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elizadoolittlethings · 5 years

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The Madness of George III starring Mark Gatiss review at Nottingham Playhouse – ‘Gatiss rises to the challenge’

by Natasha Tripney - Nov 7, 2018

Announced well over a year ago, this production was always intended to be a high point in Adam Penford’s first year as artistic director of Nottingham Playhouse, and so it proves.

Mark Gatiss turns out to be very good casting in the title role of Alan Bennett’s 1991 play about the illness that befell George III in the 1780s and its political implications.

Penford’s production brings out the body horror in Bennett’s play. Gatiss captures the king’s bewilderment and agony as he comes to realise he is no longer able to trust his mind, nor his mouth, nor those around him.

Little aphasic hitches in his speech give way to tics and tremors. Doctors flock around him like crows, eager to bleed and blister him, to scrutinise his stools. As his behaviour become more erratic, he’s restrained, legs suppurating and scalp bloody, dignity exiled.

Gatiss’ performance is very physical. He makes the most of his height, stalking the stage, splay-toed, as he conveys the king’s rapid decline. He ends up shaven-pated and wrapped in a black, fur-trimmed coat, looking like a broken Count Orlok. But he is also very affecting in his moments of lucidity – “I am not going out of my mind, my mind is going out of me” – poignant and vulnerable.

Nottingham Playhouse has gone all in on this one – the production is lavish. Robert Jones’ handsome set, consisting of various rotating walls panelled in duck egg blue, is suitably palatial and ermine. Periwigs abound. Richard Howell’s lighting has a dash of Joseph Wright of Derby about it.

Adrian Scarborough (who appeared in Nicholas Hytner’s original London production) plays the king’s saviour and adversary, Dr Willis, the Lincolnshire physician who restores George’s wits by breaking him as one might a horse. It’s a skilled performance but some of the intricacy of the power play between the two men is lacking.

Photos: Manuel Harlan1 of 11

Among the supporting cast, Nadia Albina is particularly effective as the pragmatic Fitzroy – many of the male roles are played by women – and Debra Gillett makes for a sympathetic Queen Charlotte, his “Mrs King”, affection mingling with sadness in her eyes even as her husband says vile things to her in German.

Wilf Scolding is a bit Blackadder as the vain, portly Prince of Wales, though that’s partly to do with the way the role is written.

Bennett’s jokes about the colonies and Europe land somewhat differently these days, and the idea that a man in a position of power might not be in full control of his faculties is the stuff of modern nightmares. Penford’s faithful staging is always engaging, if not exactly subtle, but the play very much hinges on the Lear-like lead role – played by Nigel Hawthorne originally and on screen, and David Haig in the West End in 2012. Gatiss rises to the challenge.

Mark Gatiss: ‘There’s nothing quite like the sheer bloody terror of theatre’

#MG #mark gatiss #the stage #review #the madness of george iii #the genius in action #all things MG

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janepwilliams87 · 4 years

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Wyoming Judge Dismisses Marijuana Charges Against Hemp Farmers

The state treasurer, House majority floor leader and House Judiciary Committee chairman testified in support of the farmers.

By Andrew Graham, WyoFile.com

CHEYENNE—A Laramie County judge threw out drug trafficking charges against hemp advocates and farmers Debra Palm-Egle and Joshua Egle Thursday, finding prosecutors lacked probable cause that the mother-and-son duo intended to grow and distribute marijuana.

At the conclusion of the preliminary hearing, Laramie County Circuit Court Judge Antoinette Williams also dismissed charges against a contractor and his wife, Brock and Shannon Dyke, who worked for the farmers and were on the property when the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation raided it in November 2019.

Prosecutors sought to charge all four with conspiracy to manufacture, deliver or possess marijuana; possession with intent to deliver marijuana; possession of marijuana and planting or cultivating marijuana. All but the last are felonies. The judge dismissed all charges, including a misdemeanor marijuana charge, a court clerk said Friday.

Lawyers for the defendant argued, and the judge ultimately ruled, that the farmers had intended to produce hemp, not marijuana. The day of the raid, Brock Dykes showed DCI agents the results of tests conducted on the crop that indicated it contained less than 0.3% THC.

Under Wyoming’s hemp statutes, the crop has to have a THC-concentration limit below 0.3%. Marijuana and hemp are derived from the same plant. Tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, is the chemical in marijuana that gets users high. Its low presence in hemp keeps the crop from being categorized a drug.

Acting on a tip, DCI ultimately seized 700 pounds of hemp from the Egles’ farm. When agents ran it through a series of their own tests, most test results came back with THC concentrations higher than 0.3%. The highest result was 0.6%.

Laramie County Assistant District Attorney David Singleton, who prosecuted the case, argued that any plant testing over 0.3% is marijuana, not hemp. The judge, however, said it was clear the farmers intended to grow hemp, citing as evidence Dyke’s presentation of earlier test results to DCI and the Egles’ long history as hemp farmers.

Reached by phone Friday, Laramie County District Attorney Leigh Anne Manlove declined to comment on the case.

The dismissal of the case at such an early stage in criminal procedures — during a preliminary hearing — is unusual. Tom Jubin, a lawyer for the Egles, said that during his decades-long career this was only the third of his cases to end at that early stage.

“It’s pretty rare but it’s also pretty rare that a prosecutor would take a case like this and push it,” Jubin told WyoFile after the judge’s verdict.

“Please, have the courage to get these people home,” Jubin asked the judge during his closing remarks. In June, a different judge restricted Deborah Palm-Egle to Laramie County, though her home is in Colorado, her son told WyoFile.

Judge Williams’ own comments before her verdict were brief.

She understood why prosecutors had chosen to bring the case, she said, but did not believe they had probable cause. She also reprimanded the Egles, who had begun growing their hemp crop without a license while state and federal authorities were still developing rules for the newly legalized crop.

The Egles were prominent activists in front of the Legislature who helped push Wyoming’s hemp bill through. House Majority Floor Leader Eric Barlow (R-Gillette), who took the witness stand Thursday, testified that he knew the Egles and understood them to be hemp farmers with no intention of growing marijuana. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Dan Kirkbride (R-Chugwater) and Wyoming State Treasurer Curt Meier submitted statements with similar testimony in support of the Egles.

As such, the Egles “knew the law as well as anyone,” Williams said, and should have been licensed.

Under Wyoming statute, the Egles could face a $750 fine for growing hemp without a license. Such a penalty is a far cry from the decades of prison time they could have gotten if convicted on prosecutors’ charges.

After the judge’s ruling, Shannon Dykes rushed to tearfully embrace Palm-Egle, who is in a wheelchair. “Thank God it’s over,” Palm-Egle said.

Joshua Egle began growing what he described as a test crop of hemp for research purposes before he got his license, he told WyoFile after the hearing. Working in unfamiliar soil, it would take time for farmers to understand how to harvest the plants at the right time to keep THC concentrations legal, he said.

At the time, he was betting officials would soon work out the new industry regulation kinks and allow him to license the crop, he said. In the meantime, “we had to get going,” he said.

The Egles, and other hemp proponents, have pitched the crop as a new outlet for Wyoming’s farmers, and a viable path for economic diversification for a state struggling with its dependence on the energy industry. Egle will continue to pursue hemp farming in Wyoming, he said.

The raid

On Nov. 4, the Dykes were at the Egles’ property in Albin, a farming village in eastern Laramie County near the Nebraska line. The Egles, who live principally in Colorado, were not home. Brock Dykes was taking advantage of fresh snow to burn some waste wood, he told WyoFile in an interview after the judge’s verdict Thursday.

Dykes and his wife were standing outside and saw a line of unmarked cars, and one Wyoming Highway Patrol car, coming toward the property, he said. Their first thought was someone had called in concern about the smoke, he said. His two sons, then 11 and 12 years old, were inside the farmhouse.

Law enforcement officers, who ultimately turned out to be DCI agents, came out of the cars in tactical gear and with rifles pointed at the couple, the Dykes said, yelling at them to “put their fucking hands up.” Brock Dykes saw “five or six officers with a battering ram” approaching the door of the house where his sons were, he said. He yelled that it was unlocked and they didn’t use the ram.

Officers trained guns on the two boys as well, the Dykes said. It was 45 minutes to an hour before Shannon Dykes was able to see her sons, she said.

The investigation had begun when a “reliable source of information” called DCI concerned that the Egles were growing marijuana, according to the charging documents. DCI agents visited the farm several times and spotted what they believed to be marijuana plants drying in an open barn.

DCI agents never contacted the Egles, either before the raid or during the five months between the raid and pressing felony charges, according to the DCI investigator’s testimony during the trial.

“You sought charges against these farmers for crimes that carry decades of prison time without ever talking to them?” Jubin asked DCI Special Agent John Briggs, who led the investigation, during the hearings.

“I did not interview them, no sir,” the investigator answered.

The Dykes were never handcuffed during the raid, they said. Testimony during the preliminary hearing, which took place over two afternoons in July and August, established that Brock Dykes tried to explain the Egles were growing hemp. He showed officers the THC testing results Joshua Egle had sent him, which were on his cellphone.

Briggs was not interested in those results at the time of the raid, Dykes told WyoFile. Briggs told Dykes “I’m not going to argue with you about the technical difference between hemp and marijuana,” Dykes said.

The Dykes’ attorney, Michael Bennett, asked the judge to consider what kind of criminal would “show [testing] proof to agents, as if it were some elaborate ruse to grow the worst marijuana in the entire universe.”

DCI agents confiscated 722 pounds of plants, according to the affidavit. During the court hearings, Briggs testified that then-agency director Steve Woodson, and then assistant-director Forrest Williams drove a vehicle to the farm to collect the crop. Woodson retired in early 2020, and Williams is today the agency’s interim director.

Though relieved at the judge’s action Thursday, the Dykes remain angry at the DCI agents and prosecutors who brought such heavy charges against them. The young couple and small business owners have had to pay for weekly drug tests since early June, and spent considerable money on a lawyer, they said.

“This is all very, very surreal,” Dykes said.

The hemp industry has now progressed in Wyoming, and a number of people around him are growing the crop, he said. “How many more people are growing right now whose neighbor is going to call the police?” he said.

WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.

Arizona Marijuana Legalization Initiative Officially Qualifies For November Ballot

Photo courtesy of Pixabay.

The post Wyoming Judge Dismisses Marijuana Charges Against Hemp Farmers appeared first on Marijuana Moment.

from Updates By Jane https://www.marijuanamoment.net/wyoming-judge-dismisses-marijuana-charges-against-hemp-farmers/

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notfspurejam · 5 years

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THE MADNESS OF GEORGE III - IN PRODUCTION - PHOTOS BY MANUEL HARLAN

#The Madness of George III #mark gatiss #Adrian Scarborough #debra gillett #spoilers

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allbestnet · 7 years

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The last 160 and you are Finished

Considerations - By Colin Wright

From Good to Amazing: No Bullshit Tips for The Life You Always Wanted - By Michael Serwa

The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism - By Olivia Fox Cabane

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The Education of Millionaires: Everything You Won't Learn in College About How to Be Successful - Michael Ellsberg

No More Mr. Nice Guy: A proven plan for getting what you want in love, sex and life - By Robert A Glover

She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman - By Ian Kerner

Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain: How I Went from Gang Member to Multimillionaire Entrepreneur - By Ryan Blair

The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million - By Mark Roberge

The Fine Art of Small Talk: How To Start a Conversation, Keep It Going, Build Networking Skills -- and Leave a Positive Impression! - By Debra Fine

Models: Attract Women Through Honesty - By Mark Manson

The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life - Hal Elrod

Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth - By Steve Pavlina

The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results - By Gary Keller

Managing Oneself - By Peter Ferdinand Drucker

The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire - By David Deida

The 48 Laws of Power - Robert Greene

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment - By Eckhart Tolle

The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, A Toltec Wisdom Book - By Janet Mills

168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think - By Laura Vanderkam

Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits - By Gretchen Rubin

The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are - By Brene Brown

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The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun - By Gretchen Rubin

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Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long - By David Rock

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Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard - By Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die - By Chip Heath and Dan Heath

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Me, Myself, and Us: The Science of Personality and the Art of Well-Being - By Brian R Little

The Happiness of Pursuit: Finding the Quest That Will Bring Purpose to Your Life - By Chris Guillebeau

Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator - By Ryan Holiday

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The Productive Narcissist: The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership - By Michael Maccoby

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas - John Boyne

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Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success - By John C. Maxwell

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#The last 160 and you are Finished

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Inside No. 9 Series 6 Episode 6 Review: Last Night of the Proms

https://ift.tt/2TvXLtU

This Inside No. 9 review contains spoilers.

Beheading, drowning, strangulation, throat-slitting, cannibalism, exsanguination, human sacrifice, dead babies… Practically nothing makes Inside No. 9 flinch. Let’s not forget, its first ever episode was a tale of historical child sexual abuse that ended in mass murder – which might explain why it took Bafta six series to finally award it ‘Best Comedy’.

It’s only the arrival of Inside No. 9’s first overtly political episode that marks out how apolitical the show has been until now. Of all the uncomfortable places it’s ventured, the state of the nation has stayed largely unexplored territory. Now it’s making up for lost time with a tale of Brexit Britain that belatedly takes up the full mantle of its 1970s Play For Today predecessor. In that strand, Barry Hines, Jim Allen, Ken Loach and others regularly put the country on screen alongside more fanciful, experimental plays from writers like Dennis Potter. ‘Last Night of the Proms’ blends Potter-ish fantasy, Hines-ish politics, and the cringe comedy of Mike Leigh classic ‘Abigail’s Party’, playing out as a tribute to all of the above.

Set in a Somerset country pile, the episode features the excellent Sarah Parish as leave-voting family matriarch Dawn, who’s married to Steve Pemberton’s buffoonish and cheerful Mick. Debra Gillett is Penny, Dawn’s sexually frustrated sister who’s unhappily married to Reece Shearsmith’s monstrous remain-voting pedant Brian, and mother to their teenage son Oliver, played by Jack Wolfe. Julian Glover is Dawn and Penny’s dementia-suffering father Ralph (whose Tourette’s-like interjections are, somewhat tastelessly, used here as punchlines).

The story plays out over a single evening at a Last Night of the Proms family viewing party. Mick’s having a high old time, Dawn’s trying to herd everybody into the spirit, Penny’s lonely, Oliver’s bored, Ralph’s in a world of his own, and Brian’s spitting hostility in every direction and drowning in booze. Into this mix walks Yusef, a mysterious non-English-speaking interloper (played by Bamshad Abedi-Amin), thought to have found his way there from a local immigration detention centre.

Inside No. 9 Series 6 Episode 5 Review: How Do You Plead?

By Louisa Mellor

Inside No. 9 Series 6 Episode 4 Review: Hurry Up and Wait

By Louisa Mellor

Parish is the episode’s star, and a match for Shearsmith’s brilliantly vicious energy. His character Brian starts off as a mere wanker (as summed up by one of Ralph’s eruptions) but ends up as a real villain. When Yusef arrives, Brian is shown to be more xenophobic and abusive than any of them. His high-minded criticism of ‘Little Englanders’ is revealed as hypocrisy when he uses a DNA test to crowingly evict Dawn from the family home after learning that she’s not Ralph’s biological daughter and half-German. When an insensible Ralph, whipped into a paranoid frenzy sound-tracked by ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, stabs Yusef, Brian leaps off his moral high ground and sticks the knife in too. Prior to that, he takes advantage of an opportunity to molest Yusef, much as his wife did during ‘The Sailor’s Hornpipe’ sequence. Wrapping Brian’s villainy up in his identity as a closeted gay man feels uncomfortably retrograde, but then again, nobody’s a hero in this episode.

Making the remainer character a total prick is perhaps a conciliatory attempt to armour the episode against accusations of left-wing BBC bias, but by the end, there’s no disguising the political perspective. The episode is an uncompromising look at post-Brexit UK identity and division. First, it paints a picture of the specific version of Britishness that inspires people to wave flags, hang bunting and congratulate themselves on being part of glorious British tradition. And then… it shows them murdering an illegal immigrant who might just be Jesus (Yusef looks the part, turns water into wine, miraculously restores an eaten buffet, has stigmata, and appears in a vision to Penny after his death – there’s the Dennis Potter fabulation), before they dispose of his body wrapped in a Union Flag. Well, why pussy-foot around.

I say ‘uncompromising’, perhaps ‘emphatic’ is better. Most our-national-flag-is-soaked-in-blood protest isn’t made quite so literally, but this certainly gets the job done.

There are some laughs amid the drama and hostility. Pemberton’s Mick is a cuddly racist whose relationship with Dawn is endearing. The Royle Family meets Gogglebox trick of cutting between actual footage of the proms, and the family’s commentary and unfolding story is a great ruse that leads to some exhilarating musical chaos from director Matt Lipsey and co. Comedy clearly isn’t the main goal here though, as the reflective, low-key ending shows.

The psychic wounds, if that’s the right way to describe them, of the last few years in the UK have pushed plenty of us to more political engagement. It’s no surprise that Inside No. 9 has been moved to do the same. When people age, we either mellow from the firebrand passions of youth or enter a new era of boldness. Maturing TV series are no different, it seems, and judging from this episode and the whole of series six, mellowing is not on this ever-vital show’s agenda. Here’s to series seven.

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All episodes of Inside No. 4 series 6 are currently available to stream on BBC iPlayer.

The post Inside No. 9 Series 6 Episode 6 Review: Last Night of the Proms appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3wvVtJJ

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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all-allam · 7 years

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The Limehouse cast prepare for the show! Pictures courtesy of the Donmar Warehouse’s Twitter, taken over for the occasion by actor Paul Chahidi.

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cardsandkeyfobsthings-blog · 5 years

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Big Brother at the supermarket till?

Just a harmless extension of the well-known barcode, or a sinister tracking device designed to monitor the movements and habits of consumers?

The arguments around radio frequency ID (RFID) tags are heating up, with news that an American civil liberties organisation wants a boycott of Tesco over its use of the tags.

Tesco says it is only using RFID tags on DVDs and CDs at its Extra superstore in Leicester to help its distribution process and to "improve availability for customers".

But those opposed to it insist the technology - which allows products to be tracked via radio waves - is a device to spy on customers.

Trial extension?

RFID tags in products, and on "smart" shelves, are able to tally the shelves' contents continually, and make more precise requests for inventory from suppliers.

The chips can also indicate when a CD is stored in the wrong shelf. This could mean that retailers have fewer empty shelves, and suppliers can eliminate wasteful overproduction of their goods, say supporters of RFID.

However pressure group Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (Caspian) is urging people to restrict their purchases at Tesco.

It claims RFID chips can be used to secretly identify you and the things you're carrying or wearing.

All kinds of personal belongings, including clothes, could constantly broadcast messages about their whereabouts and their owners, it warns.

"We believe Tesco's decision to pursue item-level RFID tagging is irresponsible," says Caspian director Katherine Albrecht.

Ms Albrecht claims Tesco's RFID move "would involve potentially hundreds of thousands more shoppers... it essentially means that more people will be taking home items containing spy chips".

Analysts point out that the technology is years away from being able to function in such a sophisticated way: although it is already starting to be applied to logistics operations, consumer goods are unlikely to be tagged on any scale until 2010.

And Tesco says the tiny devices, fitted to the cellophane wrappers on products, can be simply thrown away by the consumer after opening.

They also say the radio-barcode on the devices can only be read when in close proximity to a checkout "reader" located in the store.

"Suggestions we would use these to track people or monitor them after they have left the store are simply not true,"

RFID order

There was controversy in 2003 when a RFID tracking system was used in the packaging of Gillette Mach3 razor blades to stop shoplifting at one of Tesco's Cambridge branches.

Anyone picking up a packet of the blades triggered CCTV surveillance of themselves in the store.

And those who support the new technology say it could help improve security, at a shop floor level and distribution level.

Tesco has signed a deal with ADT, which will supply 4,000 RFID readers and 16,000 antennae to it by autumn, with 1,300 UK Tesco supermarkets and 35 distribution centres getting tracking equipment.

The company says says the technology will be used on things like trays and palettes, and not on individual items.

This is totally separate from the Leicester trial, Tesco insists.

Marks & Spencer is another UK retailer experimenting. The firm has been running an RFID tag trial on men's suits at nine stores, including in Oxford Street, London.

It says this is solely to "monitor improvements to stock availability in the supply chain from supplier to store".

US legislation

RFID was pioneered in the US at the Auto-ID Centre in Boston, a partnership of around 100 global companies, including Wal-mart, Tesco, Nestle, and Pepsi.

The centre has now been superseded by EPC Global where research continues... as does protest in the US.

Utah's House of Representatives has passed an RFID privacy bill, which requires all goods carrying functioning RFID tags in stores to be labelled as such.

In California, state Senator Debra Bowen has introduced a bill to keep data from RFID tags separate from consumers' personal information.

But, according to Tesco: "The impact to the supply chain, to our stores, our staff and most importantly to our customers will be enormous, and all for the better."

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