Travel, Theatre, Music, Cricket, Tennis, Writing, Life
This was a very entertaining evening in the theatre, Sounds odd, but it was a very amusing play about suicide.
Click here for a link to the Almeida’s resource on this play/production.
We rate Tom Brooke very highly and he was superb in this piece – a free adaptation, by Moira Buffini, of a subversive Soviet era Nikolai Erdman book.
It was well received by the critics on thew whole – click here for reviews and stuff.
Two weeks in a row to the National Theatre (RNT) and two theatre visits out of three to see John Kani perform in one of his own plays.
This one, a revival of one of the most famous works to come out of the defiant anti-apartheid theatre in South Africa in the 1970s, in some ways pleased us less than Nothing But The Truth at the Hampstead a few weeks earlier.
Nothing But The Truth by John Kani, Hampstead Theatre, 9 February 2007
Again, we really wanted to like it. We had loved The Island when we saw the revival of that one. But Sizwe Banzi seemed an altogether lighter and more dated work. The play has some great lines and some excellent points to make, but didn’t move us as we felt it should.
Yes, we were glad to have seen it, but it was a bit like seeing a band of ageing rockers whom you wished you had seen “back in the day”. The point was back in the day.
It got pretty good reviews – click here to find them.
Below is a short excerpt of John Kani and Winston Ntshona performing the play back in the day – early 1980s I think.
Judging by the e-mail correspondence and crossings out in the diary, the arrangements for this one were a bit messy but it all came good in the end…
…appropriate for this form of cuisine, because…
we ate at Merkato, an Ethiopian institution in Kings Cross. Quite a messy business, Ethiopian-style dining, if you do it in an authentic stylee.
This was about a year after Janie and I visited Ethiopia, so I wanted John to experience Ethiopian-style eating and my description of it had sparked John’s curiosity to try it.
Trip Advisor speaks of Merkato thus – click here. Clearly still doing OK at the time of writing – April 2018.
John and I had a good evening at Merkato – certainly I remember it fondly. We were in part looking forward to and plotting a gathering of the four of us (including Janie and Mandy) for a few week’s hence at John and Mandy’s place.
I remember us both finding this piece about low-level BBC shenanigans interesting and enjoyable – despite a suicide forming the denouement (that is not a spoiler). I suspect, given subsequent events at the BBC, it would seem tame and much beside the point today.
I think I picked up the terms “cruel spectacles” and “waning powers”, both of which I use a fair bit, from this particular show.
Great cast, with Ben Chaplin, Paul Ritter, Bruce Alexander, Angela Thorne and Leo Bill really standing out.
Well directed by Richard Eyre and produced of course to RNT standards.
Reasonably well received by the critics – click here for a search term to find reviews.
It was worth seeing at the time for sure.
Janie and I took this great trip to the Caribbean in early 2007.
We used Abercrombie and Kent as the agent for this one – at that time it was hard to find an agency well geared up to do Cuba in an interesting way – A&K’s ideas were top notch – click here to see our itinerary.
I kept loads of notes and shall write up the events from those notes in the fullness of time. For now, here are links to the notes for those who can deal with exotic cyphers:
Lots of great photos split into five Flickr albums – click on the image for each album to view the pics:
Janie was very keen to try the famous paladar, La Guarida, in Havana and had been much frustrated by our inability to get in, even for lunch, while we were in Havana in mid February.
So, before leaving Havana to tour other parts of Cuba, we booked ahead; a lunch at La Guarida for our action packed last day in Cuba before flying off to Jamaica that evening. Not the way we would have chosen to do it, perhaps, but as it turned out a very memorable and successful day.
But when I say memorable, what I mean is that we both remember the event so well. The name, La Guarida, for some reason keeps evading us both whenever we try to remember the name. I can remember that it was in the film Fresa Y Chocolat – you’d have thought it was easier to remember the name of the restaurant…
…anyway, this is what I wrote about the first half of that day – the Havana/La Guarida half:
Despite the late night we both rise early so we take a pretty ordinary breakfast and then (after a short aborted attempt to get money and water) we head towards Old Town, buying water and changing money on the way.
We have a quick look at the Cathedral and then the Museum of Colonial Art. We try to see the Wilfred Lam Museum but it is closed for refurbishment, so we visit the Taller Experimental instead & see etching turned into print and buy the pressing from it (from Pedro Redonet).
Back to hotel for tepid, feeble shower (water problems) & then “checkout” & get cab to La Guarida paladar for the last and best meal of our holiday in Cuba.
Ged started with marinated fish in a subtle herb dressing with avocado & tomato. Daisy started with tuna in sweet pepper with a creamy, tomatoey sauce.
Mains of grouper (Daisy) and swordfish with seafood sauce (Ged). Dessert of Fresa Y Chocolat ice cream (naturally as that film was filmed here).
Lingered over coffee and looked around the tenement-like building before strolling back to hotel.
Tiny place, tiny kitchen back then:
If you want to see more pictures and or look up other parts of this holiday, there is a placeholder and links page – click here or below:
Cuba and Jamaica, Placeholder and Links, 17 February to 9 March 2007
Quite a few crossings-out in that early part of 2007. For example, we were due to see Kim and Micky in early January, but I think that got cancelled/postponed and became instead the gathering on 10 February.
20 January 2007
A Saturday evening out with Jamil and Souad. We started the evening at their place for drinks. Janie and I are straining to remember where we ate.
We know they like to eat at Noura in Belgravia (and have eaten there with them more than once) but Janie and I both have a feeling we ate in Mayfair that night. Perhaps they just fancied the change or perhaps Belgravia was unavailable when they chose to book.
In any case, we had a very pleasant evening as always with those two.
10 February 2007
We had Kim, Micky, DJ and his then girlfriend Julie over for dinner at Sandall Close that night.
We can’t honestly remember the menu, but with two vegetarians in the group (Kim and Julie) almost certainly one of Janie’s takes on Lebanese food (perhaps inspired by the Noura experience a few week’s before) so that four of us got a good meaty main course while the others had loads of dips, tabbouleh and the like to make up a substantial meal.
If it was anything more complex, there’d usually be some tell-tale notes in Janie’s diary, but there are none…
…except for:
collect shoes Kogee
…I don’t think Janie cooked those.
Fun evening it was, that much we do remember.
We really wanted to like this piece a lot.
John Kani is a bit of a legend of South African theatre, having been so influential in Athol Fugard’s plays and the like.
The subject matter – Truth and Reconciliation and all that – was right up our street. It was great to see John Kani performing in his own play.
In truth, this piece did less for us than we’d hoped.
It was well produced and well acted. Perhaps it had been built up so much as a modern classic that it was bound to disappoint us a bit.
It had some good moments and we were pleased to have seen the piece, but it didn’t really grab us the way we had hoped.
By way of contrast, the play we saw downstairs a few years later, A Human Being Died That Night – click here or below…
A Human Being Died That Night by Nicholas Wright, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, 10 May 2013
…really did grab us. Coincidentally, our next visit to the theatre was to see a Nicholas Wright – The Reporter.
Click here for a link to reviews and stuff – mostly very good – on Nothing But The Truth.
Below is a clip from a Cape Town production of the piece, but without John Kani himself performing:
Below is an interview with John Kani:
At the end of a stressy week, what could be better than an evening of jazz at Thw Wigmore Hall?
And what a stressy week it had been – with the deal to sell most of the business to Aon/McLagan Partners due to complete that week but actually not completed until the following week.
In truth, I don’t remember all that much about this concert other than the joy of sitting and letting a very accomplished jazz trio weave their magic for me.
I couldn’t find a vid of exactly the three who played our night, but two out of three ain’t bad:
While below is a subsequent extract from Portrait Of A Woman including vocals:
Janie and I are very keen on Frank McGuiness’s plays and this one is a good example of why that is so.
It sounds like the scenario for so many Irish plays – a family gathers to celebrate a birthday in a remote cottage in the West of Ireland…just take my word for it that this one is/was special.
Click here for the Almeida resource on this play/production.
Wonderful cast, superbly directed and produced – this is what the Almeida does best.
This link – click here – finds the reviews and stuff – mostly excellent ones.
I recall that we felt our year of theatre going was properly up and running after seeing this one.