Motives and Murkiness

Yesterday, we went to see The Motive and The Cue, a play about people putting on a play! It's about the production of Hamlet directed by Sir John Gielgud and starring Richard Burton in 1964 - and I thought it was excellent. Some of the cast were underused (several of them didn't even have any lines) but the main players, especially Elizabeth Taylor, were top-notch. The staging was very clever, with one or two actors doing things in front of the curtain while set changes took places. There was a fair amount of quoting Hamlet, but it was done effectively to demonstrate certain aspects of the process of rehearsals. Great stuff all round!


Not so great was my experience of reading The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota. It tells the story of three young Indian men, who find themselves sharing a house with multiple others in Sheffield, doing construction work in an attempt to make enough money to better their lives. It's unremitting in its portrayal of the tragedy and hardships they've suffered and continue to suffer - and that's absolutely the point - but the relentless grimness got too much for me and I had to give up around page 150.