Bob Dylan
Christmas in the Heart
Columbia Records 88697 57323 2
Making an album of Christmas music would seem to be about as middle-of-the-road and as polite and inoffensive a project as a singer could have. So it would seem. But when Bob Dylan decided to announce the release of his forthcoming Christmas album, it got the online critics’ fires a-blazing!
Julius Caesar
The Courtyard Theatre, Stratford
3rd September 2009
Tonight, I watched David Troughton in a repeat of the BBC light drama, New Tricks. Troughton is an actor with a distinguished Shakespearean pedigree and he carried off the TV role with aplomb and class.
The Winters Tale
RSC at the Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon
23rd July 2009
The RSC have put together a new ensemble which will work on a number of productions between now and 2011. If these first fruits are anything to go by, it promises to be a very good run indeed.
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Courtyard Theatre, Stratford Upon Avon
As You Like It
23rd of April 2009
In 2007, Neil Bartlett directed a version of “Twelfth Night” for the RSC which held tightly together in the first half of the performance but tended to be more unwieldy after the interval as the drama led us out into countryside celebrations and a hippy-chic interpretation of some of the songs in the second half. It was bright, colourful but a little too flamboyant for its own good. Watching Michael Boyd’s take on “As You Like It” at the Courtyard in Stratford-Upon-Avon, I began to wonder if this production was going to fall into the same problems. Tight and precisely directed in the city action of the first scenes, a little too wild in places as the action transferred to the forest in later scenes.
Thursday Night, 12 March 2009
The Tempest by William Shakespeare
RSC Courtyard Theatre, Stratford
Another night with the RSC and another lesson in handling Shakespeare when the director wants to “discover” a flavour of a modern theme in the midst of the script. Janice Honeyman believes that The Tempest will speak powerfully to the world of European Colonialism and African slavery. I believe that her direction and the text’s natural moral direction are at odds with each other and that her insistence on making this idea central to the production may have swamped the play just as badly as Alonso’s ship is swamped by Prospero’s magic.
Edward Bennett as Hamlet
In Hamlet, the RSC have, by far, their best production of the year. Last night at the Novello Theatre, an enthusiastic audience rose to their feet in standing ovation to reward the actors on the conclusion of an oustanding performance.
On Friday, I was in Stratford-Upon-Avon, once more, for the Royal Shakespeare company’s latest production of Romeo and Juliet. It has been an interesting year for the RSC with receipts up because of David Tennant’s involvement in Hamlet and Love’s Labour’s lost but some mixed reviews and varying quality and conceptualisation of productions.
Love’s Labour’s Lost
RSC
Courtyard Theatre
Stratford-Upon-Avon
30th October 2008
I keep wanting to say that is an ordinary production….. but that isn’t true. In fact, in many ways, the production is extraordinary. The stage design, the colours, the movement are all of a very high standard indeed. I don’t even get to say that David Tennant was either extremely good or extremely bad. His performance as Berowne is run-of-the-mill, no better, no worse, albeit very good in parts.
Well, back from 4 days in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
What can I say? The town is a mess. The unnecessary vigour to tear down the old theatre and replace it with a new one as now spread to the Bancroft Gardens. Every inch seems to have been dug over and turned to mud. Fences and scaffold surround everywhere in sight and I felt sorry for those who had travelled from France and Japan (seemed like the only two kind of tourists in evidence!) who had made a long journey and who were missing the old town at its best.
(This was the original title. When it was published elsewhere, my editor chose to retitle the piece “Bob Dylan: The Spiritual Journey of a 20th Century Icon” which was not what I wanted AND rather seemed to miss my point)
When Leon Patillo was converted in the late seventies, the Christian music industry and its press was full of the news of the conversion of “Santana’s lead singer”. Those who are familiar with the music of Santana will know that the band revolves around and is named for its guitarist and has used a mammoth amount of vocalists over the last 30 years. But the facts don’t always get in the way of Christian reporting and a good story when it sees one.
Patillo may now only merit a footnote in the history of Contemporary Christian music but his launch into the Christian marketplace and its subculture was indicative of something that was going to happen time and time again in the late 70s and early 80s. The church had come to believe that celebrity converts in some ways added to the validity of the gospel. Perhaps if it waved the flag hard enough and high enough and showed that someone famous believed then those who didn’t would be persuaded by celebrity testimony.
Perhaps it was symptomatic of the times. It was the opening of an era in church life which was heavily influenced by the Vineyard fellowship, John Wimber and his teachings. The argument went something like this – if people see marvellous works of God then they would be persuaded of the validity of the gospel and accept Christ. Leaving aside troubling comments of Christ that suggested it was an adulterous generation that looked for a sign and that people would not be persuaded even if someone was raised from the dead, whatever the weaknesses of the theology and the theory of the church, the Vineyard movement would make a lasting impression on the church for the next two decades, until the passing of Wimber, its most persuasive advocate.
Which brings us to Bob Dylan. Not only was Dylan the height of the cult of the celebrity convert, his conversion occurred whilst he was under the auspices of the Vineyard movement. After his conversion, Dylan immediately began to record exclusively gospel songs and began to perform in concert in a way that was out of keeping with the first twenty years of his career. Someone who previously had needed to be encouraged to say “Thank You” between songs and who evaded questions presented by the press, now began to preach sermons about Armageddon and give interviews about his new found faith. Sometimes he was booed and heckled whilst on stage whilst others talked about it all being “a phase”. In 1982, he reverted to type refusing to talk about much of anything once more. He left Vineyard, began to study Scripture, occasionally with the Jewish Lubavitch sect, and declined to host a gospel music awards show. The church that had a use for Dylan’s celebrity now had no use for him. His 1983 album “Infidels” was searched by the Christian press for the expected disowning of the Christian faith and when none came the religious press paid less and less attention to each subsequent Dylan album. The Dylan Christian era was over, it seemed.
twilightdawning 