Cuba, Pre-NewsRevue Lyric, 22 December 1991

This lyric dates from that early period when I was writing just for fun and/or hoping to impress Spitting Image. This one certainly wasn’t going to impress the latter, as I fear it is more than a little one-dimensional.

I do quite like the Amnesty International inspired idea of writing to Fidel and Raúl Castro to complain about human rights abuses.

The closing line, “soon it will be others”, infers that I thought they were reaching the end of their line in 1991. Wrong.

If you want to know how Janie and I got on when we visited that country, in 2007, while it was still “governed” by those two brothers, click here or below.

Next up, my 1991 lyric:

CUBA (To the tune of "Cuba")

CHORUS 1

Cuba, we eat a lot of pasta,
Cuba, and smoke a lot of Ganja.

VERSE 1

We haven’t much money, we haven’t much oil,
Tobacco and poppies grow well on our soil.

CHORUS 2

Cuba, a good place for a Rasta,
Cuba, with reefers from Havana.

VERSE 2

This island is boring, there’s no place to go,
And six hour speeches from Fidel Castro.
He’s the one,
Does go on,
On and on,
And on and on.

CHORUS 3

Cuba, the people like a martyr.
Cuba, especially Che Guevara.

VERSE 3

The workers are friendly, the soldiers are cruel,
Write and complain to Fidel and Raul.

CHORUS 4

Cuba, is ruled by those two brothers,
Cuba, but soon it will be others!

To see and hear Cuba by The Gibson Brothers click here (where you can also read the lyrics in the information section) or just watch the embedded link below:

Blood Wedding by Federico Garcia Lorca, Cottesloe Theatre, 14 December 1991

Gosh I thought this was very good.

I think it might have been my first experience of a Lorca play and by gosh this production of Blood Wedding was powerful.

I saw this with Bobbie.

Subsequently Janie and I both became very keen on Lorca and saw a good production of Blood Wedding at the Almeida in 2005.

But returning to this production, the Theatricalia entry for it is here. A very young Helen McCrory starred as the bride and Cyril Nri was the groom.

It seems that we saw a preview, as press night was three days after our sight of it.

Below is Michael Coveney’s review from The Observer:

Coveney On Blood WeddingCoveney On Blood Wedding Sun, Jan 5, 1992 – 41 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

I think they got their timing wrong having press night on 17 December… a rare Cottesloe opening that missed out on Michael Billington or indeed anyone from the Guardian. But in my view it was the critics who missed out on a very good production.