High Spirits, Low Ratings: ABC’s Galavant

Joshua Sasse and Timothy Omundson in ABC's Galavant.

If a cast of committed, engaging performers do a funny musical number in the Enchanted Forest, and no one’s watching, does it make a sound? That is more or less the question facing ABC’s oftentimes delightful but unfortunately low-rated musical comedy Galavant, created by writer Dan Fogelman and with music and lyrics by Alan Menken and Glenn Slater.

Galavant is now in the middle of its second season, and no one seems more surprised by that fact than its own creative team, as evidenced by the opening number of the first episode, aptly titled “A New Season.” In keeping with the show’s overall aesthetic, the song’s full of self-referential moments, such as the acknowledgement of the cost to the network of bringing on more guest stars or the writers’ disbelief that they couldn’t even garner an Emmy nomination for Best Song – all taking place within an episode whose full title is “A New Season aka Suck It Cancellation Bear,” a dig at a TV website that had predicted all-but-certain doom for the show after its truncated first season.

Hateful, Indeed: Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight

Kurt Russell and Samuel L. Jackson in Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. (Photo: Allstar/The Weinstein Company)

“I have a definite problem with Quentin Tarantino’s excessive use of the n-word. I think something is wrong with him... It’s just the n-word, the n-word, the n-word.”

– Director Spike Lee, in a 1997 interview following the release of Tarantino's film Jackie Brown.

I don’t usually agree with Spike Lee, whose defamatory depiction of Jewish characters in his early movies (Mo’ Better Blue, 1990; Get on the Bus, 1996), before 9/11, was offensive in its own right, but when it comes to Quentin Tarantino’s overuse of the word "nigger," Lee is spot on. In Tarantino’s films it’s generally uttered as much for shock value – and the word can still shock, even in our day and age – and cheap provocation than for veracity or to make a salient point in the story. I didn’t count how often it was used in Tarantino’s latest movie The Hateful Eight but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was utilized more than the 109 times it popped up in his last movie Django Unchained (2012). But it’s also only one problematic aspect of a movie that, even held up against Tarantino’s limited palette of themes and tones, is a singularly redundant, unnecessary and, yes, hateful movie.

Boldly Go: Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty

Rick and Morty, created by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon, recently completed its 2nd season on the Cartoon Network.

Although animated series Rick and Morty wrapped up its second season in October of 2015, the cult hit has recently moved to a new, coveted time slot on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim on Sunday nights at 11:30pm. It’s been renewed for a third season with a yet to be announced air date, estimated somewhere between late 2016 and mid-2017. In the interim, incorporating Justin Roiland (Gravity Falls) and Dan Harmon’s (Community) madcap cartoon show into your Sunday viewing schedule is a worthwhile investment of time. Arguably the cleverest cartoon series currently in production, Rick and Morty is full of bold jokes, intelligent writing, and just enough heart to keep it anchored without becoming saccharine.

Too Serious: Zappa and Jazz by Geoff Wills

Frank Zappa and George Duke, backstage, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the mid 1970s. (Photo by Herb Nolan)

In 1973 Frank Zappa delivered one of his many humorous statements when he said, “Jazz isn’t dead. It just smells funny” on his album Roxy & Elsewhere. Zappa’s sarcastic quip had a certain resonance. By the early seventies jazz music was transforming into a blend between the electric sounds of rock and the confluence of funk. Fusion, as it came to be called, was inspiring a new generation of musicians (Jaco Pastorius, Al Di Meola et al) and testing the mettle of the “purists” who preferred the acoustic sounds of Louis Armstrong and Thelonious Monk. For author, musician and psychologist Geoff Wills, Zappa’s comment didn’t make sense because the composer regularly worked with highly skilled musicians who played jazz or came from that school. In his autobiography, Zappa declared jazz to be “the music of unemployment” – further feeding Wills' need to “clarify the often confusing nature of [Zappa's] relationship with” the genre.

Choosing Peace: The Strange Genre Subversion of Undertale

Undertale operates based on a simple premise, which is actually just a question: do you really have to kill every foe you encounter in a video game?

Violence in all media is generally an easy way to generate conflict, and therefore drama. But Undertale, created almost entirely by a single programmer/designer/composer named Toby Fox, seeks to challenge the basic assumption that violence is the only way to create meaningful conflict in a game. Within the familiar framework of a retro-styled RPG, it allows for peaceful resolution of every encounter you find yourself in. If you decide to kill your foes instead of convincing them not to fight, those choices are reflected in the game world, which becomes either more hostile or more welcoming depending on how wantonly murderous you decide to be. It’s a fascinating inversion of a familiar genre.

Carol: Women Under Glass

Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett in Carol, directed by Todd Haynes.

For the first half of Carol it seems as if the director, Todd Haynes, is going to make it work. Haynes stepped into movies with one of the most startling curiosities of the eighties, a short called Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story populated by Barbie and Ken dolls, but at feature length his movies always seem theoretical – and rigged – like a doctoral dissertation you can’t get behind because it scrambles any instinctual reading of the material. That’s especially true of the project he returns to every two or three pictures, where he tries to replicate glossy Hollywood melodramas of the forties and fifties but moves into the foreground the subversive qualities that (some say) directors like Douglas Sirk slipped into the margins of their movies. Since I can’t take Sirk’s movies seriously, Haynes’ takes on them probably wouldn’t interest me much anyway. But he was certainly an entertainer, and though he asked his audience to accept some stupefying plot points, God knows he didn’t try to pass theory off as drama. Haynes’ most highly regarded film, Far from Heaven (2002), defied common sense at every narrative turn. His plan was to set the movie in the suburban 1950s with a Jane Wyman-type heroine (played by Julianne Moore, whose performance is the movie’s only saving grace) and give her a husband who’s a closeted homosexual and a lover who’s an African-American gardener. It might have been an interesting proposition, but not if the gardener (Dennis Haysbert) talked like he’d just time-traveled back from the twenty-first century and certainly not with Dennis Quaid as the husband. Haynes needed an actor who read as straight but who could be convincing as a gay man, like Brando in Reflections in a Golden Eye. (Or Taylor Kitsch in the second season of True Detective, who seemed to have based the early scenes in his performance on Brando in Huston’s movie.) Quaid is preposterously miscast – like, say, Michael Douglas as  Liberace in the TV movie Behind the Candelabra – so all you get is the idea of a straight man who’s secretly gay. And when Haynes throws in a butch little girl and an effeminate little boy as Moore and Quaid’s kids, the obvious reversal of sexual expectations becomes dopey and childish. It’s the by now familiar problem of drama that goes straight to the symbolic level before it’s been worked through on the narrative level. Far from Heaven flattered viewers by making them feel smart for getting what he was up to without engaging them in the storytelling.

Maajid Nawaz’s Memoir: From Islamist to Liberal Democrat

Author and politician Maajid Nawaz. (Photo by David Levene)

“Here I am back in Mecca. I am still travelling, trying to broaden my mind, for I have seen too much of the damage narrow-mindedness can make of things, and when I return home … I will devote what energies I have to repairing the damage.”

– Malcolm X, Letter to James Farmer 

It is not surprising that in Radical: My Journey from Islamist Extremism to a Democratic Awakening (WH Allen, 2012), Maajid Nawaz cites Malcolm X, given the correlation in the arc of their lives. Whereas the African-American leader’s path gave way from being a petty criminal and long-term incarceration to becoming an influential minister and separatist political activist to evolving into a humanist in the final stages of his life, Nawaz’s journey led him from being a British-born angry teenager of Pakistani descent, who found his voice of rebellion through American hip-hop, to the upper echelons of the radical organization Hizb-al Tahrir, and his subsequent imprisonment in Egypt and disenchantment with Islamism. What both men shared in common was their ability to challenge their deepest convictions despite the personal costs they endured.

Neglected Gem #87: Metallic Blues (2004)

Avi Kushnir in Metallic Blues (2004).

I first saw Metallic Blues (2004) a decade ago when it had its run on the festival circuit, and, though I recall enjoying it, I mainly remembered it for its thematic and structural overlap with Eytan Fox's Walk on Water. It was striking to see two very different films coming out of Israel's relatively small film industry in the same year, both set primarily in contemporary Germany, each dealing with questions of Holocaust memory (and trauma) through the lens of characters of a later generation and with scripts that shifted confidently between Hebrew, English, and German. The ideas prompted by this confluence of features was, and remain, intriguing – but side by side, Metallic Blues seemed the smaller, and therefore, less memorable of the two films. No doubt Fox's movie remains as powerful, but I expect time and distance have done Metallic Blues more favours.

Podcast: Interview with Julie Walters (1983)

Julie Walters, with Kevin Courrier, in 1983. (Photo by Roger Cormier)

From 1981 to 1989, I was assistant producer and co-host of the radio show On the Arts, at CJRT-FM (today Jazz 91.1) in Toronto. With the late Tom Fulton, who was the show's prime host and producer, we did a half-hour interview program where we talked to artists from all fields.

One of those interviews was with actress Julie Walters. Walters was in Toronto promoting Educating Rita at The Festival of Festivals (now The Toronto International Film Festival) when we met to speak in her hotel room. Julie Walters, currently in theatres playing a supporting role in Brooklyn, has enjoyed a long acting career, beginning on television in the UK in the 70s. Educating Rita (1983) was her first feature film, and her turn as a young working-class woman (a role she'd originated on the London stage) brought her fame and accolades internationally. On screen, she acted opposite Michael Caine and they both won Golden Globes for their roles that year. (They were also nominated for, but did not win, Oscars for Best Actress and Best Actor Academy Awards for their roles.)

– Kevin Courrier.

Here is the full interview with Julie Walters as it aired on CJRT-FM in 1983.

Tom Fulton was the host and producer of On the Arts for CJRT-FM in Toronto for 23 years, beginning in 1975.

Kevin Courrier is a freelance writer/broadcaster, film critic and author (Dangerous Kitchen: The Subversive World of Zappa, Randy Newman's American Dreams, 33 1/3 Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, Artificial Paradise: The Dark Side of The Beatles Utopian Dream). Courrier teaches part-time film courses to seniors through the LIFE Institute at Ryerson University in Toronto and other venues. His forthcoming book is Reflections in the Hall of Mirrors: American Movies and the Politics of Idealism. 

The Seriously Underdeveloped Bride: Sherlock’s New Year’s Special

Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch in Sherlock, "The Abominable Bride."

Six years ago today, on January 7, 2010, Kevin Courrier, David Churchill and Shlomo Schwartzberg launched Critics at Large with the aim of providing a place for new critical writing outside the narrowing constraints of the media industry. Since then, we have published a new piece of criticism every day (on films, books, television, theatre, dance, and popular and high culture of all genres), and have gathered a still-growing group of writers – both established and emerging – from across the continent. Over 2,200 posts later, Critics at Large continues to be committed to providing a space when a true diversity of voices can resound. It is particularly meaningful to mark the anniversary of the site with a piece by Danny McMurray on Sherlock. The BBC series was dear to David, who we lost to illness in the spring of 2013, and we at Critics at Large will read Danny's analysis with pride and with loving memories of David. 

Mark Clamen
Managing Editor, Critics at Large

Kevin Courrier
Editor-in-Chief, Critics at Large

Note: This review contains spoilers for Sherlock's "The Abominable Bride".

Fans have waited almost two years since Sherlock, the BBC’s beloved modern-day adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries, closed out its 3rd season with the shocking return of Holmes’ nemesis, Jim Moriarty (Andrew Scott). To some frustration, the latest episode, titled “The Abominable Bride” and billed as a feature-length holiday special, does little to further the plot showrunners Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat left us with two Januarys ago. Instead, the holiday special takes the form of an “alternate reality” story that transports Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) and partner Dr. John Watson (Martin Freeman) to the lush, gothic Victorian London from which their characters were born.

Neglected Gem #86: My Life on Ice (2002)

The French filmmakers Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau have collaborated on a series of gay-themed movies; My Life on Ice was released after their charmingly offhand picaresque The Adventures of Félix (2000). It’s a freshly conceived coming-of-age movie about a Rouen teenager named Étienne (played by Jimmy Tavares), who skates competitively but whose latest obsession is making home movies with his video camera that chronicle his life. The French title is My vraie vie à Rouen (My True Life in Rouen); My Life on Ice isn’t much of an improvement, but it does suggest, rather clumsily, the idea that Étienne is in a fragile, on-the-brink state – that he’s being kept on ice until his real (adult) life begins. He uses his camera to record the transition, putting himself on it most of the time, though occasionally he focuses on his widowed mother, Caroline (Ariane Ascaride), who works at a bookstore, or his paternal grandmother (Hélène Surgère), who is eager to talk about his father (his mother is more reluctant), or his best friend Ludovic (Lucas Bonnifait), who has begun to experiment sexually, or his geography teacher, Laurent (Jonathan Zaccaï), who becomes Caroline’s lover. Étienne records his own daily life, and all the things that are important to him – like a visit to his father’s grave, which he professes is a meaningless excursion while the camera reveals what he isn’t willing to admit about his own emotions. Ducastel and Martineau manage to sustain the tentative, exploratory tone and unsophisticated visual style of the film. It has the feel of a student filmmaker’s continuing project, yet it never feels shoddy or clunky. The cinematographers, Mathieu Poirot-Delpech and Pierre Milton, fix it so the movie looks quite handsome but homemade. Ducastel and Martineau carry off the greater feat of allowing Étienne to tell his own present-tense story – without the benefit, say, of a distanced adult voice-over perspective (the usual solution) – that is, however, informed by their adult sensibility, their sense of what we need to know to understand this boy’s tale. The movie is a highly accomplished narrative trick.

Syfy’s The Expanse: Stumbling Boldly Into The Future

Steven Strait (as James Holden) on SyFy's The Expanse.

I went through the usual roller coaster ride of emotion when I heard that Syfy was adapting James SA Corey’s incredible sci-fi book series, The Expanse, into a television show. At first, I was elated: here was a chance to see Holden and Miller in the flesh, and to see the wonderfully rich and detailed near-future world of the novels come to life! Then, the doubt crept in: how could any TV series, no matter how well funded, possibly do it justice? The novels wove a rich tapestry of futurism and escapism, balancing complex themes of racism, authority, and even the nature of consciousness with a propulsive sense of adventure. I don’t care how big your budget is, that’s a feat that’s nearly impossible to replicate from the page to the screen. Then came the final reservation: I’ll watch it, knowing that it likely won’t be what I want it to be, but since that expectation is unreasonable, I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt – and hopefully it will find ways to surprise me.

Surprise me, it did. As curators of science fiction programming, an all-too-rare commodity, Syfy’s quality record has been patchy at best: for every intelligent, worthwhile pilot, there are two ghost-hunting shows; for every Defiance, there’s a Fangasm. The Expanse, though, feels like an effort with some oomph behind it. It’s clear in every frame that the network wants it to succeed – and much more notably – wants it to be good. I’m not fully sold on all of the show’s elements, which we’ll get to, but off the bat I have to say that as a huge fan of the source material, I was very impressed.

King Charles III: Plain Verse

Tim Pigott-Smith as the Prince of Wales in King Charles III, at Broadway's Music Box Theatre. (Photo Sara Krulwich)

Mike Bartlett’s King Charles III begins in the not-too-distant future, after the death of Queen Elizabeth, when Prince Charles (Tim Pigott-Smith) is about to succeed to the throne. Bartlett’s notion is to present a story of royal intrigue, in the days following the longest reign of any monarch in English history, as a five-act verse play (in iambic pentameter and blank verse, of course), and it’s cleverly packed with allusions to Shakespeare’s histories and tragedies. Charles ruminates in soliloquy on kingship, like Richard II and Henry IV; his last soliloquy, after his son William (Oliver Chris) and daughter-in-law Kate (Lydia Wilson) have manipulated him into abdicating in William’s favor, is inspired by Richard’s prison speech in the final act of Richard II. William is, naturally, in the position of Bolingbroke to Charles’ Richard, but he and Kate are also versions of the Macbeths, with scheming Kate urging her husband on in his reticent moments: “My nervous future King! . . . Become the man I know you are and act,” and later, “I lifted you, my one, / To where by right of birth you ought to be.” William’s kid brother Harry (Richard Goulding), who falls in love with a proletarian, Jess (Tafline Steen), is a debased version of Prince Hal in the Henry IV plays, and his scenes, like the ones in Shakespeare that involve lower-class characters, are mostly in prose. The anti-monarchy protesters – including Jess – who pop up in force when Charles’ refusal to sign a bill creates an unresolvable tension between him and Parliament suggest the chaos in the streets after Caesar’s murder in Julius Caesar. There’s even a Shakespearean ghost with a not immediately apparent identity.

This is all fun, but the elements of parody don’t determine the tone of the play. And it isn’t really a satire either, though the first half seems to be tending that way. What it turns into after intermission is a political melodrama. Bartlett has some good narrative ideas, like depicting Charles as more liberal than either the prime minister, Mr. Evans (Adam James), or the leader of the opposition, Mr. Stevens (Anthony Calf): the bill he won’t support limits the power of the press, and Charles, though he doesn’t put it in exactly this way, finds it fascist. But as an examination of English politics and specifically the strange relationship between the royals and the government, King Charles III is intriguing but doesn’t go very deep.

Misfire: Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s The Assassin

Shu Qi in Hou Hsiao-Hsien's The Assassin.

The Assassin, the latest film from Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien is, bafflingly, one of the best reviewed foreign language films of 2015. (The British film magazine Sight & Sound ranked it as the best film of 2015, based on a poll of 168 critics from around the world.) Much of that praise, no doubt, comes from the consistently high (and sometimes deserved) esteem his films are held in – but even by those lights, his atypical martial arts epic, which comes out on DVD in North America on Jan. 26, is a failure, utterly undeserving of the fulsome raves it’s garnered from the critical establishment. Yes, it looks ravishing – courtesy of ace cinematographer Mark Lee Ping Bing (In the Mood for Love, 2000; Renoir, 2012) – and it is intelligently conceived, but it’s also a dull slog through a time and place Hou fails to do proper justice to.

“And Away…We…Go”: The Frantic, Funny Billy on the Street

Billy Eichner interviews Amy Poehler on Billy on the Street.

Celebrity culture is something that many of us would probably rather not admit to following, and yet it’s both hard to avoid and increasingly something that it’s no longer shameful to confess to liking. Liz Lemon, the alter ego created by Tina Fey on her show 30 Rock, was an intelligent, successful woman and a confirmed feminist, but she also had a weakness for reality TV (a genre which the show occasionally parodied, to great comic effect). Comics such as Amy Schumer and Mindy Kaling, who have a reputation for creating smart, socially-engaged work, nevertheless present their fictionalized public selves as obsessed with pop culture and largely apathetic towards politics and high art. However, they’re also operating on the implicit assumption that we’ll get the joke, and be able to laugh at their characters’ self-absorption.

Comedian Billy Eichner takes this self-consciousness about pop culture’s paradoxically fascinating and vapid nature and turns it into the centerpiece of his bizarre, oftentimes very funny game show, Billy on the Street. Eichner’s satirizing our obsession with celebrity gossip and the ephemerality of popularity (whether that applies to movie franchises, TV shows, or individual stars), but there’s an undercurrent of sincerity, too, as when he launches into a rant defending the universally-panned Sex and the City 2 in a recent episode. It’s that tension between satire and sincerity, as well as the sheer gonzo bizarreness of the show, that I find so entertaining.

Art from Adversity: Netflix’s Making a Murderer

Steven Avery is the primary subject of Netflix's new documentary series, Making a Murderer.

I didn’t know what I was in for when I decided to watch Netflix’s new documentary miniseries, Making a Murderer. Friends all over social media were praising the series, but I’d never heard of Steven Avery or his 1985 conviction for a violent sexual assault that he didn’t commit. Ultimately, my ignorance was to my advantage; not knowing what was coming for Avery and his family intensified my feelings of shock, frustration, and outrage as the story showcased by filmmakers Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos played out in ten hour-long episodes.

Without spoiling too much for the viewer (you should also feel shocked and outraged by Making a Murderer), the documentary tells the incredible story of Avery’s release from prison after serving eighteen years for a crime he didn’t commit, only to land at the centre of a highly publicized murder investigation. Evidence initially seems to point to Avery’s involvement in the murder of 25-year-old acquaintance, Teresa Halbach, but the ensuing trial is full of mistakes, prejudice, and shady dealings. Making a Murderer takes a bold stance and poses the question: did the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Department convict an innocent man as a matter of convenience?

Talking Out of Turn #40 (Podcast): Dave Marsh on Bruce Springsteen (1987)

Bruce Springsteen, on stage during The River tour in 1981. (Photo: Patrick Harbron)

From 1981 to 1989, I was assistant producer and co-host of the radio show On the Arts at CJRT-FM in Toronto. With the late Tom Fulton, who was the show's prime host and producer, we did a half-hour interview program where we talked to artists from all fields. In 1994, after I had gone to CBC, I had an idea to collate an interview anthology from some of the more interesting discussions I'd had with guests from that period. Since they all took place during the Eighties, I thought I could edit the collection into an oral history of the decade from some of its most outspoken participants. The book was assembled from interview transcripts and organized thematically. I titled it Talking Out of Turn: Revisiting the '80s. With financial help from the Canada Council, I shaped the individual pieces into a number of pertinent themes relevant to the decade. By the time I began to contact publishers, though, the industry was starting to change. At one time, editorial controlled marketing. Now the reverse was taking place. Acquisition editors, who once responded to an interesting idea for a book, were soon following marketing divisions concerned with whether the person doing it was hot enough to sell it.

Georgia on Its Mind: The Oxford American Annual Southern Music Issue, Winter 2015

In lieu of a top ten list of the best music for 2015, I’d like to pay tribute to one of my favourite magazines, The Oxford American that celebrates the music of the American South every December with a compilation CD and some outstanding music journalism. I’ve been collecting them since a good friend of mine introduced me to the periodical in 2010. This is a magazine worth keeping.

Now in its 17th year, the Oxford American focuses on the history of the southern United States. It is published four times a year but the magazine’s best issue arrives in December. Simply titled the “Southern Music Issue,” the magazine features recordings, past and present, from a particular state or region in the American south. Last year the magazine and accompanying CD featured artists from Texas. This year it’s the music of Georgia, with a 77-minute sampler and some fine storytelling about the State’s musical heritage.

Top Ten Games of 2015: Monsters, Makers, and MOBAs

Yacht Club Games' Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows is just one of the gaming highlights of 2015.

If you hear anyone bemoaning the state of popular media, grab them by the shoulders and give them a good shake: there can be no doubt that these, right now, are the good ol’ days. 2015 was an incredible year for the pop culture enthusiast, whether you were a cinephile or a book lover, and gaming was no exception. The glut of fantastic, unique gaming experiences on offer this year was so generous that I wasn’t able to get around to many of the most popular ones (Bloodborne, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Batman: Arkham Knight, and Just Cause 3, just to name some bigger names). What follows are my favourite of the games I did have time to play, and some of them were so good that I suspect they’ll resurface as all-timers. I implore you to try these games out for yourself, or at least watch them in action on Youtube or Twitch.tv.

Tour de Force: Maggie Smith in The Lady in the Van

Maggie Smith in The Lady in the Van.

2015 has been an abundant movie year for leading performances by women, but to my mind Maggie Smith walks away with the honors for her work in The Lady in the Van. Smith created the role of Mary Shepherd, an irascible eccentric who spends the last decade and a half of her life living in her van in the driveway of a house owned by the English playwright Alan Bennett (Alex Jennings). Bennett first encountered Miss Shepherd in 1970, shortly after he’d bought a house in trendy, gentrified Camden Town (the movie was shot in and around that actual house), but for a long time he resisted writing about their strange acquaintanceship while she was camped in his garden – an arrangement that he’d allowed reluctantly in 1974 as a temporary stop-gap but that became permanent without his ever actually agreeing to it. He eventually dramatized the story in 1999 and Smith starred in it at the National Theatre. I read about it at the time and eagerly anticipated seeing it when she brought it to Broadway, but she never did, so it’s a lovely surprise to see a movie version all these years later, with the same director, Nicholas Hytner. Hytner also staged Bennett’s The History Boys for the National in 2004 as well as the 2006 movie version, and except for Richard Griffiths, who died in 2013, the entire cast of that play shows up in The Lady in the Van. All but Frances De La Tour play cameo roles; she has a delightful supporting part as one of Alan’s neighbors, the widow of the composer Ralph Vaughn Williams, a robust specimen of the English bohemian artists’ community of an earlier era. (My favorite of the cameos is by James Corden, as a street market vendor.)