Critic Cal

World is crazier and more of it than we think, Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion A tangerine and spit the pips and feel The drunkenness of things being various.   (From  Snow  by Louis MacNeice)  Some people seem to find everything so straightforward. And that is why I must make everything extra-specially complicated, to compensate. At my university Christian Union, they got you to sign the UCCF doctrinal basis if you were nominated to serve on committee. (Cue horrified gasps from political idealists at student's unions everywhere…but our CU wasn't in the student's union and besides, there is a certain logic to the idea that the people running a 'religious society' be in some sense 'adherents'…) I signed it myself back in the day, and, although some of points a) through k) touch on things that I've still much to learn about, I reckon I'd sign it again in an instant. It is, after all, a pretty good summary of what I understand and believ...

When the greatest poet of the 20th century* writes a playful collection about cats targeted at children (albeit in such a way as to endow them with a pretty remarkable vocabulary by the end) it is, I guess, fair game for the likes of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Actually, I really enjoyed 'Cats' as a 9-year-old. We had this amazingly inspirational and creative teacher, who (among many other things) taught us dance and read us poetry and took us to the theatre. So I've always remembered it with fondness -- a rich, multi-dimensional, culturally-expanding experience. Even in my musical-skeptical adulthood I don't mind what they did to 'Old Possum's' poems, pretty much preserving the fabulous words intact and matching them with energetic and atmospheric music/set/performance etc. BUT I made a discovery a few years ago which rather does grate with me... The big, crowd-pleasing, 'hit single' song from the show is ' Memory '. It's not from 'O...