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The National Theatre has a new production on at the moment called Fram. Fram is Norwegian for forward. The play is about the arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen who at the end of the 19th century tried to get to the North Pole after sailing in the specially designed wooden hulled ship called Fram.

Of course we know he never made it and neither did Captain Scott in 1912 so we know the outcome of that part of the plot. What is less well known is that Nansen went on to become a champion of humanitarinism in the 1920′s and was a instrumental in setting up the League of Nations.

Nansen was internationally known in his day but is almost forgotten now. The poet and play write Tony Harrison has been obsessed with Nansen (his own words when interviewed on Radio 4) for years and apparently he has been working on the play for a long time. Not only has he written it but he has also shared the directing credits. The really interesting thing about this play is it is written in verse.

I was lucky enough to get tickets for an early preview. The play started off well enough but rapidly degenerated into what can only be described as a total mess. Apart from the fact that I don’t like poetry (you can’t accuse me of not giving it a go!) the structure of the play is difficult to say the least. There are too many historical bits left out that make it hard to follow what is going on especially if like me you are not totally obsessed with Nansen. For example one minute it’s the 19th Century and then we are catapulted into 1922. There is a famine in Russia and the League of Nations is being set up but there is no mention (apart from a throw away line) of WWI. The issues of famine and inequality are literally rammed down the audience’s throat (the vomiting scene springs to mind) and it all gets reduced to a secondary school type polemic on how bad America and the West are because they are rich and the East is hard done by.

This get really tedious after the intermission. The funny thing is I seriously considered not returning after the break but thought it can’t get any worse. How wrong I was. Looking around after the intermission it quickly became clear that many other people had acted on the same thought and had either gone to the pub or done something else more fun than watching this painfully bad play. Things got even better as the play got under way and people started to walk out. Some very brave people even got up from the front row. Now don’t get me wrong the acting was OK the material was just so badly written and by the end frankly embarrassing.

There are some good stage effects such as the ship that comes up out of the stage floor but that’s left to almost the end by which time you want to start self harming. One more little detail about this play that’s worth taking note of, it’s three hours long so if you suffer from ADHD you are going to be in for a really rough time.

Here are some lies – sorry reviews from the national media:

Actually the press reviews recently have given this production no more than two stars and it’s been uniformly slated. If you want to see something worth the money I’d recommend this:

http://ironmanmovie.marvel.com/

We know what David Lynch thinks about watching a film on a mobile phone – he does not like this behaviour one iota. On the other hand there are some attributes of mobile phones that Mr Lynch does like for instance ring-tones. For someone who is irritated by watching movies on a phone it’s strange that he has a penchant for something much more irritating like a ring-tone but no accounting for taste. Of course David Lynch is a master of the surreal so this could all be part of one of his performances. Here is David discussing his ring-tones:

Download a David Lynch ringtone today and watch this movie on your mobile phone.

I have a Motorola Z8 mobile phone. I waited about 6 months for this model to be released and was thrilled to finally get one. I was so impatient that I changed my service provider and phone number. One of the big selling points of this phone just before it was released was the focus on the quality of the screen and it’s ability to run full length movies. I have made good use of the phone’s ability to play a film only once when stuck on an aircraft for 6 hours before takeoff on the runway at Berlin airport in late 2007.

After having the Z8 for nearly a year I have realised the device has some severe functional shortcomings such as a keypad that is very unresponsive and almost impossible to compose a text message on. I must admit that I have not used the Internet on my phone and the next one I get will probably be a basic phone and text model. The recently released Apple iPhone is also being marketed as a multimedia device capable of playing movies. There are other people including the film director David Lynch who are not that comfortable with phones that can display movies. Here is a short film where he talks through his views on watching a film on a mobile phone:

Here is an update on the London Mayoral election campaigns (well based on the chatter tracked by Omgili):

I just realised that I will be in Edinburgh on election day so I won’t be able to vote and I forgot to register for a postal vote. If Boris gets elected don’t blame me.

By the way in case anyone has forgotten May 2nd is St’ Boris Day.

Until recently I was a customer of  Amazon.co.uk’s DVD rental service. I closed my account after a couple of years of membership due to increasingly poor service. Just before closing my account a message was posted on the DVD site saying that Amazon was negotiating with LoveFilm for their DVD rental service to be taken over by the LoveFilm. This is a company I have always tried to avoid due to a couple of bad experiences when using their free trial an experience shared by other people I know (including my mother).

LoveFilm is a company that clearly prefers quantity size over quality. If you look at DVD clubs you’ll quickly find that many of them are owned by or are suplied by LoveFilm. Customer service reviews are often derisory. I spent some time looking at the alternatives and have recently settled on a company called CinemaParadiso. So far CinemaParadiso seems to be providing good service and a regular supply of DVD’s.

Today I received an email from Amazon announcing that the deal with LoveFilm has now gone through…

This might be good news for Amazon and LoveFilm but probably not good news for their DVD rental customers. It will be interesting to see if there is an exodus away from Amazon to the few remaining companies that are not owned by LoveFilm.

Here is a thought, once very high speed broadband becomes common and cheap enough for most people to afford what will be the future be for DVD rental companies that use the post system when it will be easier and cheaper to download on demand high quality movies? I suspect there may also be a knock on negative financial effect for the Post Office as they have large contracts with companies such as LoveFilm to deliver their DVD’s.