Another excellent evening of theatre at the Hampstead Downstairs. We saw a preview of this one, which technically opens on Monday 16th and only runs until 11 April. If the thought of it grabs you, we suggest you grab a ticket while stocks last.
The play is about venture capital, tech-entrepreneurism, purportedly-ethical-investing and all that sort of thing.
But if that all sounds like a massive turn-off theatrically, don’t be put off. Aaron Loeb has written three all-too-believable, three-dimensional characters who are ensnared, and ensnare each other, in a web of their back stories, ethical dilemmas, rapid technological advancement and the resulting commercial/regulatory environment…with real human interest.
(Aaron Loeb, if by chance you are reading this – that is meant as a compliment).
One conceit of the play – that “the powers that be” might not appreciate a discovery that solves so many problems that their markets and jobs might be eroded – reminded me of an Ealing film I remember seeing on the TV and thinking about a lot as a child – The Man In The White Suit.
Enough about the piece. the acting was excellent throughout. Lloyd Owen, Letty Thomas and Millicent Wong all played their parts superbly well. All three (especially Lloyd Owen and Millicent Wong) were on stage for most of the 100 minutes the play runs, which must take some energy. Chelsea Walker directed the production, making 100 minutes pass without seeming like it was far too long without an interval. But 100 minutes is, by definition, a bit too long without an interval – the audiences aren’t getting any younger, you know.
But my minor quibble is there merely to show balance. This is yet another triumph for the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs. I do hope, for the sake of the wider audience that should see this production, that the production transfers.
The original Hinds Trophy being presented in March 2023
The following text (or an edited version of it) will shortly appear on the MCC website, along with some of the photographs taken on the night. When that happens, I'll add a link.
Sixty years ago, in March 1966, one of the most coveted trophies in global sport, The Jules Rimet Trophy, was stolen from its apparently secure display location in Westminster. A couple of days after an aborted ransom sting, a dog named Pickles discovered a parcel containing the trophy in a hedge beside his owner’s home. Pickles became an overnight sensation, the Jules Rimet was presented at the 1966 Football World Cup Final, before being retained by Brazil, then, a few years later, in Rio, permanently stolen.
The Hinds Trophy (aka The Skills Night Wooden Spoon Trophy), another of the most coveted trophies in global sport, recently had a similar journey. The original Hinds was snatched from its secure location behind the Lord’s hazard end galleries, at some point in the summer or autumn of 2024. No ransom was ever demanded, nor was any canine heroism involved, as far as we know. But just a few weeks ago, long after its replacement with a replica trophy, the original Hinds reappeared just as mysteriously as it had disappeared. The replacement Hinds will continue to be engraved and displayed. The original Hinds is now preserved at a highly secure, secret location.
Ironically, the coveted Hinds Trophy was nearly won this time by Andrew Hinds’s own team, Three Ravens. Numerically and temporally challenged in many ways, that team started with just two but ended up with four players. They need words, not numbers; the collective noun for ravens is “an unkindness”.
The ravens team was especially unkind to two teams. By performing so well on the final discipline, they knocked Souldiers Three (Hugo Fenwick, Gavin Yeats & David Pritchard) into the Hinds Trophy slot. Then, with the final scoring of the event, those unkind ravens denied Three Things In Store late surge to the top spot. Instead, Three Poor Mariners – Richard Boys-Stones, Mary Strevens & Huw Humphreys – were, fairly, reinstalled at the top of the podium.
The Close But No Cigar Award went to neophyte Gerald Slocock, whose ability to almost-but-not-quite hit a target might become the stuff of legend, if he maintains form in that regard.
The Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award went to Shaheed “Sid” Rashid, not least for being the only player to score two points off one hit on the central beam of the dedans gallery.
The Philip The Bold Golden Moment Award went to John Thirlwell, for an extraordinary hat trick of coups du pataugeoire -landing the serve in a paddling pool – which is much harder than it sounds.
There is a serious purpose to skills night; honing skills. True, most of the skills honed on such nights involve eating curry, drinking, singing and the like, but the evening does include some real tennis skills too.
Skills night unquestionably proves the skills of the MCC admin team who organise the event so well, and our tennis professionals, who make the game swing with great reliability. Which is more than can be said for most of us players’ tennis swings!
We both thought this play/production was really excellent. The Bush Studio is one of our trusted venues these days – we rarely leave that place disappointed. This time we felt we had seen a very original piece of writing and some excellent performances.
The scenario is a simple one. A housing association block acquires a stench in the building which residents suspect might be caused by the demise of one no-longer-visible resident. But the residents seem powerless to get action out of the bureaucratic jobsworths “from the housing”.
The play is performed in a narrative rather than dramatic style, although the narrator/performers do slip in and out of characters – several each – while telling the story. A style that sounds iffy when described but it really worked for this piece. Below is the teaser/trailer fort his production.
The story is sad at many levels, yet there is a great deal of humour and humanity in the play. Performers Marcia Lecky, Safiyya Ingar & Sam Baker Jones all do a great job of bringing the story to life. Jess Barton directed the piece with a simple but very effective style.
The piece speaks volumes about the our society in the 2020s by telling a simple story, not by preaching or screeching about the issues that underlie that story. Farah Najib has written a really excellent short play here – we’ll be looking out for more of her work – that’s for sure.
This was our first visit to the Finborough for a while. We were pleased to see that the former pub underneath the theatre – which had been a closed down space on our last few visits since covid – is now a trendy Indian restaurant named Yogi’s. One to try…but not tonight.
1.17am is a two-hander, in which two twenty-something young women, Katie & Roni, whose close friendship has been shattered since he untimely death of Katie’s brother, spend a heart-wrenching 75 minutes delving into their shared truths, half-truths, white lies and fantasies.
Sarah Stacey’s directing is to be commended for making the piece flow so well. The play is a seamless one act play which could become laboured in less capable hands.
The production is running at The Finborough until 7 March 2026 – if you read this review in time and you like this sort of thing, we suggest that you book it before it’s too late.
The heist movie, as a genre, isn’t really my thing. It feels disconnected from the real world, to me, or at least disconnected from my world.
I did have a couple of youthful, personal experiences of failed heists. Those actual experiences no doubt informed my negative subjective perception of the genre.
I’m delighted to report that the police foiled The Great Battersea Camera Shop Heist. A few minutes after the crime, a bloodied gentleman presented himself at Bolingbroke Hospital, with several items from my dad’s smashed shop window about his person, having left a trail of blood along the few streets between the shop and hospital.
I remember my father commending the police for their astute detective work in apprehending the photographic equipment fiend. The police officers, without any outward signs of irony in their response, accepted dad’s praise smugly. Thus distracted, the police failed to book my dad for using child labour (me) as assistance for the squalid clean-up operation.
My second experience of a failed heist had the added excitement of cash, contraband and gun violence. This was in the mid-1980s, when I was working, on assignment, in the accounts office, at a large wine & spirits cash and carry warehouse, The Nose, underneath the arches at London Bridge.
One of the administrative employees in that office, I think she was named Diane, was a large, well-built woman. If you had gone to central casting looking for someone to play the part of a 1970s East German Olympic shot-putter, you might have chosen her.
One afternoon, while us office workers were quietly beavering away, we suddenly heard a loud commotion just outside the office. Diane leapt out of her chair and dashed onto the warehouse floor, yelling, “what the bloody hell is going on out here?”
A few moments later she came back into the office. “That’s got rid of them”. Shortly after that, we heard the sound of multiple police car sirens, after which the place was swarming with police for the rest of the afternoon.
It might have looked a bit like this. This and the headline image with thanks to DeepAI
Several (I think two) armed robbers had entered the warehouse in search of cash. They can only have been moments away from our office, where indeed they would have found plentiful cash, when Diane, unwittingly, bounded out with her shouty enquiry. The sight and sound of Diane apparently scared the armed robbers into running away sharpish.
Everyone in the office was in a state of shocked relief on discovering what had happened, not least how close we had come to being held up at gunpoint. Diane seemed the least shocked of all of us.
My work at The Nose was connected with an earlier heist of the non-violent kind. The owners were accused (and eventually convicted) of a sophisticated VAT and bonded goods fraud which, at that time, was believed to amount to £3M; then the largest Customs & Excise fraud ever.
My firm’s role was to help get the business back onto the straight and narrow, as the tax and judicial authorities wanted the business to continue trading so that the authorities might recover the defrauded value.
That role, twixt business and authorities, was very unusual. At one point, on the first day of the trial, I ended up dashing to the Old Bailey with an incriminating document I had, in the nick of time, discovered. Richard Ducann QC, strangely more famous for the Lady Chatterley , Last Tango & Fanny Hill obscenity cases than for The Nose case, persuaded the owners to change their pleas to guilty on the back of their self-incrimination.
At that juncture, some of the customs people mistakenly thought I was their stool pigeon (ha-cha-cha-cha). But my firm’s role was to support the business, not to do the authorities bidding.
I had an idea to do forensic accounting using seminal computer modelling techniques (spreadsheets), to ascertain the true value of the fraud. In part, that required me to model the economics of the entire wine trade; someone had to do it. The exercise proved the actual value of the fraud was much less than the £3M the authorities had asserted. Thus I quickly fell from favour with the customs folk.
I learnt a lot and enjoyed doing that forensic accounting assignment. But I soon drifted away from such work, after just one other 1980s fraud case. Yet now, nearly 40 years later, I’m minded to re-assemble the old firm’s investigative team. One last enormous, audacious, forensic accounting case. Just think of the fees. We’d all be able to retire in luxury…and what could possibly go wrong?
The Evening Itself, Including Several Other Heists
It is my solemn duty, in my capacity as The Scribe (aka ‘ammer ‘arris, apparently) to report on the evening.
The Boss (Rohan), His Moll (Jan), Independent Scrutiniser (Chris) & The Polymath (Kay)
We ate Moroccan food at Souk, the scene of earlier crimes perpetrated by The Boss and some of his cronies:
After the grub, it was down to business. Usual ThreadMash style – Rohan introduced and linked the pieces. On this occasion he went for some musical links – some funny, some just plain weird.
First up was Kay, whose story started off like one of her rather wonderful childhood stories about spending time with her grandfather, but then got darker and darker, as a heist story emerged from the seemingly innocent fun at the start of piece.
Next up was me – see performance piece above.
Then John Eltham told an intriguing tale from the 18th century, partly based on true events, partly on conjecture, with a mixture of piracy, mutiny, hidden treasure and betrayal. Is it a spoiler to say that, despite the tropical setting, many jewels end up buried where the sun doesn’t shine.
Julie was next. She imagined a family business doing heists to order, with a female member of the family nonchalantly going through the businesses terms and conditions with a telephone enquirer. At least one of the cancellation clauses seemed to be an existential problem in more ways than one. It was a very funny piece…
…as was Jan’s piece, which brought everyone who had assembled that evening into play. The Boss in her piece is a sinister character with a bunch of unsuspecting cronies, who are all writing creative pieces to order, not realising that The Boss is stealing all of their stories and publishing them as his own. Who could possibly stop him? Perhaps the quiet, demure one, who also happens to be The Boss’s moll.
We all chatted together for a while…before The Boss set our next assignment and encouraged his accomplices in Souk to extract money from us.
After that, some of the gang scarpered sharpish – especially those with long journeys. Several of us stuck around to try and put the world to rights. We failed, but at least we tried.
Perhaps we should have debated world affairs over coffee, in the 18th century style. Right at the end of the evening, I suggested same to Kay, as a way of mentioning my Thomas Paine blue plaque project, a mile or so north of Souk, in Fitzrovia, three doors down from the house in which my dad was born.
All music by William Lawes, this is what we heard:
Choice Psalmes: – Music, the master of thy art is dead
Harp Consort No. 9 in D:– Pavin on a theme by Cormacke
Choice Psalmes: – My God, my rock, regard my cry
My God, my rock, regard my cry (arranged by Loris Barrucand)
Judah in exile wanders
Harp Consort No. 5 In D: – Alman – Saraband
Harp Consort No. 4 in D: – Coranto
Choice Psalmes: – Whieles I this standing lake swathed up with ewe
Love, I obey, shoot home thy dart
O sing unto the Lord a new song
Harp Consort No. 11 in D: – Fantazy
Choice Psalmes: – Ne irascaris, Domine
Harp Consort No. 10 in G: – Paven on a theme by Coprario
Choice Psalmes: – How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord
Come sing the great Jehova’s praise
In resurrectione tua
Harp Consort No. 8 in G
Choice Psalmes: – O my Clarissa
This concert is basically their latest album Lighten Mine Eies, available I’m sure at all good CD outlets and streaming, e.g. YouTube Music – click here.
Below is a little video clip of them performing one of the instrumental pieces:
While below is a little video clip of them performing one of the choral pieces:
We were supposed to hear Maïlys de Villoutreys sing the soprano parts, but she was unfortunately unwell. Enter a late replacement in the form of Marion Tassou, who did a wonderful job given the near-absence of preparation and rehearsal time.
Ensemble Près are a very together-looking unit, handling the late soprano switch like the commensurate professionals they clearly are.
We really enjoyed this concert and have enjoyed listening to their recordings of 16th and 17th century English music since. An unusual choice of repertoire for a young French ensemble. I hope it works for them.
Robin Pharo, their leader and gambist, did mention that they have started work on some French repertoire as well. Quelle surprise!
Below is a charming little promotional vid, not that we were enticed by the vid. We were enticed because I am a bit of a George Eliot nut and this play is about an intensely difficult “coming of age” stage in the life of Mary Ann Evans, subsequently known as George Eliot.
It is the sort of story that could easily become mawkish and/or melodramatic, but we were in the safe hands of Alexi Kaye Campbell (playwright), Anna Ledwich (director) and a top quality cast.
The evening was hugely entertaining, with a beautifully blended mixture of comedy, tragedy and tragi-comedy. Owen Teale is no doubt the big name draw for this production, but the big name to be is surely Elizabeth Dulau – remember where you heard the name first – whose performance as the young Mary Ann Evans is simply masterful.
The supporting cast all played their parts well too, even those who were written, I’m sure deliberately, as caricatures of characters that Mary Ann Evans subsequently slipped into her great novels. Keeping most of the characters on stage much of the time, bringing them to life when needed, was a lovely directorial touch; I imagine a nod to the same “character forming in more ways than one” nature of this Mary Ann Evans story.
You don’t have to be mad on George to be mad on Bird Grove
Janie is not a George-Eliot-ista but still thoroughly enjoyed her evening – even after the nail-biting race we had to get to the theatre on time – having allowed 75 minutes for the North Circular Roadwork, which was only JUST enough time. They didn’t have such problems in the mid 19th century…
…but they did have their own issues back then.
I’m rambling. If you are reading this in time, grab yourself some tickets before it is too late. A great night of theatre. Well done, Hampstead, once again.
Let’s be honest about this – we wouldn’t have gone to see this play/production had it not been for the fact that Jan Goodman is in it. The Old Red Lion Theatre, although we had heard of it, has never been on our radar. But neither Janie nor I had previously seen Jan performing in the theatre – despite the fact that Jan and I appeared together at the National not so long ago, darlings…
…but the handful of January dates for the original run of The Paper Doll House didn’t work for us.
When Rohan postponed the ThreadMash I was going to attend 12 February, because Jan’s run had been extended…
…it made sense to me to book the show and go.
Janie had been cherishing the idea of a quiet night in for that evening, but as the day progressed started asking me questions about the show and eventually asked,
do you think I’d be able to get a ticket at this late stage?
…to which the answer of course was, “let me see – they are being sold on-line…yes we can!”
The weather was awful, as indeed the weather has been for most of 2026 so far. We worked out that the neighbourhood benefits from free parking on pay-bays and residents bays after 6:30. Despite me joking about “there be dragons” on my copy of the London maps for any area that doesn’t have a W in the postcode, actually I know those Clerkenwell and Islington roads pretty well, having spent so much of my life working with charities based on those mean streets.
Whatdya mean, mean?
The hard-boiled language is a segue into the play, The Paper Doll House. Set in 1956, revolving around a dramatic mother and daughter combination who might, or might not, have been the perpetrators of a notorious Hollywood murder in the 1920s.
The play unashamedly wallows in pastiche of the two golden periods involved, and does so very well. The play also makes knowing and homage nods to more serious theatre. Both of the abuser/victim pairs involved: the mother & daughter, plus the gangster & moll, have their Ibsenian Dolls House moments in the play. The piece also resonated with Williamsesque Glass Menagerie & Baby Doll themes.
An intriguing mix of camp fun and thoughtful drama, this play could fall flat without high quality acting. That’s where the cast, in particular Jan Goodman (mother) and Carol Been (daughter) come in. Their performances were top notch. Camp and comedic at times, sinister and tragic at others. Credit also to Tug J Wilson, the director, whose work with all four actors must surely have benefited from his long and varied career on stage and screen. Credit also to Tom Inman and Chloe Teresa Wilson, who played the less-developed roles of gangster and moll respectively with panache and measure.
As Janie and I so often say when we see top notch theatre in fringe/pub theatres, this play/production deserves a wider audience than it can achieve at The Old Red Lion, run extensions notwithstanding.
We enjoyed our evening of theatre and at last we’ve seen Jan Goodman perform on stage. Not before time!
Paul Cattermull & Emma Norris (front), Linda Sheraton-Davis, Me, Richard Prosser & Simon Mansfield (back) – looking on from the dedans.
The team at The Queen’s Club gate are regular faces and clearly very well trained. On arrival, I announced myself by saying:
I am here for one of the great events in the global sporting calendar.
The attendant replied:
That must be the Dedanists’ match. Let me get the list…
I was especially looking forward to the fixture when I learnt that I would be paired with Giles Stogdon, with whom I have partnered many times in the past, but not since the arrival of Pinky, my new hip, less than a year ago.
Playing one of the early matches gave us the opportunity to warm up with some of the other early arrivals. During warm up, Giles tried but failed to emulate the “lights out tennis” he had mustered against me the previous week in the MCC weekend:
The early arrival also of Linda Sheraton-Davis & Chris Hancock enabled us to start our bout about 15 minutes early. Just as well – the battle was a hum-dinger which would not have been concluded in a mere hour. Indeed, even with the extra time, we needed to start the decisive third set at 4-4.
At one point, Linda Sheraton-Davis made an impressively elegant, almost balletic manoeuvre, in order to dodge the ball and avoid losing a vital point, allowing a modest chase instead.
Later in the evening, in conversation – yes, the chatting, watching, eating and drinking is at least as important as the tennis on these occasions – it transpired that Linda had indeed pursued ballet as a hobby in her youth. Several people expressed regret that Linda’s “croisé devant” had not been captured on camera during our match.
But in the modern era, one needn’t let an absence of real images spoil a good story. I instructed DeepAI to produce an image that reflected Linda’s move. The AI did rather well, although I couldn’t persuade it to produce anything that looked faintly like “a real tennis court”…or even “a court tennis court”…as the background. But it has most certainly captured the dance move.
Being a polite chap, I did ask Linda for permission to produce and publish an automated artist’s impression of the moment. Linda replied:
Only if you also point out to your readers that starting the final set at 4-4 put you and Giles at an advantage, because in both of the previous sets you had won the first two games and then lost the next three!
You see how much it means to us all! In truth, we all turn up in the hope of having good bouts like the one we enjoyed on this occasion, but tend not to be too fussed about the result if it is a good match.
As much as anything else, this Dedanists’ fixture, like many others, tends to be populated mainly by Dedanists, such that we often find ourselves batting for the other side. As in 2023, in 2026 I was representing The Queen’s Club…despite having no real right to do so.
Giles Stogdon has no more right to represent Queen’s than me. He hadn’t even twigged that we were listed to represent Queen’s rather than The Dedanists’.
The fact of the matter is – the “which team won?” aspect doesn’t really matter. We raise some money for the Dedanists’ Society good causes, have a good fun match and a most companionable dinner afterwards. In that sense everyone wins and tennis wins.
Richard Vallat & Gary Duncan (service end) v Graham Defries & Stuart Kerr (hazard end).
On returning to the gallery after their battle, Richard Vallat confessed to me that he had completely forgotten which side he was representing this time around. Classic. But the last set of that match was a most enjoyable watch while we worked up our appetites for a delicious boeuf bourguignon dinner, followed by a very tempting cheese plate.
But just in case anyone has come here to see a results sheet – here is that sheet.
Our first Wigmore Hall concert of the year. We had been looking forward to this concert as something rather different…which it was. It was also very different from the concert as promoted. The rubric mentioned banjo and tambourine. Rhiannon apologised for that, as she explained that she and Francesco were currently working on voice and piano.
No-one seemed to mind. The audience mostly comprised Rhiannon fans, from what we could make out. We didn’t recognise fellow Wigmore-istas. Which is a good thing in our view. We are great believers in the Wig opening up to different artists and styles.
The music Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi played us was delightful and of the highest quality, albeit relentlessly downbeat in mood. Leonard Cohen and John Dowland had nothing on this pair in the gloom department.
Rhiannon is a charismatic performer, who can clearly shift between musical styles and spoken languages in a seemingly effortless way.
She did get caught out on the piece they were premiering that night, when the music page technology let her down. She stopped, explained the problem and asked if we wanted her to start again?
Yes please…
…we all shouted. So she started again.
Francesco explained with great enthusiasm that he had been afforded the honour and opportunity to play The Old Lady – the older of the two Steinway pianos at The Wig that rarely gets an outing. I had thought that the piano looked a little different when we arrived. The headline photo shows The Old Lady with our reflections in it as I snapped it on exit.
There’s not a lot of on-line video showing Rhiannon Giddens performing with Francesco Turrisi, but the following YouTube (which also includes one other musician), shows one of the most moving pieces they played: American Tune by Paul Simon:
We thoroughly enjoyed this concert and will look out for other concerts in Rhiannon Giddens Wigmore Hall residency. We might get to hear the banjo and tambourine next time. Or something completely different. I don’t suppose we’d much mind.
