Ian Louis Harris

“You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Immature Forever”, Dinner With Fellow Alleyn’s Alums, Then Tink by Lizzy Connolly & Kat Kleve, The Other Palace, 8 October 2024

Olly Goodwin having received his Olly-Vier Theatre Award from Rohan Candappa

The above quote comes from Germaine Greer. It is apposite to both elements of the enjoyable evening I am about to describe.

“It was Candappa’s fault, Sir”. That non-quote is nevertheless true – this evening would not have happened, had it not been for Rohan Candappa doing his thing, both in terms of keeping us ’73-’80 Alleyn’s alums together and in helping to promote writing and theatrical talent.

Kat Kleve first came into my orbit when she worked with Rohan on One Starts in a Barber’s, One Starts in a Bar, which several of us Alleyn’s alums first saw at the Gladstone Arms in the autumn of 2018, after which it went to Edinburgh the next year and ultimately Kat’s bit ended up being Rohan’s first Lockdown Theatre production, And You Are? You can read all about it by clicking here or the link below.

And You Are? by Rohan Candappa, Lockdown Theatre Company, 24 March 2020

At the time, I gave that piece the wildest praise I could conjure at the time:

Better than watching Boris Johnson telling you what to do and what not to do – Ian Harris, Ogblog.

Strangely, neither Kat nor Rohan latched on to that quote for promotional purposes at the time. Pearls…

…anyway, this time around Kat is performing her own show, written with Lizzy Connelly, named Tink. The play did famously well at Edinburgh in 2023 and now has a London run at The Other Palace. Book early to avoid disappointment.

Hence Rohan’s idea for us alums to meet up there for a bite, a drink and a show.

As coincidence would have it, Olly Goodwin was a Trustee of The Theatres Trust back when The Other Palace was just an idea. Olly was instrumental in helping that project get its planning permission. If you have ever wondered why that building has a glorious but perhaps incongruous-looking marble staircase…

…ask Olly. And if you have ever wondered why Rohan thought fit to award Olly Goodwin with an Olly-Vier Theatre Award…see headline photo…the answer is intrinsically connected to the above coincidence.

The food was pretty good and the serving staff delightful at The Other Palace, even when Olly exclaimed:

Hey, why have you served Ben with his drink before serving mine, which I ordered earlier?…

…ignoring the large glass of wine that the waitress had placed in front of him a few moments before serving Ben. That wine glass is also commemorated in the headline picture.

Here is the whole scene just before we went into the theatre…except that my lens isn’t wide enough to have captured all the group and I have cruelly left out our ringleader, Rohan.

You’ll just have to take my word for it that Rohan is like a kid in the proximity of a candy store on such occasions.

Actually, we all tend to display our inner overgrown schoolboy modes when we get together, which is at least some of the point behind getting together. As Germaine Greer said:

You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Immature Forever.

Anyway, recollecting our youth over dinner will have helped prepare us for the coming of age musical, Tink, which we then went down the Olly Goodwin Memorial Marble Staircase to see.

Tink by Lizzy Connolly & Kat Kleve

Here is a link to the Other Place information and resources on this show.

Here’s the trailer:

The conceit of the piece is that the central character – this is a one person show – is a modern Tinkerbell, growing up in the early 21st century rather than the early 20th century character in Peter Pan.

Not in truth my type of show, but Kat Kleve is a very talented and versatile performer, so there was plenty to enjoy in the performance.

It’s basically a coming of age story set in a fairies and elves context, which seemed startlingly like a human context to me. I liked the agonies Tink goes through around trying too hard to be the best at everything (which, it seems, is not guaranteed to make you popular – who knew?) and the social mores around how to dress and behave at teenage parties.

Especially interesting, to me, was the business around social media, which hadn’t been invented when we were kids. I’d long suspected that it is probably even harder to bee a teenager now than it was back in our day – this play illustrated some of the reasons why.

The songs are not really my type of songs either. They reminded me a little of Ed Sheeran and Meghan Trainor style singer-songwriter songs. Very well delivered, though. Here is an example of one of the songs:

That style of song might be spot on for the intended audience for this show, which I imagine to be a bit younger than me. We were there for the opening night and didn’t feel out of place, but I suspect that the average age of the audience will come down a decade or two on most other nights…

…apart from the nights for which Rohan is taking a posse of his friends.

The show runs until 20 October, so if you are reading this in time you might well want to click this link and grab some tickets, before dynamic pricing takes Kat Kleve out of your price range.

Beryl Cook: A Private View, Written, Performed & Painted by Kara Wilson, Finborough Theatre, 5 October 2024

Tea In the Garden by Beryl Cook, Copyright The Artist, fair use for this piece, low quality image via Wikimedia Commons

This was an interesting and enjoyable visit to the Finborough, albeit not the most drama-strewn visit we have ever made to that place.

Beryl Cook is an interesting character in that she found art later in life and lacked both the inhibitions of her generation and the pretentions of her chosen field. But she basically led a conventional provincial middle-class life that lacked drama. The play is therefore a collection of Beryl Cook’s own comments and things said about her in interviews. Interesting, but not dramatic.

The thing that makes this performance piece unusual is that Kara Wilson, in the persona of Beryl Cook, paints an artwork during the hour of the show. That aspect was truly fascinating.

As we understand it, The Finborough arranged this run with Kara Wilson at relatively short notice, when the theatre’s autumn plans went awry.

This engaging theatrical work enjoyed a successful run at Edinburgh – many of the formal reviews you might find about it relate to that run, although several are now emerging from The Finborough run too. Click here for reviews.

We also enjoyed the discussion afterwards.

Don’t you find it difficult to perform a solo play and paint at the same time for an hour?

…asked Janie, which I imagine was a question that had passed through everyone’s mind, but no-one had yet asked the question.

Yes, very.

…said Kara.

Good answer.

If you get to this review in time, this run is on until 26 October at The Finborough – click here for tickets and/or The Finborough’s stub on this production if you are interested in that.

Oud Have Thought It?: Rihab Azar Session At Wigmore Hall (Learning Room), 4 October 2024

We were keen to see this solo early evening concert by the virtuoso oud player of Syrian origin, Rihab Azar. The oud is a basically a Middle-Eastern fretless lute – indeed the instrument from which the Western lute derived.

We were not disappointed – the concert was truly lovely.

Here is a link to the Wigmore Hall resources on this concert.

For those who cannot be fussed to click, this is what we heard:

Ahmad Al Khatib – Extract from Suznak Rhapsody
Rihab Azar – Enchanted Weavers
Adnan Abul-Shamat – Hatiha Ya Sah
Rihab Azar – Biography of a Bubble
Rihab Azar – Samaie
Rihab Azar – Questions
Rihab Azar – The Pull of Time
Anouar Brahem – Parfum de Gitane
Rihab Azar -Indulgence
Rihab Azar -Sand, Roots & Blossoms.

Here is a charming video of Rihab Azar playing one of the lovely pieces we heard, Indulgence, on the very same seven-course oud that we heard:

The concert was held in the Learning Room (formerly known as the Bechstein Room), which the Wigmore Hall team had set up beautifully in a “jazz club with tables” style and some suitably Middle-eastern-looking drapes. Very atmpospheric.

Soon after the concert began, an old twerp with a massive Canon camera and several large lenses came forward from the rear of the room and sat next to us at our table, fiddling away with his camera and snapping with seeming abandon. Janie thought he must have been an official publicist or something, until a member of staff stepped forward at the end of the piece and politely but firmly told the geezer that it was not permitted to take pictures during the performance – a fairly obvious point that, in the main hall, would have been made as part of the pre-announcements these days, now that everyone has cameras (smart phones) on them all the time.

The old geezer feigned surprise and confusion. Then he proceeded to fiddle with his equipment ceaselessly during the performance and snap with reckless abandon between each piece.

The staff clearly made a decision, rightly or wrongly, that further intervention would be more disruptive than letting the old git have his way.

Rihab Azar took all this with great grace. She even took with great grace the same geezer stopping the concert just before she played her last piece, with a request for “something old school”, because he hadn’t been expecting her use of the loop pedal and wanted to hear the oud without it.

Rihab sweetly said that she had to play her planned last piece, but that she would additionally play a short traditional piece without loop pedal (I cannot remember what it was, but it was delightful) before the last scheduled piece (which was also but differently delightful).

If you, like the old git, want to hear “old school” oud, here is the Parfume de Gitane piece played by the composer, Anouar Brahem, and his mates back in 1997:

No wonder Rihab Azar was insistent on playing her closing number – it was especially charming and is her latest piece, Sand, Roots & Blossoms. designed to accompany an art exhibition, “The Universe Within”. here is a link to the performance she posted, from that exhibition, a few days after our gig:

At the end of our concert, several members of the audience let the witless git know how they felt about him. One said that he had ruined their enjoyment of the concert, which seemed a bit extreme. We were the closest to his fiddling and we just thought he was a twerp.

Mr Twerp engaged us in conversation once he had beaten back his detractors. He clearly wanted us to know that he was a guitar player (he must have said “Fender” three times) and spoke in critical terms about the loop pedal back-tracking (which we rather liked) and the fact that Rihab Azar “looked at the neck of her instrument too much”.

“Have you ever played a fretless instrument?”, I asked. He hadn’t, but pointed out to me, entirely counterfactually, that the oud has frets…or at least Rihab Azar’s did! (Oh no it doesn’t…oh no it didn’t).

Janie then wondered, given his desire for “old school oud playing”, whether Mr Git had ever been to Syria. Of course he hadn’t. “Oh you should, you’d find it fascinating”, said Janie.

*Janie correctly remembered seeing oud playing at Abu Al-Azz in Damascus in 1997*

I quietly wondered whether the old geezer would survive 20 minutes in Syria these days. Even in 1997, some diplomacy was needed to navigate the political regime and local sensitivities wherever we went. Perhaps that was in Janie’s mind when she recommended the place to Mr Twerpy Git, the amateur photographer-guitarist.

After we parted company with the fellow, Janie told me that she had wanted to take a picture of him for the blog, but thought him so mercurial that the request might lead to an argument and that permission to publish would probably not be granted. I agreed that her decision was a wise one.

I decided instead to help you visualise this geezer by prompting the DeepAI image generator with the phrase:

Silly Old bald Man taking a photo with a telephoto lens camera

The following image, very much of the right kind, emerged:

We had a lovely time at this concert and for sure will return to “Learning Room Sessions” if the subject matter pleases us.

Let’s leave the last word to Rihab Azar’s beautiful oud-playing:

My English Persian Kitchen by Hannah Khalil, Soho Theatre, 30 September 2024

This show is an excellent and unusual experience in the theatre. Based on a true story, Isabella Nefar is superb as a young woman who escapes to England from an abusive marriage in Iran. She doesn’t find London life easy either, but takes solace in cooking Persian food to remind herself of the home she might never see again.

While telling her gruelling story, she also cooks Ash-e Reshteh; Persian noodle and herb soup, which after the show she serves to anyone in the audience who fancies it…which was almost everyone.

Aware that the play was this kind of thing, we got to the Soho Theatre a little early to try to get front seats. We knew that the visibility would be fine just about anywhere, but the smells would be subject to the inverse-square law and we wanted to smell this play.

We ran into a couple of people we knew while queuing: Sara Amini, whom we had met in Stratford when we attended a talk about the play Englsh in May:

English by Sanaz Toossi, The Other Place, 13 May 2024

…and also our friend Jacquie from the Boston Manor tennis courts, which was a little more of a surprise in this context.

Anyway, we got the front row seats we fancied and were entranced by the short show.

Unusually for us, we ventured to the theatre by tube rather than car, as Soho is such a awkward place for driving. A points failure near North Acton confounded us, sending our West Acton bound tube to Hanger Lane instead, making our return journey a little fraught. Fortunately we’d had a bowl of soup to sustain us and hadn’t left our dinner cooking at home when we went out!

*Contemplating the yummy soup, not the journey home*

This show previewed at Soho before a very well-received Edinburgh run and then a short reprise at Soho. It was very well received by the formal reviewers – click here for plenty of links.

Hopefully My English Persian Kitchen will be revived elsewhere, so that more people can get to see it, smell it and eat it.

Giant by Mark Rosenblatt, Royal Court Theatre, 21 September 2024

Roald Dahl‘s books and stories were a significant part of my life as a child and teenager growing up in the 1970s. Dahl’s widely publicised anti-Semitic remarks in the early 1980s shocked me at the time.

Giant is about Dahl and those remarks, set during an imagined afternoon at Dahl’s Great Missenden house in 1983.

I grabbed a couple of “first Saturday preview” seats for this one as soon as tickets became available for Royal Court members. I am glad that I did.

Mark Rosenblatt surely wrote most if not all of the play before the events of 7 October 2023 and for sure no-one knew that the Israeli Defence Forces would be bombing Beirut a couple of days before the first Royal Court preview. The play seemed extraordinarily topical, even though that topicality was inadvertent.

It is a very well-written play, depicting Dahl as a charismatic yet monstrous character. An extremely eloquent disruptor, who would use the power of his words and status to charm or bully as he saw fit. Everything I had read about Dahl suggest to me that the character was well researched and brilliantly depicted by John Lithgow, who is clearly a top draw stage actor.

Other real people from Dahl’s world were depicted: Felicity “Liccy” Crossland whom Dahl married soon after his public anti-Semitism row, and Tom Maschler, who was head of Jonathan Cape, Dahl’s publisher.

Into this mix, Rosenblatt throws a fictional character, Jessie Stone, who works for Dahl’s US publisher. Unlike Tom Maschler, who seems (or at least purports) to be able to manage Dahl’s wonky characteristics, the Stone character confronts Dahl directly with her concerns about his remarks, with predictably scary results.

*Wondering whether anyone in the audience can tell that I am “one of them”.*

There were some similarities between this play and the wonderful David Edgar play, Here In America, which we saw (also in preview) at The Orange Tree last week:

Here In America by David Edgar, Orange Tree Theatre, 14 September 2024

Although the moral dilemmas in the two plays are different in nature (do you grass on your old mates to protect your career? Do you apologise for things you said even if you did really mean them?), both plays are based around true characters and real events and both plays are structured around a visit to the home of the maligned protagonist.

Janie enjoyed both plays/productions but preferred Here In America to Giant, primarily because she found the moral dilemma more paradoxical. By the end of Giant, Janie was convinced that Roald Dahl was a ghastly character with scarily racist views.

I found the arguments suitably nuanced in both plays and enjoyed both for their excellent acting and production, as well as the quality of the writing/drama.

However, I did sense that Here In America diverged from the historical reality of its situation less than Giant.

In Giant, the conceit of the play suggests that Dahl might have made his most outrageously and blatantly anti-Semitic comments as a result of being cornered by his publishers and fiancée on a single afternoon. In reality, Dahl made many such comments in several interviews/conversations over an extended period of time. Dramatic licence, I accept, but it made Giant, for me, a little less convincing as a dramatic whole.

There are some terrific speeches and lines in the play. Janie and I are glad we bought the play text so we might refer back to some of those. Romola Garai was excellent as Jessie Stone; her speech at the end of the first half of the play was a coup de theatre.

Elliot Levey’s performance as Tom Maschler also stood out. Several of his lines, explaining how you can be an overtly English Jew without obsessing about Israel and while feeling more English than anything else, certainly resonated with me. As did his speech about not feeling the need to apologise for the actions of the Government of a country in which he held neither nationality nor residency. And as did Maschler’s speech about low-level anti-Semitic remarks and sneers being essentially harmless and part of the price for being a Jew in England at that time.

I was very much reminded, by this play, about my own strange experience, around the time the play was set, with an overt anti-Semite, Don Knipe, who, in his terms, obviously didn’t mean people like me and my family, whom he loved…he meant all the other Jews.

Strange Case Of Dr Green And Mr Knipe…And Beluga Caviar And Scotch Whisky And A Bust Of Hitler, c22 December 1981

Indeed that experience is so strange, I realise, on reflection, that Don could easily have been a Roald Dahl short story character. Click the above link if you dare. But I digress.

There was a lot to think about in the play Giant and we’ll go on thinking about it for some time, no doubt.

The short Royal Court run (to 16 November 2024) is already all-but sold out, but surely this excellent play/production is lining up for transfers; both sides of the Atlantic, no doubt.

John Dowland And His Cheery Pals, Tim Mead & Sergio Bucheli, Wigmore Hall, 16 September 2024

John Dowland, CC BY-SA 4.0 click here for details

OK, I have a confession to make. The Wigmore Hall did not title this concert “John Dowland And His Cheery Pals”; it merely promised us the superb countertenor Tim Mead and the also excellent lutenist/theorboist Sergio Bucheli.

On arrival, I made a bee-line to the desk where a young woman was handing out programmes. I told Janie that the programme was bound to include a lyric sheet so we all could sing along.

Don’t be ridiculous…

…said Janie.

Have fun…

…said the far more open-minded young lady.

We found ourselves sitting next to a Scottish woman named Fiona, who had sung in her youth and was clearly a huge fan of Tim Mead. She said she might inadvertently sing along, which Janie tells me Fiona sort-of did – under her breath. I chose not to sing along, partly because Tim Mead sings in the wrong pitch for me. I might have tried singing a whole octave down, but wouldn’t have wanted to upstage Tim that way.

More seriously, it was a truly lovely concert. Here is a link to that very programme and song sheet if you want to see what the whole thing contained.

I was familiar with many of the John Dowland songs and lute fantasias, whereas some of the material by other composers was new to me.

We were particularly taken with John Danyel’s three part song, “Mrs M E her funeral tears for the death of her husband”…

…did those guys compete for maximum misery in the subject matter of their songs in those days?…

…a truly beautiful sound that has made me seek out some more John Danyel to hear after the concert.

Here is a link to the first part of the Mrs ME song – don’t be put off if you see a line through the link – it should work for you even if you are not a YouTube Music subscriber.

Tim Mead does a lot of his work with La Nuova Musica – in fact Janie and I didn’t realise that we had seen Tim sing before at one of their concerts – at St John’s Smith Square in 2015:

La Nuova Musica, St John’s Smith Square, 20 March 2015

We had seen Sergio Bucheli several times before, most recently at Wigmore Hall just a few months ago:

All The Bs: Biber, Benjamin, Byrd, Bach…& Brett – Brett Dean Concert, Wigmore Hall, 20 April 2024

We enjoyed every bit of the Dowland and Pals concert, despite the downcast subject matter. With Dowland you can be pretty sure about what you are going to get. Otherwise it would be a bit like going to a Leonard Cohen concert and complaining that the songs are miserable.

Tim Mead and Sergio Bucheli seemed very much at home in this late Renaissance space, although my guess is that home base for them is Baroque music from 70 to 100 years later than the works we heard. I cannot find a sample of these two performing late Renaissance works, but this sampler from their recent album about Purcell And His Perky Pals (OK, it’s actually named Beauteous Softness)…

… has inspired me to stream that album as soon as I have some proper listening time…which might be as soon as 24 hours after the Dowland & Pals concert.

Here In America by David Edgar, Orange Tree Theatre, 14 September 2024

Imagine politics in the USA embroiled in weird paranoia, obsessing about enemies within, making counterfactual accusations directed primarily towards people from migrant communities, with freedoms consequently being eroded by egotistical politicians.

But this isn’t a play about the Trumpian era; the play is about the Second Red Scare in the 1950s and the impact it had on the friendship between playwright Arthur Miller and director Elia Kazan.

I have been a fan of David Edgar’s plays since the mid 1980s, when I got busy reading every play I could get my hands on. In those days I was able to get my hands on a lot of David Edgar’s plays.

In the 80s and 90s I got to see several David Edgar plays performed, but he is not so prolific these days and not often revived in places that Janie and I tend to visit.

Still, like London buses, after a dearth of Edgars for several years, two new ones have come along at the same time: this one and The New Real, which we have booked to see in Stratford-Upon-Avon next month.

This one, Here In America, is just our sort of play – and this production at The Orange Tree is just our sort of production – we loved it.

I have long been fascinated by the phenomenon that became known as McCarthyism and in particular the impact it had on the performing arts. In 1952 Elia Kazan eventually agreed to name names rather than jeopardise his career, whereas Arthur Miller risked jail by refusing to name names when he was summoned to the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1954, around the time that Kazan was enhancing his career with films such as On The Waterfront:

In David Edgar’s hands, this story fizzes with political and interpersonal energy. The play is mostly dialogue between Kazan and Miller, with Kazan’s wife, Molly Day in a great many of the scenes. Several scenes also include Marilyn Monroe, who appears in Milleresque fashion, perhaps as flashbacks, perhaps as unreliable memories or perhaps as imaginings. Very reminiscent of such scenes in Miller plays, e.g. Death Of A Salesman. Very well done.

All the actors played their parts well: Michael Aloni (who struck us as very Arthur Miller-like), Jasmine Blackborow, Faye Castelow and Shaun Evans. Director James Dacre is also to be congratulated for making this multi-faceted play work extremely well within the limits of The Orange Tree’s small in-the-round space.

Janie and I left The Orange Tree with lots to discuss; many big-picture political matters, questions around loyalty to friends and also loyalty to loved ones. Both Kazan and Miller betrayed their wives with Marilyn Monroe and later, arguably, jointly betrayed Monroe’s memory through their work.

But before we left the auditorium, or rather as we were leaving, I was able to congratulate David Edgar in person. We were there on the first preview night for this show so it was hardly a surprise to spot him there. I asked him if Here In America and the forthcoming play The New Real are companion pieces.

Didn’t really think about it that way…but there are two lines that appear in both plays,

he said. I promised to form my own opinion on that question. I’m glad I had the opportunity to speak with David Edgar, albeit very briefly, having followed his work for so many decades.

The evening even generated a memory flash from 50 years ago, which I have written up in a separate Ogblog piece:

Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I’ll Name Names, Tomorrow…Playing Call My Bluff In An English Class, Was It 1S Or 2AK? 1974 or 1975

It was a very memorable preview night in the theatre. I’ll add a review link once the play has been formally reviewed. It is running at The Orange Tree until 19 October. Highly recommended by both me and Janie.

Forty Years Of Celebrating Birthdays Together: Dinner With John White At Lita Marylebone, 27 August 2024

John is one day younger than me. We have often celebrated our joint birthdays together over the decades. It seemed fitting, 40 years after we first celebrated together…

“John White The Only One Dancing”, Learning How To Do The Keele SU Disco And Other Late August 1984 Happenings

…to meet around the time of our birthday.

It was my turn to choose and John’s turn to pay. I chose Lita Marylebone, which has received excellent reviews as a relatively recent opening.

Life took me to that Baker Street Quarter of Marylebone a little early on a glorious summer afternoon, so I took a short stroll around friends and family sites…

*A house in Manchester Street which was, according to Portman Estate records, my Harris family’s place briefly in the late 1920s.*

…took some tea outdoors in a cafe and sat reading in Paddington Street Gardens South until dinner time.

Then Lita.

The conceit of the place is sharing plates, which both John and I like. I sense that the maître d’ encouraged us to over-order, by suggesting that we order three plates from the small category, three from the medium and two from the large plates. Perhaps I should have asked him if those numbers were for rotund people like himself, or slim-jims like me and John.

Still, it was great to taste so many utterly delicious plates:

Wildfarmed sourdough, cultured butter
Kentish radishes, smoked cod’s roe
Smoked Basque sardines, ajo blanco, cherries
Salad of Romana courgettes, artichoke, ricotta, basil, mint
Strozzapreti, Aylesbury duck ragu, Parmesan 36 mth
Linguine, St Austell mussels, Cornish cockles, palourde clams, bottarga
Slow cooked Cull Yaw, celeriac, preserved winter truffle
Cornish monkfish, fennel, heirloom tomatoes, bouillbaisse

Plus some Ratte potatoes, which were surplus to our requirements but very interesting/different from your regular taters.

We chatted about all manner of things and the evening flew by. I took several pictures of John (see also headline picture), but he didn’t take any pictures of me…

…but that was OK, because my earlier appointment had been all about pictures of me – about 300 of them.

*John, still crazy after all these years*

An Afternoon At Hampton Court Palace Watching Real Tennis Champions Trophy Quarter-Finals, 2 August 2024

I chose a beautiful afternoon to down tools early and drive out to Hampton Court Palace to see some quality tournament real tennis.

I hatched the idea several weeks earlier, when Janie was called for jury service that week and the next. At that time, June, the weather was cold and we’d had more than our fair share of rain. I thought of this booking as a bit of a hedge against my summer sports watching being rain-blighted.

As it turned out, none of my chosen June/July tennis and cricket watching was so blighted and 2 August was destined to be a seriously hot day.

I watched the first of that afternoon’s two matches from the sauna that was the dedans gallery: Nino Merola v Nick Howell. Here is the highlights reel:

In the break between matches, I ran into Linda, whom I know through the Dedanists and have even partnered on one occasion. She was stewarding. When I mentioned the heat, she pointed out that the upper gallery places had barely sold and that I would be welcome to watch the second match from those less crowded and cooler giddy heights. It turned out to be excellent advice, both for me and also to relieve some pressure on the heaving dedans gallery.

I enjoyed the views from the upper gallery – initially (before the match started) the external views:

Then from the inside, the view of the match itself. I have viewed from the hazard end before (at Prested) but never from a great height like this:

Rob Shenkman v Ben Taylor-Matthews, it was. Ben depicted above. Here is the highlights reel:

It was a most enjoyable afternoon. The choice of a Friday afternoon in early August made sense in the end, as the drive to Noddyland was a doddle compared with the usual rush hour jam home from Hampton Court.

The Box by Brian Coyle, White Bear Theatre, 30 July 2024

All production photos by Alex Walton

I received a kind invitation to see and review this play/production – a fairly rare occurrence for me at a location and on a day that I was able to do. Janie has been summonsed to the Old Bailey (she claims it is jury service) so I ventured south of the river alone.

I’d never been to The White Bear Theatre, Kennington before. It is a “room above a pub” theatre, much in the style of, in the old days, The Bush (The Bush Theatre now has its own swanky space around the corner from the old pub), The Gate (which has moved from above a pub in convenient Notting Hill to an inconvenient space in Camden) and The Finborough Theatre (which is still in its original location, but currently has no pub underneath!). Indeed The White Bear appears to be, much like The Finborough, a magnet for new writing, which earns it a huge thumbs-up from me.

*The White Bear is just around the corner from picturesque Cleaver Square*

I suspect it is the Finborough connection that led to my e-mail address being in Sarah Lawrie’s e-rolodex, as she produced a couple of productions there which I had reviewed favourably: Scrounger by Athena Stevens and Death Of A Hunter by Rolf Hochhuth.

OK, so I had not seen Sarah Lawrie act before, but I had seen director Jonathan Woolf act a small part in a big production: Travelling Light at the RNT, in 2012 just before “I parted ways” with Nick Hytner the following year.

Can Sarah act as well as produce? Can Jonathan direct as well as act?

***Spoiler alert*** – yes they can.

The Box is a fringe-theatre-style one hour drama. Very much the style of play we like.

I found the first 20 or so minutes bemusing. I know I was supposed to be bemused, but perhaps just a bit too long or a bit too bemusing.

I wrote the word “disjointed” in my jotter. I also wrote “collection of vignettes”.

But soon the drama and tragedy that underpins the play was unfolding and the meaning of those disjointed scenes became apparent.

During the initial scenes, I was unimpressed by the acting; it came across as am-dram overacting. Frankly, I was surprised that both performers were fringe-award-winning actors based on those early scenes. But once it became clear that I was witnessing, in those early scenes, fine actors playing the role of ordinary folk acting out fantasies, I was with the message. How could I not be, given that Janie and I have Ged, Daisy and a cast of thousands to play with?

How this might play out in the USA, where even fringe audiences are prone to walk out after 10 or 15 minutes if they are displeased, I don’t know. That’s worth the playwright and cast thinking about, though, as the play struck me as having an American feel to it that could, with minor revision, do well over there.

I was reminded of:

…all of which are very successful American plays. That is not to say that the play is derivative, but several of its themes share themes with those plays.

I thought both performers were very good indeed; as the play went on and as the tragedy became clearer, they performed dramatically but without melodrama. Sarah Lawrie in particular came across as a sympathetic character, but as the story unfolded the bottled-up anguish of Martin Edwards’s character also came to the fore.

If you want to see this production at The White Bear, you only have until 3 August to see it. It deserves a bigger audience than it is getting at that small but sweet space. But then, how often do I find myself thinking that about fine drama at fringe theatres?

Tink by Lizzy Connolly & Kat Kleve

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