Roth is BAFTA bound - SPOILERS BEWARE

10 Rillington Place –Tim Roth is BAFTA bound as Reg Christie

“Treedown gotobed is a great name for a culture vulture blog” is a statement rarely heard in Kings Cross on a  sunny afternoon. In fact Ive never heard anyone say it. I regularly state it is widely read, but few believe me. How do you convince strangers that you are a successful GP if you are not. It’s a trick Tim Roth pulls off with regularity in his mesmeric performance as Reg Christie in this hypnotically watchable BBC series. Set in grim and grimey post-war London, the cul-de-sac on which Christie lives with his wife(Samantha Morton) looks just like the one in The Ladykillers. That was Battlebridge Road in N1, but there are so few scenes set outside the house and street, it is hard to tell where Rillington Place is.

Three hours is a lot of time to be on screen, and if there was one weakness in this tour de force of a production, it was the sets of the house interior. The peeling wallpaper, squalid dirt and rubbish infesting every corner, the sepia grey and brown tones were all a bit overdone. Times were tough, but a scene in Episode 3 in which a local Bobby calls round and sits on the only piece of furniture in the lounge, a chair surrounded by a few piles of clothes, rings slightly hollow. It is symbolic of Christie’s dire state, he is starting to lose control of a small world he has lorded over for so long. He has treated all comers to a list of rules like he owned the place, but only now nearing stories end are we told he is merely the oldest tenant, his landlord act just another fabrication in a long list of lies, starting with the pretence of being a doctor and war veteran, apparently gassed while in the trenches.

His defence which works so well when poor Timothy Evans is convicted and hung for one of Christie’s crimes – the murder of Evans’ wife and daughter – is what motive would this gently spoken old veteran have? Evans can come up with no explanation. Roth plays Christie as the blandest Northerner you could meet, nearly always speaking just louder than a whisper , the vocabulary littered with harmless phrases like “Ill be back in a tick”, while he vanishes into another room to attempt an abortion on another lady he has fooled. You see the psycho inside, but its only in private and all evidence is gone in a flash from his demeanour. His murder of his wife is so cold blooded, the editing seemed to deliberately shy away from the suffocating agony on Morton’s face. Suffice to say, Roth is a favourite for a BAFTA next year.

Lazarus The Musical

Lazarus The Musical

It was with trepidation we entered the vast tin can like structure erected specially for this musical event in Kings Cross. A quick listen to the songs on the internet had put us –the Bowie / Iggy hard core fans -into a panic. We happened upon one of the two schmaltzy renditions of a Bowie past glory.

“OMG – they are going to give it the full-on jazz hands, singing and dancing Lloyd Webber treatment, aren’t they?” says Bowie fan #1.

“They better not or I will stand up and start breaking things “ I replied.

It isn’t like that , thank God. The story is hard work; Newton, The Man Who Fell to Earth, built a rocket with the billions he made from his 7 major patents, in order to return to his wife and daughter in a far off planet with no water. But Man stopped him, and now he is stuck in a New York apartment, drinking and hallucinating a girl who delivers all the schmaltz there is. But there are other characters, one is called Valentine, and another is a helper who becomes besotted. Played by Amy Lennox, she is terrific, as is Michael Hall of Six Feet Under fame in the main role.

The songs are pretty good, some are even an improvement !! Its No Game came early and was wonderfully twisted, Absolute Beginners was better than the original, Changes was invigorated by a loss of temper half way through, delivered by Lennox’ character, hurling the contents of the fridge at Newton in a fury. All The Young dudes just comes out of nowhere, as do This is Not America and Always Crashing in the Same Car – this was a highlight for me. The new songs all stand up fine, fitting in seamlessly with the 70s oeuvre. Where are They Now is a song I am beginning to think is an ironic look back to Berlin, does he really care? Bowie is proud of his legacy, but it is so unlike him to look over his shoulder at the past. Iggy already did it when they were in Berlin ; Dum Dum Boys does the same thing, just 30 years earlier.Lazarus the song is similar with the line about getting to New York and living like a King. Hmm.

The performance received a standing ovation so I guess most of the audience went with it. The large screen standing stage centre could have been used better. I know they were acting their socks off, but we couldn’t see enough to tell, being so far back. When the screen did relay the on stage action, it frequently seemed to buffer, so the visual was a second behind the sound. Occasionally it was well done, the shot from above at the end, when a rocket has been drawn on the floor in tape is a nice effect. But the shots of earth from space were too little as were the story telling sequences.

Bowie was involved pretty much all the way in the production so this is what he wanted. Its pretty good, I don’t know what many of the peripheral characters were doing there, but so what? Its great to have this treat to go and see on a grey Sunday afternoon.