Our first visit back to The Finborough Theatre since the pandemic. Coincidentally, our previous visit was our last visit to any theatre before the pandemic, and that piece was also at least partly about Israel:
Since that 2020 visit, The Finborough has been awarded a coveted Pub Theatre Of the Years Award 2022, which is quite something…
…especially as The Finborough currently has no pub. But that’s not important to us, as we were always “only there for the theatre”, not “only here for the beer”.
Janie and I were both very taken with The Retreat. It is set in 1993, in the shadow of the Oslo Peace Accords, although the play is set in Canada, pitting a Hebrew School teacher/would-be script writer with a pair of seasoned but warring (with each other) film makers.
If the play errs at all, it is a bit long, running to nearly two-and-a-half hours. Ironic, really, given that the central conceit of the play is about script editing. But that space gives room for the characters to develop and for the darker recesses of their behaviours to become apparent to the audience.
Janie and I thought all four cast members performed very well but were especially taken with Jill Winternitz as the somewhat vulnerable young woman and Jonathan Tafler as her father.
We’re back at The Finborough in a few week’s time to see the next thing and can hardly wait after enjoying this production. We’d almost forgotten how much we like this type of small-scale intimate drama.
Eight of us gathered for one of our periodic NewsRevue alum evenings at the Holborn Spaghetti House.
There were no controversial shortages of certain dishes this time, but there was an especially irritable waiter who seemed to decide that I am an idiot, perhaps because I turned up a little late and didn’t want to partake of the Prosecco and sparkling mineral water already on the table, but wanted to order my own non-sparkling beverages.
Most unusually for me, I prevailed in Colin Stutt’s quiz about the faces/quotes of Irish writers & characters. A lot of informed guesswork in my answers, plus some lucky, uninformed guesswork. But on the whole it seems I can tell Shaw from Wilde, Joyce from Beckett and the like.
I did not fare so well with John’s intriguing game about famous movie stars and the obscure locations from whence they hail.
The next day, John summed up the evening, wonderfully, in his inimitable words:
I am sure you will all be celebrating the 234th anniversary of the Mutiny on the Bounty, which falls today (I know I am) but if I could drag you away from your Tahiti-shaped cupcakes for a moment…
Just wanted to thank you all for turfing yourselves out last night to the Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner. I would like to thank Colin for his wonderful Irish-themed quiz. I tried bits of it out on Jenny this morning, because she got herself an Irish passport last year in response to Brexit. One of her grandfathers was Irish, which is enough to make you count as Irish, apparently. Sad to say, she didn’t shine, so her citizenship may be re¬voked. I would like to praise Ian for winning said quiz and Mark for know¬ing the birthplaces of more Hollywood Royalty than anyone need to.
I would like to thank Colin again for the generous touch of the Prosecco and each and every one of you for your warm congratulations on Jenny and I becoming man and wife after all these years. I was very touched.
As I looked around the room, I thought how lucky I was to enjoy the friendship of such erudite, witty and good-hearted men. Such a shame that none of them could be there. You’d like them. And Caroline, I left you off that list cos it spoilt the flow of the joke, not because I’ve forgotten you.
The theme of this rather wonderful BBC Lunchtime Concert at Wigmore Hall was imitations. All of the pieces had themes within them in which the music imitates some sort of natural sound.
Janie and I thought this was an excellent and very interesting concert. We very nearly missed it, as I, in an extremely rare omission, forgot to write this Wigmore Hall date in our diaries when I booked this back in February. It was only because there was a small change to the programme that I was alerted to my omission and fortunately we were both able still to make the date.
The headline picture is sort-of an imitation too – that painting by Jan Voorhout was once thought to be Dieterich Buxtehude, the composer of the first piece we heard, but is now believed simply to be a domestic music scene of that baroque period.
If you just fancy one little listen to some Baroque imitation, then the third movement of this sonata by Johann Paul von Westhoff, which we heard, should thrill your ears.
Continuing the theme of imitation, I suppose I spent the day “imitating” a young man. I have said in recent years that there are now only three places left where people sometimes call me “young man” without irony: Wigmore Hall, Lord’s and Gresham Society. Today I enjoyed all three.
After Wigmore Hall, I went on to lord’s for a cracking game of real tennis doubles.
2016 Picture by Toni Friend – I was so much younger then
Then on to the National Liberal Club for the Gresham Society AGM and dinner. For reasons known only to him (and in a style only Tim could muster), Professor Connell invited me to sit at the top table:
Would you care to join us on the top table tomorrow night?
Everyone else has refused and it will look a bit odd if there is no-one on it.
It would have been hard to refuse such a courteous request.
Tim Connell promised to keep the formal AGM bit to seven minutes but those around me suggested that he strayed into the 10-15 minutes zone, as usual.
Worse yet, despite spending the day in all three places where I am still occasionally addressed as “young man”, no-one had done so that day and no-one did so that evening.
Still, I chatted with lots of interesting people and enjoyed a good dinner.
Sir Thomas Gresham: 1519-1579 – I’m even older than him now
This was a fabulous play/production at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond.
It’s about revolting young people in Cairo – i.e. the story, over several years, of several engaging, well-crafted characters, initially caught up in the revolution which started in 2011.
No programme for this production, but there is a care pack – click here – this must be the modern way.
The playwright AHLAM is anonymous/pseudonymous, perhaps a proxy for the “always in danger blogger” character Osman, played very well by Tarrick Benham.
The play covers well the politics of those years – from hope through frustration to fear and desperation. In particular the revolutionary blogger character Osman and his gay friend Rafik, played well by Nezar Alderazi, illustrate the big picture.
But it is also a tale of interpersonal relationships. The younger characters, girls at the outset, Lina (played by Eleanor Nawal) and Maya (played by Yasemin Özdemir) getting in and out of trouble with boys and with each-other.
The whole production was very well acted and very well produced. The night we went, Hanna Khogali was indisposed, so assistant director Riwa Saab stood in for her at the last minute. Riwa is clearly a very talented young thing but not a actress – nevertheless she is a performer when not directing and carried the part astonishingly well in the circumstances, as did all the others, in particular Moe Bar-El whose character had to interact with Riwa’s character the most. Theirs was a “star-crossed lovers” story; him from a Coptic family and her from a Muslim family of cops.
It sounds a bit cheesy when described in simple sentences about the plot, but the stories dance between each other and across time to make a wonderfully engaging evening of theatre.
100 minutes without an interval, but at no point did it feel like a drag.
Janie and I have not been to the theatre much these past few months. We’ll be going a fair bit over the next few months. This one certainly started our “new season” of theatre going with a bang…and I don’t mean tear gas canisters going off in Tahrir Square.
Actually I visited Lord’s twice in the short week before Easter and on both occasions played real tennis.
Given the weather and my other activities, I got more tennis than cricket during those visits.
On the Tuesday, before the start of the cricket season, I had a really good game of doubles, partnering Graham Findlay for the first time and taking on some strong opponents. On paper we should have received some handicap but we played level and still prevailed over 90 minutes. The best I can remember me playing for a long time; perhaps the best I have ever played. Sadly, the CCTV camera stopped running a couple of seconds into our slot, so all I can show of the historic event is this warm-up shot from the hazard end.
Meanwhile Charley “The Gent Malloy” and I had planned to spend the first day of the season at Lord’s together, a bit of a tradition and, with Middlesex playing Essex, a desirable fixture for us both too. But Chas had to withdraw from the planned meet, so I arranged to play tennis first thing with a view to seeing a bit of cricket afterwards, all being well.
Another really good game of doubles, with an opportunity to partner Nick Evans for the first time since goodness-knows-when. Also a chance to play with Bill Taylor again, who was back on court playing competitively after quite a long absence. Again, we played level against the odds for my pairing. This time we lost by a smidgeon. I’d rather not talk about the four set points that went begging, nor my duff call on the opponents’ set point. Again I played well, I felt, but not as well as I had played on the Tuesday.
When I emerged from the dressing room, I ran into Ed Griffiths, Harry Whiteley and Arfan Akram from the London Cricket Trust, who were having an impromptu meeting (chat) about our next stage of activities. They asked me to join them.
In the interludes between the cricket conversation, Ed waxed lyrical about the real tennis, as only he can, suggesting it was a geriatric game, while studiously ignoring the rather good quartet from Prested Hall who were playing by then.
Then Ed collared young Nat, our apprentice professional, asking him why he wasn’t 60 years older than he looked and then asking Nat to provide a three word description of my real tennis.
Graceful, technically gifted…
…came Nat’s spontaneous reply, which I must say I thought was a fine contribution to the debate. I’m not sure what substances (or planet) Nat is on if he actually believes that, but it was a great answer for the context.
The weather then started to smile and Ed wanted to go off to take custody of a ludicrously fast and expensive car for reasons that he did explain but they got a little lost in translation. It’s probably something to do with late-onset-mid-life-crisis.
Ed made a rather disparaging remark about my car, Dumbo, perhaps unaware that Dumbo tends to hang out with ludicrously fast and expensive cars these days:
Two Lamborghinis, Dumbo & a Ferrari: in Waitrose Bayswater Car Park
But I digress.
I got to see some cricket.
I sat for a while in the Writing Room, but then really wanted to get a feel for the outdoor nature of the game, so took up a position in the Warner Stand…
Then, around 3:15, I started to realise how cold I felt and how close the time was getting to the “afternoon showers” predicted by the weather app and increasingly feeling likely. So I went home.
Still, I had played a good game of tennis, had a useful chat about the LCT (between the bants) and seen a couple of hours of cricket. That’s a pretty good day in my book.
