Janie and I both really love Tennessee Williams but neither of us are very keen to see revivals of plays if we have seen a decent production before.
So this production of Summer And Smoke, a play that neither of us had seen before, at one of our favourite places, The Almeida, sounded like the hottest of hot tickets to our taste.
So much so, it would have been understandable had our massively high expectations not been met…but we needn’t have worried – this production most certainly did the business for us.
I’m not too sure why this play is so rarely performed, other than the fact that I think it does need some sort of imaginative staging to come alive – achieved wonderfully by Rebecca Frecknall and her team in Rebecca’s first major gig as a Director.
Frecknall is a star director in the making and Patsy Ferran is similarly a star performer breaking through just now.
I’d heard a lot about The Gesualdo Six – they are currently the hottest boy band of the early music vocal consort world – so I have been keen to see them for some time.
This early evening concert at St John’s Smith Square slot didn’t suit Janie on a Wednesday, so I made one of those unusual but no longer rare concert bookings just for me.
What a super short concert it was.
SJSS had been turned around for this concert, so the audience faces the organ, not the massive, tired-looking stage – something I know they’d been talking/thinking about, but until now I had not yet experienced it. Janie and I have thought for some time that this configuration would work better for soloists and small ensembles.
It does work better.
I got in early to bagsy a good seat and took a picture. You can see my coat draped across a front row seat.
SJSS Turned Around
Nice touch with the candles.
The hall soon filled up – several hundred people I would estimate – the largest audience I have seen at SJSS for a while. The idea of doing an early evening concert of this kind ahead of the main event certainly worked for this evening – perhaps also linked to the fact that this concert was part of the Holy Week Festival.
The people sitting to the left of me clearly knew one of the singers, Guy James, who chatted with them briefly before the gig. The younger woman in that party asked him to throw in a pop song or two – but he shyly demurred, saying that he’d love to but it would probably get him into trouble with the others. Not very rock’n’roll.
I did and do have an arithmetical problem with this group. When I looked at the picture on their website – click here –and/ or the above SJSS web page and/or indeed the programme for the evening, I kept counting seven people in The Gesualdo Six.
A knowledgeable-sounding fellow sat next to me about five minutes before the start of the Gesualdo Six concert – he said that he had seen some of the performers before (e.g. Joseph Wicks recently) but never the entire ensemble together and was very excited to be getting to see them.
I mentioned my cardinal number problem – i.e. the matter of seven people comprising The Gesualdo Six, hoping for some insight from this knowledgeable fellow.
“I know, yes…tough isn’t it,” was that gentleman’s unhelpful reply.
But from now it’s all good news.
There were only six people in The Gesualdo Six on the night – which put me at my ease again.
The music was absolutely lovely.
Indeed, the opening number, Tallis’s Te Lucis Ante Terminum, was worth the price of admission alone (as sports commentators would tend to put it).
I don’t normally go for modern choral music mixed in with early music, but I was much taken by the several lullabies by Veljo Tormis, which contrasted nicely with the Byrd lullaby.
I also enjoyed Owain Park’s own piece, Phos Hilaron. I cannot honestly claim to have got much out of Joanna Marsh’s pieces, though.
But basically I loved the gig – they are a wonderful ensemble – so when Owain Park announced that we could buy pre-release copies (due out Easter Weekend) of the group’s debut album on exit, I was up there with my £12 like a shot.
You can order/buy the album from all the usual outlets or direct from the band’s site by clicking below:
Below is a video from an unspecified place of The Gesualdo Six singing some Tallis – a piece from the album but not from the gig.
Likewise, the following piece of Thomas Tomkins (seen below in Ely Cathedral) is on the album but wasn’t on show at the gig:
They only sang one piece of Gesualdo on the night – not the following one, but I can’t let you sample The Gesualdo Six without Gesualdo himself:
Finally, below is a little documentary piece about the group from SJSS itself two years ago. They look unfeasibly young in the vid – they still look young but not THAT young. Two years is a long time for a boy band. Another couple of years on the road and they might look like The Rolling Stones by 2020.
All of this rather puts my own attempt at some seasonal, medieval-style performance into the shade:
A long-planned dinner at the Noddyland house with DJ, Lana, Linda and Maurice.
Janie had been so hoping for some decent weather so that we could take drinks and nibbles in the garden before dinner, she wasn’t going to let single figure temperatures and dank weather stop that aspect of the project.
So we all wrapped up warm and went outside for drinks with nibbles of Kilcolman (West Cork) smoked salmon and tempura prawns.
Perhaps it was the need to try and stay warm that ensured that the conversation was lively and animated from the word go out there.
I hope everyone has now recovered from the cold.
The main course, wild pacific salmon with new potatoes and salad was also a hit; mostly served with a very fruity Vouvray upon which Janie has settled of late.
The conversation got yet livelier over cheese and a very fine bottle of vintage port.
It was one of those evenings that just worked. Although several of the people didn’t know each other, everyone seemed to get on really well and really easily.
A very enjoyable evening of great food, good wines and superb conversation amongst friends.
Simon Jacobs very kindly took time out from his hectic promotion schedule to meet me for dinner on Tuesday. Simon’s new single, Sore, came out three days later – today at the time of writing.
You can hear the song and watch the vid on the embedded YouTube below.
The first thing I feel bound to say about our evening on Tuesday is that the song Sore is most certainly not the story of Simon’s evening with me. Neither of us drank excessively, although we did share a bottle of rather jolly Alsatian Riesling, nor did we dance on any tables in a shirtless stylee.
Of course, what Simon did after we parted company on Holland Park Avenue is a matter solely for him, but I can report that the song and video were already in the can by Tuesday, so if Simon’s lyric is reportage, it is reportage of some earlier evening. Come to think of it, it could be reportage of a great many evenings at Keele “back in the day”. but that is an entirely different matter.
Anyway, we dined at the Ladbroke Arms, which had impressed me when I met Kristof there for a drink just before Christmas. I had resolved then to try the food some day soon – so when Simon suggested that I find a gastro-pub near me for our meet up this time, it seemed an ideal choice.
Click picture for link to pub’s site – photo borrowed from that site
The staff took my request for a relatively quiet, corner table literally, so we were in the snug back area in the corner, which actually is a nice quiet spot for a chat.
Simon and I discussed all manner of things, but clearly at the forefront of Simon’s mind was his music career, past and present.
“When I was very young, I briefly joined the Jackson 5”, said Simon.
Now I have known Simon since we were both 15 or so and this was the first I had heard of this matter.
“I know it sounds strange,” said Simon, “because my name isn’t Jackson…”
“…also strange because I don’t recall one of the Jackson 5 being named Simon,” I chimed in, somewhat suspiciously.
“OK, name them all then,” said Simon, confidently.
“Michael, obviously”, I said tentatively, “Tito, Marlon…um…Jermaine…um…um…”
…”and Simon”, said Simon, who then embarked on quite a long story – 45 seconds to a minute – more than my full attention span anyhow – in which I thought he explained that, as a nipper, he imagined himself to have been asked to join his heroes in the Jackson 5 and managed to convince some naive fellow nippers in the park that Simon was now a Jackson.
“It is morally reprehensible to lie about one’s singing career”, I thought quietly to myself, “but if merely a pre-teen fantasy lived out in the park one day, I suppose it is just about forgivable after all these years”.
But when Simon sent me a kind note the following day, he included this factoid:
PS: Marlon, Tito, Jermaine, Simon, Michael… and when Jermaine stayed with Motown and the rest of us went to CBS, little brother Randy joined… it’s all on Wikipedia…
So is it true? Was Simon really a member of the Jackson 5 back then? Or was Simon guilty of generating a bit of early 1970s fake news, which for some reason (presumably to bolster his current musical career) Simon still seeks to perpetuate?
I decided that I would have to investigate this matter for myself.
My first ground for suspicion was that Simon’s surname is Jacobs, not Jackson, so how could Simon Jacobs possibly be “a Jackson”?
Well, actually, Wikipedia puts that matter into clear perspective. The original line up, known as The Jackson Brothers, included “childhood buddies Reynaud Jones and Milford Hite playing keyboards and drums, respectively”.
OK, so it was not unprecedented for a non-Jackson to join the Jacksons. But the Wikipedia entry for that group clearly mentions a brother named Jackie – the one whose name had slipped my mind (and presumably Simon’s too) – who was in the Jackson 5 throughout. So could the Jackson 5 ever have comprised six people?
That’s not quite as daft an idea as it sounds – we all know about the lesser-known fifth Beatle and the lesser-known fourth and fifth Marx Brothers. But the name “Jackson 5” does seem, at least to me, to have a cardinal-numeric requirement to it. When Jermaine left, Randy stepped in to keep the arithmetic pure to the eponymous value “5”.
Yet, even though I could find no textual evidence that the Jackson 5 sometimes exceeded five people, I did find, also through Wikipedia, the following fascinating piece of photographic evidence:
By The Jackson 5 (eBay front back) [Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsNow sums is not necessarily what I do best, but I am pretty sure that there are six people in that picture which is clearly labelled “Jackson 5 1974” on Wikimedia Commons.
So perhaps Simon really was in the Jackson 5 at one time. I must say that, by the time I got to Wikipedia, all mentions of Simon were omitted from the Jackson 5 entry, but perhaps that is simply some sort of spoiling tactic by Simon’s competitors, who know he has a single coming out today.
So does Simon sound like a former member of the Jackson 5? Does Simon look like a former member of the Jackson 5? I am hopeless at judging these things and am open-minded, so I’m sitting well and truly on the fence for this one.
You, dear reader, should judge for yourself, by listening to Simon’s new single, watching the video and possibly then buying the single, e.g. directly from Simon’s site – click here:
Anyway, as usual, it had been a fun evening chewing the fat with Simon. Big tick in the box for the Ladbroke Arms food and service too.
And to reiterate, I was not sore the next morning…at least not until after I had played two hours of tennis from 8:00 a.m. straight through to 10:00. Then I was very sore.
Below is a trailer showing one of the rap numbers from the start of the piece:
Below is a short “meet the writer” interview:
Kene explains that it is a piece about trying to write such a piece…
…which I suppose makes it a post-modern performance piece.
There’s some weird imagery too, with some orange balloon motifs acting as a recurring theme.
I don’t think this piece is aimed at the traditional theatre audience, but we were captivated by it.
We liked the poetry of Arinzé Kene’s language, we liked the music – both of the musicians, Adrian McLeod and Shiloh Coke (you can see them in the City Creature vid above) were excellent – I was especially impressed by Shiloh Coke, a young multi-instrumentalist – she should go far.
Arinzé Kene is a very talented rapper, along with being a talented writer and actor/performer.
At the time of writing Misty has only just opened, so you should be able to get to see it over the next few weeks – highly recommended as an unusual but entertaining theatrical, musical, image-filled evening.
Tim Connell is never one to miss an opportunity to organise a Gresham Society visit to a newly opened historic site; this visit to the London Mithraeum was no exception.
The London Mithraeum is one of the most substantial archaeological finds relating to Roman Britain. It was found on Walbrook soon after the Second World War and was moved away from its original site, bang slap in the middle of the City of London, to allow construction, including a permanent home for the relic more or less where it was originally located.
The building is now the Bloomberg Space, with the London Mithraeum in the basement. It opened to the public in November 2017. Anyone can visit this fascinating site and it is free of charge – but it is wise to book to ensure that you get your chosen time/date.
Enough of all that generic stuff. Here’s what happened on the Gresham Society visit.
About 25 of us gathered, which made for a pleasant gathering of the clan to add to the joys of seeing the relic. When I say “gathering of the clan”, I of course mean The Gresham Society clan and not followers of Mithras. No, no, no…
…although, when we were in the viewing gallery of the temple itself, enjoying the Bloomberg Space multi-sensory experience, I asked a couple of people whether they were starting to believe in the mysteries of Mithras?
Professor Cox answered, “not yet”…
…while Barbara Anderson replied, “not telling”.
So I detect some signs of hope for a Mithras revival.
Professor Connell mused that there must have been music involved in the initiation rites, at which point I offered to go home and get my baroq-ulele, but Tim very kindly implored me to stay, saying that he didn’t want me to miss any of the tour, which was so very thoughtful of him.
But Tim’s thought about the music for the initiation rites did get me thinking.
Anyway, after the tour, most of the party removed to a nearby hostelry for some suitable libations. I must leave it to others to report on that vital aspect of the outing, as I needed to return to Z/Yen Central to finish off some work that day.
But once I had finished work the next day, I started some in depth research into the musical side of the initiation rites of Mithraism.
It seems that the most terrifying initiation rite of them all was a requirement for the initiate to sing the Mithras Initiation Song, without hesitation, repetition, deviation or preparation.
We’re talking “one take” here.
Anyway, I did indeed manage to find some fragments of Mithraic music and text, which enabled me to translate the arcane Latin words of the Mithras Initiation Song into comprehensible English and modulate the rather dull, plain tune from the Hypolydian mode into something a little more familiar to the modern ear.
It is said that this particular initiation rite was actually more terrifying for the observers than it was for the initiate. I’ll let you, dear reader, be the judge of that.
For the Gresham academics, I would like to explain far more about my multifarious sources and the enormous trove of truly wonderful original materials about Mithraism I have uncovered.
Unfortunately, however, I realised, once I had performed the initiation song, that I have inadvertently initiated myself into the cult of Mithras at the very highest level…
…and that only initiates may be privy to the relics of the Mysteries of Mithras that I have uncovered.
Naturally, scholars who are keen enough to know about my sources may apply for initiation by singing the Mithras Initiation Song. The English language lyrics are set out below.
Mithras Initiation Song
Look at me,
I’m as cryptic as a Roman Mystery;
As I join in initiation rites,
I can’t understand,
I get Mithras,
And I’m joining that band.
Mask my eyes,
And a thousand stars appear to fill the skies,
Or it might be the sound of slaughtering bulls,
That music I hear,
I get Mithras,
My joining is near.
Can’t you see that you’re leading me in,
But that’s just what I want you to do;
Don’t you notice how much I need that faith,
That’s why I’m following you…(and you know that it’s true).
On my own,
I would wander through Londinium alone;
Never knowing my Persian from my proto Christianity,
…we were really looking forward to the other piece running concurrently at the Finborough, Checkpoint Chana, but we found it comparatively disappointing.
The topic is interesting – an academic/poet accused of making anti-Semitic references in one of her poems. But as a play it really didn’t work. The poet is also meant to be a soak – so there’s a lot of soak-laden drama involved, which tends to leave us cold.
There’s a lot of telling rather than showing in this play – which tilts it towards melodrama.
I thought it was almost a good short play, but could have done with a heavy prune/edit/revision. Janie really didn’t like it and thought the whole thing beyond redemption.
Tate Modern has a new offering for members – opening a couple of hours earlier on Saturdays and Sundays for members only. Great idea.
We plugged for the Sunday, which was a sensible slot for us…
…except I should have thought to shift our Boston Manor tennis court back by an hour…
…I’ll get that right next time.
Meanwhile, London is almost a pleasure to drive through at 8:00 on a Sunday morning…and places to park when you get there.
Rather a stunning carpet on arrival at the Tate Modern
Quite a lot of members milling around the exhibition, but not crowded the way the public slots for the Picasso exhibition are likely to be. A real members’ benefit, for those of us willing to get up early on the weekend. The show is really popular, btw – you’ll need to book if you want to get in for a regular slot.
There are lots of top notch pieces on display in this show. It is mostly the story of Picasso’s miraculous year, 1932. You do get to see a few works from other periods, but not many.
Plenty of variety in Picasso’s work during 1932 and lots of interesting stuff about his life at that time too.
These days the Tate allows punters to take pictures of some but not all the works. Not quite sure how they decide what is and isn’t allowed. Janie nearly always wants to take home the book of the show if she likes a show (as she did in this case)…but still on this occasion she took some pictures as well…perhaps for your benefit, dear reader/viewer. They certainly make fine eye candy for the blog piece.
Not without controversy – it was originally set to be performed in New York and then withdrawn under political pressure.
It is controversial material from a controversial author. The piece is the story of a Palestinian couple returning to Haifa in 1967, some 20 years after abandoning their home and (inadvertently) their infant child in that city.
Here is a short vid about Kanafani and this play – basically it was the fundraising vid for the production:
Kanafani was clearly a serious intellect who could see the Israeli/Palestinian debate from both sides. There is nuance in this piece which is rarely seen in dramatic material on this subject.
It took me a while to identify the name and author of that play, despite the fact that it was written and directed by my old friend Rebecca Wolman. Weird – I remembered that play so clearly and I separately of course remembered going to see Rebecca’s play in 1999 and getting a chance to see her again briefly after so many years, but I hadn’t connected the two until I dug out my old archives. But I digress.
Rebecca’s play, similarly nuanced, used the fertility of the gardens as an allegory for the impotence of the displaced Palestinians. Kanafani’s piece uses the abandoned child as that symbol.
Both plays I believe contain sufficient insight to make strong arguments for a peaceful resolution, but whereas Wolman’s piece is firmly oriented towards peace, Kanafani’s protagonist, Said, suggests that only fighting could resolve the conflict, even if that results in brother fighting brother. Kanafani’s own political career and life sadly went in the violent direction, although there is evidence that he renounced violence (certainly of the indiscriminate kind) shortly before he was assassinated.
A humorous aside – the play was performed in the round at the Finborough, with the audience seated on benches. The usherette (who admitted it was her first day) told us all that we needed to sit five to a bench as the show was sold out. I think she meant that some of the benches seated five people and that those would need to accommodate five people – some of the benches (ours for example) were quite modestly sized even for four people.
The result was a fair bit of jostling for position before the play started. I wondered briefly whether the mistake was deliberate, to get the audience into a “there’s not enough space for all these people…how do we resolve this?” frame of mind. But in truth I think it was just an honest mistake. It soon became clear that common sense could prevail and that, as long as four people sat on the four-seaters and five people sat on the five-seaters, there was enough room for everyone. If only the Israeli/Palestinian problem could be solved so easily.
Returning To Haifa is a fascinating play, extremely well acted and produced – it deserves a much larger audience than a short run at the Finborough will provide for it, which is a shame. I do hope it gets a transfer on the back of its success.
The above photo of The Red Lion is courtesy of TripAdvisor
When the e-mail came through from the Keele Alumni office, suggesting an informal “Keele In The City” at The Red Lion on Parliament Street, the timing seemed perfect to me.
I expected, by chance, to be in Westminster that afternoon, a few hundred yards away from The Red Lion pub.
This photo of The Red Lion is courtesy of TripAdvisor
I e-mailed Bobbie Scully (who is often at work in the Supreme Court, across the road) and John White (who often hangs around in the Palace of Westminster lobbies) to see if they were around and/or up for it. John said no, while Bobbie said yes to meeting around there, but suggested that we make it a quick drink and then a longer meal to catch up after so long – good thinking in my book.
As it turned out, my afternoon meeting in Westminster was somewhat curtailed, so I sloped back to the flat for a couple of hours, waving at the pub as I descended into the underground, then sloped back to Westminster early evening.
I hadn’t seen Steve for ages. He wasn’t an official photographer for this MBS visit, but apparently he had been the Prime Minister’s official photographer for the general election. He told me one or two things about our dear leader that didn’t surprise me but still horrified me. The word “chaos” is the one that sticks in the memory, perhaps due to frequent repetition.
I returned to Westminster about 18:50, some 20 minutes after the appointed hour with the Keele Alumni but 40 minutes ahead of the sort of time I figured Bobbie might show up.
Derby Street – the side road on one side of the pub – was chock full of police vans, which were themselves ram-packed with policemen. I recalled the wise words of Malcolm Cornelius, formerly of the Keele parish in our day:
“it is extraordinary how many policemen you can get inside one of those vans”.
I wondered whether the police had been tipped off about the Keele Alumni gathering. Facebook, after all, is said to be a fine source of security intelligence. The Keele Alumni announcement was full of key words that might trigger security concerns for the authorities…
I wandered through the pub in search of the basement, then saw the roped off stairs, jumped the barrier, went downstairs and found it was all locked up. Confused, I wandered back through the pub and then got caught up in a massive swarm of policemen on Parliament street, all heading from the vans towards Downing Street.
Now dazed as well as confused, I was unwilling to go back inside the Red Lion, which was absolutely heaving with people – unlike my previous visit there, to decompress after the Payroll Giving Awards. 2011 I think that was, when we held the event at Number 11 Downing Street and I met GOD – I’ll certainly retro-blog that evening in the fullness of time.
Seconds later, a drove of legal-looking folk marched purposefully down the side of Derby Street. Although I recognised no-one, the look and demeanour of this flock could only possibly have been the Keele Law Moot lot.
I joined the throng, as the advanced members of that party threw aside the basement rope and stormed the basement.
“I tried that five minutes ago – it was all locked up down there”, I said, dolefully.
“Oh, don’t worry, they’ll soon negotiate our way in”, said a cheery member of the moot party…
…which indeed they did. Very rapidly. Of course they did. They’d just been mooting all day.
I was assured that no actual donkeys were separated from their actual hind legs in those negotiations. On reflection, by the standards of mooting in the Supreme Court, persuading a publican to open his doors and sell drinks to thirsty Keele Alumni was probably not an especially tough argument to win.
So we were in.
I didn’t recognise anyone, but soon I was approached by a gentleman named George who had studied Psychology and Sociology in the 1970s. We chatted for a while as the moot brigade got their drinks orders in and started to quench their debate-weary thirsts.
Soon after that, Zoë Hollingsworth from the Alumni team came up to me. She had clearly mugged up on some of my post Keele activities and we chatted about charities a bit – a shared interest.
Then a very pleasant surprise – Andrea Woodhouse (formerly Collins) showed up; unexpectedly (to me), although she insisted that she had mentioned her intention to visit on her Facebook page. Perhaps I live on Facebook less than most people, but unless a Facebook posting specifically hails me, I’m unlikely to see a friends posting, unless, quite by chance, I am on-line around the time it is posted. But no harm done – it just made it a nice surprise for both of us on the evening.
Then Bobbie showed up.
Then we all chatted and drank for a while – drinks gatherings are a bit like that.
Around 20:00, Bobbie and I figured we should go and claim our Roux At Parliament Square table, so said goodbye to the drinks party. A shame in a way, as it was a very jolly, not overly noisy and not over-crowded gathering. We’d have enjoyed meeting some more of the people there.
Still, Bobbie and I really wanted to catch up with each other – we hadn’t had a chance to do that for a long time – so a quiet restaurant with some fine food and wine was probably a more suitable setting for that.
Out on the street, the police vans had all gone. The mean streets of Westminster had returned to a more tranquil state – perhaps those dodgy-sounding key words from the Keele Alumni message had now been reinterpreted as benign. Bobbie and I strolled the couple of hundred yards to Roux.
The food at Roux really was superb. They sort-of specialise in tasting menus, but I didn’t really fancy those and Bobbie was happy to go along with a more regular choice of dishes, so we had:
Dorset crab with Apple, Fermented chili, Dashi (Bobbie’s starter);
Pork cheek with Carrot, Ale, Mangalitsa black pudding (my starter);
Venison with Savoy cabbage, Pine, Alsace bacon (Bobbie’s main);
Halibut with Cauliflower, Grape, Tarragon (my main).
Dig those mains – mine in the foregroundA closer look at Bobbie taking a closer look at her main
We even both had a desert. Wines by the glass to complement the food.
It was great to catch up with Bobbie – no excuse really for leaving it so long but we have both had a lot of family stuff to deal with over the past few years, not least conclusive parent stuff.
Bobbie insisted on picking up the tab, noting that she (and Dave) had enjoyed our hospitality several times in succession…
…then Bobbie suggested that, on that basis, she probably should have taken Janie out to dinner rather than me.
I passed on that last reflection to Janie, while showing her the above photos.
Janie expressed envy at the sight of the meal and agreed with Bobbie that she has suffered an injustice…
…I don’t yet know how Janie expects me to redress this matter, but no doubt I’ll find out soon enough…
…I might need some of those Keele moot people to help argue me out of this tight corner.
Heck, but whatever the penalty, it was worth it – a most enjoyable gathering and then dinner.
Thank you, Keele Alumni team, for setting up the evening.
