Ruth Leon recommends… Late Flowering Lust – John Betjeman and Matthew Bourne
Ruth Leon recommendsLate Flowering Lust – John Betjeman and Matthew Bourne
So many of you loved Matthew Bourne’s Spitfire, the ballet parody that was on last week’s Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise, that you have begged for more from Bourne and his company, Adventures in Motion Pictures. No sooner asked than answered: here’s another really original and creative Bourne work, recommended by my friend Hazel who worked for the BBC in 1993, when it was made and helped to get it off the ground.
This movie is a combination of mime and dance that accompanies the “voiced-over” lyrics of a selection of poems by John Betjeman. Altogether, it portrays the events of a weekend party at an English country house.
Late Flowering Lust is as much wistful as lustful, although there’s more than enough lust to go around, but it is a real gem. It is a reading of a number of John Betjeman’s poems by Nigel Hawthorne (of Yes, Minister fame), one of which gives its title to the film. However the format is unique.
The ‘plot’ is that ‘Cousin John’ (Hawthorne) is invited for a weekend at a country house. He and owners of the house are of the older generation and the daughter and all her friends are of the younger one.
The action of the film consists of Nigel Hawthorne speaking the selected poems while the three older people mime the subject matter of each one and the ‘bright young things’, all soloists from Matthew Bourne’s dance company, Adventures in Motion Pictures), dance each poem. Hard to describe, see it for yourself. Very English, very amusing and very well done.
It has choreography by Matthew Bourne, and music composed by Jim Parker. Try not to mind the video quality. The film was only ever released on VHS, so is not available in DVD or anywhere else.
I started watching this afternoon and will finish when time allows. It is utterly exquisite, Jim Parker’s sublime music – partially familiar from ‘Betjeman’s Banana Blush’ etc – transporting us joyfully to the optimistic foothills of the immediate post-Great War era.
Betjeman’s albums reciting his own poems to Jim Parker’s music marked my early adolescence. This was gentle artistic fusion at its finest. In the light of ‘pro-Palestinian’ (sic) demonstrations, daily knife crime (unknown prior to cultural enrichment), ‘honour killings’ and acid attacks, this video was a reminder of a better world. And a better country.
Just finished watching this beautiful, exceptional video. Yes, the world was better before (not that anyone with half a brain cell needed reminding of that little fact). To put it in perspective: Imagine what the 2024 BBC remake would look like (if you want to induce nightmares).