Author: Ian Louis Harris

The Moat by Mark A C Brown, Network Theatre, Preceded By Hamsters v Dedanists Real Tennis Match At Hampton Court Palace, 17 October 2024

Hampton Court Palace – Moat by N Chadwick cc 2.0 from Wikimedia Commons

A long but very enjoyable day.

I had been democratically pressganged into match managing the annual Hamsters v Dedanists real tennis match at Hampton Court Palace, about which I have Ogblogged plenty in the past, e.g. my first encounter with that court and fixture five years ago:

How I Lost My Virginity Three Times In Less Than A Week, Yet Didn’t Lose A Match, 10, 14 & 15 October 2019

There will be a match report from the 2024 fixture in the fullness of time, which I shall be sure to link here once that epic has been written, approved by the libel lawyers and published…

…UPDATE – the lawyers have done their worst – here is a link to a scrape of that Dedanists’ page.

What better way would there be to round off a day of real tennis at a formerly moat-protected palace than a visit to The Network Theatre in Waterloo seeing one of my real tennis pals, Ian Falconer, perform in a play named The Moat.

If you need proof that Ian and I can form a formidable real tennis partnership, look no further than the following “lowlights” reel from the MCC tennis weekend earlier this year in which, as a strange reversal of the natural state of things, Ian played second fiddle to me in the absurd matter of leaving the ball to win points.

Absurdity being another helpful link between real tennis and the play, The Moat, which is grounded at an interesting junction between the Theatre of the Absurd and the Theatre of Cruelty.

The playwright, Mark A C Brown, describes the play thus on his website – click here for more on him and his work:

The Moat is an absurdist comedy set in the not too distant future in which the world is perpetually ablaze. Those who can afford it live amidst the inferno in moated communities. and one couple is trying to put on a dinner party. It would be going great if people would only stop dying and the fire would stop getting closer and closer.

To get the absurdity started before arrival, it is very clear on the Network Theatre website (and Ian Falconer’s entreaties to his cohort of ticket-holders) that the place is not exactly easy to find.

Network Theatre is rumoured to be difficult to find, so check out the map and directions below before your first visit.

We’re not on maps, but you can find Lower Road under Waterloo Station, leading off Waterloo Road, opposite Sainsbury’s.

Lower Road is a service road under Waterloo Station so you will need to ask for Network Theatre at the security gate (bring your e-ticket confirmation for access) and pass the loading bays before you find us on the left.

This video posted on YouTube shows you the way from Waterloo Station concourse.

If you have three minutes or so to watch the above-linked video, it is a masterpiece of suspenseful hand-held cinema, making The Blair Witch Project look like a Sunday afternoon picnic.

In Ian Falconer’s words:

…go down a long, murky tunnel… hopefully you make it and have time for a drink in the theatre bar beforehand…It’s a crumbling theatre space; don’t expect luxury – it’s very fringe!

Actually I got there in good time and my companion for the evening, Chris Swallow, a senior professional from the MCC real tennis court, had got there even earlier than me. It wasn’t quite as crumbly as Ian Falconer had led us to believe…

…let’s be frank, you can pay three figures for a West End show ticket and find yourself in a fairly crumbly place. And in that West End theatre you are unlikely to find such helpful and mostly friendly people as the volunteers who keep the Network Theatre going.

Imagine a world perpetually ablaze…

Returning to the play and production. The play is unsubtly allegorical, as indeed it is clearly intended to be. The party-throwing couple within the moat are supremely confident that their security systems and their moat can protect them from the incendiary dangers beyond, despite the clear and evident danger from the events we witness (or learn about) in their immediate vicinity. [Insert your own favourite social/political allegory here.]

Despite the characters being absurd caricatures of their types, the play works because it has an integral dramatic arc and a narrative line, with one or two sub-plots, that support that arc. After a while, I was able to “go with the flow” of the absurdity and enjoy the play. I only occasionally feel this way about absurdist pieces; on those occasions they tend to be written masterfully by playwrights such as Eugène Ionesco or Václav Havel.

I sense that director David Whitney has worked with writer Márk [sic] A C Brown before, which will surely have helped make the production flow, as this was not a simple piece to put on in a small fringe theatre. I thought the production values were very high given the constraints. I commend all of the crew as well as the cast – see this link for details; all shall have Ogblog tags.

Ian Falconer was excellent as the the lead character, Andre. I’m not just saying that because he is my friend. Of the supporting cast, I (and indeed Chris Swallow also) would single out Orietta Wanjiru Subrizi who played the part of delivery girl Eden with the right blend of contained gusto.

I do worry slightly about Ian becoming typecast in absurdist, allegorical plays about fire-engulfing situations. I note from his CV Fire in the Basement by Pavel Kohout and Huis Clos by Jean-Paul Sartre.

Parenthetically, my own trip to see Huis Clos, in 1989 (35 years ago…gulp), at the Lyric Studio, was in such a hot situation we the audience felt that we were experiencing the play in sense-around:

Huis Clos by Jean-Paul Sartre, Lyric Studio, 5 August 1989

Mind you, as Ian Falconer’s nephew pointed out over drinks in the Network Theatre Bar afterwards, my regular choice of water bottle, for tennis and theatre alike, might have been designed for the play The Moat:

My thirst extinguishers tend to get dented by cricket balls and hard tennis balls

A Short Autumn Break In A 15th Century Cottage In An Old Market Town Part One: Stratford-Upon-Avon, 13 to 16 October 2024

Mason’s Court, Built c1485, Occupied by me & Janie from c1615 on 13 October 2024

Janie and I both love spending time in Stratford-Upon-Avon and don’t need much of an excuse (usually something interesting at the theatre) to arrange a short visit to the place.

Indeed, our first short break together, just a few weeks after we met, was in Stratford-Upon-Avon – in a B&B of the old-fashioned variety:

A Long Weekend In Stratford-Upon-Avon, 29 October to 1 November 1992

Subsequently we tried most of the better hotels in Stratford, until I discovered Airbnb for some of my/our other short breaks and tried that approach in spring this year:

A Short Break In Warwickshire For Tennis & Theatre, 13 to 17 May 2024

Janie discovered Mason’s Court while e-rummaging on our previous trip and I agreed that I should try and secure that place for our next trip if I was able.

I was able.

You can see from the headline picture that this wonky so-called Tudor design predates the more linear Mock Tudor that followed it:

Noddyland, Built c1930, Occupied by me and Janie c2011

Our hosts had clearly done due diligence on us and wanted to make me to feel at home by putting up a portrait of me in the dining room:

When depicted from the correct angle, it is almost impossible to distinguish between the two images:

But joking apart, we loved staying in Mason’s Court, despite and because of its genuine late-medieval wonkiness and deference to “Shakespeare-pilgrims”, as a large proportion of the house guests no doubt come from that cohort.

We’d thoroughly recommend 3 Mason’s Court – here is an Airbnb link. Don’t be put off if the link looks struck through – it should still work.

On the first evening we had booked to have dinner at The Opposition, as we had tried Lambs for the first time in decades on our previous visit. We like both of those places a lot and were not disappointed by the quality of the food and service at The Opposition, still, after all these years.

Monday 14 October 2024

Despite the promise of good weather for our trip, the weather gods chose to drizzle upon us for almost the entirety of our short visit this time, confounding our planned trip or two to the tennis club. Indeed we left the tennis equipment in Dumbo throughout our stay, as he was blessed with a private parking space and police protection to go with it:

Dumbo is discretely secreted just beyond the police sign

Dumbo was a bit nervous of parking alongside the police station. Despite being a relentlessly honest vehicle and a pandemic hero…

Dumbo, One Of The Unsung Heroes Of The Pandemic Volunteer Effort, Reflects On 2020, 1 January 2021

…as anyone crazy/interested enough to delve into Dumbo’s canon will discover, he was traumatised by an early experience when he was stopped and searched by the fuzz for seemingly no good reason.

But I digress.

We knew we were seeing a long play on the Monday and had brought grub with us for a light meal of smoked fishes on our return from the play.

During one of the breaks in the rain we made a short trip to the shops (five minutes walk) to get one or two additional provisions, including stocking up on cheap confectionary for the impending Halloween invasion at Noddyland:

Nightmare In Noddyland, Halloween Night, 31 October 2017

But I digress some more.

In the evening we went to see The New Real at The Other Place. I have written that up separately.

The New Real by David Edgar, The Other Place, 14 October 2024

Our fishy supper at Mason’s Court was a delight and we both felt we had earned a glass or few of wine after more than two-and-a-half hours of The New Real.

Tuesday 15 October 2024

More drizzle, but heck, we had some lovely provisions in for lunch (including some very tasty bread from MOR.)

We had also made an executive decision to try The Giggling Squid for dinner as a takeaway, given that the restaurant was two or three minutes walk from our place and we had such a lovely environment in which to dine at home.

Further, I had brought Benjy The Baritone Ukulele with me and felt inspired by the Chandos “Shakespeare” portrait in Mason’s Court to lay down a lyric sung to the traditional tune The Mason’s Apron, the lyric being – Oor Hamlet by Adam McNaughton. (The latter link has the original version of McNaughton’s performance and lyrics). My version owes also to Martin Carthy’s version, with the Scots lingo toned down a bit. Here’s mine:

Not my finest performance, but something I felt compelled to get out of my system.

The staff at Giggling Squid were delightful and helped us to choose a very tasty meal. We’d certainly be happy…keen even…to try some more of their Thai food on a future visit.

Wednesday 16 October 2024

Still drizzling in Stratford but the weather forecast told us that London would be different…

…which it was.

So we did finally get a game of tennis during this short break, but back on our regular courts in London. Which is sort-of how the break started, as we played on Sunday morning before setting off for Stratford. So it goes.

We have another short autumn break in a 15th Century cottage in an old market town lined up very soon…watch this space, readers!

The New Real by David Edgar, The Other Place, 14 October 2024

Not to be confused with The Other Palace, in Westminster, which I visited with my old school pals a few days earlier…

“You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Immature Forever”, Dinner With Fellow Alleyn’s Alums, Then Tink by Lizzy Connolly & Kat Kleve, The Other Palace, 8 October 2024

…this visit to The Other Place, in Stratford-Upon-Avon, was the excuse for me and Janie to take a short break in that wonderful town this autumn.

A Short Autumn Break In A 15th Century Cottage In An Old Market Town Part One: Stratford-Upon-Avon, 13 to 16 October 2024

We’re big fans of David Edgar’s plays. Indeed, this was our second David Edgar premier in the past few weeks – his plays seem to come along with the regularity of London buses these days (nothing for ages, then two together):

Here In America by David Edgar, Orange Tree Theatre, 14 September 2024

But in truth I cannot rave about The New Real the way I raved about Here In America.

There was a lot to like about The New Real. Terrific cast who all acted superbly well. Excellent production using the traverse stage and screen effects well. But the overall effect of this rather long play was a sense of over-stimulation by the end of it. So many ideas about politics. So many screen and stage effects. And relatively little human drama to illustrate rather than declaim the points David Edgar wanted to make.

Anyway, despite both coming out of the experience with headaches of over-stimulation, we’re both glad that we have seen this play.

Here is a link to the RSC resources on this one, which will tell you all about the cast and creatives and that sort of thing.

Here is a Google search which should find reviews for this play/production. I believe many/most reviews express a similar view on this play/production to ours…but perhaps with a bit more critical heft than I choose to muster.

“You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Immature Forever”, Dinner With Fellow Alleyn’s Alums, Then Tink by Lizzy Connolly & Kat Kleve, The Other Palace, 8 October 2024

Olly Goodwin having received his Olly-Vier Theatre Award from Rohan Candappa

The above quote comes from Germaine Greer. It is apposite to both elements of the enjoyable evening I am about to describe.

“It was Candappa’s fault, Sir”. That non-quote is nevertheless true – this evening would not have happened, had it not been for Rohan Candappa doing his thing, both in terms of keeping us ’73-’80 Alleyn’s alums together and in helping to promote writing and theatrical talent.

Kat Kleve first came into my orbit when she worked with Rohan on One Starts in a Barber’s, One Starts in a Bar, which several of us Alleyn’s alums first saw at the Gladstone Arms in the autumn of 2018, after which it went to Edinburgh the next year and ultimately Kat’s bit ended up being Rohan’s first Lockdown Theatre production, And You Are? You can read all about it by clicking here or the link below.

And You Are? by Rohan Candappa, Lockdown Theatre Company, 24 March 2020

At the time, I gave that piece the wildest praise I could conjure at the time:

Better than watching Boris Johnson telling you what to do and what not to do – Ian Harris, Ogblog.

Strangely, neither Kat nor Rohan latched on to that quote for promotional purposes at the time. Pearls…

…anyway, this time around Kat is performing her own show, written with Lizzy Connelly, named Tink. The play did famously well at Edinburgh in 2023 and now has a London run at The Other Palace. Book early to avoid disappointment.

Hence Rohan’s idea for us alums to meet up there for a bite, a drink and a show.

As coincidence would have it, Olly Goodwin was a Trustee of The Theatres Trust back when The Other Palace was just an idea. Olly was instrumental in helping that project get its planning permission. If you have ever wondered why that building has a glorious but perhaps incongruous-looking marble staircase…

…ask Olly. And if you have ever wondered why Rohan thought fit to award Olly Goodwin with an Olly-Vier Theatre Award…see headline photo…the answer is intrinsically connected to the above coincidence.

The food was pretty good and the serving staff delightful at The Other Palace, even when Olly exclaimed:

Hey, why have you served Ben with his drink before serving mine, which I ordered earlier?…

…ignoring the large glass of wine that the waitress had placed in front of him a few moments before serving Ben. That wine glass is also commemorated in the headline picture.

Here is the whole scene just before we went into the theatre…except that my lens isn’t wide enough to have captured all the group and I have cruelly left out our ringleader, Rohan.

You’ll just have to take my word for it that Rohan is like a kid in the proximity of a candy store on such occasions.

Ah, there he is…

Actually, we all tend to display our inner overgrown schoolboy modes when we get together, which is at least some of the point behind getting together. As Germaine Greer said:

You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Immature Forever.

Anyway, recollecting our youth over dinner will have helped prepare us for the coming of age musical, Tink, which we then went down the Olly Goodwin Memorial Marble Staircase to see.

Tink by Lizzy Connolly & Kat Kleve

Here is a link to the Other Place information and resources on this show.

Here’s the trailer:

The conceit of the piece is that the central character – this is a one person show – is a modern Tinkerbell, growing up in the early 21st century rather than the early 20th century character in Peter Pan.

Not in truth my type of show, but Kat Kleve is a very talented and versatile performer, so there was plenty to enjoy in the performance.

It’s basically a coming of age story set in a fairies and elves context, which seemed startlingly like a human context to me. I liked the agonies Tink goes through around trying too hard to be the best at everything (which, it seems, is not guaranteed to make you popular – who knew?) and the social mores around how to dress and behave at teenage parties.

Especially interesting, to me, was the business around social media, which hadn’t been invented when we were kids. I’d long suspected that it is probably even harder to bee a teenager now than it was back in our day – this play illustrated some of the reasons why.

The songs are not really my type of songs either. They reminded me a little of Ed Sheeran and Meghan Trainor style singer-songwriter songs. Very well delivered, though. Here is an example of one of the songs:

That style of song might be spot on for the intended audience for this show, which I imagine to be a bit younger than me. We were there for the opening night and didn’t feel out of place, but I suspect that the average age of the audience will come down a decade or two on most other nights…

…apart from the nights for which Rohan is taking a posse of his friends.

The show runs until 20 October, so if you are reading this in time you might well want to click this link and grab some tickets, before dynamic pricing takes Kat Kleve out of your price range.

Beryl Cook: A Private View, Written, Performed & Painted by Kara Wilson, Finborough Theatre, 5 October 2024

Tea In the Garden by Beryl Cook, Copyright The Artist, fair use for this piece, low quality image via Wikimedia Commons

This was an interesting and enjoyable visit to the Finborough, albeit not the most drama-strewn visit we have ever made to that place.

Beryl Cook is an interesting character in that she found art later in life and lacked both the inhibitions of her generation and the pretentions of her chosen field. But she basically led a conventional provincial middle-class life that lacked drama. The play is therefore a collection of Beryl Cook’s own comments and things said about her in interviews. Interesting, but not dramatic.

The thing that makes this performance piece unusual is that Kara Wilson, in the persona of Beryl Cook, paints an artwork during the hour of the show. That aspect was truly fascinating.

As we understand it, The Finborough arranged this run with Kara Wilson at relatively short notice, when the theatre’s autumn plans went awry.

This engaging theatrical work enjoyed a successful run at Edinburgh – many of the formal reviews you might find about it relate to that run, although several are now emerging from The Finborough run too. Click here for reviews.

We also enjoyed the discussion afterwards.

Don’t you find it difficult to perform a solo play and paint at the same time for an hour?

…asked Janie, which I imagine was a question that had passed through everyone’s mind, but no-one had yet asked the question.

Yes, very.

…said Kara.

Good answer.

If you get to this review in time, this run is on until 26 October at The Finborough – click here for tickets and/or The Finborough’s stub on this production if you are interested in that.

Oud Have Thought It?: Rihab Azar Session At Wigmore Hall (Learning Room), 4 October 2024

We were keen to see this solo early evening concert by the virtuoso oud player of Syrian origin, Rihab Azar. The oud is a basically a Middle-Eastern fretless lute – indeed the instrument from which the Western lute derived.

We were not disappointed – the concert was truly lovely.

Here is a link to the Wigmore Hall resources on this concert.

For those who cannot be fussed to click, this is what we heard:

  • Ahmad Al Khatib – Extract from Suznak Rhapsody
  • Rihab Azar – Enchanted Weavers
  • Adnan Abul-Shamat – Hatiha Ya Sah
  • Rihab Azar – Biography of a Bubble
  • Rihab Azar – Samaie
  • Rihab Azar – Questions
  • Rihab Azar – The Pull of Time
  • Anouar Brahem – Parfum de Gitane
  • Rihab Azar -Indulgence
  • Rihab Azar -Sand, Roots & Blossoms.

Here is a charming video of Rihab Azar playing one of the lovely pieces we heard, Indulgence, on the very same seven-course oud that we heard:

The concert was held in the Learning Room (formerly known as the Bechstein Room), which the Wigmore Hall team had set up beautifully in a “jazz club with tables” style and some suitably Middle-eastern-looking drapes. Very atmpospheric.

Soon after the concert began, an old twerp with a massive Canon camera and several large lenses came forward from the rear of the room and sat next to us at our table, fiddling away with his camera and snapping with seeming abandon. Janie thought he must have been an official publicist or something, until a member of staff stepped forward at the end of the piece and politely but firmly told the geezer that it was not permitted to take pictures during the performance – a fairly obvious point that, in the main hall, would have been made as part of the pre-announcements these days, now that everyone has cameras (smart phones) on them all the time.

The old geezer feigned surprise and confusion. Then he proceeded to fiddle with his equipment ceaselessly during the performance and snap with reckless abandon between each piece.

The staff clearly made a decision, rightly or wrongly, that further intervention would be more disruptive than letting the old git have his way.

Rihab Azar took all this with great grace. She even took with great grace the same geezer stopping the concert just before she played her last piece, with a request for “something old school”, because he hadn’t been expecting her use of the loop pedal and wanted to hear the oud without it.

Rihab sweetly said that she had to play her planned last piece, but that she would additionally play a short traditional piece without loop pedal (I cannot remember what it was, but it was delightful) before the last scheduled piece (which was also but differently delightful).

If you, like the old git, want to hear “old school” oud, here is the Parfume de Gitane piece played by the composer, Anouar Brahem, and his mates back in 1997:

No wonder Rihab Azar was insistent on playing her closing number – it was especially charming and is her latest piece, Sand, Roots & Blossoms. designed to accompany an art exhibition,  “The Universe Within”. here is a link to the performance she posted, from that exhibition, a few days after our gig:

At the end of our concert, several members of the audience let the witless git know how they felt about him. One said that he had ruined their enjoyment of the concert, which seemed a bit extreme. We were the closest to his fiddling and we just thought he was a twerp.

Mr Twerp engaged us in conversation once he had beaten back his detractors. He clearly wanted us to know that he was a guitar player (he must have said “Fender” three times) and spoke in critical terms about the loop pedal back-tracking (which we rather liked) and the fact that Rihab Azar “looked at the neck of her instrument too much”.

“Have you ever played a fretless instrument?”, I asked. He hadn’t, but pointed out to me, entirely counterfactually, that the oud has frets…or at least Rihab Azar’s did! (Oh no it doesn’t…oh no it didn’t).

Janie then wondered, given his desire for “old school oud playing”, whether Mr Git had ever been to Syria. Of course he hadn’t. “Oh you should, you’d find it fascinating”, said Janie.

Janie correctly remembered seeing oud playing at Abu Al-Azz in Damascus in 1997

I quietly wondered whether the old geezer would survive 20 minutes in Syria these days. Even in 1997, some diplomacy was needed to navigate the political regime and local sensitivities wherever we went. Perhaps that was in Janie’s mind when she recommended the place to Mr Twerpy Git, the amateur photographer-guitarist.

After we parted company with the fellow, Janie told me that she had wanted to take a picture of him for the blog, but thought him so mercurial that the request might lead to an argument and that permission to publish would probably not be granted. I agreed that her decision was a wise one.

I decided instead to help you visualise this geezer by prompting the DeepAI image generator with the phrase:

Silly Old bald Man taking a photo with a telephoto lens camera

The following image, very much of the right kind, emerged:

We had a lovely time at this concert and for sure will return to “Learning Room Sessions” if the subject matter pleases us.

Let’s leave the last word to Rihab Azar’s beautiful oud-playing:

My English Persian Kitchen by Hannah Khalil, Soho Theatre, 30 September 2024

This show is an excellent and unusual experience in the theatre. Based on a true story, Isabella Nefar is superb as a young woman who escapes to England from an abusive marriage in Iran. She doesn’t find London life easy either, but takes solace in cooking Persian food to remind herself of the home she might never see again.

While telling her gruelling story, she also cooks Ash-e Reshteh; Persian noodle and herb soup, which after the show she serves to anyone in the audience who fancies it…which was almost everyone.

Aware that the play was this kind of thing, we got to the Soho Theatre a little early to try to get front seats. We knew that the visibility would be fine just about anywhere, but the smells would be subject to the inverse-square law and we wanted to smell this play.

We ran into a couple of people we knew while queuing: Sara Amini, whom we had met in Stratford when we attended a talk about the play Englsh in May:

English by Sanaz Toossi, The Other Place, 13 May 2024

…and also our friend Jacquie from the Boston Manor tennis courts, which was a little more of a surprise in this context.

Anyway, we got the front row seats we fancied and were entranced by the short show.

Unusually for us, we ventured to the theatre by tube rather than car, as Soho is such a awkward place for driving. A points failure near North Acton confounded us, sending our West Acton bound tube to Hanger Lane instead, making our return journey a little fraught. Fortunately we’d had a bowl of soup to sustain us and hadn’t left our dinner cooking at home when we went out!

Contemplating the yummy soup, not the journey home

This show previewed at Soho before a very well-received Edinburgh run and then a short reprise at Soho. It was very well received by the formal reviewers – click here for plenty of links.

Hopefully My English Persian Kitchen will be revived elsewhere, so that more people can get to see it, smell it and eat it.

Giant by Mark Rosenblatt, Royal Court Theatre, 21 September 2024

Roald Dahl‘s books and stories were a significant part of my life as a child and teenager growing up in the 1970s. Dahl’s widely publicised anti-Semitic remarks in the early 1980s shocked me at the time.

Giant is about Dahl and those remarks, set during an imagined afternoon at Dahl’s Great Missenden house in 1983.

I grabbed a couple of “first Saturday preview” seats for this one as soon as tickets became available for Royal Court members. I am glad that I did.

Mark Rosenblatt surely wrote most if not all of the play before the events of 7 October 2023 and for sure no-one knew that the Israeli Defence Forces would be bombing Beirut a couple of days before the first Royal Court preview. The play seemed extraordinarily topical, even though that topicality was inadvertent.

It is a very well-written play, depicting Dahl as a charismatic yet monstrous character. An extremely eloquent disruptor, who would use the power of his words and status to charm or bully as he saw fit. Everything I had read about Dahl suggest to me that the character was well researched and brilliantly depicted by John Lithgow, who is clearly a top draw stage actor.

Other real people from Dahl’s world were depicted: Felicity “Liccy” Crossland whom Dahl married soon after his public anti-Semitism row, and Tom Maschler, who was head of Jonathan Cape, Dahl’s publisher.

Into this mix, Rosenblatt throws a fictional character, Jessie Stone, who works for Dahl’s US publisher. Unlike Tom Maschler, who seems (or at least purports) to be able to manage Dahl’s wonky characteristics, the Stone character confronts Dahl directly with her concerns about his remarks, with predictably scary results.

Wondering whether anyone in the audience can tell that I am “one of them”.

There were some similarities between this play and the wonderful David Edgar play, Here In America, which we saw (also in preview) at The Orange Tree last week:

Here In America by David Edgar, Orange Tree Theatre, 14 September 2024

Although the moral dilemmas in the two plays are different in nature (do you grass on your old mates to protect your career? Do you apologise for things you said even if you did really mean them?), both plays are based around true characters and real events and both plays are structured around a visit to the home of the maligned protagonist.

Janie enjoyed both plays/productions but preferred Here In America to Giant, primarily because she found the moral dilemma more paradoxical. By the end of Giant, Janie was convinced that Roald Dahl was a ghastly character with scarily racist views.

I found the arguments suitably nuanced in both plays and enjoyed both for their excellent acting and production, as well as the quality of the writing/drama.

However, I did sense that Here In America diverged from the historical reality of its situation less than Giant.

In Giant, the conceit of the play suggests that Dahl might have made his most outrageously and blatantly anti-Semitic comments as a result of being cornered by his publishers and fiancée on a single afternoon. In reality, Dahl made many such comments in several interviews/conversations over an extended period of time. Dramatic licence, I accept, but it made Giant, for me, a little less convincing as a dramatic whole.

There are some terrific speeches and lines in the play. Janie and I are glad we bought the play text so we might refer back to some of those. Romola Garai was excellent as Jessie Stone; her speech at the end of the first half of the play was a coup de theatre.

Elliot Levey’s performance as Tom Maschler also stood out. Several of his lines, explaining how you can be an overtly English Jew without obsessing about Israel and while feeling more English than anything else, certainly resonated with me. As did his speech about not feeling the need to apologise for the actions of the Government of a country in which he held neither nationality nor residency. And as did Maschler’s speech about low-level anti-Semitic remarks and sneers being essentially harmless and part of the price for being a Jew in England at that time.

I was very much reminded, by this play, about my own strange experience, around the time the play was set, with an overt anti-Semite, Don Knipe, who, in his terms, obviously didn’t mean people like me and my family, whom he loved…he meant all the other Jews.

Strange Case Of Dr Green And Mr Knipe…And Beluga Caviar And Scotch Whisky And A Bust Of Hitler, c22 December 1981

Indeed that experience is so strange, I realise, on reflection, that Don could easily have been a Roald Dahl short story character. Click the above link if you dare. But I digress.

There was a lot to think about in the play Giant and we’ll go on thinking about it for some time, no doubt.

The short Royal Court run (to 16 November 2024) is already all-but sold out, but surely this excellent play/production is lining up for transfers; both sides of the Atlantic, no doubt.

John Dowland And His Cheery Pals, Tim Mead & Sergio Bucheli, Wigmore Hall, 16 September 2024

John Dowland, CC BY-SA 4.0 click here for details

OK, I have a confession to make. The Wigmore Hall did not title this concert “John Dowland And His Cheery Pals”; it merely promised us the superb countertenor Tim Mead and the also excellent lutenist/theorboist Sergio Bucheli.

On arrival, I made a bee-line to the desk where a young woman was handing out programmes. I told Janie that the programme was bound to include a lyric sheet so we all could sing along.

Don’t be ridiculous…

…said Janie.

Have fun…

…said the far more open-minded young lady.

We found ourselves sitting next to a Scottish woman named Fiona, who had sung in her youth and was clearly a huge fan of Tim Mead. She said she might inadvertently sing along, which Janie tells me Fiona sort-of did – under her breath. I chose not to sing along, partly because Tim Mead sings in the wrong pitch for me. I might have tried singing a whole octave down, but wouldn’t have wanted to upstage Tim that way.

More seriously, it was a truly lovely concert. Here is a link to that very programme and song sheet if you want to see what the whole thing contained.

I was familiar with many of the John Dowland songs and lute fantasias, whereas some of the material by other composers was new to me.

We were particularly taken with John Danyel’s three part song, “Mrs M E her funeral tears for the death of her husband”…

…did those guys compete for maximum misery in the subject matter of their songs in those days?…

…a truly beautiful sound that has made me seek out some more John Danyel to hear after the concert.

Here is a link to the first part of the Mrs ME song – don’t be put off if you see a line through the link – it should work for you even if you are not a YouTube Music subscriber.

Tim Mead does a lot of his work with La Nuova Musica – in fact Janie and I didn’t realise that we had seen Tim sing before at one of their concerts – at St John’s Smith Square in 2015:

La Nuova Musica, St John’s Smith Square, 20 March 2015

We had seen Sergio Bucheli several times before, most recently at Wigmore Hall just a few months ago:

All The Bs: Biber, Benjamin, Byrd, Bach…& Brett – Brett Dean Concert, Wigmore Hall, 20 April 2024

We enjoyed every bit of the Dowland and Pals concert, despite the downcast subject matter. With Dowland you can be pretty sure about what you are going to get. Otherwise it would be a bit like going to a Leonard Cohen concert and complaining that the songs are miserable.

Tim Mead and Sergio Bucheli seemed very much at home in this late Renaissance space, although my guess is that home base for them is Baroque music from 70 to 100 years later than the works we heard. I cannot find a sample of these two performing late Renaissance works, but this sampler from their recent album about Purcell And His Perky Pals (OK, it’s actually named Beauteous Softness)…

… has inspired me to stream that album as soon as I have some proper listening time…which might be as soon as 24 hours after the Dowland & Pals concert.

Here In America by David Edgar, Orange Tree Theatre, 14 September 2024

Imagine politics in the USA embroiled in weird paranoia, obsessing about enemies within, making counterfactual accusations directed primarily towards people from migrant communities, with freedoms consequently being eroded by egotistical politicians.

But this isn’t a play about the Trumpian era; the play is about the Second Red Scare in the 1950s and the impact it had on the friendship between playwright Arthur Miller and director Elia Kazan.

I have been a fan of David Edgar’s plays since the mid 1980s, when I got busy reading every play I could get my hands on. In those days I was able to get my hands on a lot of David Edgar’s plays.

In the 80s and 90s I got to see several David Edgar plays performed, but he is not so prolific these days and not often revived in places that Janie and I tend to visit.

Still, like London buses, after a dearth of Edgars for several years, two new ones have come along at the same time: this one and The New Real, which we have booked to see in Stratford-Upon-Avon next month.

This one, Here In America, is just our sort of play – and this production at The Orange Tree is just our sort of production – we loved it.

I have long been fascinated by the phenomenon that became known as McCarthyism and in particular the impact it had on the performing arts. In 1952 Elia Kazan eventually agreed to name names rather than jeopardise his career, whereas Arthur Miller risked jail by refusing to name names when he was summoned to the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1954, around the time that Kazan was enhancing his career with films such as On The Waterfront:

In David Edgar’s hands, this story fizzes with political and interpersonal energy. The play is mostly dialogue between Kazan and Miller, with Kazan’s wife, Molly Day in a great many of the scenes. Several scenes also include Marilyn Monroe, who appears in Milleresque fashion, perhaps as flashbacks, perhaps as unreliable memories or perhaps as imaginings. Very reminiscent of such scenes in Miller plays, e.g. Death Of A Salesman. Very well done.

All the actors played their parts well: Michael Aloni (who struck us as very Arthur Miller-like), Jasmine Blackborow, Faye Castelow and Shaun Evans. Director James Dacre is also to be congratulated for making this multi-faceted play work extremely well within the limits of The Orange Tree’s small in-the-round space.

Janie and I left The Orange Tree with lots to discuss; many big-picture political matters, questions around loyalty to friends and also loyalty to loved ones. Both Kazan and Miller betrayed their wives with Marilyn Monroe and later, arguably, jointly betrayed Monroe’s memory through their work.

But before we left the auditorium, or rather as we were leaving, I was able to congratulate David Edgar in person. We were there on the first preview night for this show so it was hardly a surprise to spot him there. I asked him if Here In America and the forthcoming play The New Real are companion pieces.

Didn’t really think about it that way…but there are two lines that appear in both plays,

he said. I promised to form my own opinion on that question. I’m glad I had the opportunity to speak with David Edgar, albeit very briefly, having followed his work for so many decades.

The evening even generated a memory flash from 50 years ago, which I have written up in a separate Ogblog piece:

Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I’ll Name Names, Tomorrow…Playing Call My Bluff In An English Class, Was It 1S Or 2AK? 1974 or 1975

It was a very memorable preview night in the theatre. I’ll add a review link once the play has been formally reviewed. It is running at The Orange Tree until 19 October. Highly recommended by both me and Janie.