Marcel Theroux interview for The Telegraph

Theroux: gentle

On this wet and cold May morning, warm yourselves up with my interview with Marcel Theroux. We talked Dr Johnson, doppelgangers and eternal life. His new novel, Strange Bodies, is out now. Read the interview here.

C S Lewis biography by Alister McGrath

I've reviewed Alister McGrath's new biography of C S Lewis, author of a now ignored epic poem called Dymer - oh, and something called the Narnia series. Read it here.

James McAvoy in Macbeth: review

Macbeth is a bloody play, there's no doubt about that. From the opening speeches - "What bloody man is that?" - and the captain's gory image of his "gashes" crying for help, all the way through to the usurping, murderous King's end, it's not one that lets violence happen offstage.

But it is also a play that contains poetry, and stillness, and contrast; and in this, Jamie Lloyd's relentless production at Trafalgar Studios was a touch lacking.

The action took place in a claustrophobic, bare, post-apocalyptic setting in the round, with the actors frequently breaking out of their space into the audience - James McAvoy's furious Macbeth entered rushing on his knees, whilst the porter addressed a puzzled playgoer. The setting played on the "tale told by an idiot / full of sound and fury / signifying nothing," as we were treated to something almost Beckettian in its starkness; and yet the players were constantly rocketing about the stage, spitting and screaming as if they were always on the point of death.

Everybody was covered in blood, most of the time, which (as my companion, who hadn't seen the play before) didn't do much to help identify who was who. Because of the constant barrage of decibels and speed of the speeches, the sense and beauty of the poetry was indeed reduced to sound and fury.

The production borrowed tropes from horror films: masked murderers, a zombie-like Banquo's ghost, severed heads and trapdoors (which sometimes tipped into absurdity.) And that is a problem of genre, because Macbeth is not a horror film, and reducing it to a simple matter of gore piled upon gore robs it of any sense of grandeur.

For we never got a sense that Macbeth thought about his actions. James McAvoy is an engaging actor, and clearly enjoyed strutting about the stage, packing the performance (quite literally) with some guts; but he was a psychopathic Macbeth, one for whom violence is all, not one who equivocated. Similarly, Lady Macbeth was so insane from the beginning that when she did go nuts you hardly noticed. The text was cut up too: the shock of the prophecy about Dunsinane wood was immediately spoiled by a cut in to the English soldiers being ordered to pick up trees.

Mark Quartley's Malcolm was a welcome point of calm(ish); and Jamie Ballard's Macduff produced the most emotional moment in the play, with Shakespeare's devastating line - "All my pretty chickens?" He showed a father's sheer grief and terror at the death of his family beautifully. If only he hadn't spoiled it all by screaming his revenge.

The largely young audience clearly enjoyed this Macbeth, and I suppose if enough teenagers go away thinking, well Shakespeare isn't that bad after all, then that must be positive. But I can't help wishing that the matter of the play had been allowed to breathe a little more, that the poetry had been allowed to sing. Macbeth himself becomes a poet, after all: "Light thickens / And the crow makes wing to the rocky wood." Yes, this is a play of seething terror and blackness: but blackness, in order to function properly, needs light.

Donald Antrim review for The New Humanist

Happy Easter one and all, and for your weekend reading, I give to you: my review of two Donald Antrim novels, The Hundred Brothers and Elect Mr Robinson for a Better World. Read them here.

The Lady Vanishes: Mystery on the Orient Express

Middleton and Hughes: She's over there!

Smoke, elegance, cigarettes; mysterious plots and evil doctors; imperturbable baronesses and suspiciously burly nuns. Nope, it's not some new Soho nightclub: I finally caught up with the BBC's fine remake of The Lady Vanishes.

The shuttling train provides the perfect acoustic drumming backdrop to a mystery. It's almost as if trains were built for such things: like that other hamaxostichian (ok, I’ve run out of words for train and have fallen back on the classics) mystery, Murder on the Orient Express, this made great play of the claustrophobia and disruption that railway journeys can cause.

Tuppence Middleton was Iris, the not-so-sweet ingenue who suspects something has gone awry; Tom Hughes the dashing young man who comes to believe her. The suggestions of sleazy opulence were nicely done: the beginning, with  Iris's friends (a charming Emerald Fennell, and a brilliantly boozy Daisy Lewis) providing a raucous backdrop to a seemingly idyllic Balkan holiday.

That idyll, though, is a locus amoenus where trouble will happen. When Iris decides to travel home alone, things start to seem a little loopy: at the train station, she has a fall - but was she pushed, or did she faint? Middleton did a good job of Iris' breathless confusion, moving into semi-hysterical conviction. Reflections, smoke, and, most importantly, other people's prejudices and selfishnesses, all conspired to throw her off the scent. Rather than finding herself on this exotic journey, Iris comes very close indeed to losing herself.

It's a gripping, smooth production - and very pleasing to see Julian Rhind-Tutt playing a cad for once.
And one thing the film certainly made me wish for enormously is the return of a dining car - complete with in-car-pianist. It would make a welcome change from the usual mobile phone conversations...

Home Fires by Elizabeth Day: Party

Miss Elizabeth Day

To Lincoln's Inn Fields, for the launch of Elizabeth Day's novel, Home Fires - her second, and a lovely, moving read it is too. The party took place in an officer's mess - perhaps in homage to the military theme, Elizabeth Day was in a striking red dress - and was attended by various literary types (I got told off for having a copy of Wuthering Heights in my pocket, and the London Review of Books in the other), including biographer Andrew Lycett, and novelist Sadie Jones; also present was Molly Oldfield, whose book, The Secret Museum, is hotting up displays all over London.

Home Fires looks at grief and loss: it starts with the burial of the Unknown Soldier, seen from a little girl's perspective. It's written with great clarity and intelligence, and I suggest that you go out and buy it - although as Elizabeth herself said, "it's not a beach read." Go! Buy!

Robin Robertson's Hill of Doors

Bacchus is, naturally, my favourite divine being (see The Liberators): so I was well pleased to see him play such an important part in Robin Robertson's excellent Hill of Doors, which I have reviewed for The Telegraph, here.