Honour and Good Name
2 March

It's strange how sometimes you can see two entirely different enterprises with very different purposes and come away more aware of the similarities than the differences.

First up, Ross and I took ourselves off to the Everyman Theatre on Saturday night to see The Mayor of Zalamea by Pedro Calderòn.

It must be well over a decade since I last set foot inside this theatre. It was good to be there again and it was good to see a play of such distinction played with such passion and verve. It was like going back to the good old days when the Everyman gave solid, challenging performances of classics and contemporary works before, latterly, everything was given as a rock pantomime.

The programme was a little apologetic about the work feeling that it might not speak to a modern audience. I don't think that they need have worried.

Codes of chivalry may not abound these days but the idea of honour and good name still hold true; the idea of justice throughout society and those who believe their position gives them licence to do as they please remains current.

The only moment that felt at all foreign or of another time was when a brother vowed to kill his sister because she had been raped and had therefore brought dishonour upon his family.

However, I suppose that, within certain ethnic communities, the idea of honour killings is still very current so, even there, there were resonances.

What made the evening most enjoyable was that none of this was rammed down the audiences throat. The play was trusted to speak for itself and the audience was allowed to use its own intelligence. Four stars I think.

It's been several years since I saw Calderòn's Life is a Dream at the Edinburgh Festival. There is to be a festival of Renaissance Spanish plays at the RSC this summer. I should try and go to some.

Come Monday night Ross and I were at the local Plaza cinema for Girl with a Pearl Earring. This film has been lauded with plaudits aplenty and is well worth them all. It is the story behind the creation of one of Vermeer's most celebrated paintings and tells the story of a serving girl who is lusted after by a patron and becomes the subject of an erotic painting to hand in his private cabinet. To our eyes the painting is simply a portrait but the steady gaze, the slightly open mouth, the moist lips were all part of a message of availability meant to titillate the discerning viewer.

Like the Calderòn play, there were issues of good name and honour and codes of conduct across the classes and people believing that there position gave them the right to behave as pleased them. This, though, I shall give only three stars because it was, eventually, much less satisfying. There was a whole area of a Catholic family living in a Protestant land which fascinated me but scarcely seemed to get more than faint acknowledgement.

Ross was intrigued to realise that the servant girl was played by Scarlett Johannson who was one of the leads in Lost in Translation which we saw some weeks back. He had simply not realised the connection until I pointed it out to him.