Punchdrunk: The Drowned Man

Have you ever seen nature inside out? When the sun stands at midday and it's as if the world was going up in flames?

Step into the world of Temple Pictures where the Hollywood studio system meets a forgotten hinterland filled with dreamers who exist at the fringes of the movie industry. Here, celluloid fantasy clings to desperate realism and certainty dissolves into a hallucinatory world.

Inspired by Buchner's fractured masterpiece Woyzeck, this theatrical journey follows its protagonists along the precipice between illusion and reality.

You would be forgiven for thinking wtf does that mean when you read the above blurb for immersive theatre company Punchdrunk's latest spectacle - The Drowned Man. To be honest you would be forgiven for thinking wtf when you get to the end of the entire evening, having absolutely no idea what you just witnessed. But lord this is good.

Call me cynical but normally I'm a little sceptical of people who tell me how much they 'loved' some weird modern arty theatrical performance because I always slightly think they're worried their cool-points will plummet if they say they didn't like it and had no idea what was going on. This time, though, I was intrigued.

For those who don't know, a little summary. Firstly, you all have to put on Venetian-style white masks so that suddenly you become completely anonymous and it's almost impossible to recognise your friends or they you. Once inside, the whole building becomes the dark (quite literally) world of Temple Pictures and its surrounding grounds. It is absolutely vast. 

Floor after floor with different sets, secret passageways, characters' private rooms where you can rummage about their papers and diaries etc, while all the time actors run amongst you playing out scenes. One moment you could be watching a romantic moment between two lovers, before you find yourself in a seedy bar with drunken cowboys threatening each other.

How on earth do you even begin to tackle such a huge project. The answer is of course completely up to you. Some choose to follow an individual character who will, inevitably, introduce you to other people, other floors, other sets as they move around the building. Others follow friends. Some people stick to just a couple of floors and never even find the other sets. Personally I went off on my own. Being the nosey person I am, I went off looking for secret passageways, details written in letters inside characters' dressing rooms, watching random scenes as I came across them. It's a voyeur's dream and I have to say it concerned me a little how easily I slipped into this role...

Sadly I didn't come across many secret passageways... clearly I'm not practiced enough at snooping... but I know some people found themselves whisked away by strange actors desperate to make them famous or being chatted up by a discerning young gentleman...

If you keep wondering around you will eventually discover the bar... completely in the 1940s Hollywood style, you get swept up in the glitz and glamour. It is also the only place in the entire building where you can take off your masks and are allowed to talk to people. Having lost my friends I stumbled across the bar, got myself a glass of wine and found myself getting into deep discussion with a completely random man I'd never met before. There's something so brilliant about that. Like when you're a bit tipsy and get into some weird conversation with a strange person but with all the excitement of the setting and again surrounded by actors carrying on in character. 

The experience is amazing and I would recommend it to anyone but I would give a little advice:

1. Definitely read the brief outline of the play that they hand out in the queue.
2. Don't get too het up with working out the story and what each scene is trying to do because inevitably you will come out with no idea what just happened.
3. For this reason, split up with your friends and then afterwards go for a drink and share your experiences - you can start to then piece together the story a bit more for yourself (or just get really jealous that your friend found a secret passageway through a fridge or trapdoor or some other awesomeness.

Eleanor Catton wins Man Booker Prize

So last year Hilary Mantel set a number of Man Booker Prize records and 2013 has seen two more records broken as 28 year-old Eleanor Catton becomes both the youngest winner of the Man Booker Prize and her book the longest, at 872 pages (I think we can safely say that challenges my 400 page rule...).

Eleanor Catton is the second New Zealander to win the prize. Keri Hulme won in 1985 with her novel, The Bone People - another case of book sat on my shelf that I haven't yet got round to reading.

Catton apparently started writing The Luminaries three years ago and 872 pages later we have a Victorian murder-mystery set during the gold rush:

It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a whore has tried to end her life, and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely patterned as the night sky. The Luminaries is an extraordinary piece of fiction. It is full of narrative, linguistic and psychological pleasures, and has a fiendishly clever and original structuring device. Written in pitch-perfect historical register, richly evoking a mid-19th century world of shipping and banking and goldrush boom and bust, it is also a ghost story, and a gripping mystery. It is a thrilling achievement for someone still in her mid-20s, and will confirm for critics and readers that Catton is one of the brightest stars in the international writing firmament.

Catton was up against, as always, a stellar line-up of novels and writers: A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki, Harvest by Jim Crace, The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri, The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin and We Need New Names by Noviolet Bulawayo. Although The Luminaries was not the favourite to win (Harvest by Jim Crane was considered the more likely candidate), critics seem to be pleased - that's got to be a first?

2013 marks the end of an era when it comes to the Man Booker Prize. Up until now the prize has been open to Commonwealth countries and Ireland only. Next year they're letting the Americans in... who knows if the Cattons and Mantels can stand up to the likes of Jonathan Franzen and Donna Tartr... we'll see. We'll also see if I ever get round to reading The Luminaries... I do hope so.

Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan

The year is 1972. The Cold War is far from over. Britain is being torn apart by industrial unrest and terrorism. Serena Frome, in her final year at Cambridge, is being groomed for MI5.

Serena is sent on a secret mission - Operation Sweet Tooth - which brings her into the world of Tom Haley, a promising young writer. First she loves his stories, then she begins to love the man. Can she maintain the fiction of her undercover life? And who is inventing whom? To answer these questions, Serena must abandon the first rule of espionage - trust no one.

Sweet Tooth is the latest novel from Booker-winner Ian McEwan. All the things we love about McEwan are in this book - strong character voice, a couple of clever twists and turns to keep things moving, an intellectual narrative and beautiful writing. I have to say, though, that something was missing for me. Unhelpfully I don't quite know what.

It's one of those books where there was nothing to stop me finishing it and when I came to the end I could say, 'yes, I enjoyed that' but did I love it? Not really. Perhaps if there had been a bit of a longer build up and less long on the Tom Haley thread? But then if that had happened, would that have prevented me from caring about what happened to Serena?

What I did really enjoy about this book was the intellectual side. McEwan's characters are very intelligent and so the conversations they share reflect that. If I were honest with myself, I'd probably struggle to keep up with them in some cases and I'm 99% sure I wouldn't be a good recruit for the secret services but I did like taking a back seat and watching Serena climb the academic ladder, learn all she could from Tony and I took a little pleasure in seeing her confound Tom Haley with intricate mathematical problems. And even though I'm sure McEwan took similar pleasure when it came to constructing his ending, I have to allow him that - I didn't quite see it coming (and that's not something I ever like to admit... hence the addition of the word 'quite' in that sentence...).

I couldn't help but compare this novel to Restless by William Boyd - a very different war but nevertheless an exploration of the British secret service against a fascinating backdrop of international secrets with a ballsy woman at the helm and both, of course, written by some of the country's most talented and successful writers. The other similarity, though, was the disappointment factor although, if I had to pick, I would say Sweet Tooth pipped Restless to the post as, to me, Serena appealed that little bit more than Ruth.

This book gets a 7/10 from me.

Super Thursday 2013

One of my big secrets in life is that I'm a celebrity nut. Ok, so that sounds like a giant cashew or something but hopefully you get my meaning. I love all the Hollywood gossip even though I know the Metro's Guilty Pleasures section, ONTD and Perez Hilton are all gradually destroying each of my braincells one by one. When it comes to celebrity autobiographies like Jennifer Saunders' yesterday, though, sometimes I wonder if there are just too many.

Today is what publishing folk like to call Super Thursday. It's the day (usually a Thursday funnily enough) when all the big books of the autumn are released. The ones that will be sat under the tree in, publishers hope, millions of houses on Christmas Day and all ultimately dreaming that they will be the ones to beat Jamie fricking Oliver to the number 1 spot.

Just some of the books hitting the shelves today include autos by Jennifer Saunders, Sharon Osbourne, David Jason, John Bishop, Mo Farah, Rachel Khoo and Harry Redknap. Leading the fiction is, of course, Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones sequel, Mad About the Boy.

Back to the biographies, though, I have to say I feel relieved that this year shows people who have actually lived more than 18 years. That aside, though, I wonder whether these people have anything interesting to say. Admittedly I'm only in my twenties but the thought of putting together a book about my life bores me, let alone the poor idiots who read it. For instance, Sharon Osbourne - this is her third auto. I'm sure her life is far more interesting than mine but is it really three times more interesting?

Anyway, it seems celebrity autobiographies and cookbooks will continue to be published in their masses - we'll just have to see which ones actually fly.

Bonkers: Jennifer Saunders at the Royal Festival Hall

Jennifer Saunders can now add 'wrote a probably bestselling autobiography', 'interviewed by Clare Balding' and 'filled out the Royal Festival Hall' to her disgustingly long list of achievements. Doesn't she think someone else might like a chance?

Jennifer Saunders is the latest of a series of comedians to turn their mind to writing a book. Not fiction like friend and co-writer, Dawn French, but a long-awaited autobiography. Bonkers: My Life in Laughs will be released tomorrow on Super Thursday but last night Saunders gave the Royal Festival Hall a taster. The book will give us an insight into everything from writing her award-winning comedy series to battling breast cancer.

Jennifer Saunders recounted a series of anecdotes that had the whole hall shaking with laughter and Clare Balding charmingly kept everything moving along brilliantly, batting away a few awkward moments with ease.

I wasn't 100% sure of the best way to blog about this event - I obviously don't want to give you a blow by blow account of every story Saunders told... largely because I can't even begin to tell them as well as her... but I have to say, that really was the structure of the evening. I wouldn't say Saunders was a natural conversationalist but you're nothing but a cold, dull fish if you didn't enjoy the evening. I have concluded that the best way to sum up the evening was to tell you what I took away from it and that way you may also get an idea of the book...

1. Jennifer Saunders is a massive country music fan, loves Dolly Parton and has actually met her. Not sure if I've been more jealous.

2. All showbiz success stories start with living room performances to a reluctant audience. I just knew I should have kept up those impromptu Abba concerts I gave...

3. Everyone has a terrifying teacher at school but Saunders' headmistress (who was actually taken to court by parents for excessive caning of their mischievous teen) might help us heal at least a little of our own emotional bruising from simply terrifying teachers.

I guess my final point has to be whether I will buy the book. My answer is - not in hardback (only JK can make me do that) but the paperback must be worth buying just for Saunders' generous supply of hilarious photos, including some fantastic early French and Saunders shots...