'The Long Forgotten Dream'

(Sydney Theatre Company)

Jeremiah Tucker's daughter returns for a lengthy overseas trip with the news that she has discovered the location of his grandfather's remains and has organised for their return home to Australia for an appropriate burial and memorial service.

The news and the preparations for the welcome to home stir up memories and questions of the past.

'The Long Forgotten Dream' is a wonderful new play by H Lawrence Sumner. The mostly indigenous cast and performers bring the story to life in an inventive staging.

Highly recommended.

✮✮✮✮

'Skyscraper'

'Skyscraper' is a 21st Century updating of 1974s box office hit 'The Towering Inferno' although its plot does depart from the earlier disaster epic. The setting has moved from San Francisco to Hong Kong and this skyscraper is a cover for all manner of gangster hijinks.

The opening scenes reveal a hi-tech building with features that just for one brief moment gave me hope that this was going to be an unexpectedly superior disaster feature. That hope was quickly scuttled as the film descended into ludicrous activity.

Dwayne Johnson maintains a surprising level of dignity despite his character's ever more cartoonish acts of heroism.

✮✮

'A Taste of Honey'

A single mother and her teenage daughter lead a love/hate struggling life finding solace and disappointment in each other and in the men in their lives.

'A Taste of Honey' was a first play hit from Shelagh Delaney in 1958 and again in the subsequent film version but has rarely been performed since.

Now staged by Belvoir St Theatre this production has been transplanted to an Australian setting whilst seemingly retaining much of its original regional British character.

✮✮✮

'Gloria'

Young 'wannabes' in a Manhattan magazine office chat, gossip and compete. As diverse as they may be one thing they are in agreement is that their colleague 'Gloria' is an oddball. Someone who no-one seems to like very much.

Their ethics are stretched following a tragic event.

Apparently this play, regarded as a satire and drama, was a finalist in the Pulitzer Prize. I don't see that merit myself. The cast worked hard to squeeze humour from dialogue that was fairly predictable at the outset. Several twists lifted the plot briefly but still left the play limping to its abrupt end.

✮✮

'On Chesil Beach'

Florence (Saoirse Ronan) and Edward (Billy Howle) have arrived at their beachside hotel to commence their honeymoon. Both are nervous and inexperienced making their first steps into marriage a painful affair. Flashbacks show their courtship conducted despite the constraints of differing social backgrounds.

I think that the intention is to present 'On Chesil Beach' as a great romance albeit one tinged with sadness. However as portrayed in this film the best I can feel is sorry for this couple rather than sadness.

Some nice scenery.

✮✮½

'The Wife'

Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce) learns that he has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. His wife Joan (Glenn Close) accompanies him to Stockholm for the award ceremony and related celebrations during which, and through flashbacks and action, her true role in her husband's success is revealed.

'The Wife' is a slow burn with the prime drama surfacing at the end.

✮✮✮✮

MIA

I've been missing in (blogger) action for the past couple of weeks; indeed on and off for months.

Over the past ten days or so I have been diverted with three house guests visiting from warmer climes in Australia.

This was not an imposition. On the contrary. So pleasant was their presence and so relaxed did I become by the time of their departure on Thursday that I lost complete track of the days. As a consequence I kept thinking it was a Monday (not Friday) back at work making me look and sound like a goose to patients several times yesterday.

Well I better get back to normality because I have cinema and theatre visits to record and overseas trips to make.

Yes, there are four - count them, one...two...three...four - booked for the next twelve months or so.

First up in just two weeks time are first time visits to Sri Lanka and the Maldives travelling with Mb. Later, at Christmas, a solo, R&R stay in Honolulu. In mid-2019 another solo trip, albeit with an escorted group; a tour from Montreal to New York City. Followed a couple months later with visits to Spain, Portugal and Morocco with Mb and Cz.

Not so super Saturday

For weeks, the Political pundits told us that at least two electorates in the 'Super Saturday' by-elections were too close to call.

They weren't. The ABC's Antony Green called the results well within two hours of the respective poll closures.

Winner (NewsLocker)

Loser (The New Daily)

Forget News Polls.

App tracking

I download Apps to my smart phone and tablet on a whim. Some, like NextThere, which tells me when a bus I'm waiting for is due, are very useful. Others, that I won't name, prove useless and remain unloved on my devices until eventually I delete them.

One of my loved Apps is FlightRadar24 which tracks commercial flights all over the world and provides me with hours of mindless entertainment when I am in the mood.

I see various flight paths to/from Sydney Airport from my apartment and often will open the App to identify passing planes and their routes.

Occasionally, like yesterday, I monitor a particular flight carrying friends. Cz and Cw flew to Vancouver yesterday and on and off for the best part of 12 hours I checked the passage of their flight. From ascent, I watched whilst the plane was still low over Sydney inner suburbs. Hours later after a cinema visit I tuned back in to see them somewhere over the South Pacific Ocean. Another couple of hours later and their flight was passing by the Hawaiian Islands and later still, at my bedtime, the west coasts of the United States and Canada appeared on screen as the flight was within 90 minutes of arrival at Vancouver.

You can do all this for free.

Traffic control at the airport

(News Corporation)

I dropped Cz and Cw off at the airport this morning for their flight to Canada. Traffic at the various terminals continues to be problematic especially at peak times. Marshalls wave lighted batons in a vain attempt to stream traffic but are ignored by taxi drivers who then trap other motorists thus exacerbating the logjam.

One taxi driver somehow managed to trap four cars in one go; two kerbside cars attempting to clear the area and myself and one other car waiting to replace them.

Let the sun shine in.....

The current extended spell of winter sunshine in Sydney is very welcome.

Future King

Prince George of Cambridge

There are comments I could make about this image of the future King Queen Monarch of England but on this occasion discretion is the better part of valour. Of course, as Jerry Seinfeld might say, there is nothing wrong with that.

'Beirut'

In 1982 American diplomat Mason Skiles (John Hamm) returns to Beirut, where he was previously posted, when his skills as a negotiator are needed in a hostage situation.

This thriller seems a realistic portrayal of the murky world of Middle Eastern politics and diplomacy even if the images of the civil war affected seaside capital, once known as the Paris of the Middle East, appear more like the images of bombed out Syrian cities of recent times.

✮✮✮½

The spirit returns

A rare sight nowadays. The Spirit of Tasmania, which usually plies its trade between Melbourne and our island State, steaming up Sydney Harbour. It has been years since there was a regular ferry link between Sydney and the Apple Isle.

I guessed the Spirit was in town for some R&R (repairs and refurbishment) and sure enough it steamed right into the Naval dockyard at Woolloomooloo.

'Mama Mia! Here We Go Again'

'Mama Mia! Here We Go Again' is the sequel to 2008's box office smash 'Mama Mia!' and follows the same template of setting a plot to as many ABBA songs as the makers can squeeze in. With most, if not all, the most popular tunes having already been used in the original film this sequel has to make do with a number of lesser known numbers interspersed occasionally with the big hits like the title number, Dancing Queen and Waterloo. As it turns out even the lesser known ABBA tunes are...well...very tuneful.

The credits list no fewer than six writers including Richard Curtis who is the inspiration behind some of the most successful British comedies of recent times so it is puzzling that they have produced such a bland plot and more puzzling still that much of the script is lame.

However the sunny scenery and ABBA's infectious melodies eventually carry the day and the film ends on a high with its final scene and end credits.

✮✮½

'Ant-Man and the Wasp'

'Ant-Man and the Wasp' is the latest in the seemingly endless series of comic inspired hero and heroine movies.

The Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) and the Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) are sent on a mission to retrieve (rescue) another Wasp lost in some form of a parallel universe. Standing in their way is Ghost Hannah John-Kamen) a hologram-like villainess.

The film is not high art but in having both a female hero and villain it certainly redresses Hollywood's  more traditional gender balance (or rather imbalance).

The performers don't take themselves too seriously and so the film is imbued with a reasonable amount of humour. The special effects are not over the top but they are modestly impressive.

✮✮✮

Doggy play date

Brunch today with Hn, Mb and Mk. The excuse for brunch was the first play date between Hn's Groodle and Mb's Spoodle which is a cross between a Cocker Spaniel and a Poodle.

This is a Spoodle

Dogs have play dates. I'm learning something every day. Luckily dogs don't require fancy foods or liquids when they date. Adults do. The dogs were completely satisfied with bowls of water. I needed scrambled eggs, turkish toast and a hot chocolate for my part in the date.

Hn's Groodle jumped at me. Mb's Spoodle did not. Mb is obviously a more effective doggy mother than Hn.

Grrrr

Lunch at Hn's. She has new dog. It's a Groodle. A cross between a Golden Retriever and a Poodle.

This is a Groodle

Dogs seem to enjoy jumping all over me. I don't enjoy dogs jumping all over me. Hn's previous dog, a Golden Retriever, used to jump up at me. Hn told me the Groodle wouldn't jump at me. It did.

Grrrr.....

R&R

A birthday passed by recently and now I am less than a year from becoming a septuagenarian. (Look it up.) Perhaps it is showing. I'm feeling more tired than I have been accustomed to at the end of a day's volunteering.

Yesterday after my day at the nursing home I decided with no substantive planning to book myself a week's R&R at some tantalising destination. Honolulu came to mind.

I have visited Honolulu at least six times but the last visit was more than 35 years ago. In all those visits I ventured little beyond Waikiki Beach other than for transport to and from the airport. I hadn't even visited Pearl Harbour.

I checked the flights and checked my preferred hotel and with little more than thirty minutes spent online a week's holiday in Honolulu over Christmas has been booked.

Easy Peasy.

My night on the Seine

Andrew has written about his lunch cruise in Paris which reminded me of my cruise on the Seine.

I was travelling with two friends, sisters, and our stay in Paris was at the tail end of a month visit to Europe extending from Prague overland to Budapest then by rivers to Amsterdam and overland again to the French capital. I suspect the two sisters were thoroughly sick of each other's company by then even if I was still having a ball.

One of our last touristy activities was billed as a romantic evening dinner cruise on the Seine. We piled onto the river boat with high expectations. The evolving coolness between the sisters was now so evident that no-one else in our touring party sat anywhere near we three.

The cruise got underway in summer's bright late afternoon light. Dinner was served as we puttered down river; afternoon light still blazing. The sights were indeed splendid, if not yet romantically lit, but with two companions no longer speaking the general mood had turned decidedly chilly. After a time the riverboat turned about and headed back the way we came; still in bright light.

As we approached the wharf where we had boarded I assumed we would continue up the river in the other direction. After all the day, although late, was still bright. The romance of evening, I felt, might thaw the sisters out and lift the mood.

Not on your life. We tied up at the wharf and were quickly shuffled off to allow the next load of tourists to have their romantic cruise. No doubt their's, unlike our's, was eventually an evening cruise.

Beware the 'romantic evening' promises when travelling at the height of Europe's summer daylight saving hours.