Month: January 2000

Bash by Neil LaBute, Almeida Theatre, 29 January 2000

This production blew us away. It was shocking and also intensely gripping drama.

We trusted the Almeida in those days, so we booked a preview of this one, “on spec”, although we were unfamiliar with Neil LaBute’s work and also unfamiliar with the imported cast and director.

We were right to trust!

Bash is a collection of short plays, rather than “a play”. All were excellent in our view. The last one was the most shocking, but all were shocking in their own way. Brilliantly well acted by Mary McCormack, Zeljko Ivanek & Matthew Lillard. Joe Mantello directed. Here is the Theatricalia entry for this production.

I’m pretty sure the critics tended to be with us in admiring this one. Let’s see.

Yup, Nicholas de Jongh in The Standard waxed lyrical:

Bash deJongh StandardBash deJongh Standard 03 Feb 2000, Thu Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Charles Spencer in The Telegraph admired the writing and performances but hated the plays:

Bash Spencer TelegraphBash Spencer Telegraph 04 Feb 2000, Fri The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Our fried, Michael Billington, in the Guardian absolutely got it:

Bash Billington GuardianBash Billington Guardian 03 Feb 2000, Thu The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

One of those utterly unforgettable nights at the theatre that makes us want to go back for more!

The Balcony by Jean Genet, Questors Theatre, Followed By Dinner At Gascons Ealing, 28 January 2000

Possibly the least said about this one the better. Naturally Janie and I would have been with the Duchess. Naturally she will have treated us to her theatre tickets (comps), while Janie and I will have done the interval drinks and dinner.

My log reads:

tame – we left at half time.

This will have been a collective and unanimous decision. It was quite a long play – Janie had booked Gascons for 10:30 – possibly with a bit of persuasion for the late booking. In any case, we were probably all ready for our din-dins after 90 minutes or so of Genet.

The Questors, being the Questors, has all the details, including a downloadable scan of the programme, available for all to see – click here.

I don’t think the meal afterwards was redemptive of the evening. Neither Janie nor I can remember much about Gascons in Ealing. The Duchess was probably in a foul mood because she hadn’t had value for (lack of) money out of those three Questors comps.

“Waste not, want not…”

Kontrabande, Wigmore Hall, 24 January 2000

Crumbs, Janie and I went to the Wigmore Hall to see a lot of baroque concerts that season. Here’s another one we rated as:

superb.

Kontrabande were terrific. Had they been 1970s rock rather than 17th & 18th century baroque they might have been described as a supergroup. Dig this list of great names:

  • Charles Humphries,
  • Clare Salaman,
  • Jane Norman,
  • Katherine McGillivray,
  • Richard Campbell,
  • William Hunt,
  • Laurence Cummings,
  • James Johnstone,
  • Elizabeth Kenny.

This is what they played that night:

  • Antonio Lucio Vivaldi – Concerto for strings and basso continuo in D minor RV 128
  • Antonio Lucio Vivaldi – Cantata “Vestro Principi divino” RV 633
  • Antonio Caldara – Sonata a tre Op 1 No 5
  • Antonio Lucio Vivaldi – Stabat Mater RV 621
  • Antonio Caldara – Cantata “Soffri, mio caro Alcino”
  • Antonio Lucio Vivaldi – Concerto for Lute in D major
  • Antonio Lucio Vivaldi – Cantata “Nisi Dominus”

I couldn’t find any YouTubes of Kontraband on-line, but the following one of Caldara sonatas and cantatas is very pleasing to the ear – I’d forgotten how much Caldara’s music pleased us that night:

Spoonface Steinberg by Lee Hall, New Ambassadors Theatre, 22 January 2000

I didn’t make any notes in my log about this one. I don’t think we were overly impressed with it, but neither did we think it quite as awful as some of the critics. Still, I’d better let the critics do the job for me with this one, given that i wrote nothing.

Here is a link to the Theatricalia entry for this one. Kathryn Hunter was the big name for this one person show.

Charles Spencer in The Telegraph absolutely hated it:

Spoonface Spencer TelegraphSpoonface Spencer Telegraph 07 Jan 2000, Fri The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

On the other hand, Nicholas de Jongh in the Standard spoke mostly very highly of it:

Spoonface de Jongh StandardSpoonface de Jongh Standard 12 Jan 2000, Wed Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Susannah Clapp in The Observer didn’t like it much:

Spoonface Clapp ObserverSpoonface Clapp Observer 09 Jan 2000, Sun The Observer (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Im Zimmermanschen Kaffeehaus, A Weekend With Trevor Pinnock & His Pals, Wigmore Hall, 14 & 15 January 2000

A pair of baroque concerts over that weekend – Friday evening and Saturday evening. We chose to go and see both. It was part of a series named “Bach & His Contemporaries”.

I logged that Janie and I both described the concerts as:

superb.

On the Friday evening we saw/heard:

  • Johann Sebastian Bach – Trio Sonata in G for violin, flute and continuo
  • Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer – Chaconne in D minor for solo harpsicord
  • Diderik Buxtehude – Sonata in B flat for violin and viola da gamba Op 1 no 4 BuxWV255
  • Johann Sebastian Bach – Sonata in B minor for flute and harpsicord, BWV 1030
  • Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber – Passacaglia for solo violin
  • Johann Sebastian Bach – Sonata in G minor for viola da gamba and harpsicord, BWV 1029
  • Johann Sebastian Bach – Trio Sonata from the Musical Offering, BWB 1079

On the Saturday evening we heard:

  • Georg Philipp Telemann – Suite in A minor for recorder and strings
  • Johann Sebastian Bach – Concerto in C for two harpsicords, BWV 1061
  • Johann Sebastian Bach – Sonata in G for violin and harpsicord, BWV 1019
  • Sylvius Leopold Weiss – Tombeau sur le mort de M Comte de Logy
  • Johann Sebastian Bach – Orchestral Suite no 2 in B minor

Trevor Pinnock, Rachel Podger and some of the others recorded the Bach trio sonatas that year. I have put together a playlist on YouTube Music which includes those lovely sonatas and some other pieces from the January 2000 weekend – click here to listen to that playlist. Don’t be put off by the strike through on the link – anyone can hear the playlist but you will get adverts if you are not yourself a YouTube Music subscriber.

If you prefer to just click the odd embed, here is one of the Bach sonatas we heard Trevor and Rachel play:

I wasn’t familiar with the work of JCF Fischer. Here’s Trevor Pinnock playing Fischer’s passacaglia, not the chaconne we heard. Still lovely:

Here are some other people playing (part of) the Telemann Overture/Suite that we heard:

The Weiss piece was a delicious listen. Here is Evangelina Mascardi giving it a go.

We heard William Carter play the Weiss at that January 2000 concert, long before Janie’s “mystery punter” evening at the same venue:

William Carter, Theorbist Extraordinaire’s Mystery Punter Outed, 24 September 2010

Finally, here is a YouTube of the closing number from that brace of delicious concerts, with music so you can play along with it if you wish:

Septimus Gussett This Is Your Life by Magnolia Thunderpussy (aka Mike Ward), Actor’s Workshop Halifax, 7 January 2000

This “opus” was not Mike Ward’s finest hour as a comedy impresario.

For several years prior to this one…and indeed for many years after…the Actor’s Workshop would traditionally stage “New Year Revels”. Indeed, I met Mike early to mid 1990s, when his son, Adam, briefly wrote for NewsRevue and twigged that his dad’s annual show might benefit from material produced by NewsRevue writers. I contributed to the show for several years and visited it for the first time in 1997:

New Year Revels 1997, Actor’s Workshop, Halifax, 2 January 1997

I have no idea why Mike decided to try something different in 2000. Perhaps it was because several of the NewsRevue “class of ’92” had all-but stopped writing sketches and songs by 1999. Possibly it was Mike’s irritation that so many of the sketches and songs that were written by young Actor’s Workshop folk for him to perform mocked his rhotacism. Septimus Gusset was, if I recall correctly, one of Mike’s “answers to that”. (Performing On The Waterfront some years later was another, no doubt, whereas Mike’s wonderful Casablanca The Musical, which literally brought the house down the following year, embraced that rhotacism).

Casablanca The Musical by Magnolia Thunderpussy (aka Mike Ward), Actor’s Workshop, 18 September 2001

In truth, Janie and I were not wild about the Septimus Gussett show and I don’t think it did anything like as well as “New Year Revels” in the matter of bringing the Actor’s Workshop community together for a celebratory show.

Still, Janie and I had a most enjoyable short trip up to Halifax. We stayed at the Crown, again and I am pretty sure that Lottie Ward treated us to one of her magnificent beef fillet feasts at Mike & Lottie’s place after the show.