We’ve been interested in Martin Crimp’s writing for years. Sometimes his plays are a bit too weird even for us, but they always make us think and are usually chock-full of suspense and creepiness.
Dealing With Clair is no exception. One of Crimp’s earlier works this, when he was writing exclusively for The Orange Tree, it is very loosely based on the Suzy Lamplugh tragedy, which occurred a short while before the writing of this play and not too far away from Richmond.
Yet, this play from 30 years ago seems very contemporary and relevant today in this production.
The whole cast was excellent.
Our hearts sank a little when we saw that the designer had gone for one of those “behind a screen” designs, which we tend not to like, but actually it worked extremely well for this production, not least because the screen is removed at a telling moment in the play.
By gosh the play is creepy. We were talking about it a lot, for ages, after the evening – which is usually a sign that a play/production has really affected us – which this one surely did.
There are plenty of review snippets on the above links to the Orange Tree, but click here for links to the full reviews – mostly very good ones which the production thoroughly deserves.
I keep saying it, but the Orange Tree is doing great work at the moment – I hope they keep it going.
One of the great things about being friends with someone like Rohan Candappa is that you get to see some of his creative pieces while they are works in progress.
…but not so far back that the term “back in the day” didn’t even exist…
…Rohan told me about a short performance piece he was working on, working title “The Last Man Cave”, which was about going to the barber’s. That idea would sound like complete rubbish coming from most people, but coming from Rohan, I guessed that he was onto something eentertaining.
Rohan also asked me to look at a short fragment of a female performance piece he had worked on with the actress Lydia Leonard, which he had given the working title “Pigeons” and had filmed:
I thought there was real merit in that fragment.
Rohan agreed and told me that he had expanded it into a complete but short work, working title: ‘And You Are?’, which he planned to have performed alongside his comedic barber’s piece.
Don’t be put off by the title “Trailer long” in the above trailer – it’s 74 seconds long.
That’s not long.
My hair is long…
…but that’s because I have an aversion to going to the barbers – an aversion formed when I was very small – a story for another time. Rohan’s barbers and bars stories are far more interesting than mine.
Based on the preview I, together with a few other lucky people, saw at the Gladstone Arms in November, One Starts in a Barber’s. One Starts in a Bar. is a really good show. It’s funny, sad and thought-provoking in equal measure.
We’ve been fans of the Bush for yonks and have become especially enamored with the Studio there, since it opened eighteen months or so ago.
This short play, Lands, is exactly the sort of thing we like to see at a place like the Bush Studio.
It is really quite a strange piece. One young woman is obsessively, slowly working her way through a massive jigsaw puzzle while the other jumps up and down on a trampoline throughout most of the play.
Much is left unexplained, but the pair might well be a couple; at the very least there are strong hints that they know each other well and have done so for a long while.
In one early coup-de-theatre, they perform a wonderful synchronized dance to Ain’t That Terrible by Roy Redmond…
…a great track btw, that Daisy and I both remember dancing to in the clubs way back when. It had both of us wracking our brains (unsuccessfully) in our attempts to identify the record.
Ellie at the Bush kindly put us out of our misery with the song title and artist, which helped us to avoid our own domestic the following Monday. Thanks Ellie – otherwise I might have obsessively blogged and Daisy might have obsessively pole-danced non-stop for a week. Not safe.
But I digress.
There were some very funny moments in the play – not least that dance – but also several very poignant scenes. While the play is, in many ways, an absurdist piece, there is enough realism in the scenario and the manner in which the drama pans out to be very affecting.
Both Leah Brotherhead and Sophie Steer perform their parts extremely well; the switches of mood – a couple of times turning on a proverbial sixpence, very deftly done.
In some ways the nub of the play is the domestic drama about the obsessions that seem to be pulling these people apart from each other, but in other ways it is about the causes of such obsessions. Towards the end of the play, the Leah character rants about all the things she doesn’t care about. But of course she must care about those things to some extent if she feels motivated to rant quite so viscerally about not caring. Perhaps Leah’s obsessions (or both women’s obsessions) are ways of shutting out the world because they cannot cope with caring about so much that is wrong.
In truth we weren’t expecting a piece quite as challenging as this one but we agreed that we were very glad to have experienced it once we got home and started chatting about it over our supper.
Janie booked us in to a late night Friday slot for the Klimt/Schiele exhibition ages ago – it seemed like a good idea for a show we wanted to see as soon after our return from Japan as possible.
The following little video explains the thinking behind the show.
What we had both forgotten, of course, is that the days of “late night Friday at the RA” being one of the best kept secrets in London are now over. Instead of it being an opportunity to see the exhibitions in a relatively relaxed and congestion-free atmosphere, late night Fridays are now “a thing” and the place is more crowded than at other times.
Before we went to Japan, I had spotted that the RA also had the Oceania exhibition on still in November and had made a mental note that it would be good to see that show on the same evening…
…but I didn’t make a pen or pencil note and had plain forgotten about it…
…until Janie, helpfully, sent me a message on the morning of our visit, suggesting that we get to the RA early enough to take in the Oceania exhibition ahead of the Klimt/Schiele.
In many ways I enjoyed the Oceania more than I enjoyed the Klimt/Schiele. I have long been fascinated by people of the South Sea Islands, not least the Melanesian archipelago. That fascination dates back at least as far as 1974:
Daisy became convinced, quite early in the visit, that I resemble some of the figures depicted in the Oceania exhibition and took several pictures in an attempt to prove it. Don’t see it, myself:
Probably the highlight for us was the panoramic, sort-of 3-D, sort of CGI film, In Pursuit of Venus – the still in the link cannot do justice to the clever effect of this filmscape.
Between Oceania and Klimt/Schiele we still had a bit of time and I was in need of a sit down after two hours on the tennis court this morning. We attempted to go to the members bar, but it was heaving with people – including my real tennis friend Bill Taylor and his entourage. Coincidentally, Bill, comfortably seated, was also still aching after two hours on the tennis court the day before.
We then tried the public bar, which was less crowded (yes there was seating) but Janie observed both servers coughing and sneezing. When they both admitted that they were poorly with flu, we thought best to forego refreshments on their patch. Ironic, given that, we learnt later at the Klimt/Schiele, that Egon Sciele and his wife both died tragically young, in 1918, of flu.
The Klimt/Schiele was a little disappointing in truth. You cannot really look at drawings easily when a gallery is that crowded – you’re almost better off looking at the best of them in the on-line gallery – click here.
Also, I think such work makes more sense when you can also see the major works that were inspired by or started their life as such drawings. This exhibition is all drawings which, especially in the case of Klimt’s work, does not make all that much sense in isolation.
Schiele’s work on paper is more complete/stark and thus makes more sense:
We had hoped to eat in The Senate Room after the Klimt/Schiele but had been misinformed about the availability of food in that space in the evening; so we had a quick drink there and returned home for some Chinese food which we took back to Noddyland.
In short, I think it was well worth a trip to the RA to see these two exhibitions on one day, but we’ll almost certainly be avoiding late night Fridays from now on.
To some extent I was still basking in the glory of last night’s real tennis match, in which I had played a small but decisive part in the MCC’s recovery from near defeat to eventual victory against Middlesex University by three rubbers to two. In truth it was the incredibly exciting fourth rubber which turned the contest – our pair had some five match points against them in their rubber before turning it around. I played in the deciding fifth rubber.
The original plan for this SJSS lunchtime concert had been to go with John Random, but he had to pull out of this one. So I even considered missing out myself.
Wild Gypsy fiddling, Jewish and Greek music, and tango, alongside interpretations of Japanese, Polish and Sephardic songs…
…was just what I needed before going to the office on a Thursday afternoon. Not least because we have just returned from Japan, where we came across very little actual Japanese music…
Anyway, I’m very glad I made the decision to go to SJSS that lunchtime and see the Kosmos Ensemble perform.
They are three very talented young musicians who met while studying at the Royal Academy of Music and formed this ensemble as a vehicle for their shared interest in world music.
Actually I don’t think we got any “Sephardic Songs” as promised, but we did instead get a Serbian lament and some Scandinavian music, plus even some Scottish and English themed music.
Some pieces worked better to my ears than others – one or two of the pieces inserted phrases from well-known works at a level of subtlety that might even make PDQ Bach blush. I sense that all three of them are most at home with Eastern-European melodies and rhythms – but their virtuosity and curiosity help compensate for those elements of the programme that were not quite to my taste – I pretty much enjoyed the whole set.
For me the highlights were:
the Japanese-style piece Sakura (Cherry Blossom):
a version of Piazolla’s Libertango with a sort-of Klezmer cadenza at the end, which they have nicknamed “Liberklezmango”:
All three of the musicians: Harriet Mackenzie, Meg-Rosaleen Hamilton and Miloš Milivojević are clearly embarking on highly successful careers and I wish them well individually and as an ensemble.
While in no way wanting to detract from Ian Theodoresen’s concise and important point about heated toilet seats, I feel bound to describe Japanese toilet technology in more detail.
Because every toilet seat Janie and I encountered was more than just heated; every toilet seat was, to a greater or lesser extent, smart.
The simplest, smart toilets had an array of coloured and lettered buttons, which we knew to be flushing and bidet functions of various sorts, enabling the user to clean up after themselves in various ways.
In the absence of labelling which we could understand…and having both lived many decades each without such functions…we felt loathe to experiment with such buttons for a good while.
we were blessed, at the Hyatt, with an especially smart loo, upon which the buttons were more elegantly labelled, with descriptive symbols leaving both of us in little or no doubt as to the function of each button.
Seriously smart loo – control panel rarely needs using.
Also, we had a bit more time in Kyoto than we’d had in other places, so we had the luxury of some additional experimentation time. Thus we both tried the various bidet buttons.
We both agreed that the sensations provided by the bidet functions were quite pleasurable, once we got over the over-riding senses of amusement and novelty.
We also both agreed that, in the functional matter of cleaning up after oneself, we suspected that such “automated bideting” was only of limited use – perhaps even lulling the user into a false sense of hygiene security.
In short – we were remaining old school in the matter of such personal hygiene for the time being.
…that our toilet got really smart. I think the idea of “luxury pilgrims lodgings” with en-suite facilities is quite new at Ekoin, so we had the very latest stuff. More utilitarian in look than the posh Hyatt loo, but seriously smart.
The control panel enabled you to do all manner of things – we barely touched the surface of those possibilities – but the smartness of this loo included a sensor that recognised that one of us was in the vicinity and lifted the loo seat up for us.
Once we were done, the sensors seemed to recognise what we had done, so it would short flush or long flush accordingly (manual over-ride was an option of course) once we had moved away from the loo – then it would sloosh around the bowl for a while, then it eventually would close the lid again.
In short, this loo seemed to know what we wanted to do…as well, if not better than we did ourselves.
Now, as many readers will know, I’m all in favour of augmented intelligence and artificial intelligence in theory…
…but in practice, we found this level of smartness emanating from the loo just a little creepy…
…also had these ultra-modern, ultra-smart loos and we are now both totally into it. We conversed with our loos, instructed them orally just in case they aren’t quite as smart as they like to think they are…
…and of course we thanked our loos for their comprehensive efforts. After all, courtesy costs nothing.
And comprehensive those efforts really can be; as Janie put it on one occasion:
I’ve just had a complete wash and blow dry on my bum.
I fear that we might have adjusted so comprehensively to our new loo environment, we’ll no doubt find it difficult to adjust back; remembering to do our own flushing and to lift/close the toilet seat for ourselves might prove tricky for us.
Predictably hilarious results might ensue unless Janie and I pay close attention to “sharpening our own smarts” again in the matter of toilet use on our return to the UK, where the loos are still so very 20th century.
It was pouring with rain on the morning we left the Amanemu. I told several of the staff that we were crying and that the sky was crying because we were leaving. One Japanese member of staff said he found that thought, “so poetic”. Perhaps I have picked up a little of the Japanese culture along the way.
We went through some brighter spots on the rail journey back to Tokyo and hoped that the weather there might be better – the forecasts I had looked at suggested that the rain might stop in Tokyo mid-afternoon – but in fact it was bucketing down when we emerged at Asakusa, to such an extent that we got fairly drenched just walking the two to three minutes from the station to the Gate Hotel.
We resolved to go out if the weather improved and not to do so if it didn’t.
It didn’t.
The Gate restaurant was fairly heavily booked for the evening, with the big main room booked out for a function. But the maître-d took us, as residents, under his wing and said we could either eat at the bar straight away or wait until about 19:30 at which point he was sure he could have a nice table for us. He even arranged for us to be called in our room once the table came free.
The food at The Gate is western style but clearly a fashionable place for Japanese people to try western food. Wouldn’t have been my first choice but certainly preferable to the risk of that drowned rat feeling just before you fly. Also a fashionable place because the skyline views are so good…when it isn’t pouring with rain…the above pictures look interesting in the wet but hardly show the skyline.
Come the morning, the weather was much improved and I was able to take some good pictures of the skyline from the terrace.
Then we were chauffeured to the airport for a pretty event-free journey home.
I’ll let the photos tell most of the tale of the ANA flight, but here are the details of our last multi-course Japanese meal of this holiday.
Amuse:
Cheese stick brown pepper flavour;
Fois gras mousse with apricot gelee;
Pickled small red pimento with cheese in herb oil
Sashimi:
Konfu kelp-cured alfonsino
Poached big-fin reef squid
Konfu kelp-cured red sea bream
Kobachi (Tasty titbits):
Marinated snow crab, mushrooms and garland chrysanthemum
Shabu-shabu bolied beef and grilled eggplant in seseame cream
Main course: Grilled barracuda rolled with Daikoku Hon Shimaji mushroom
…nursing several glasses of alcoholic beverage at the same time throughout the main meal…
A bit of product placement here for my friend Rohan Candappa – a great book btw
…Daisy even doubled up on deserts and chocolates…
No wonder Daisy slept for much of the remainder of the flight – not that the sleep seemed to prevent her from getting jet lag far worse than mine for several days after our return. Oh well.
We left Osaka feeling just a little the worse for wear and in my case a little sheepish for my terrible faux pas in the breakfast room, not knowing that the “thou shalt wear slippers” rule in communal rooms in rayokans becomes a “thou shalt not wear slippers” in the breakfast room of the Ritz-Carlton Osaka. My grungy trainers (the only shoes I had, since the rest of my kit had been mailed ahead to the Amanemu), were apparently perfectly acceptable and indeed several other punters were donning well grungy clobber in that opulent setting.
Daisy was starting to lose all confidence in my judgment generally, but I insisted that I was totally on top of the task of getting to JR Osaka station on time and from there to the right station to pick up the train to Shima, where five days of bliss awaits us at the Amanemu. I was indeed well up to that task.
The long haul express train (this was to be a two-and-a-half hour ride) was pretty full when we started in Osaka, but it started to empty station by station and about an hour shy of Shima it was virtually empty, so we were able to spread out and enjoy a very relaxing ride.
At Shima we were met and whisked away to the uber-up-market property that is the Amanemu. We were told that high tea is served between 15:30 and 17:00 and the staff wondered whether we would like a buggy to take us to the bar where tea is served. So we called when we were ready and were whisked all 60 or 70 meters to the reception. We’ll walk that one next time and thereafter.
Before that whisking, we were visited by a large, majestic black kite – which seemed to be welcoming us and making absolutely sure that we knew that he was there and that we were visiting his patch.
In truth, we will need the buggy service for tennis and the spa, both of which are quite long hikes from our room, but the restaurant, library and bar are too close by for us to trouble the buggy-dudes – or indeed ourselves to get in and out of a buggy rather than walk.
We mentioned on arrival that we love the taste of Kakuni and were told that the chef would prepare some for us, but we didn’t realise that chef would be willing and able to implement that request on the very day of our arrival.
We were told the good news re this evening’s Kakuni before tea and eventually were also told the good news that we could play tennis early – at 8:00, tomorrow. On reflection, I had been wondering whether later (like lunchtime) would be better for tennis, given the autumnal weather – it was hardly going to be too hot at any time of day, but our request for an early slot had been met, so we would see it through.
The Kakuni meal was good. We tasted a couple of interesting starters ahead of the Kakuni; a seseame tofu and fish concoction plus a rather interesting fishy starter with conger pike. An interesting Italian Traminer to wash it down too.
2 November 2018
We played tennis at 8:00 in glorious sunshine, but even so it was a bit chilly and we realised that lunchtime will be better for us, especially if it was not to be so sunny every morning, which indeed it wasn’t. Our majestic black kite visited us at the tennis court and let us know in no uncertain terms that the big tree beside the pavilion in front of Court Number One is also his patch.
We had a craving for some western food, so we had the American Breakfast this morning. Then we took advantage of the sun on our beautiful terrace overlooking the stunning bay.
Our next door neighbours were playing some rather naff music, so we played some early music, performed by the Savall family, further to calm the atmosphere.
We took tea again today. While Daisy was fiddling with her WhatsApp, alarms went off and an emergency alert popped up on her screen. Then there was a tiny little jolt, which turned out to be the earthquake for which we were being alerted. Daisy was relieved, because she thought she had set off the alarm by pressing the wrong button on her gadget; we’d be getting alerts every five minutes if that were the case.
We satisfied our crazy craving for western food this evening – I had a very tasty seafood linguini and Daisy had a giant club sandwich with fries. In truth, this place is far better geared up for Japanese food than western food, but crazy cravings occasionally need to be satisfied, We tried the Riesling this evening, which was nice, but not quite as interesting as the Gewurtztraminer.
3 November 2018
Before we went down to breakfast this morning, I was reading in our splendid room (we’d arranged to play tennis at lunchtime today), when I heard a thump on the front window and then saw a little bird – a sparrow – struggling on the front terrace and then lying very still.
Perhaps it had got disoriented (perhaps it was being chased), saw the lush greenery through the back window and didn’t sense the glass. It was more than disoriented now – it looked out for the count.
Daisy gently put out some water for it and we kept an eye on the little bird for a while. Then when we went off to breakfast, we alerted the maid and signalled to her that she should not disturb the bird.
We had Japanese breakfast this morning – a splendid feast of a Japanese breakfast it is too, with some sashimi, some roe and three types of grill as well as pickles, rice and miso, all brilliantly done.
When we returned to our room, the little sparrow looked much revived, tweeted at us and flew away. It really felt as though the bird had waited for us to return to thank us and let us know it was OK before leaving. I don’t think the sparrow should play cricket or even tennis for a few days though, in accordance with the modern concussion protocols.
Tennis worked much better at 13:00 than it had the previous day at 8:00 – at least as far as the score line was concerned from my point of view. Actually both days the contest had been quite close and could have gone either way before one of us (Daisy the previous day) or the other of us (me on this day) took control. There are enormous carrion crows around here and at one stage, when I lost a point in ungainly fashion, I’m sure the watching crow was crowing with laughter at me.
Our return buggy didn’t show up today, so we wandered over to the Nemu Hotel and asked them to alert the Amenemu people to come and rescue us. This gave us the opportunity to check out the Nemu restaurant, but we concluded that the Amanemu was offering a much better choice of food and that the Nemu prices, while lower, were in a surprisingly similar bracket.
We also checked out the spa after tennis and resolved to take advantage of that facility over the next couple of days, while also picking up one or two gifts.
We also still had time to freshen up and take tea, which is a very pleasurable ritual at this property.
We got more reading done and the like before dinner, which we have now resolved to make Japanese food affairs here. We chose some wonderful seared tuna skewers, a grilled chicken dish and a soba noodle dish which made for a very delicious and satisfying dinner to end another most enjoyable day.
4 November 2018
It was misty and peeing down with rain when we woke up this morning. The poor weather for this morning had been threatened, but it looked well grim and all of the weather forecasts we could find suggested that it might simply rain on and off all day, which would be a bit of a dampener.
We managed to stay dry by timing our move to breakfast pretty much perfectly. We’d barely sat down in the breakfast room when it started heaving down again. Daisy went for American breakfast today, while I plugged for Japanese.
Towards the end of breakfast, Daisy remarked that the sky seemed to be brightening, which reminded me of my own hopelessly-optimistic assessments at more cricket matches than I’d care to remember. But when we got back to the room and I checked the radar pattern for the past half hour, I had to admit that it did look as though the rain belt was moving relentlessly to the east and that we should be spared the rain for several hours at least, despite the forecasts all still suggesting that we should expect showers all day.
So, as the weather really did brighten, we arranged to play tennis again at 13:00 and an epic battle ensued, starting under brightening skies and ending in fully-fledged sunshine. The battle ended an hour later as an honourable 5-5 draw.
We asked our buggy-dude to take us straight to the spa, as we had brought our bathing costumes with us for that purpose. He kindly offered to drop our tennis gear back at the room – now there’s service for you.
Meanwhile we got to enjoy the delights of the spa – the largest onsen you’ll ever see – beautifully laid out in several pools like a sort-of steamy, mineral springy Zen garden. Inauthentic, in that you wear costumes and it is dual-sex, but all the lovelier for that, enabling us to enjoy such a setting together.
We met a very charming young couple from Indonesia, the only other people in the onsen at the time, so we took pictures for each other and swapped tales about our travels etc.
Then back to our room before tea and then some more rest…just in case we are not well enough rested…ahead of dinner.
We decided to try shabu-shabu tonight – something that neither of us have ever tried. At the Amanemu we were able to try it with the local Ige beef. Very delicious and we were given more help for this “cook yourself meal” than we had been given at Fukinomori or the Hide beef place in Takayama.
Not sure I’ll be rushing to try shabu-shabu again – certainly not at those prices – but it was very delicious and we were both glad to have tried it once. The seseame sauce is quite a highlight.
5 November 2018
Rose early and packed out big bags for dispatch to Tokyo. Then the wonderful breakfast – again Janie went American and I stuck with Japanese.
The weather was much brighter so we were able to enjoy our lovely terrace in the sunshine after breakfast. Then it clouded over a bit, but when it brightened up a little we tried the swimming pool for the first and last time. The pool was quite warm despite the ambient temperature being a little cool, so we didn’t swim for too long.
We chose to use the mini but private onsen in our room rather than the massive but potentially shared onsen at the spa for our mineral bath that afternoon (such choices!)…
…in amongst rest and reading and getting ready for dinner. It started to rain soon after we got to our room, so the indoor onsen call had been the right one.
Dinner comprised two starters – lobster ones – two very different ways – both delicious. Also braised eel with turnip and a braised pork with vegetables in a rich dark soy, with rice. All excellent.
Then a buggy back to our room for an early night ahead of our journey to Tokyo the next day – a step en route to London the day after.
All the pictures from our five day stay at the Amanemu can be seen by clicking the Flickr link here or below:
