My name is Eminen - not Eminem

My name is Eminen – not Eminem.
I want to make that clear. Don't mistake me for him.
The differences between us are plain to see.
I'm clearly not him, and he's not me.
Em's from Detroit and he comes from the Hood
I'm from the Wirral, near Burton Wood.
The Wirral is a sandstone peninsular in the UK
where you're more likely to see a squirrel than an AK.

That said ....

A night at the Brewer's Arms is arguably less exciting
than standing on stage freestyling and reciting
tales of murder and family fall out ..
while I'm watching Tranmere Rovers kicking the ball out.

If you need convincing, there are other differences too ..
I need to make this clear so he won't sue,
or write a revenge track a la Machine Gun Kelly.
I'd hate to see Em diss me on the telly.

Here's another reason why he's not me,
(in case he claims I'm using the name Eminen illegally):
He's great at rapping, while I'm just a con.
I saw one of his gigs with George, my son.
We stood in awe as Em delivered beat infused speeches
to rival we'll fight them on the beaches,  
A soliloquy going on for two hours.
For me Em towers
head and shoulders above me,
though he's 5'7 and I'm 6'3.

Apart from talent, he also has riches,
(now here I should really rhyme this with bitches,
but I won't as he's a faithful man
 - who happened to write Stan, about a lunatic fan. )
Anyway, there's no doubting that Em is rich,
(oh now I should really rhyme this with bitch!
There's a powerful lexiconic imperative in rap
which obliges one to turn on the expletives tap).
I won't do this, as I'd just sound fake,
like pretending I'm a cod when I'm really a hake ..

or a peach! OK ...

Eminem is a very wealthy man - 200 million it says on the Net.
That's a lot by Wirral standards. Here is what Em could get ..

A thousand houses in Neston. He could buy the whole town!
If I saw him at the Cross, I'd show him around.
Take him down to Parkgate for an ice cream.
I'd think he'd like it. One can only dream ...

I guess he could also buy most of Birkenhead,
though apart from Oxton most wouldn't be seen there dead.
That said, I think Em would like Birkenhead Park -
or the skyscape of Liverpool after dark.
He'd be able to handle the scallies,
and walk safely down the streets and alleys.
8 Mile is a good apprenticeship for Birkenhead,
he'd have a pithy comeback to "eh mate, you're dead."

I mention Em's wealth to contrast him with me.
I don't really have much in the way of money,
apart from some stuff invested in cryptoassets.
That's it - apart from some books, CDs, cassettes ...
Cassettes you ask? Yes, I've got a few recordings. Different types  ...
Tapes of Hurricane of Wind and The Naughty Soil Stripes.
You never heard of them? Well you bloody well should.
Although they never got recording contracts, they were really good.
I should know as I was in both groups ..
well before all this stuff with loops.

I digress ..

There are really big differences between Em and me,
though our rap names are spelt similarly.
What distinguishes our names is just one letter.
I'm not saying my rap name's any better.
In fact it could well be worse,
in the same way my couplets don't match up to his verse.
While Marshall Mathers is a glorious name - an M and an M -
mine, Mark Neal, is not quite the same - and M and an N.
His moniker resembles a branded candy. Handy for memory - like a mnemonic ..
Mine is less resonant, more nasal, with sonic
features that distinguish it from both Em's beats
and the peanut and coated chocolate sweets.

Em's got talent  - lots of talent!
How much talent? Too much talent!
The way he crafts words is a wonder to witness,
the way he performs them is testimony to his fitness.
In many ways, he has it all  .. wealth, skill, good looks - he's no minger,
and he gets better as he gets older. I mean, he produced the Ringer! 
For me he's the best, the GOAT, the champ,
the greatest rapper to turn on an amp.
I'm none of these things - though I was once a singer.
I'm just a fan, like Stan .. while he's a humdinger.

So lawyers listen up ..

My name is Eminen - not Eminem.
I want to make that clear. Don't mistake me for him.
The differences between us are plain to see.
I'm clearly not him, and he's not me. 

Laguna

Accelerating. 

At the turn you skidded wildly, but survived with a smirk. 

We pedalled on until the rocks and sea. 

Fourteen days and nights in Tito’s former gaff - 

a thirteenth century house, full of paintings. 

Hired a couple of bikes, and headed up the coast

- sea and pine in ears, eyes, nostrils. 

Pulled up at the security gates of a Naturist Resort. 

Beyond the barriers, Germans shuffled around in flip flops. 

The heat, pure, dazzling – bad for private parts. 

Still private when exposed to hard sun? 

Chuckling at the prospect, secure in our clothes, 

we mounted our bikes and pushed up the long hot road, 

bracken either side. 

Turning back towards the peninsular, 

we pushed and swerved and swore until we reached the house. 

I kicked down the bike stand,
and fiddled with a key. 

Inside, cool thirteenth century gloom - and paintings, now familiar. 

We glugged down water urgently, and collapsed onto wooden chairs. 

Lunch: crusty bread, cheese and endless water.

Out into the sun again.

Bike stands kicked back with a click. Off moving, 

this time to the South, passing groups and touts - 

the chemical wafts of suntan lotion fading to pine and sea.

At the top of a perfumed outcrop, surrounded by waves,

I sat in the shade; you climbed the rocks. 

On again, pushing hard, upwards, 

away from hotels, towards buzzing glades. 

Hard and upwards to the top of the road.

A moment of bliss as the pedaling ceases. 

Land and sea spill out before us. 

Slowly at first, rolling, quickening; 

crickets constant, trees blur. 

At full speed now, wind in hair and eyes. 

You brake too hard/ skid dangerously, flop this way and that. 

I thought you would flip. A high speed slow-mo horror. 

I watched, hands tight. 

You stabilised and careered onwards, 

downwards, in a straight, untroubled line. 

At the bottom, a sparkling laguna. Blue, deep. 

We pulled up and raised our phones with narrowing eyes. 

You smirked at my horror, and sought out a plastic table. 

I locked up the bikes. 

A waiter presented us with two tinkling drinks – heaven doesn’t come close. 

We stared out and said nothing. 

Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, Nottingham Royal Theatre

Reviewed by George Neal (16)

When a take on a popular play includes two adults acting as children, and a twisted altered self is played like a drunk Scotsman, you might expect this version of Jekyll and Hyde to be a miss - but it ends up providing a very fresh and overall cleverly executed version of the beloved story.

Performed in Nottingham Royal Theatre and directed by Kate Saxon, this version of the well-known classic adds some gripping and intriguing new elements to the material while never departing from the classic themes of gritty philosophy - and the inclusion of female characters adds some much-needed diversity and further emotional weight to the story.

In Victorian times, a professor tries to find the meaning of what truly keeps the workings of the mind together by repeatedly testing a drug on himself that twists his consciousness into the demented alternate mindset of Mr Hyde. This gradually affects his life with his sister and nephews, as well as his debating colleagues, with his traumatic history of his father seemingly fuelling the burning separation of his two identities.

The first half goes by relatively slowly, establishing the main characters, with it mostly focusing on Jekyll and his friends debating on the works of the mind. This goes by a little tiresomely even for such an intriguing concept, but it is thankfully more digestible with Sam Cox’s fantastic performance of Poole, the butler, whose much needed sarcasm and frustration amongst his humbleness makes it flow much better. Cox’s clever emotionally-inwards methods of acting, shown with his increased panic and distrust of Jekyll in the second act, is definitely one of my favourite elements of the show.

Phil Daniels provides a very intriguing and credible representation of Jekyll, starting off as a modest, humble character, who realistically starts to slip into insecurity as the play progresses. The choice of having only one actor for Hyde is highly effective, presenting the actual philosophical themes of mental instability and feeding the dark corners of the mind more front and centre, making his identical Jekyll self descending into madness more credible than focusing more on making Mr Hyde as physically over the top as possible.

Daniel’s hardest efforts to create a hugely separated other-self, descended into pits of madness and violence with no use of make-up and such, makes him seem more of a blabbering, drunk Scotsman than a twisted brute (even making his speech noticeably difficult to pick up), which arguably leaves an even more disturbing impact with his most brutal scenes, such as when he executes a politician.

Most of the performances in this play were solid for me, with every actor capturing a unique and memorable personality and development that remains set in stone. There were, however, a couple of exceptions - one being a priest, who accompanies Jekyll on a train journey, whose performance is so ridiculously over-the-top loud and angry for someone having a conversation with a stranger on a train ride it’s almost no wonder his Hyde side goes to shut him up! This does however have a nice contrast between his increasing output of goodness in passionate speech and Hyde’s increased output in evil with his transformation, but it is overdone to the point where it is a little hard to take seriously.

In terms of setting and use of effects, this is exceptionally well done, having a raised platform (taken full advantage of in varied scenarios), a well detailed lab setting with even a full wall of chemicals, with smoke effects that capture that gloomy 1800s feel, and interesting choices of scale that range from a full, cosy setting of Jekyll’s living room, to a tight, focused setting of Enfield at his desk all crammed into a corner, all, of course, pulled off with clever uses of lighting. The effect that stood out the most for me has to go the sudden dimming of all but a lamp shining above Hyde’s furious re-transitioning into Jekyll when he knocks it and sends it swinging, vaguely reflecting his mind-state.

The scenes are cleverly connected by several emotionless people dressed in full Victorian clothing that step in and out to transition props of scenes, which adds a surprisingly unique emotional feel to it rather than blackening out and having people in black moving things as fast as possible. There’s also an out-of-the-story female singer who sings haunting songs while foreseeing into the events. It’s a little over-the-top, given how the events that follow don’t exactly live up to its level of horror, but it adds a further layer of melancholic eeriness to the play as a whole.

In conclusion, I recommend seeing this fresh and gripping telling of Jekyll and Hyde. Not only does the solid acting make the classic story more digestible, but the exceptional use of effects and staging adds a layer of suspense, highlighting the deeper themes – though at times, it feels a little clichéd in its representation of Victorian England.

Review: Sweeney Todd, D2E Youth Drama, Guildhall Arts Centre, Grantham

Stephen Sondheim has a dark side. Some of his lyrics in West Side Story have a bleak, nihilistic edge, partly camouflaged by Bernstein's vivace score. In Sweeney Todd, he explores the dark side of humanity - he washes us all in blood.

Imelda Staunton famously called Sondheim "the Shakespeare of musicals," and Sondheim owes much to the Bard. West Side Story is of course based upon the feuding Capulet and Montague clans of Romeo and Juliet. Sweeney Todd meanwhile has a direct blood lineage to Titus Andronicus. Like Titus, it is a revenge play and, in both, vengeance is against the perpetrator of a rape. In each, blood is splashed around liberally by brutalised characters. In both plays, the perpetrators end up in pies.

Sweeney Todd is thankfully a fictional character, who bloodily burst into the public zeitgeist in the mid nineteenth century. Since then, he has joined the demonic pantheon of popular horror figures. He is the proletarian counterpart to the very real Jack the Ripper, whose actions in 1888 resonated with the demonic barber's. From a social historical point of view, the Todd urban legend is interesting, as it plays on Victorian anxieties about food safety, murder and lack of regulation. Dickens raised these concerns in Pickwick Papers, where Sam Weller advises to buy pies only from women they know made them.

The show was first produced on Broadway in 1979, with Angela Lansbury as Mrs Lovett, and directed by Hal Prince. The writer and director had different visions of the play. Whereas Sondheim saw this as a timeless revenge tragedy a la Shakespeare, Hal Prince was more Dickensian in approach, seeing it as a vision of brutal society churning out "soulless, defeated, hopeless people." These two readings are not mutually exclusive, and in performance the play achieves both visions, resulting in an exciting, horrifying but dispiriting spectacle.

This production by D2E Youth Drama achieved this collision of Shakespearean revenge tragedy and Dickensian social commentary brilliantly. As soon as you entered the theatre, a dark mood descended. Behind a gossamer curtain the whole cast were assembled with their backs to the audience, all silently engaged in a slow-motion slashing motion. This went on for ten minutes, after which the usual audience chatter and laughter had died to an uneasy, expectant silence.

Suddenly, the curtain rose and the whole cast turned grimly towards the audience to give a disturbingly aggressive ensemble of The Ballad of Sweeney Todd. From then on, the audience were immersed in a brutal Victorian Fleet Street, populated by grotesque, pitiful characters. The stage was organised well, with a raised platform for a room above Mrs Lovett's pie shop - this became the focus for much of the action, and the gloriously grisly killings.

The energetic and enthusiastic cast kept the production pacey, lively and entertaining. For a young group of actors, taking on Sondheim is challenging. The score and melody lines are complex and often contrapuntal, with precise phrasing and stressing needed. The singers all managed their parts with confidence, and produced a musical of the highest quality.

The standout performance was that of Milly Parker as Mrs Lovett. Her vocals were superb as she beamed a seedy charisma throughout, and engaged the audience with a complicit warmth. The audience rightly loved her. It was a pleasure to witness such talent.

Todd was played well by Morgan Blakeman-Evans, who injected flashes of distorted humanity into the role of brutal butcher. There was a sick chemistry between Todd and Mrs Lovett, and the actors worked well together to achieve this, with Milly Parker bustling and scheming around the hate-filled portrayal by Morgan Blakeman-Evans. The two took on much of the singing, and they both deserve enormous credit for carrying it off so well.

The only ray of sunshine in the plot was the tryst between Anthony Hope and Joanna. Lewis Fitt played the romantic lead well, with some strong vocal performances. Ella Brookes' voice was wonderful - her clear soprano injecting a startling purity into the mire of sleaze and violence.

The corrupt Judge Turpin was played well by Joseph Zalas, who brought an unhealthy disdain and arrogance to the role. Sam Smith played his henchman, the Beadle, with a confident simmering brutality. Meanwhile, Kayleigh Hunt as the Beggar Woman (Todd's wife), alternated disturbingly between persistent pleading, and saucy wantonness. Kacey Hall, meanwhile, played the innocent turned murderer Tobias Ragg with open-eyed menace.

Some much-needed comic relief was provided by Corey Hall as the fraudulent Italian barber Pirelli, who entertainingly played up the conman to great effect. The switch from Italian to Irish, as he dropped his mask, was well done. The audience loved him.

Jonas Fogg, the doctor of the asylum was played with effortless menace by George Neal, whose eyes darted ominously and threateningly to his terrified patients.

The above actors put on a fantastic show, and carried off challenging roles with great panache and enthusiasm. The rest of cast, who provided chorus and dancing were also terrific, providing an electric vitality to proceedings, approaching the audience en masse with seething menace.

Jade Goswell and Elaine Bishop deserve great credit for the production and direction of this musical. They did not play it safe, and stretched these talented young actors to embrace Sondheim's dark vision.

At the end of the blood and cruelty the lights went out on Fleet Street, and the audience jumped to their feet in a long and loud ovation. As I stood and clapped, I felt a real admiration for the hard work this talented cast had obviously put into this, and the enthusiasm they injected into achieving Sondheim's dark vision. I was relieved to have survived this episode in Fleet Street, and left the theatre thinking how we need these visions of darkness to appreciate the light and the good in people.

Later on that evening, I started thinking about pies - murder wrapped in pastry; darkness concealed in a thin civilised coating. From the Globe Theatre to Broadway, and now to Grantham .. this is a lesson for us all. Thank you D2E Youth Drama for putting on such an entertaining and challenging show.

Review: A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, by Thomas Middleton. Rose Theatre.

Thomas Middleton had London in his DNA, and the city he lived and died in was a dirty, cruel and fascinating place. The turn of the century and change of monarch were accompanied by huge confessional, social and economic upheavals, and the rapid growth of an entrepreneurial and urban middle class. The era was beset by horrific plagues every twenty years or so, which wiped out 20-30% of the London population each time. With ongoing growth in economic activity, this meant more demand for less labour, and so even the proles experienced a rise in income and aspirations. Everybody was desperate to climb up from the mud and open sewers, and these people looked up at those with inherited wealth with growing envy and disdain. This after all, was England only thirty years before the Civil War, and the Levellers. As a London intellectual and jobbing playwright, Middleton was grappling with the complex creative destruction whirling around England's capital, which would all end in tragedy. One sensed that Middleton knew this. 

A Chaste Maid in Cheapside was his Abigail's Party - a funny, vicious exposing of the aspirational classes and the seedy urges lying beneath.  Cleverly directed by Jenny Eastop, the Mercurius troupe brought a pared down text to life, with hilarious and surprising results. One sat and chuckled as plot was joined by plot; and the narrative was lost as the pitch rose to a crescendo, leaving us with a marriage - the traditional resolution to Early Modern comedies. One was, however, left rather shaken - and the confusion, sleaze and artifice remained as the laughter and applause died down and we shuffled off into the night. All very Joe Orton - who also used over-complex absurd comedies to unsettle, and swivel the spotlight on his aspirational middle class audiences. It comes as no surprise that Orton was a fan of Thomas Middleton, and acknowledged a debt to his trailblazing work. 

Perhaps then, the play would have been better set in the 1960s than the 1950s, as was the case here. When I read that this production was set in the doo-wop decade, my heart rather sank; but  it worked well visually and musically, and wove some unexpected cultural synergies (flick knives used as combs, twirling skirts . . ).

The acting was utterly terrific. Beth Eyre had a difficult role in Moll, in the sense that she was the love interest in the piece, the sweetheart, but she subverted these expectations well through some clever stances and glances. Stephen Good was wonderful as the successful but naive goldsmith, Yellowhammer, bringing a welcome authenticity amidst the whirling artifice. His wife was played by Josephine Liptrott who gave an engaging and powerful performance of the pragmatic brains in the marriage. Timothy Harker (as Allwit) simply burst onto the stage, effusing glee with his ill-earned lot, and continued to entertain throughout. Fergus Leathem ably played Sir Oliver Kix, one of the undeserving rich, desperate for a son, not because he particularly liked children, but because it would mean a large inheritance. Richard Reed portrayed Touchwood Senior as a louche teddy boy, bringing a sly, lascivious humour to the proceedings. Harry Russell took on the role of  his younger brother, another ted and chancer, but with a just discernible heart amidst the seething moral swamp. The role of Sir Walter Whorehound is a gift for any actor, and Andrew Seddon didn't miss an opportunity to camp up the memorable Falstaffian reprobate. At one point he collapsed into the seat next to my friend and engaged her in smutty Jacobean double-entendres. If only I'd had a glove handy I could have joined the play.

Overall, then, the quality of acting was outstanding - nuanced, skilled and tuned into the audience. Bravo Mercurius! However, the - the - stand-out performance of the evening went to the marvellous Alana Ross, who played two roles to jaw-dropping effect. As Lady Kix, she simply lit up the Rose with a sassy, mercurial, hilarious performance tinged with desperation. Brilliant. 

This then is a must see. Well done, Mercurius, and you lovely people at the Rose for having the imagination to put this on, and pull it off so well. And thank you to that great Londoner, Thomas Middleton, for writing something so entertaining, so unsettling, so now. 

Shakespeare and Impermanence: Henry IV Part II, Barbican, and Winter's Rages, Rose Playhouse

Hang on - I thought Henry IV Pt II was meant to be inferior to the first. I mean, that's what critics throughout the ages have said. A couple of weeks back I saw the Donmar's all-female Henry IV, which one might think would span the works equitably - but Part II hardly got a look in, with only a couple of scenes tagged on to bring us to the crowning of Hal. Director Phyllida Lloyd was unrepentant about this, dismissing parts of the sequel as "bucolic meanderings".

Blimey. Well, the RSC folk obviously didn't see it this way, and staged a performance of Part II that rivalled any theatre I have seen in terms of depth, charm and sheer joy. Much of this joy and charm came embodied in Antony Sher's masterful Falstaff, who drank, lied, and confided to the audience with such candour that I was sorry to leave his company. I have now seen Sher's Falstaff in both parts, and I feel like I know him personally. I know I'm going to miss him.

Shakespeare based Falstaff upon Henry V's old friend, Sir John Oldcastle; and this caused something of a spat at the time. Part I was a smash hit, a sell out, but somewhere along the line it is likely that one of Oldcastle's progeny - possibly Baron Cobham himself - watched on with horror at the lampooning of a beloved ancestor. Letters flew, arms were twisted, and Shakespeare felt obliged to include an epilogue to the next play, explaining that Falstaff would be back . . hurrah! . . but, by the way, his character had nothing to do with noble, courageous, honourable John Oldcastle. Mumblings. Snorting. Yeah right. 

Falstaff is great company. He is always up for a party; he drinks continuously and is forever weaving schemes and inventions. Inveterate liar, whore monger, thief - there's little to dislike about him. For instance, in Part 2, he gives a thoughtful speech praising the twofold effects of sherry. I wish more playwrights would explore the subject as eloquently.

As we sat chuckling through Sher's monumental performance, it occurred to me that here Shakespeare had immortalised  a prototype - the roistering soak, who liberates us temporarily from the iron cage of puritanism. In Elizabethan England, with its mutaween, Falstaff was a provocative, and wholly necessary, figure. And so he remains in today's climate of PC, self-censorship and myriad -isms. Falstaff coupling with Doll Tearsheet spawned all the tragic, but challenging ne'er do wells that keep us from turning into automata . . . Oliver Reed, Liz Taylor, Georgie Best, Gérard Depardieu, Jeffrey Bernard . . Talking of which, Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell was obviously inspired by Pt 2. Keith Waterhouse merely locked Falstaff into the Boar's Head for an evening, and had him reflecting upon his adventures. I will never think of the Coach and Horses in the same way again.

In my obsessive viewing of Shakespeare plays, I have seen some wonderful performances, but Antony Sher's Falstaff is someone I will never forget. I feel privileged to have met the great man.

Another highlight of this week was seeing "Winter's Rages" at the Rose Playhouse. In this inventive piece, Sophie Kochanowska has cut and pasted together snippets of Shakespeare, and Bard-influenced music to produce a stark, post modern exploration of impermanence. Blioux Kirkby was superb as she played a mentally ill Ophelia, and a fragile, traumatised Ariel; and her singing was rich, alluring and charismatic. Hannah Yip played the keyboards throughout quite brilliantly - in the cold as well. It was, however, Sophie Kochanowska herself who dominated, with the unsettling Drei Lieder der Ophelia by Richard Strauss, and Fear No More the Heat O'The Sun, by Gerald Finzi. Her playing of the youthful, doomed Juliet about to take a sleeping potion was fresh and disturbing. Congratulations to all for highlighting a theme that runs through so much of the Bard's work - impermanence. In many ways, Shakespeare was a Buddhist, and here tonight, as Sophie Kochanoska's singing echoed around the Rose, the truth and tragedy of impermanence was given a voice.

Fresh, disturbing, post-modern . . . how adaptable Shakespeare is. What would Falstaff have made of "Winter's Rages"? Well, he would have enjoyed the singing and the beautiful players . . . but he probably would have disgraced himself, and got himself ejected from the Rose. I'm glad then I left him roaring with laughter in the Boar's Head. More sack, boy . . more sack!!

Shakespeare's Rudest Sonnet? 151

Love is too young to know what conscience is, 

Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?

Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,

Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove:

For, thou betraying me, I do betray

My nobler part to my gross body's treason;

My soul doth tell my body that he may

Triumph in love; flesh stays no farther reason,

But rising at thy name doth point out thee,

As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride,

He is contented thy poor drudge to be,

To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.

   No want of conscience hold it that I call

   Her love, for whose dear love I rise and fall