Aspects of Love w/ Michael Ball - Lyric

Well, that's BORING!  

What I enjoyed/appreciated about seeing it with the un-tinkered script at Southwark Playhouse, was there was a certain degree of "ickyness" and shock factor to an otherwise quite pedestrian storyline.  It made you think about what was acceptable in the time and social class of the original story, and how things have changed. 

The sanitising of art continues apace. We seem to be going backwards....

Do we really need protecting by Nica Burns and her ilk as moral arbiters/gatekeepers? Good lord!

You're absolutely right of course. In this day and age, the mentality of "cancel culture" - or call it what you will (I have no particular attachment to the term) will ultimately spell the sanitisation of everything. To protect the bottom line from a boycott.

I agree - see my earlier post - but this is happening more and more. (See the ‘cleaning up’ of Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming books, for example.) If characters are not allowed to act badly then art/drama/literature will eventually be populated by a cast of squeaky-clean do-gooders. (It’s interesting that at the Royal Premiere, in 1989, the ‘icky’ Jenny storyline was kept in while the lesbian kiss was cut!)

It's so true. And yet no one ever objects to characters committing murder, which happens all the time in fiction. I just never understand it.

And also, the more I thought about this, the more I feel La Ball is talking NONSENSE.

I think it's quite insulting to suggest that "incest" and cousins falling in love was "acceptable" to late 80's/early 90's audiences.

There is a big difference between something been "acceptable" to the public to something that is a somewhat shocking to them, OR not calling for the production to be shut down or a "moral panic" in the sh1t stirring media.

But isn't that what Michael Ball means?

Back in 89/90, the audience might have quietly talked amongst themselves and said "that bit about Jenny and Alex was a bit icky, wasn't it?", shrugged it off and went home. 

Today you get the keyboard warriors stirring up sh*t online, most of which haven't seen the show, and shout for cancellation. It'll stick to the production like dogsh*t to a shoe. 

I often get the sense that today's shouts for sanitation and changes to "problematic bits" automatically seem to mean that audiences a few decades ago were all fine with things. They weren't. It just wasn't such a big deal, it was perhaps quietly talked about after leaving a show and/or remarked on in a printed newspaper review that was forgotten two weeks later, it wasn't all so blown up online. 

I also feel that this kind of sanitation would love to ignore things that are simple facts. 15 year old girls DO often crush on older men because boys the same age are still seen as pimply immature little idiots. Most girls that age crush on older movie stars or pop stars, but many also on older men in their vicinity. And a (female) cousin of mine confessed to me years ago that when we were teens, she had also crushed on a (male) cousin of ours. She was around 14 then, he was 19/20 - not the same age difference as Jenny and Alex, but still a vast gulf at that age. Nothing had come out of it, as hers had been a silent crush, but it was there. It's also easy to forget that in many societies girls as young as 14-15 have been regarded as women once their period had kicked in, they got married and were expected to have children (and it's still happening in parts of the world). 

The keyboard warriors also seem to forget that David Garnett wrote Aspects of Love when he was part of the Bloomsbury Group around Virginia Woolf, who were famous for their unconventional lifestyles. Garnett himself lived in a menage à trois with Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell for a while. Vanessa (Virginia Woof's sister) married Clive Bell, but still had a child with Duncan Grant, Angelica, who later married David Garnett, her own mother's lover. Talk about Aspects of Love. They explored a lot of things in real life, even more in literature and they certainly scandalized their peers with their lifestyle. Angelica later wrote a fairly bitter biography about her childhood amid all of that and I wonder how much of her can be found in Jenny. 

Also, we are in a certain culture now where - young people in particular - are encouraged to "call out" anything they believe to be wrong. "Silence is violence" and all that. It is not enough to shrug something off, or say nothing. People are being compelled to say something - regardless of their ignorance on a subject.

(I'm not going to use the "W" word, as it's divisive)

Of course the plot of Aspects of Love is less scandalous than David Garnett's own life. Garnett was bisexual, as were several members of the artistic and literary Bloomsbury Group, and he had affairs with Francis Birrell and Duncan Grant. On 25 December 1918 he was present at the birth of Grant's daughter by Vanessa Bell, Angelica, who was accepted by Vanessa's husband Clive Bell. Shortly afterwards he wrote to a friend: "I think of marrying it. When she is 20, I shall be 46 – will it be scandalous?" On 8 May 1942, when Angelica was in her early twenties, they did marry, to the horror of her parents. She did not find out until much later that her husband had been a lover of her father.

Just heard Elaine Paige play a song called "The Summer Game" from Cricket, which I'd never heard before. It's probably been remarked on before, but the intro to the song is what would later become Anything But Lonely (and the rest of the song bore a strong resemblance to Amigos para Siempre)
Dear old ALW recycling his tunes!

Danielle de Niese will NOT be performing on Tues 13th June, Weds 21st June, Sat 1st July, Thurs 6th July, Sat 8th July (eve), Tues 11th July, Tues 18th July, Tues 25th July, Fri 4th August, Tues 8th August, Tues 15th August, Mon 4th September, Tues 5th September, Weds 6th September, Tues 12th September, Tues 19th September, Tues 26th September, Thurs 5th October, Tues 10th October, Tues 17th October, Tues 24th October, Tues 31st October and Thurs 9th November.

The role of Giulietta will be played by Soophia Foroughi.

Michael Ball will be on The One Show at 7pm tonight, advertising the show and announcing something…

The news is that Michael is releasing a book about his journey with the show. How the original production made him a star and how he’s now back in it in a different role. It’s out in October.