same with all of us. They were the tip-top point of our lives. The girls may see happier ones – I never shall”

Her husband had remained at home, in England. His name was … Rev. William Gaskell. And yes, she was Elizabeth Gaskell who had already published her Mary Barton (1848) ,Cranford (1851–3), Ruth (1853) and North and South (1854–5) She was already an acclaimed novelists at the time. He was Charles Eliot Norton, American student of art history of which later he became professor at Harvard and was then on his second trip to Europe. In fact, seven years before, in 1850, he had already been introduced to Mrs Gaskell during one of her London visits at the Proctors’ house and had retained a charmed memory of her.

“She is – he later told James Russel Lowell – like the best things in her books; full of generous and tender sympathies, of thoughtful kindness of pleasant humour, of quick appreciation, of utmost simplicity and truthfulness, and uniting with peculiar delicacy and retirement a strength of principle and purpose and straightforwardness of action, such as few women possess”.

(Excerpts from Winifred Gérin, Elizabeth Gaskell, Oxford University Press, 1976)

A real demonstration of love. Maybe Platonic but true sincere love. Did you recognize any of Gaskell’s future characters in this young man so dear to her?

19th CENTURY ROMAN CARNIVAL

(from an American tourist's  point of view)

For generations the place to be for Carnival was Rome.

European and, eventually, American tourists took in the pre-Lenten celebrations in Rome, often at the end of a winter stay in the city, as part of a "Grand Tour." The New York Times even had correspondents reporting from Carnival in Rome into the 1870s

In his Europa: or, Scenes and society in England, France, Italy, and Switzerland, Bostonian Daniel C. Eddy, a Baptist clergyman, wrote of his travels in a "reminiscence of our pleasant tour".

 In his preface to the travel book, however, Eddy is upfront about his nativist political leanings and his anti-Catholicism (he would be elected as a "Know Nothing" to the state legislature and served as Speaker of the House in Massachusetts):

( Carnival in Rome by Bartolomeo Pinelli (1781-1835). Watercolor. Rome, Italy, 1806. Victoria & Albert Museum)

If Italy is ashamed of her bones and beads, crosses and cardinals, her sovereign, with his tiara and his dandy guards, let her enslaved thousands rise and be men again, as were the people of Rome, when even Paul could boast that he was a citizen of that once favored, but now fallen city.

In spite of himself, Eddy, like many other American tourists, found themselves ambivalent and conflicted with the beauty, customs, history, and decay of Rome and the Church. American reactions to Carnival, Lent, and Easter in Rome often brought out that ambivalence. Eddy, in between quotations from Charles Dickens, writes:

The carnival, which continues eight days, and consists of a succession of masquerades, races, balls, and frolicks, is gay, magnificent, and foolish beyond description. The last two days bring out all the people of Rome, and thousands of strangers, who resort to the city for the purpose of seeing the famous sports. ...

The Corso is the broad way, the great thoroughfare of Rome; and it is here that pleasure appears in its most attractive forms. Families lay aside their aristocratic pride, and ride out in their carriages; strangers hire less imposing vehicles; poorer classes on foot crowd the streets, while the windows, verandas, porticoes, and balconies are filled with the delighted spectators. ...

The carriages are filled with men and women, young and old, gay and grave, who are armed with baskets of flowers and piles of confectionery, which they throw at others whom they may meet in the street, in other carriages, on the sidewalks, and at the windows. ...

At night, carriages again fill the Corso, crowded with beauty and life. Each person has a lamp, and the frolic consists in blowing out each one the lamp of his neighbor, and keeping his own burning. The Corso becomes a cloud of fire, which shines out from many a torch and lantern. Red, green, blue, and many a gay color flashes on the wight, until the whole scene becomes one of bewildering beauty. ...

During the carnival, Rome is a sort of paradise--a heaven of gay pleasures; but when the carnival closes, hell begins...These festivals are held to cover up the wretchedness of the masses; but they cannot do it..."

HAPPY SHROVE TUESDAY NIGHT TO ALL OF YOU!!!

Special thanks to my little fairy, Merryweather!

THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL - DVD REVIEW (2003 and 2008 adaptations)

Last Sunday was dedicated to Elizabeth I, this Sunday to her  parents – Ann Boleyn and King Henry VIII - and to her aunt Mary Boleyn, THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL. Well, actually this is what Henry VIII calls Ann, seeing her at court when he was already expecting a child from Mary, in a BBC production dating back to 2003. It stars so many familiar faces that I spent the first minutes recalling where I had already seen them and had to re-start the DVD ‘cause I had missed part of the dialogues. This TV movie was an adaptation of Philippa Gregory’s novel of the same name (which I have not read yet ). So I just enjoyed the story for the first time though, all through it , I had the impression I had already seen many of the scenes but … where and when? Then, little by little, I realized that I had seen them in series 1 of The Tudors  starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers (above on the right). Many of the scenes were identical. Was that series based on Philippa Gregory’s novel too ? I don’t know but maybe it was.

So what about this story? Palpitating familiar saga,  doomed to tragedy. Involving and realistic,  especially thanks to the brilliant performances of the experienced and talented British actors in it. Jodhi May attempted to make Ann more humane and gives a touching convincing portrait of the unfortunate Queen both in her successful moments and – especially – in the tragic epilogue. I also appreciated Natascha McElhone as Mary Boleyn, Steven Mackintosh as George Boleyn, Jared Harris as Henry VIII , Philip Glenister as William Stafford and Anthony Howell as William Carey.

(Natasha McElhone and Jodhi May as Mary and Ann Boleyn)

The most disturbing element is the use and manipulation of the two beautiful young Boleyn sisters carried on by their family. They were considered exchange goods to get to power.
It seems - and this story is based on the conviction that - Henry VIII favoured Ann’s sister Mary first. She was more beautiful docile and sensitive then the other Boleyn girl but already married to William Carey. She was forced to accept the king’s will by her parents and uncle Thomas. Her husband, though unwillingly , couldn’t refuse. She came to love the king little by little but he tranferred his favour to Ann Boleyn while Mary was bearing his child. She had to endure the king’s refusal of her and her child and even being separated from the baby and sent back to her husband.

(Steven MacIntosh as George Boleyn, Ann and Mary's brother)

We follow then Ann’s ascent to the throne, playing the game of keeping the king’s interest in her alive by refusing to give herself completely to him. Mary is summoned at court to help her sister in her plot. But when Ann, now Queen, after Carey’s death, wants to use her to find new connections with powerful families she accepts Stafford’s marriage proposal and leaves the court. She prefers to marry a nobody for love than following her family’s and sister’s ambitious plans for power. The third Boleyn sibling, George, is always devoted to his sisters, especially , and in this version he fatally accepts to save Ann’s life sleeping with her. Rather unbelievably , they are encouraged by Mary in their final desperate incestuous act . The tragic epilogue is known to all.

(Ann plots to seduce the king - Henry VIII is Jared Harris)

This was a low production budget of £750,000. It was highly acclaimed by critics for the superb performances and the innovative way of approaching costume drama. The drama was shot using modern camera techniques and the cast spent four weeks in workshops improvising the script together with the director. It came out on DVD in 2008, following the release of the world famous theatrical version.

I also saw this latest adaptation of THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL as soon as I finished the older one . It was released in theatres in 2008 and it starred Natalie Portman & Scarlett Johansson as the two Boleyn sisters and Eric Bana as King Henry VIII. The plot here quite differs from the BBC version in many aspects and events . Ann is more treacherous, smarter, more ambitious and more bitter to her sister. George is a less constant presence in his sisters’ lives, the Boleyn girls are used to get to the king more by their wicked uncle Thomas ( David Morissey ) than by their parents. The first meeting between the King , Ann and Mary is differently narrated. The king is never really in love, in this latest adaptation, with Ann and even rape her before their marriage. He is never tender and is often furious to her. The final trial against Ann and her lovers is here reduced to an accusation for her incestuous relationship with her brother. They were  witnessed by George’s wife, Jane, but in this script it never actually took place because George finally refused his sister. (In the BBC 2003 version  the incestuous affair took place and – just like in THE TUDORS – Ann was accused of betraying the king with several men among whom her brother).
The historical locations in both productions blend seamlessly with production designer studio sets to create a convincing Tudor England.

(Eric Bana & Natalie Portman as Henry and Ann in 2008 film)

( The two Boleyn sisters in the 2008 version - Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson)

(David Morissey as Sir Thomas Boleyn)

Impossible to remain indifferent to the 2008  luxurious production. However, I honestly loved the  "modest"  British TV version more than the rich  American theatrical version.   The actors in the 2003 THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL were stunning, amazing. The low budget made their efforts even more praiseworthy. 

Jodhi May, an unforgettable Ann.

Have you read Philippa  Gregory's novel  or seen one of these adaptations of her book? Are there many differences? I'd love to read the book!

MARY BOLEYN ACCORDING TO HISTORIANS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Boleyn

http://englishhistory.net/tudor/citizens/boleyn.html

http://englishhistory.net/tudor/monarchs/boleyn.html

MY BLOGGER BUDDIES : LARA PARMIANI, AN ITALIAN ACTRESS IN LONDON

I found  Lara on line searching for blogs about London, my second favourite city after Rome. She has called her blog London Calling and this led me to discover her world. Her irony and vivid style immediately caught my attention.Then I went back several times and I found out, little by little, how special she is. Lara Parmiani is an Italian actress living between Italy and London. She is totally bilingual and has experience in film, TV, theatre and voice over. She's even a published writer.

I thought it would be nice to let you all know her and her work in my space dedicated to MY BLOGGER BUDDIES : WOMEN, READERS, WRITERS , FRIENDS and , from today on, also … ACTRESSES!

So, Lara, it is a bit strange to speak English between us since we are both Italian but, as my readers are mostly English speakers, we’ll have to do it. And it seems you don’t have any problem at all! First let me say it’s a great pleasure to have you as a guest on my blog . Then, I’d like to start by asking ... you live and work in England, in London. When did you start and why?

Like most things in my life living in London wasn’t really a decision, it kind of happened little by little. After graduating from Accademia Dei Filodrammatici – the oldest drama school in Italy – I started auditionning for theatre shows and films; but most castings were fake, talent wasn’t really the main factor... I did lots of “dubbing”, some children TV and a couple of shows but I felt condemned to being just a “voice in the shadow”. Not that I don’t like voice over work, it’s fun, but I wanted more. But all doors were shut. I’m 1mt55, flat chested and I’ve always looked way younger than my age. Quite intellectual and a feminist... Not exactly the type that’s so popular in Rome!

By the way Maria Grazia, you mention Rome as your favorite city, well, I’m afraid I equal Rome with hell. A place for lost souls, corruption and sin. I hate it. Of course it’s beautiful but it’s so fake, so rotting, nothing works, nobody takes you seriously, and it’s still terribly provincial. Then one summer, I think in 1994, my singing teacher, who was from London, suggested I should do a short musical theatre course at Central School of Speech and Drama, just as an experience. I’m also a singer so I thought it’d be fun. I had only been in London once before, in 1986, on an EF language holiday and I’d found it a bit scary, full of punks and skinned heads. But when I arrived in 1994 I immediately felt so free and happy. Free even in the silliest things. For instance, I’ve an insane passion for clothes, but not for labels, for original, creative stuff; in Italy everyone wears the same style, colour, shape, they’re all obsessed with labels...

In Britain people play with clothes, create an image, have fun, experiment, mix second hand with couture, charity shop stuff with H&M, their granny’s hats with Topshop... I adored that! And of course the theatre scene was amazing, shows at every corner, and actors seemed to get much more respect than in Italy. However, I didn’t dare just saying, ok, I’m going to give up on everything and move here. It’s not me. I’m like an octopus, very rooted to the place I belong to, like a turtle who needs to carry her whole world with her on her back... I wanted to be in London but also to make sure it wouldn’t be a traumatic cut, that I could still go back, that I wouldn’t loose “my” people and also the only secure source of income I had: dubbing. So I went back to Milan and for a year I studied English at the British Council while continuing with my voice over work. Then in 1997 I returned to London and spent two months here. Then back to Milan, then again back to London. Then to Milan and back... For about 3 or 4 years I lived like that, as a commuter so to speak. In late 1999 I got my first part in a show, it was a musical, The King and I. So I stayed longer. I rented a proper room in an absurd house that I shared with absurd people... But even after that, I never stopped “commuting”, even though I would be gradually spending more time in the UK than Italy. By 2002 instead of being a Milanese who visited London once a month I had become a Londoner who visited Milan once a month. But it was so gradual that even my friends and family didn’t really notice that I wasn’t living in Italy anymore!!!

Even now that I own my own flat in London I keep returning to Milan at least once a month to “dub” cartoons and of course my dear GUIDING LIGHT (Sentieri in Italian. It’s going to end forever!!! In the US it’s already closed! How am I going to live without Lizzie Spaulding???) Sometimes it’s tiring, but it allows me to keep in touch with friends and family and to keep being considered as one of the voices of Italian TV, which is quite important professionally. (Listen to Lara/Lizzie in this clip)

2. What are the pros and cons of living in London?

London is one of the most truly multicultural cities in the world, and this is great. In Italy, even the most open minded people are somehow suspicious of what’s “different”. A stupid example: most Italians only eat Italian food. In London, when somebody takes you out for dinner, they always ask “which kind of food would you like tonight?” Because it’s normal that once you eat Thai, once Indian, once American, once Italian etc. More seriously, many Italians, at least the ones over the age of 25, don’t have friends who belong to different cultures, races, backgrounds. This generates prejudice. In London people come from everywhere. No matter where you work, your colleagues will be Asian, Oriental, African, West Indians. If a black man and a white woman walk hand in hand, nobody stares at them. If two men kiss in the street, nobody cares. Same with two women. I think every young Italian person should spend a compulsory year here, a sort of military service to open the mind. As an artist, London offers so much. It is a crucible of ideas, people, trends, because of this feeling of freedom, and this absence of preset rules. Of course London has also many problems. Public services are terrible – hospitals, schools, public transport... I don’t know why foreigners thinks the UK is this perfect place where everything works, well, perhaps in Victorian times, but try and get an urgent medical appointment, or try and cross the city by Tube at the weekend and you’ll change your mind immediately! But what worries me the most is seeing how social and moral values have almost disappeared in certain areas of society, leading to broken families, the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the Western world, and gang culture. The idea of tight communities where people look out for each other – like in Italy – doesn’t exist in London. Italian families can be a bore sometimes, everyone wants to know your business, but they offer a strong social, emotional and financial infrastructure.

Last year hundreds of kids were victim of knife crimes. 30% of kids between 11 and 15 get regularly drunk more than once a week. Alcholism is a problem even among “grown up” people, rich people, in the City, among bankers, if you don’t drink you’re an outsider for instance. On the personal relationships side, London is so huge, it might take up to 2 hours to cross it. It can be very tiring. It makes keeping relationships very hard. The British are not very open, they’re kind but keep to themselves, they don’t talk to you, which for a foreigner can be hard, as one can feel very isolated. And the weather personally drives me insane, even though it’s not true London is cold, for instance ( it’s much milder than Milan), and it’s not true that in London it rains all the time. The problem is, London is cold and rainy at the WRONG time of the year! In winter one has very dry lovely day, and in July and August it keeps raining. It makes me want to kill somebody! From April through October is pretty much the same season, which is so sad. I miss summer!!! Hot hot hot summer.

In general, lots of people come to London looking for dreams, for themselves, for a better life, but often they find solitude and disappointment. It’s typical of all big metropolis. There are lots of angry people around.

2. When did you understand you WERE an actress?

Writing and performing have been part of my life since I was little, so there was never a question of me becoming a doctor or working in an office. Both my parents have always taught me that work shouldn’t be just a way to make money but a way to express your best qualities, do something good, achieve fullfillment. I think acting – like writing – isn’t just a job. It’s an addiction, something you feel you NEED to be doing. Actors are the only people who’re always happier when they work than when they’re on holiday... It’s like the best part of you comes out when you’re out there being somebody else. It’s weird, we’re probably mentally sick... I was a very shy child and I loved playing on my own pretending to be somebody else. I know most kids do it but I took it to quite an extreme level, in my head I was always somebody else living somewhere else, even when I ate or slept... my mum wanted to take me to a therapist! Every day, after school, I’d return home, have lunch and then play the Zecchino D’Oro record. We had a little platform in the sitting room and I’d step on it and perform every single song, each with a different voice and movements as I was pretending to be different kids.

This EVERY SINGLE DAY for about 5 years. But other than that I was painfully shy, so it was a real shock for my relatives when I announced I wanted to be an actress. They’re all such exhibitionists, especially in my mother’s family, my aunt was a stage actress and exactly what you’d expect from one: hystrionic, loud, always at the centre of the attention. My mother is the same. My grandfather used to stand up in the middle of Sunday lunch and recite poems... At every gathering there was always somebody imposing their performances on the rest of the family... And it was never the kids, which would have been normal and cute, it was always the adults, which was so embarassing! So when I told them I wanted to act, they laughed. I was the intellectual of the family, the little clever one with top marks in Ancient Greek and Literature... They didn’t know that by the age of 18 I’d had my two “epiphanies”, ie The Tempest at Piccolo teatro and – brace yourself – FAME... I loved FAME, I taped it and re-watch it to learn all the lines. I was obsessed by it. The Tempest directed by Strelher was another big thing. Giulia Lazzarini as Ariel was dancing in the air and everything was so magical. I thought, I want to be her. I want to live in this magical world, pretend to be so many different people. I’ve never been good at keeping my feet on the ground.

3. What are the works you’ve done so far you love most? And the one you dream about?

I really enjoyed the King and I, as it was such a fun musical and my first. It was also very interesting being part of the BBC series “He knew he was right” as it was such a huge set, with all those costumes, and people running around. And I had my own driver who picked me up in the morning! Very posh... I dream about doing Chechov with a great director. I know I’ll never work with my idol Peter Brook as he’s too old and I’m too unknown, but my goal is to work at that level, with that amount of passion. And I’d love to do a film with Meryl Streep of course. Just to watch her and learn. She’s amazing.

4. What are you currently doing?

Lots of things at the same time as usual. Apart from my usual dubbing, I’m rehearsing a show for Prague International Festival with a very interesting company called Beautiful Confusion. I’m very excited about it, as it’s a devised piece inspired by the book “The world’s wife” by poet laureat Carol Ann Duffy. The poems are brilliant, each in the voice of the wife of a famous character (some are contemporary, some mythological, some historical etc). I truly reccommend it if you don’t know it, it’s quite a feminist book but also full of irony, fun and tragedy. I’m also working at another couple of projects with my company, LegalAliens. I’m finishing a film course that I attend every weekend as I’d like to do more camera work and it’s been quite inspirational. I prefer theatre to cinema, but the more I learn about camera technique the more I manage to enjoy it. Sometimes I go to the cinema and I just “study” actors. Usually it’s Meryl Streep, who’s by far the one with the most incredible technique. And of course I’m still hoping to finish my collection of short stories... And there’s my blog, that gets often neglected....

5. People who visit my blog love books, especially classics. What about you? What kind of reader are you ? What are your favourite authors and books?

I like contemporary British-American writers. I tend to identify with their voices. I don’t read just as a past-time, I read looking for a “dialogue” with the book, its authors, its characters. A book must “speak” to me. My favourite authors are writers that I feel somehow in contact with, as if one could establish a real relationship through the words of a book, a relatinship that goes beyond time and space. Foscolo talked about “corrispondenza di amorosi sensi...” There are some great female writers I love like Ann Pratchett (Run and Belcanto are fantastic books), Lionel Shriver (We need to talk about Kevin is one of the most compelling books I’ve read in the past 10 years), Carol Shields, Anne Tyler, Joyce Carol Oates... They manage to talk about “big things” through very small, every day stories. I used to love Hanif Kureishi, especially his tales of lost men in grim contemporary London, but recently he’s become repetitive. Same for Mc Ewan, I prefer his early work. I appreciate the American Paul Aulster and of course Philip Roth. I love also some Japanese writers like Kazuo Ishiguro, and Murakami. There’s something surreal and melancholic about their writing. I’m currently reading “Half a yellow sun” by a Nigerian writer - another beautiful book. I haven’t read the classics in a very long time I must confess. I love them, I read all Jane Austen, George Eliot etc when I first arrived in England but, as I said, I now prefer books whose symbolism and message can throw a ray of light on my life, whose main characters I can identify with.

Therefore novels about 18/19th century maids looking for the perfect marriage, however fun and beautifully written, aren’t at the top of my list! My favourite books of all times are To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (I have a sort of idolatry for Woolf that verges on obsession), Catcher in the Rye and Carver’s short stories. Salinger is the author that made me discover you can talk about very serious stuff with a very light touch. It’s what I hope to do with my writing. I don’t really read contemporary Italian literature and I’m embarassed to say so. I find it often too “old fashioned” in terms of style, at other times too “clever” (like the author is trying to prove his originality) and often its themes are repetitive. Do we really want to read about another 30 years old person going through a crisis? Or another anorexic child with self harming tendencies? It’s so depressing and it doesn’t say anything new. The only authors I really respect are Carofiglio and Camilleri, but they’re not exactly young and new. Mazzantini is talented, but a bit too melodramatic. The only new tendency I find interesting in Italian literature is the re-discovery of ancient stories rooted in very specific places and told using local language, even dialect. “Mille anni che son qui”, set in Matera in the 19th century, is very good.

6. You are also a writer. Then tell us something about your writing.

I started writing and reading at 4 years old and never stopped, really. Writing has always been a part of me, I kept a diary for years and years, and perhaps because it’s such an intimate and special part of my life I never really tried to find a job where I would be “forced” to write, like journalism or script writer. Even though I’d like to have more stuff published sometimes I think that if I had a publisher and an agent and the pressure to write a book a year I’d stop enjoying it... When I started writing “seriously” in my 20s, I used to write poetry. I was influenced by Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson, by Alda Merini and other “tormented souls”... Some of the stuff I came up with wasn’t bad, but it was mainly a way to express my “angst”, my frustration and unhappiness rather than a research on words, sounds, rythms. I love images, I love writing through images, and in that sense my writing is poetic. But real Poetry is more than pure imagery. It’s precision of rythms, assonances, its’ painstaking search for the right sound, noun, verb. It required almost mathematical precision and endless concentration. I’m too “random” for that. Too undisciplined. My attention span is quite short. I’m either good at something straight away or I quit. I’m not the type that will spend a week on a verse, it’d run me mad. I’ve done it occasionally with my short stories, I can hear the narrating voice in my head while I write – almost a voice over reading aloud my words – and if the rythm doesn’t work I get stuck and frustrated and I can’t continue until I found the right sentence. But with poetry every verse is like that and it’d drive me insane. For a while I was stuck, trying to understand what to write. I had lots of stories in me but I feared they weren’t important enough, that nothing happened and that my voice was too light and ironic, unable to express real drama, violence, passion. I had this idea that to be a great writer one had to be “profound” and talk about big things. Salinger was a great discovery. He saved me! He talked about very important, personal, universal stuff, but without ever loosing lightness, without doing a close-up on tragedy. I realised that there were a series of American writers who didn’t write sagas, just little moments of life. Carver, for instance. Joyce Carol Oates. Also my dear Virgina Woolf, despite being a totally different writer, always managed to keep a sense of detachment and irony. I realised that small details can tell as much as an epic scene. That nothing is purely mundane. My first collection of stories was called “Con minime varianti” and was never published as a collection even though a couple of stories appeared on Italian magazines. When I came to England I went to a period of silence. From time to time I’d write a short story in Italian, but being surrounded by a new language meant I didn’t know how to speak anymore. How to write. It’s so weird moving abroad. You have to learn how to speak again, like a toddler. They say children from bilingual parents don’t speak as early as other kids as they need some time to find their bearings, to realise they can actually speak two languages. It was like that for me. Then, all of a sudden, one day I opened my computer and started writing in English. At first it was frustrating. It was like painting with less colours, I knew WHAT I wanted to write but sometimes I didn’t have the right word to express it. But one can discover many things from being limited. Every word becomes a struggle, so every word becomes important. I weigh it, I consider it, I make sure it’s right. It’s not like writing in Italian. There’s no mocking about, there’s no writing without thinking. My acting and my writing are deeply related in this respect. When I acted in Italian sometimes, if I was tired, I could just “say” words, counting on my technique to come up with the right intonation. When I act in English, I can’t loose focus or I’d say the wrong thing. I always have to make sure I’m saying the right word, so every word becomes important, as it comes from deep inside. The difficulty of speaking in a different language made me a better actress, more grounded, exactly like having a more limited vocabulary has made me a better writer, I believe. And I discovered that I was full of interesting stories to tell, stories I’d taken for granted. Milan in the 70s, the industrial suburbs, the factories, the “Italian Stalingrad” where I grew up, the greyness of my city, terrorism... But also my mad family members, children games played in concrete little courtyards. An Italy that isn’t the stereotype foreigners have in mind. No latin lovers on scooters, no sunny Tuscany, no mafia, no green countryside and beautiful buildings. And then I discovered I had a series of stories related to the many lost souls I’ve met in London... So I came up with the idea of putting together a collection divided in two parts: stories set in contemporary London and stories set in Italy in the 70s and 80s. Don’t ask me when it’ll be finished because I don’t know...

I started the blog, London Calling,  about 2 and a half years ago. I wanted to share my experience of a foreigner living in London. I’d like to be more consistent. Or perhaps choose some themes. I’m open to suggestions!!

7. Many of the people who drop by or regularly read my blog have an interest in period drama and costume films, just like me. What about you? Have you ever worked in a period drama or film? Would you like to do it?

As I told you, I worked in “He knew he was right” for the BBC. Brilliant! But in the editing they cut most of my scenes!!!! I shot for two weeks in Orvieto and one week at Elstree Studios in London... And all that was left was one scene where I just nodded a couple of times to my “master” (I was the peasant maid from Italy with pre-raphaelite looks...) and then said “no signore...” How disappointing! Well, better than Kevin Costner who in his first film, The big chill, saw all his scenes cut and just appeared as a corpse!!!

(Lara as Maria in He Knew He was Right)

8. Listen Lara… Ehm … I’ve recently discovered that the majority of the visits I receive here on Fly High are due to another interest of mine: neither books nor costume drama. You know, I write a weekly post about a colleague of yours who is quite popular in the blogosphere and the Net in general. He is not famous in Italy,  I just  happened to discover him by chance in 2008, buying a DVD from Amazon UK.  I wanted to use it in my Victorian classes: BBC North and South 2004. Have you ever heard of … Richard Armitage? … Met him?

Do you know?  You’d be great in a costume drama with him!

I wouldn' t mind that! I know who Richard Armitage is but had no idea he had many fans, to be honest. He’s not among those British stars famous for being attractive. He’s one of those lucky actors who can boast some solid work, but I’m sure he can shop at Tesco’s without having crowds of women trying to rip his clothes off! Anyway, should I bump into him at Tesco’s, I’ll give him your regards...

Are you sure ladies  wouldn't notice this tall handsome guy shopping at Tesco's? I'd bet on it.

So you don’t know he has his own Army on line ( I’m not in the Army, neither the Armitage Army, since I am a convinced and committed pacifist), counting thousands of fans all over the world? You should check, anyhow. And, please Lara, if you should actually meet Richard -at Tesco's or anywhere else - give him my regards and best wishes. BTW, he is not loved by his fans for being attractive only but also extremely talented and extraordinarily hard-working, modest, humane and generous.

Now Lara, thank you for answering my questions and GOOD LUCK with your work. I’ll wait for you here. Not in Rome, then, but in my small town, Subiaco. They have shot lots of films here (i.e. Metello, Elisa Di Rivombrosa, Il grande sogno, Baciami ancora). Maybe … one day… Never say never!

Lara's official site

Lara at voice123

Lara's acting company

Lara on Facebook