Month: April 2007

Middlesex v Northants Day Two With Geoff Young, Day Three With Michael Mainelli, Lord’s, 26 & 27 April 2007

Day Two – 26 April 2007

I have little to add to the extensive report I wrote about Day 2 on MTWD: Click here for a link to my MTWD match report for the day.

Just in case anything ever happens to MTWD, I have scraped that report to here.

Geoff Young is a Northamptonshire-supporting stalwart of the Tufty Stackpole team we used to play matches against as and for The Children’s Society. Several such matches will be Ogblogged in the fullness of time – here is one example, if you like a long read, which was the most recent match when Geoff and I went to Lord’s that day in April 2007:

Tufty Stackpole v The Children’s Society, North Crawley CC, “Match Report”, 30 July 2006

For those who don’t want to read the MTWD Day 2 match report, it basically says that Geoff and I had a very enjoyable day at Lord’s – a bit more enjoyable for me based on the cricket – with a picnic lunch of the “Ian/Ged” standard variety – i.e. splendid.

Day Three – 27 April 2007

In those days Michael Mainelli (Timothy Tiberelli) and I had a traditional visit to Lord’s at least once a season – usually early season, which we called a Stumpfmerde session. We had a long standing tradition of occasional “Stiermerde” (bullshit) sessions to talk about strategic matters for the business. The Stumpfmerde was a “with cricket” variant.

I could tell you about the strategic matters we discussed that day…but I’d probably then have to kill you and believe me it wouldn’t be worth it.

Michael’s follow up note started with:

Great Stumpfmerde.  Glad to see our boys crushed ’em on Saturday.

I like the way he thinks of Middlesex as “our boys”.

To see the Cricinfo scorecard for the whole match, click here.

On the Saturday, after following Middlesex’s win on the Internet Radio, Janie and I watched the conclusion of the World Cup Final on the TV – a very cricket heavy few days for me.

Kindertransport by Diane Samuels, Hampstead Theatre, 27 April 2007

This was a revival of a play from the 1990s which we hadn’t seen and which we fancied seeing.

The subject matter is a bit gruelling and the somewhat sentimental treatment could seem mawkish, but actually we found this a good play and a well-balanced production.

Reviews (and some comparisons with earlier and subsequent productions) can be found through this search term – click here.

One of our better Friday evenings at the Hampstead Theatre back then.

Dinner At John & Mandy’s Place In Cambridge Road Wanstead, 21 April 2007

Janie and I were trying to trawl the details of this evening from our memories.

I remember travelling to the house by tube, getting a little lost walking from the tube to the house and then travelling home by cab.

 

Image “borrowed” from an estate agent’s site. Right road, probably wrong house.

We both remember having a really good time.

We both remember that the girls were there and that they were now old enough to join us and participate in much of the evening.

Did we take a stroll around the neighbourhood that time or was that a different evening?

Janie remembers taking drinks in the garden.

Janie remembers dancing with the girls in the living room.

Janie remembers roasted vegetables with thyme and Balsamic vinegar.

Janie remembers conversation about Sartre, existentialism and that sort of thing.

We both wonder whether all of Janie’s memories of this particular evening relate to this particular evening or whether several evenings have merged into one collection of memories.

I am 99% sure this was our last visit to John and Mandy in London – i.e. it was Saffron Walden the next time we visited. But frankly I’m not much help on this one memory-wise.

“JOHN! MANDY! You’re better at this than we are. What did we eat? Are Janie’s memories impressively good or a mixture of different evenings?”

Whatever – we know we had a great time.

Kiss Of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig, Donmar Warehouse, 20 April 2007

A very powerful play this – a two hander set in a Latin American jail – one prisoner is a political prisoner, the other is in jail for homosexuality.

Very well acted by Will Kean and Rupert Evans in a high-quality Donmar production.

The critics suggested a lack of intimacy and power to this production, but it did the business for us as I recall it.

Click here for a link to reviews and other resources for this production. 

One of those resources is an excellent Donmar “Behind The Scenes/Study Guide” – which I have also scraped to here so you can for sure see it even if the Donmar moves it or closes down!

A rare (perhaps unique) visit to the Donmar Warehouse on a Friday, perhaps because we had arranged to see John and Mandy on the Saturday. I don’t think we quite rated this play as powerful as Death And the Maiden, which we had seen with John and Mandy years earlier…

An Evening With Janie, John & Mandy; Death And The Maiden by Ariel Dorfman, Royal Court Theatre at the Duke of York’s Theatre, 17 October 1992

…but it had echoes of that play with the South American style and the human rights abuses.

The Man Of Mode by George Etherege, Olivier Theatre, 19 April 2007

A rare visit to the theatre on a Thursday on my own. Janie hates Restoration comedy but I had (and at the time of writing, more than 10 years later, still have) an idea for a very thorough updating of one of those Restoration plays, so I very much wanted to see this modern production of a Restoration classic.

I thought it was very well done. Rory Kinnear was exceptional, as was most of the cast, including Alleyn’s alumna Nancy Carroll.

This was before Nick Hytner found his way off my Christmas card list by forgetting where his loyal audience comes from and becoming far too much of a jobsworth cum corporate lick-spittle when running the National. So hats off to him in this regard – Hytner can direct.

I rated this production very good indeed at the time, but it was not the sort of modernisation of a Restoration play which I have in mind…

…which is a good thing…

…if I ever get around to implementing my own cunning plan. But I digress.

Click here for a link to a search term that finds the reviews, which were mostly good but not great.

Below is the trailer, which is really quite snazzy without giving away much about the show. It has a fair smattering of Nancy Carroll, which might please my fellow Alleyn’s alums…or indeed anyone who watches the vid:

Jubilate Deo, Southbank Sinfonia, St George’s Church Hanover Square, 14 April 2007

The weekend after Easter, we visited the London Handel Festival for this tasty Baroque concert by the (then) fairly new Southbank Sinfonia.

We heard:

  • Handel’s Overture to Giustino HWV37
  • Rameau’s Grand Motet: In Convertendo Dominus
  • Vivaldi’s Concerto Con Molti Istromenti RV 576
  • Lully’s Suite from “Isis”
  • Handel’s Te Deum for the Peace of Utrecht

Janie couldn’t complain that it was cold this time – we were having a bit of an April heatwave in London. But still she felt that St George’s was austere as a venue…

…”it’s bum-aching, like sitting in Church”…

…”it IS a Church”…

…so she reiterated her strong preference for the Wigmore Hall.

We both agreed that the music was lovely, though.

Below is a delightful later performance by the very same orchestra (under Julian Perkins) of the Giustino:

Below is a beautiful video of the Rameau In Convertendo with William Christie conducting but no identification of the orchestra ( Les Arts Florissants presumably) nor the wonderful soloists – perhaps some of the Early Music Group aficionados can help with the identification of those:

If you click through this link instead, you can then also hear the other parts in YouTube.

I have the whole festival programme, but here is the one-pager with most of the relevant information about that particular, excellent gig.

Tom Fool by Franz Xaver Kroetz, Bush Theatre, 13 April 2007

One of my abiding memories of going to the Bush on a Friday evening to see this production was our irritation at the draconian Friday evening parking regulations and driving around desperately seeking a legitimate space.

“This had better be worth it”, I recall Janie saying before the show, followed by “yes it was worth it” afterwards.

Quirky play, very well performed.

The Bush resource on this one can be found by clicking here.

Reviews and stuff can be found through the search term that clicks through here.

A good one.

Middlesex & MTWD Stuff, 28 March 2007, 11 April 2007 & 13 April 2007

I can see from my diary and correspondence that we had an MTWD get together just before the start of the season – 28 March.

No sign of me going to the Seaxe Club AGM that year – I don’t think I’d really started going to those yet, but I did go to the Middlesex AGM on 11 April.

True to the committee’s requests, we did not report the AGM nor can I find any private correspondence about it. It cannot have been a corker.

On 13 April I published a template for away match reports using Janie’s and my visit to Trelawny in Jamaica a few week’s earlier as the example – click here.

I’ll write up that visit in a more Ogblog stylee when I write up the holiday as a whole.

Just in case anything ever happens to MTWD, I have scraped the report to here.

The Rose Tattoo by Tennessee Williams, Olivier Theatre, 9 April 2007

A rare visit to the theatre on a Monday – this was Easter Monday.

Janie and I both love a bit of Tennessee Williams and we had only seen an amateur production of the Rose Tattoo before – at the Questors some 10 years earlier.

This was a top notch production at the National – no holds barred.

Zoe Wannamaker was exceptional.

Critics seemed to think the production and performances masked a less than brilliant play – I think I probably agree with that analysis – click here for a link to reviews.

Below is the trailer from the 1955 movie – very different style:

The Skin Game by John Galsworthy, Orange Tree Theatre, 7 April 2007

Sam Walters really had got himself locked into the early 20th Century by this time. Frankly, we didn’t think this Galsworthy piece had aged very well. Add to that Sam’s strict orthodoxy about not cutting text, it was quite a long evening at the theatre.

Well acted and directed, we stuck it out for both halves although we did consider making a break for it at half time.

Click here for a link to the Orange Tree resource on this play/production.

The critics liked it rather more than we did. Click here for a link that finds reviews and stuff.