Ray Schaufeld's blog

Asweh! This book is hutious. Stephen's lively crossover tale takes us inside the world of Harrison Opuka. Recently from Ghana, now in towerblock land East London, 11 year old Harri is a fast runner and a fast learner. Apart from the odd event, such as the murder of a young neighbour, watching the theft of a tray of chickens from the market and the public deportation of a trader, Church, the local carnival and trading banter insults with big sis...

Minette's whodunnits are sick and dirty. I find them real page-turners. I read this one in a 3 hour gulp last night and will probably re-read it today. In fact, bad confession here, it will probably be a re-reread as I got to around the middle and recognised one of the nicer characters. I only get this with whodunnits, anything else I know by around page 5 if it is a re-read. Some of her books have villains and victims who are from the bottom of...

I am almost tempted to rate this my film of the year. The children's tale about the marmalade-loving bear from darkest Peru. Very clever movie. Set in the fictional film set of London we all know, Paddington keeps the slapstick humour and childlike warmth of the original and resonates with echoes about 'where's home?',and the need to sometimes take risks. It captures the strangeness of being a creature in a strange environment. The last 6 days I...

DV8 Physical Theatre Company interviewed 50 men about life and love. They decided there was 1 man whose story they had to tell using word-for-word reported speech, acting and mime. John is the classic 'man of constant sorrow, seen trouble all his days', to borrow words from a Country song. His life is the standard tale of woe, childhood misery followed by drink, heroin,and the long-lost son who does not want to know when he discovers Dad has...

The Ghosh family live in, I'm guessing here, a typical middle-class house in Calcuta, West Bengal. It's 1967. There are seventeen of them plus the servants who occasionally get involved in a good way, one kind soul risks the sack by giving Purba a sneaky stash of Vim. Purba, who is from a poor family and has become a widow with two small children after her husband, the youngest son of the clan, went to the country with his pals and raped a...

The titles a bit dated; the story's timeless. Werther is a young man with an admin job who paints for a hobby. He's upperclass but not a twit,he cares about the local peasants and hangs out with them in friendly way as well as hanging out with the local snobs who snub him hurtfully when they happen to be posher than him, and he loves nature. Obsession is the problem, he falls uncontrollably in love with the attractive Lotte who is the fiance of...

Hard to tell a tale of grim facts which we can all Google online and to keep our interest; Richard Flanagan does a capable job. We are mainly placed in the construction of The Death Railway, the Burma- Thailand Railway built in WW2 by the slave labour of Japanese prisoners of war. Dorrigo Evans is a hero and medical colonel, a leader of men. We shuttle back and forth to his civilian life before and after and Love is the additional interest, well...

'If chance supplied a loaf of white bread, Two casks of wine and a leg of mutton, In the corner of a garden with a tulip-cheeked girl There'd be enjoyment that no Sultan can outdo. A rubai is a four-line lyric a,a,b,a, the third line adding variation of form. They were popular verse, anyone and everyone could write and share them. Omar Khayyam (1048-1131) was a distinguished Iranian philosopher. he wrote rubai for fun. Many variations on a few...

U, PG, 12A, 15 and 18; it's a hotly debated topic at my work (I do more than one thing but cleaning my local cinema is an essential part of my income), and I've no idea what the public makes of it. U is obvious, a U movie is deemed suitable for a child of four. PG, well I bust the rules slightly and took my daughter when she was four to Jurassic Park, PG is considered safe viewing for 8 and over, as did many others. No problems and I think most...

Slam poetry is a contest with rules, so my shot at the Bike Shed theatre in Exeter is probably the same set up as anytown. You get 3 minutes and get scored by 3 judges out of 20 on the poem, performance and intensity of audience response. The bad news is that scoring is public. The good news is that all the poets were good and I would enjoy hearing any of them again. There were about 70 in the audience they seemed friendly if a little bland; a...