Amadeus

Director's Notes on Amadeus by Peter Shaffer

Mr Anthony

During her eleven-year tenure as Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher attended only one production at Britain’s National Theatre: a performance of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus. 

Poster for the original RNT production of Amadeus in 1979, designed by Richard Bird and Michael Mayhew

She described it as a 'filthy play' and upbraided director Peter Hall for depicting Mozart as a scatological imp with a love of four-letter words. When Hall pointed out that Mozart’s correspondence was laced with lavatorial flourishes (a missive to his cousin, Marianne, is touchingly signed off: 'by the love of my skin, I shit on your nose, so it runs down your chin'), Thatcher held her ground: 'It is not possible,' she insisted, 'not from someone who could create works of such beauty. It cannot be so.'

Simon Callow as Mozart in the original RNT production

World Book Day

It's World Book Day! And LGBTQ+ History Month!! And International Women's Day (on Sunday)!!! To quote Lorelei Lee in Gentleman Prefer Blondes, 'things keep on happening all the time'. We can't keep up.  

We've got a couple of recommendations for LGBTQ+ History month in a moment, but first, a reminder to check out the Kayton Library's celebration of reading for World Book Day (and International Year of Reading).  You can't have missed the magnificent Bookflix posters all around the school, blazoned with reading suggestions from teachers, prefects, Polecon, the Boat Club. If you want something a bit more targeted, try the librarians' 'Round the World in 80 Days' challenge. With just under 80 days left in the school year, can you read a book from every continent? You can pick up a booklet with suggestions for each location from the library: stickers and Haribo for every continent you tick off.  

And if you fancy something more substantial (and possibly even healthier) than inter-continental Haribos, you can win Nando's vouchers in the library's annual 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?' quiz. Outside the library, there's a table laid for several mystery, literary guests: can you work out who they are? If you want some tips, have a look at last year's quiz (and the answers) here: have fun!  

Meanwhile, some suggestions for LGBTQ+ History Month.  

Wound from the Mouth of a Wound by torrin a. greathouse

Recommended by Mr Gardner

This prize-winning collection of poetry, published in 2021, presents an extraordinary and at times quite explicit poetic exploration of the bodily. Whilst the collection is most striking for its focus on visceral suffering, anguish and persecution, there is also joy—or at least the tantalising promise of it—in the poetry’s projection of a transfigured ideal of beauty and desire.

If you would like to read a sample of greathouse’s poetry, a poem from her most recent publication Deed is linked here.

Books of the Week

Today's books of the week are recommended by 4EN.D.

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
Recommended by Aryan Chaudhary

This is a humorous novel, and very satirical: the author writes it using shifting timelines, which can be quite difficult to follow at first. I liked the absurd aspects but did not like the non-linear structure as much. 

My favourite character was Orr, who chose to be 'insane' in order to overcome the system, and by being mad, escaped the war: he crashed many planes, but survived every time.  I would recommend this novel to people who enjoy satire, comedy and books about war, but it can be confusing at times.

Books of the Week

Today's books of the week are recommended by 5EN.A.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Recommended by Nico Mahoney Velez

I chose this book because it is a classic story about fairness, kindness, and growing up in injustice. It was recommended to me, and I wanted to read about how a small town deals with racism and justice during the 1930s. 

Book of the Week

The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan

Recommended by Cillian Bramham

The first thing about The Wheel Of Time that strikes many readers is the length of the series as a whole. Even if you do not count the prequel, New Spring or the cut chapters of River of Souls and A Fire Within the Ways, the 14 main novels come to around 15,000 pages in total. 

This means that the books can and will take up a significant portion of your time. It also leads to pacing issues throughout the novels. Whilst none of the books can be explicitly called boring, there is a section, dubbed affectionately by the community as 'the slog', between books 7-10 where nothing really happens as most of the time and events are being devoted to preparing for the novel's conclusion and wrapping up story lines. Fundamentally this series represents a commitment and whilst the payoff for this commitment is high, it nonetheless requires a great deal of time and effort to get to.

Play of the Week

The RNT's recent production of Hamlet will be streaming in cinemas across the country from tomorrow onwards. For anyone planning to watch it, here are some thoughts from Theo Katzenellenbogen, who played Claudius in the recent SPS production of Shakespeare's tragedy.  

Book of the Week

Fortunata and Jacinta by Benito Perez Galdos
Recommended by Mr Hager

Set in late 19th Century Madrid, this 1887 novel follows the lives of two extraordinary women of different classes, both linked by their love for the same man, the spoiled and self-indulgent Juanito Santa Cruz.

Jacinta is Juanito’s husband (and cousin) and their seemingly idealistic marriage is soon complicated by Jacinta’s discovery that Juanito had a pre-marital dalliance with the impossibly beautiful Fortunata, before growing bored of her, leaving her pregnant and destitute.  The shadow of Fortunata looms over Jacinta as she becomes increasingly desperate for a child herself, prompting her to take drastic action that will see her becoming involved with the poorer echelons of Madrilenian society, thrusting her into Jacinta’s orbit.

The life of mercantile Madrid is wryly catalogued in this realist novel which is regarded as Galdos’ masterpiece, and which rivals War and Peace in length.  He is spoken of in the same breath as Dickens (whose Pickwick Papers he translated in 1868), Balzac and Tolstoy.  If you enjoy novels that range across the social spectrum and which consider the lives of an enormous and memorable cast of characters, then this is the book for you.