Pinocchio Restored!

"How do you feel?" "Squidgy." "You get used to it."

 

 Towards the end of 2022 I wrote about a few PINOCCHIO adaptations I... hadn't got on with, let's say, and about Gemma Brockis' attempts to explain to me what Collodi's book had originally been about. Yesterday, the two of us managed to catch the very last show of The Globe's Christmas adaptation (a packed Sunday matinée, featuring Lucy McCormick beaming through grief as a blue fairy) and, readers, it was beautiful. It was perfect.

 It had heart, and sense, and fun, and painted sets and giant puppets, all perfectly coordinating with the preexisting ersatz marble pillars on the Globe's thrust, and it kept surprisingly close to its episodic source material, with a lucid sympathy for its antagonists (theatre is work, and money does matter) but also an understanding that, at some point, we were owed some real nightmares.

 It also did a great job on that winter's afternoon,of drilling home just how great a sacrifice Gepetto makes exchanging his only coat for schoolbooks. I felt every hug. 

 It was no less cheering to discover afterwards that the extraordinary creative team behind all this was also responsible for the much-loved COWBOIS at the Royal Court, a show whose every choice I'd found baffling, sad, and timid. It was, in fact, healing to discover this. Lively and freeing.

 

 

Where I took the stills from.

 

 And talking of the murder of indigenous Americans: among the many Pinocchio adaptations I saw in 2022 was THIS beautiful restoration of a silent film from 1911 directed by Giulio Antamoro that included amongst its narrative tweaks a sequence about half an hour in, in which Pinocchio is rescued from the whale by "Indiani" who make him their chief but also attempt to roast Gepetto on a spit, prompting the puppet to sneak out of his teepee and seek the help of a nearby troop of pith-helmeted machine-gunners. This creative addition stopped me sharing it originally, but I'd always meant to cut a genocide-free edit so that the rest could be more easily enjoyed, and now I finally have, and here it is...

 

 

 

potential accompaniment

Your Christmas Viewing or a better title to be decided later

 

 Let's catch up. 

 On Monday I joined friends to catch The Wind in the Willows Wiltons at Wilton's Music Hall, chiefly to see Darrell Brockis as Toad; it's amazing what a really high-waisted pair of trousers can do to a man's shape. The weasels were sort of bankers now, as was the book's original author Kenneth Grahame, who resigned as Secretary of the Bank of England in 1908 after either being nearly shot in the face during an anarchist raid, or – depending on which motive you ascribe to the enforced retirement – accusing the Bank's future Governor of being "no gentleman", so I've no idea whose side he'd be on here.

 

 (I have only my parents word for it that, many Christmases ago, "Toad of Toad Hall" was the first show they ever took me to. It was the biggest room I'd ever been in. They tell me the sheer scale of the room made me whimper, then the lights lowered, and I didn't like that at all, and then old man dressed as a mole stuck his head out of a trap door and shouted "Hang white-washing!" and I howled and we left and that was it.)

 

 Pleasingly concurrent with the fortunes of Toad Hall in this production were that of the baby otter puppet, Portly: It's always nice to see the inclusion of Pan, and "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" made a lot more sense as subplot here rather than just interlude. A lovely, lively, warm evening, and Wilton's Music Hall is an exciting space to explore during an interval. Do these photographs convey that? I don't know. Badphone finally expired on Sunday, alas, but I appear to have found a replacement with just as MySpace-era a camera, which was not my intention. I'll have to start hanging around more light.

 

 On Tuesday I caught up for drinks with an old friend who told me that she can get married in Saint Paul's Cathedral, a thrilling possible future theatre project. I also found the following extraordinary performace on youtube while searching for video essays on "Brimstone and Treacle". I'd never made the connection before between Dennis Potter's fable of Satanic Home Invasion, and Mary Poppins (OR HAD I?) 

 

 

 I just wanted to write a good part for Olivia Colman.

 

 And the TKA Smith Family Conservatory of the Art's family production of Poppins sheds little light on the banned seventies teleplay. But it does throw up a blisteringly confident turn from an uncredited singer in a role I don't remember as a rival nanny with a bun of grey hair fastened inexplicably to the top of her head, which the Conservatory has liked so much they've posted twice. In case you didn't manage to catch a Christmas show yourself this year I share both versions here, not for comparison, but to be played simultaneously to see if the resulting reason-shredding resonances open a portal to anywhere.

 On Wednesday evening we performed the ante-penultimate Love Goddess at the Cockpit Theatre. The weather was milder now. The snow had gone. I didn't walk home directly. Badphone's replacement took what it could.

 

On Thursday, well, I wrote last Sunday's post, but I also learnt that that ante-penultimate show had actually been our penultimate as one of the cast had fallen ill, although testing negative for Covid. We'd planned our cast drinks for that evening however as some people had to rush off on Friday, including myself, who would have to be up early to catch a flight from Gatwick on a day of border control and train strikes. Our producer Laura had booked a table at a pub called the Pereseverance, and I hadn't left the flat all day.

 As with the long walk home on Wednesday I found a refreshing solitude in that place. The barman gave me a Guiness in a weird glass, free nuts and sample of an unnamed Christmas cocktail he'd worked on. A lot was ending. Enjoying the uniterrupted ambience, it occured to me I could just try and go straight to Gatwick after the final show though and not worry about sleeping Friday night.

 

 

 I woke at midday, feeling finally Christmassy. The last night went ahead and everything felt new, which may not be unusual for a last night. As I said from the start, everyone's lovely, and while I may not have tried so much towards the end not to be too weird, it's only because that's what happens when you get to know people.

 

 Then that stops, and there's no getting used to it. The show's over. Almog's on another continent now, and I took the Thameslink to Gatwick however many hours ago it was and found a nice, small copy of "Pinocchio" at the airport bookshop. Its tone is very Vic and Bob. In fact Bob Mortimer would make a brilliant Pinocchio. I woke on the plane surprised to see the land up at the top. 

 

 Mum met me at Montpellier just as I received the message that the cast member had now tested positive for covid after all, but that was okay because Susy's tested positive for Covid too. We made it down. That's the main thing. Dad showed us "Creature Comforts" in the cinema (because it's important to be reminded just how perfect Aardman can be...)

 

 

 Tom put on the "Bottom" Christmas special. I'm about to put the presents out. I was meant to be cacting up on sleep but appear to haev written this instead. I hope you get everything you want this Christmas, ole unatendees. 

 Here, one more time, is Orson Welles. 

 

 Big ball to stick your head in by Arthur Handy.

PinonononoNO!

 Just as Autumn was beginning, sitting in a festoon-lit beer garden on the South Bank, I got to thinking about Pinocchio, and about how much of my adulthood seemed to have been devoted to exactly the life choices he'd been told to avoid. To showbiz and hokum. I didn't know the original book very well though, so I decided to text Gemma Brockis who'd once made a touring adaptation with Silvia Mercuriali in a car, and ask her what she thought Pinocchio was actually originally about?

 Gemma answered that originally, actually, the story had ended with Pinocchio hanged. Carlo Collodi only added the blue fairy and whale-based redemption arc after the success of the initial serial prompted its expansion into a whole book. She also said it was all tied into the Risorgimento. What was that? The unification of Italy: Collodi was apparently deeply concerned with the path his new country would take, and was convinced education was the key to its prosperity. So, wait, was Pinocchio Italy, I asked? Totally, Gemma answered. 

 I dimly remembered a live action television adaptation from my childhood, and decided to see if it was online when I got home. It was. Here's a taste:

 

 Nightmarish. As most live action adaptations of Pinocchio seem to be. That fox at the top of this post is in it too. Want the whole thing? Both episodes? 

 Here!

 

  "What a horrible thing, Simon, why would you share this?" 

 Well I don't know, look, sorry. But last night I saw Netflix's new "Pinocchio" – a film Guillermo Del Toro apparently says he has wanted to make for "as long as he can remember" –  and I think it might be worse. At least the old BBC adaptation was nightmarishly bad. Despite its many nods to Frankenstein and the inclusion of Mussolini, the Del Toro version isn't even that. One of the problems might be that Del Toro said he "wanted to deviate from the original book’s themes of obeying authority by making his Pinocchio virtuous for questioning the rules and forging his own set of morals." But he doesn't, and when Pinocchio finds Gepetto in the stomach of a whale, it's not because he spent the last act of the story searching for him, but because he inexplicably and fortuitously was sent flying out of a fascist military academy by a dropped bomb. This maybe makes the film sound more fun than it is. I promise it's not fun.

 

 I'd also suggest that, if you don't like the story of Pinocchio – whatever that is – don't adapt it. I don't care Mark Kermode gave this film five stars. That's a lie, obviously I care. If anything, I care more about this film's reception than the film itself. It almost made me want to watch the Zemeckis version, to see how that could possibly be worse, although as summarised by the excellent Ryan George below it seems to share quite a few of the Netflix version's narrative malfunctions. Don't watch the Del Toro adaptation, is really all I've come on here to say, quite spitefully, or I don't know, you might love it. 

 But if you really want to watch a terrible Pinocchio adaptation this holiday, dim the lights, press "play" above, and let the screaming start.

 

FOLD YOUR ARMS (seating)

"So what did you think of the music?"

I couldn't say. I wanted a table.

And here I return belatedly to the text "It's not their job to not look stupid." (Although the easier option will always be to do what I did in the last post ie. throw some old, recently unpacked English exercises up on the net… Actually, here's another: 

 

You see, there is such a thing as having too many apples. Apparently if you start attracting tigers then you know... And what was Mrs. Burnside doing while I churned out this unchecked, speculative drivel? Counting apples. I've lost my thread now. I mean it's barely worth returning to but I might as well.) Two points really. The first:

Last Wednesday in the Shunt Lounge (an increasingly common point of reference in these posts, though not - I sympathize - a Common Point of Reference) three musicians sat improvising in a tunnel on a raised concrete plateau before a lit bank of about 200 no-frills, pull-out, flip-up seats. I think one or two of them were making exploratory noises with instruments while the other processed these on laptop. Anyway it was packed. People were blocking fire exits.
But:
Now:
If you wanted to listen to this music, you had to watch it. (Or else stand at the side and watch other people watching it.) You couldn't sit at a table or lie on your back. You had to place yourself in the socially awkward position of noisily clambering over well-dressed strangers to sit still on a hard seat, fold your arms and watch three men variously scratch, drop and tune things or stare at a laptop. Which as a performance, if you think about it, looked stupid. But only because of how everyone was seated. Do you see?

2nd point: In that same Lounge I was reunited with Silvia and Gemma who had just returned from Sardinia. They'd been invited to perform a show based on Pinnochio up in the hills. Here the paying audience were seated in a mini (and driven around) while an unpaying, unseated audience of neighbouring Sardinian hillbillies heckled, threw rocks, threatened arson and finally went to the priest who recommended a sentence of death by hanging for witchcraft. At any rate that was the verdict that reached Silvia and Gemma in a black Pinto at two o'clock in the morning. So they moved on.

I don't really know what conclusion I meant to draw from this except that, I don't know, between these two points there surely exists a happy medium.