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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 9h

“I THINK I’VE MADE MY POINT.”

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 11h

fuxake, just open it.

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 16h

The silent what?!

Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 16h

America is an insane country.

Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 1d

Here’s a primer on ‘primer.’

It’s pronounced ‘PRIMM-er’ if you mean “a small book” or “a short informative piece of writing.”

It’s pronounced ‘PRY-mer’ if you mean “an initial coat of paint.”

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 1d

But yes, Norman Conquests a good choice – or Intimate Exchanges (which I'm sure I saw, but I can't remember much about), where the play can take off in one of several prescribed directions, so you get a different sequence of events every night.

Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 1d

You can overstate that case. I think he got a lot of credit for smartness in the 80s and 90s – several of his plays were put on at the National Theatre in London. And Alain Resnais – the Last Year at Marienbad guy – directed a couple of films based on his plays.

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 1d

Oh god, yes. He's uneven, but some of them are just really, really funny and/or moving.

There are a few that are pretty small-scale: the double-bill of Dirty Linen/New-found-land was written for a lunchtime theatre club… Trying to think how Dogg's Hamlet/Cahoot's Macbeth works.

Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 1d

They haven't done that many, have they? Rock 'n' Roll, The Invention of Love… what else? But I like the idea of Stoppard replacing the Christmas panto as the big annual milch cow.

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 1d

I did that one for A-level, and saw the 1985 revival starring Kendal and Paul Eddington, as well as a later one withEssie Davis and Simon Russell Beale. It's possibly one of the ones that works better on the page (though I'd love to have seen Michael Hordern in the original production). So read it!

Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 1d

Yes, I can see the problem. Frustrating.

Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 1d

Oh, thank you. I'll try to make that. Hampstead does some good work reviving Stoppard (even if Rock 'n' Roll, the last one I saw, is not one of his greatest plays).

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 1d

You didn't? Arcadia, Indian Ink/In the Native State, Hapgood. I'm not sure whether The Real Thing was written with her in mind, but she was in the first production.

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 1d

Felicity Kendal.

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 1d

And had long-term relationship with Tom Stoppard, who wrote a number of plays for her.

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 1d

I saw her as Desdemona to Paul Scofield's Othello circa 1980, and she was fantastic – made absolute sense of a very difficult part. (One of the very last times Othello was played in blackface in Britain.)

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 1d

Fair enough.

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 1d

Oh, I hadn't heard that. Thank you.

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 1d

The Greens were anti-EU before it was fashionable – I think mainly because of the CAP. Not surprising some of their followers have stuck with that.

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 1d

Ah, it's Mornings in the Dark: from what I can see online, it's got some stuff The Pleasure Dome doesn't have. I used to consult it fairly regularly, when I wanted to find out about films of the 30s. I'm not sure his taste is reliable, but he doesn't mess around.

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 1d

I've got a Penguin collection with a different title – wonder whether it's the same book under the hood.

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 1d

Is that a young Darcus Howe on the right, in the hat?

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 2d

He did the Riyadh thing? What an arse.

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 2d

I was rubbish at sport but could climb like a monkey, so the PE lessons when we had the apparatus out were like an extra birthday.

Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 2d

Been to the youngest’s harvest assembly.
Theory: every primary school built pre about 1980 in Britain has some version of this equipment. It is referred to as something like ‘the apparatus’.
No one has any memory of it ever being used.

Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 2d

So it's good night from him…

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 2d

Pretty much, I think. I still think the coincidence of dates was a fantastic spot, though.

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