Theatre 🎭 Film 🎬@jmcfireplays; essayist; recovering academic 📚. Author of Fat Souls, Divine Vision. These views and musings I acknowledge mine...
Wing, England
Joined March 2009
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My two most recent play publications - Divine Vision: William Blake in Felpham and The Pilgrim's Progress are available from @TSLpub
The Pilgrim's Progress
Step into an unforgettable journey with this epic adaptation of John Bunyan’s timeless allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress. Originally commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company, this dramatization brings to the stage the tale of Christian, who flees the City of Destruction on a perilous quest to reach the Celestial City. Guided by Evangelist, Christian encounters a host of vivid characters—both friends and foes—including the treacherous Mr Worldly Wiseman, the loquacious Talkative, and the fearsome Apollyon. We follow Christian’s trials as he battles through the murky Slough of Despond, faces persecution at the chaotic Vanity Fair, and confronts the enormous Giant Despair in the menacing Doubting Castle. Meanwhile, his family endures their own hardships in his absence, adding a poignant counterpoint to his epic journey.
tslbooks.uk/product/the-pilg…
Divine Vision: William Blake in Felpham
London, 1800. Things aren’t going too well for William Blake. He lacks work, his wife worries over the bills, he’s seeing visions of the Apocalypse, and his planned epic poem on the divine remains unwritten. When Blake gets an offer from famous poet William Hayley to leave London and settle in a cottage at the seaside village of Felpham, he jumps at the chance. In Felpham, things don’t quite work out the way Blake had them planned…
tslbooks.uk/product/divine-v…
The cover designs are by brilliant @MiddlesexUni BA Graphic Design graduate Phillip Block.
Mood:
A long time this world has stood
It gets more wicked every day
The Maker who created it
Will never let it stand this way
This world can't stand long
Be ready and don't be late
We should know this world can't stand
For it's too full of hate
This world was destroyed before
Because it was so full of sin
And for that very reason now
It's got to be destroyed again
youtu.be/7q9mK5k35rw?si=bTAP…
Reading some quotes from student protestors in France. They are hollow individuals, through which slogans pass like electric currents.
lemonde.fr/en/france/article…
You would have hoped Shakespeare and Marlowe could have come up with a better play than Edward III.
The Shakespeare canon may not be quite as settled as we thought. New research identifies Shakespeare as the principal author of Edward III and Marlowe as his collaborator. The old rivals may have been partners after all. @loughnrv @MarloweProject 🎭
theguardian.com/culture/2026…
Someone on my Facebook has shared the text card below, and it’s taking everything within my power not to reply with the accompanying Fall lyric.
The Dam Busters (1955) is a famous war film that turns out to be less about the interior life of heroes than about how total war inhabits the individual. letterboxd.com/jmcfire/film/…
"You're a big man, but you're in bad shape. With me it's a full time job. Now behave yourself."
A big ass black dude tells a scrawny white kid if he can spell his name, he’ll get $100.
If not, he has to box him for 30 seconds.
The kid gets it wrong (Klaus) and steps up to the challenge.
You gotta respect this.
White boy of the year. 🏆
James Martin Charlton retweeted
Might go up the BBC and pitch a new game show - ‘Fantasy Show Trials’
200 Motels (1971) is a near-narrativeless Frank Zappa fantasia, a fatally unfunny collection of sketches rescued from total collapse by Tony Palmer’s feel for putting moving pictures to music. letterboxd.com/jmcfire/film/…
If Labour ministers seriously think that working class families were ever in love with net zero… it’s a level of delusion that’s inconceivable.
I suppose that’s what you get when your national anthem’s refrain is,
Aux armes, citoyens !
Formez vos bataillons !
Marchons ! Marchons !
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons !
In Flic Story (1975), Delon pursues and Trintignant flees him through a bleak post-war France in which professionalism has replaced personality. letterboxd.com/jmcfire/film/…
I used to work with academics that hailed Russell Brand. A couple of them even wrote a book about him as a model for celebrity “involvement”. I told them he had an unsavoury reputation with women. They didn’t care, they got their tome.
James Martin Charlton retweeted
“Those old school performers came to the role with substantial classical experience, after a long apprenticeship in Shakespeare.”
@jmc_fire argues that the Royal Shakespeare Company needs more clarity of vision
thecritic.co.uk/star-struck-…
NepoMP Stephen Kinnock comes across as a dreadful piece of work, with none of the rhetorical brilliance which was his father's one redeeming feature.
This is an A level text book…
Anyone want to play 'Circle The Inaccuracies In A Single Paragraph'?
Happy to advise on a rewrite, @HodderEducation
Fascinating obituary of unreconstructed Trotskyist. His lifetime goal was to “overthrow Capitalism” but, apart from a nebulous “socialist future”, there’s remarkably little flesh on the bones of what life would be like post-Capital.
Alan Thornett, Trotskyist shop steward who caused havoc at the Morris Cowley car plant in Oxford telegraph.co.uk/gift/b0418d1…
