"Treasure Island" / "The Last Jedi"

I ended 2017 in my home town of Stoke-on-Trent, as usual, and persuaded my mother to accompany me to the New Victoria Theatre to see their Christmas production, following on from last year’s “The Snow Queen”. This was Theresa Heskins’ rambunctious take of R.L. Stevenson’s “Treasure Island”, featuring some mild gender-tweaking, and plenty of rock-inflected music. Since we were up in the balcony in this theatre in the round, some of the ground-level action was inevitably lost to view, but the ship-board setting ensured plenty of swinging in the rigging. A large, multi-talented ensemble, too, with most of the cast also playing in the band. Jolly fun, with inevitable hints of bleakness.

"Treasure Island"

My first film of 2018 was the latest in the Star Wars canon – “The Last Jedi”. As a non-devotee, I just about managed to keep track of goings-on in terms of the struggle between the brutally autocratic largely black-clad, Caucasian First Order and the multi-ethnic, proletarian rebels. Director Rian Johnson copes well with the spectacular, space-battle aspects of the story-telling, his script full of pomposity-deflating humour. Some of the acting is inevitably one-dimensional, given the narrow focus of the characters’ various journeys, but Adam Driver impresses as the conflicted Kylo Ren; Benicio Del Toro also benefits from a darkly ambivalent role. As the middle film in a trilogy, it inevitably leaves us hanging, but it’s a solid piece of work.