Wilderness is about a couple who split up, determined to make it amicable for the sake of their eight-year-old son. But of course it doesn’t work out like that.
Janie and I found this play a painfully visceral piece. Neither Janie nor I have direct experience of this scenario, but that didn’t lessen the power of the drama for us.
Anna Ledwich, who has directed so many of the excellent things we’ve seen at the Hampstead, has again done brilliant work with a new writer, Kellie Smith and a superb cast: Richard Frame, Natalie Klamar, Allison Mckenzie, Finlay Robertson.
An excellent, sparse set by Lucy Sierra added to the sense of cold and decay that pervaded the piece.
One element of the writing that I think deserves praise was how very irritating the main characters were, yet Kellie Smith managed to maintain a sense of goodness and vulnerability, such that we as audience members cared about them and cared what happened to them. One of the ways she did that was to prevent us from ever seeing the child at the centre of the tussle; of course we couldn’t but care deeply for the ever-absent child and the impact the play’s events must have been having on him.
One other event will stick long in our memories. Next to us sat two slightly unusual women; one young, one quite a bit older. They clearly weren’t together but struck up a chatting friendship. At the end of the interval, the younger woman came back with some wine and cake. She plonked the wine down in front of her (we were in the front row) and commenced with munching the cake, taking and expressing great joy in her victuals.
Janie and I both, silently, thought that wine cup was an accident waiting to happen, positioned, as it was, in the path of any late-comer who might be moving swiftly to their seat at the end of the interval. Within a minute, indeed such a latecomer arrived and indeed the cup and the wine were put asunder. To make matters worse, in her dismay and forward lunge in a vain attempt to rescue her wine, the young woman also dropped the remains of her cake.
“Oh no”, said the young woman, “that was entirely my own fault”.
In some ways, that silly incident felt like a comedic metaphor for the serious subject matter of the play. Meanwhile, I have been trying to work out if I can find yet sillier places to leave victuals and crockery lying around the house in order to maximise the chance that they get spilt and/or broken. Thought experiment only, you understand.
But back to this truly excellent play/production, Wilderness. It really is well worth seeing if you like your drama intense, up close and personal.
Plenty of seats still available at the time of writing; Janie and I would suggest that you book early to avoid disappointment. The production runs to 27 April 2019 and I hope it gets a deserved transfer after that.
Did I mention that I had a recording deal lined up? Yeh, Simon Jacobs, who does producing as well as recording and all that – he signed me up to do a demo in his high tech studio. This could be the start of my stratospheric popular music career and not before time, frankly.
Now Simon is a very musical chap and has been so for longer than I have known him, which is well north of 40 years. Here, for example, is his latest hit, Ghosts, which he released many weeks ago, but it refuses to fade in the Spotify rankings, still getting infeasible thousands of streams a week on that platform – the YouTube is below so you can also see the vid:
So what, in the name of all that is good and pure, was Simon thinking when he suggested that I record the Warren & Durbin classic, I Only Have Eyes For You. Not in the original Dick Powell pitch/key of C (heck knows that is hard enough for me, even with the sheet music to look at), but nine whole stops up the register in the Art Garfunkel range.
Nine whole stops. That’s like, Notting Hill Gate to South Ruislip, if you are daft enough to go west from Notting Hll. Even Ian Pittaway, my music teacher, who has crazy ideas about my ability to reach high notes, only nudges me three or very occasionally five stops up.
Here’s the result of Simon’s wild musical concept:
Anyway, Simon said that he much preferred the Art Garfunkel version of the song:
While I complained that even the original Dick Powell was wicked hard for me to play and/or sing.
But Simon insisted that his recording gadgetry could rectify any minor failings in my singing and that he thought he could, with a little effort, turn me into a latter-day Art.
It seemed like a jolly good excuse for a get together and/but life seemed to intervene for a while, so a ridiculous number of months passed before we actually got round to implementing the plan.
On the day, I arrived at Simon’s West London studio, which also doubles as his house, late afternoon/early evening, ready for a rollicking rock’n’roll evening of music.
First up, obviously, we indulged in some appropriate herbal substances; a big mug of tea each, together with some chat about really trendy topics, such a Brexit.
Then down to business with the recording.
I felt a little strange working on that particular song, that particular week. A couple of days earlier I’d been to the funeral of our neighbour, Barry Edson, who was an aficionado of film musicals. I’d had several interesting conversations with Barry about Warren and Durbin songs and Barry had shown me interesting stuff about those song writers from his library-sized collection of books on the topic.
But back to me recording I Only Have Eyes For You in an Art-like style with the help of computerised sound engineering.
Actually it was a very interesting process for me. Simon clearly does this sort of thing a lot, but mostly with his own, not with anyone else’s, voice.
We had a rehearsal run through. Then we took a recording take which sounded crackly. That led to some rearrangement of the microphone, the music and me. I even offered to remove my socks but those lengths were deemed unnecessary.
Then a couple more takes, at which point Simon thought we might try to repair take four with some fragments, but after we’d done that, I suggested one more try at a better straight-through take.
I’m glad I did that, because the final take was, in my opinion, quite a lot better than the previous ones (I realise that notion might be hard for the listener to believe).
Then Simon really got down to doing the sound engineering thing.
Simon is geeking my song
It was a bit like having your homework marked in front of the school teacher. On many of my notes, there was a huge amount of vibrato which Simon was able to smooth a bit.
Imagine, as an analogy, someone using fancy software to turn my legendary illegible handwriting into something that looks more like a legible script.
Is there any handwriting-smoothing software that might help? – September 1989 sample
The music software would help each note find its probable home on the scale. But sometimes the thing I had sung was closer to some other note than the note that the purist might fussily describe as the “right” note.
Actually I believe I did sing all the right notes…just not necessarily in the right order.
But it didn’t matter because Simon’s fancy software could shift pretty much whatever I sang to the exact place it belonged on the scale.
On just one occasion did Simon have to say, “I’m not even sure what you’re supposed to be singing there – may I please see the music?” – that was on the second intro couplet, which Art Garfunkle doesn’t sing.
And there is the one note that I strangled so very comprehensively that no amount of tinkering seemed able to repair it. Let’s imagine that I was gulping with emotion on that note.
Then some more listenings and some more tinkerings…
…by which time I was getting quite excited and wondered whether we should try more and more takes, on the basis that my voice seemed to be getting better and better each time.
The conversation then drifted towards artistes who had spent months or even years trying to perfect individual tracks for release.
I wondered whether we might lock ourselves away, perfecting this track, for, say, five years, in order to emerge, not only with a sure-fire hit on our hands, but with Brexit over. Simon thought that five years is probably not long enough…to ensure that Brexit is over with.
Anyway, in case you missed it above, or want to hear it again, here’s the end result:
Timothy then joined me and Simon for dinner at The Brackenbury Wine Rooms, which was a suitably convenient and high quality location for some good food & wine plus some top notch natter. It was a good opportunity to get to know Timothy a little better – the only time I’d met him before was at Simon’s Circle Line album launch, about 18 months ago, which was not an occasion for getting to know people well.
On parting, I suggested dates for me to return to record the rest of the album. But Simon just shook his head politely and solemnly. “A one-off recording deal, that was”, he said.
“Not even a B-side for the single?” I asked.
Simon shook his head politely and solemnly again, as both Simon and Timothy said, “goodbye,” not, “au revoir.”
But…
…and here’s a thing…
…when I listened to the track again the next morning, it sounded far better to me than it had the evening before. I said so to Simon, in a thank you message. Simon’s reply, perhaps similarly inspired by a re-listening:
Glad you like your recorded performance! Do let me know when you’re ready to record your whole album!!
So now I have an album deal lined up? Yeh, that well-known music producer Simon Jacobs…this must be the next stage of my stratospheric popular music career and not before time, frankly.
In many ways this evening had been long in the planning. Janie and I spotted Mere as a suitable place to dine with John & Mandy last summer, but in the end we opted for Dinner In Noddyland:
So good was it, that John and I decided that we “owed it to the girls” to all four have a meal there once the opportunity arose. Now was that opportunity.
We met ahead of our booking time to have a drink in the lovely bar. Janie and I got there first and I ordered a bottle of the excellent Sancerre that John and I had tried at Mere the first time around.
We also discussed many other things, not least John and Mandy’s other daughter, Bella, who looks set to go to Manchester to study – does Bella not know about the inclement weather in Manchester?
We all decided we wanted to try the tasting menu; so we did. Three of us (all bar Mandy) also went for the wine pairings.
John And Mandy taking it all in, as the sommelier explains the first of the wine pairingsHere’s all the stuff we tasted, in words.
Janie took the pictures, which explains why she appears in none of them. Take my word for it, Janie was also listening attentively, smiling a lot and enjoying the tastes, smells and the chat.
Leeks & TruffleAttentive listeningCornish CodWas I describing Hitler’s cohones at this juncture? Something like that.ScallopMandy sniffs the interesting Youngblood Grenache served with the scallopRose VealWe really do look like a couple of pseudo-connoisseurs in this pictureWhite Port to go with the cheeseCheese (mine mercifully without the candied walnut)Am I unconvinced by the final wine or just running out of steam?Apple Chocoholics delight
This Ogblog piece makes it look as though we did an awful lot of eating and drinking, which we did. But the portion sizes were such that we did not feel stuffed or sloshed at the end of the meal, just very happy.
We all four know how lucky we are to be able to eat in a place as good as Mere and to be able to enjoy the company of such good friends. It was a truly memorable and wonderful evening.
Or, to summarise in one word using John’s favourite adjective back in the mid 1980s:
Anyway, life hasn’t been taking me to Manchester much lately, so when John White told me that his daughter, Lydia, was to have her first professional stage role in Rags The Musical at the Hope Mill Theatre…
…I decided to construct a short trip to that fair, clement City.
I contacted Ashley Fletcher, who had been unavailable on my previous visit or two; we arranged to meet for dinner on the evening of 12 March. So I booked three goes at the Manchester Tennis and Racquets Club, a ticket for Rags for 13 March and an Airbnb apartment near to the Hope Mill Theatre for two nights.
Unfortunately, Ashley got called away at the last minute on family matters, leaving the first night free. This possibly afforded me an opportunity to meet up with Alex “King Cricket” Bowden instead…
…but Alex spotted that Manchester City were to play Schalke 04 at the City Of Manchester Stadium that night, which is within chaos distance of my chosen location for diggings and musical theatre. What do I know of football? For a start, why are Schalke given 04 just for turning up – are they using a handicapping system in football now, much as we do in real tennis?
Strangely there had been a big European match at that same stadium when I was last in Manchester in 2016 against a shibbolethic team named…
…Borussia Mönchengladbach….
…But as I was staying in Salford Quays that time, the resulting disruption was merely hearsay to me, whereas this time I had inadvertently arranged to stay right in the thick of it.
I sought some spiritual advice on the matter.
I had arranged to meet Andy Salmon at Sacred Trinity Church briefly before playing tennis that Tuesday afternoon. We are both involved with the Church’s on-line service register initiative, which Andy is piloting.
Sacred Trinity: a beautiful church in Salford which happens to be just around the corner from the Manchester Tennis And Racquets Club
It was actually very interesting for me to see one of the Churches involved in our project, not least to see what such places are like on a regular, non-service day. Andy of course made me very welcome and also gave me some helpful local North-East Manchester advice regarding what to do when a big match is on. Basically, get to your digs early enough to avoid the chaotic roads/transport and then only go out again during the hours of play.
Manchester Tennis And Racquets Club – not so special looking from the outside – you can see why I drove around the block a couple of times on my first visit there.
After tennis (a close match in which I came second, despite having received handicap points) I dashed off sharpish to get to New Islington early and settle in to my apartment. Probably just as well, not least because I could see the police getting ready to herd fans round the ring road and along Pollard Street. Also, it took me a while once I got to the apartment to sort out parking and entry – some goon had parked in the designated parking space for my car. The errant parking goon had been given a parking ticket, but I had no idea what I was supposed to do in the circumstances, so I waited for my host to sort out an alternative space for me to use, which he did reasonably quickly.
Getting in and out of these fancy apartments in converted industrial buildings is often quite a palaver (this is not my first time in such a place), but this one was quite exceptional, with codes for the car park, building entrance, stairs (if needed – wasn’t), corridors and then finally the front door. Once you know all of these things its OK, but the first time, laden with baggage…
…anyway, I was there in decent time and liaised with Alex. We concluded that getting either of us to and from each other within the hours of play would leave precious little time to actually do anything of merit, so abandoned the idea of meeting.
Plenty of time to eat there between the start and end of a football match.
Indeed I was home well before the end of the match and was very tired. I had driven almost all the way to Manchester through torrential rain; my least favourite driving conditions. I went to bed early and thought I heard the roar of the crowd from the stadium. Probably a goal I thought, dozily.
I also discovered that Manchester City had done similarly well on my previous 2016 visit, scoring four against a team requiring no handicap – I’m starting to get the hang of this new soccer scoring system now. I’m sure the soccer crowds just love the additional nuance that handicap scoring can bring.
Anyway, after that enjoyably early night, I rose early and had plenty of time for reading and practising my Renaissance guitar technique before going off again to Salford for a lunchtime tennis match up. This time no handicap at all and this time I prevailed over my opponent. Both of the matches had been very good ones; really nice people and good challenging tennis. Tomorrow I’ll return for a lesson.
Back to the apartment for some more music and reading. Then back to the Thai place to try a rice dish – a beef massaman.
The next morning I vacated my apartment and drove round the ring road for my tennis lesson. I decided to take a picture of the main lobby of the club, which, in contrast to the exterior, looks like a grand club from a bygone era. Trigger warning: the heads of deceased beasts line the walls:
Through the arched window (as they would say in Play School) is the real tennis court.
Darren Long gave me my lesson – as indeed he did on my last visit. He does some different drills from the guys at Lord’s and has some interesting thoughts on the one or two things I might do to transform my game from the ordinary to the utterly exceptional. It might be as easy as that…although it might not.
Seriously, Darren is a very good coach and it was a very enjoyable hour. Once again, the team at the Manchester Tennis and Racquets Club had made me feel extremely welcome and looked after me as well as I could possibly have hoped for.
I made two stops on the journey home to ensure an adequate state of alertness and to stretch a bit – driving from Manchester to London straight after a rigorous hour of drills on the tennis court is probably not ideal on the old body, but still.
It had been an enjoyable trip; apart from the cold, the wind and the rain. Manchester really should try and do something about that – otherwise it could end up with somewhat of a reputation for its inclement weather.
Declaration of interest: I have known Lydia White, who plays the role of Bella in this production, since before she was born; she is my best mate John’s daughter. This production is Lydia’s professional debut.
Picture borrowed from Lydia’s Twitter account – I’m guessing she wont mind.
Declaration of uninterest: this type of musical theatre is simply not the sort of stuff I would normally see. Yes, I wrote lyrics for Newsrevue in the 1990s, which is sort-of musical theatre and yes I wrote the lyrics for Casablanca the Musical at the turn of the century.
Yes, I am familiar with recordings of many of the great musicals of the 1930s through to the 1970s. But you can search Ogblog high and low for signs of straight musical theatre going in vain.
So, there I was; a chap normally predisposed to parodying musical theatre rather than appreciating it, trying to lap up Rags the Musical, a troubled piece from 1986 which closed on Broadway after just four nights, much revamped for this 2019 revival.
Rags is about a group of Jewish immigrants arriving in America early in the 20th Century. It has often been described as a sort-of sequel to Fiddler On the Roof, with several of those involved in writing the latter also involved in writing Rags. Here is a link to Hope Mill Theatre’s resource on this musical/production.
I thought the quality of this production was quite exceptional. I didn’t really know what to expect in a disused mill, relatively recently re-purposed as a small theatre with grand ideas to put on big shows like this.
Can they do it? Yes they can.
Coincidentally, I ended up sitting next to a pair of gentlemen who I had noticed sitting next to me in the Jūb Thai before the show. The chap immediately next to me turned out to be a local who has become very impressed by this new theatre on his manor. He told me that their home grown productions, of which Rags is one – have been consistently excellent.
The thing that impressed me the most was the universal quality of the performances. Not to detract at all from Lydia White’s superb performance, the praises of which clearly I am here to hail, in seriousness I thought the whole cast, every one of them, was truly excellent.
The quality of the musicianship was very high too. The music is a mish-mosh (if I might throw in bissel Yiddish) of ragtime, klezmer, jazz and show; that cannot be easy to contain and deliver to consistent quality, but the musicians and singers keep going to a very high quality level throughout.
The book was clearly problematic from the 1986 outset with this musical – I think the radical rewrite has partially but not totally solved the problem. I have some sympathy with the original author Joseph Stein. He originally set out to write a screenplay, settled on the libretto of a musical but kept the big picture story about the immigrant experience at the turn of the 20th Century. I have read a synopsis of the original version and it really does try to cover an enormous scope of subject matter for a musical.
And much like a troyer-shpil in the Yiddish Theatre tradition, which Rags The Musical parodies in many ways, it tries to throw in everything but the kitchen sink. So this is not one for the Royal Court.
The rewrite for this production is a smaller canvas but as a result some of the nuance is, I think, lost. So, for example…
…*spoiler alert*…
…Bella’s demise towards the end of the piece seems like happenstance rather than part of almost inevitable conflicts between ambition, desperation, industrial action and greed.
The writers have made some interesting choices, some of which work better than others. I loved the theatre trip towards the end of the first act where the protagonists see a Yiddish version of Hamlet which ends up with Klezmer music and Horah dancing despite Hamlet and Ophelia’s despair.
I was surprised by The Kaddish (mourner’s prayer) song, though, for which the writers chose simply to set the original mourner’s prayer to music. I imagined it would be something akin to the Fiddler On The Roof Sabbath Prayer song, which picks and chooses passages from the Hebrew prayer to make a very charming musical song in English.
The Mourner’s Kaddish is actually a tongue-twister of a prayer – part in Hebrew part in Aramaic – it must be really hard for people to learn it if they haven’t grown up with it and it must sound very strange to the uninitiated ear. Unfortunately I had reason to see and hear a mourner’s kaddish again, two days after seeing the show. I thought about it and really struggled to understand why the Rags lyricist hadn’t selected choice phrases in English to depict the meaning of that prayer with dignity and beauty. Perhaps superstition played its part – you just don’t mess with the prayer for the dead.
I was also surprised that the Children Of The Wind song doesn’t appear until right at the end of the show – reprised almost immediately in the finale. The musical would, to me, have seemed more holistic if that song had appeared early, e.g. when the immigrants arrive, as well as at the end of the show when their tale has been told.
But then what do I know to critique a musical? I don’t really do musicals.
At the small canvas level, the story very much resonated with me. I am, after all, a mostly third generation Jew, three of my four grandparents came to London from the Pale Of Settlement around the time this musical is set – plus or minus 20 years. My father’s family were indeed in the shmutter (rag) trade…they even changed their name to Harris; an idea which the Rebecca character considers but chooses to reject.
Grandma Anne With Dad (left) & Uncle Michael (right), both born in the UK. Two older brothers, Alec and Manny, came as infants with Grandma Anne from the Pale. The Rossinov family changed its name to Harris (based on my grandfather’s first name, Herschel) around 1930.
My mother’s family were musicians; quite quickly in England becoming far more high-falutin’ type musicians than the klezmer musicians in Rags, although I suspect my family arrived performing in much that style.
Grandpa Lew, sitting, with Great Uncle Max standing. Max was already an accomplished musician (strings) when they came to England, Grandpa Lew came as an infant and was never trained as a musician, but I’m told could play pretty much anything on the piano by ear. I inherited none of that.
More importantly, much of the big picture story of Rags resonates very strongly today, I’d argue to a greater extent than it did in 1986. Anti-immigration is a large element of the Brexit saga and also the Trump experience in the USA. The issues around ghettoisation, cultural assimilation and the like are very much with us, albeit not so much in the Jewish community any more. Questions around whether migrants are desirable for sound economic reasons, wanted for reasons of commercial exploitation, accepted because allowing migration is the right thing to do or not wanted at all – these questions are high on the agenda in most nations.
Despite my reservations about the book and some of the songs, I think this is a really super production and a performance piece for our time; it has the potential to do extremely well.
So what did I really think about Lydia White’s performance?
I can try to compare it to the many performances of Newsrevue casts I have seen. On that score, I can honestly say that her performance would be a standout in that environment. An environment where standout performers (e.g. from my era, Dorthy Atkinson and Rosie Cavaliero) have tended to go on to have very successful careers.
In Rags The Musical, the whole cast is very strong and/but Lydia more than holds her own in that company. For a professional debut I think it is an extremely assured and talent-packed start to her career.
It was also a great pleasure to chat with Lydia for a while after the show and learn/observe what a friendly, tight-knit group the company seems to be. Lydia won’t get that everywhere she goes in her show business career, but it’s good news that her first production is such a good one with such a together company.
Blood Knot at the Orange Tree was also excellent, but if I was only going to see one of these productions, I’d personally choose Aloes, both for the play and for the production.
We saw a preview of Blood Knot, but I think my comments will apply throughout the run.
Blood Knot is a relentlessly grim play. The play is about two half-brothers in Port Elizabeth who are Cape Coloured, to use the hateful vernacular of the South African Apartheid regime. One is light-skinned and could pass for white, while the other is dark-skinned and is more likely to be regarded as black.
The poverty and hopelessness of the brothers’ situation pervades the whole play. The brothers are extremely well portrayed by Nathan McMullen and Kalungi Ssebandeke.
But the play is very slow. Especially the first half. Let’s be honest about this – and I am an Athol Fugard fan saying this – Fugard plays tend to start very slow. Lengthy periods of scene-setting and atmosphere-generating are intrinsic to Fugard’s style.
Blood Knot is especially slow to build. It is an early work and I think Fugard himself would admit that his craft as a playwright improved with experience.
It was a ground-breaking piece in its time; 1961. Fugard himself played Morrie and was testing the boundaries of Apartheid law; loopholes which for a while allowed white and black actors to appear on stage together.
All this and more about the horrible history of racist laws, South African colonialism and the Cape Coloured community are explained in fascinating essays in this production’s programme. I don’t often specifically commend a programme but this one I found hugely informative and interesting.
At the start of the interval, Janie pondered leaving before the second half, but then came round to the idea of seeing the production through.
By the end of the evening, she was really pleased she decided to see the second half – as was I. Still not racey, but the piece makes far more sense as a whole and the second half answers at least some of the questions at a reasonable lick.
Not the very best of Fugard, but still very much worth seeing.
When I say, “funny people” in this context, I mean comedy people, not necessarily strange people. Some of them might also be strange of course, but I’ll leave that judgement to the reader.
Funny-comedic, not necessarily funny-strange: Rohan Candappa
First up, for lunch on Tuesday 5 March, was Rohan Candappa. He wanted to try a Malaysian & Indonesian restaurant, Melur, on the Edgware Road. As I had requested that we meet somewhere over my side, as I needed to be at Lord’s for a game of tennis afterwards, that seemed a reasonable choice to me.
The weather forecast suggested heavy rain around the time I’d be finishing at Lord’s, so I took my car to Aberdeen Place and parked there ahead of lunch.
The food at Melur was excellent. I was restrained in my choices given the tennis bout ahead, going for an inoffensive Nasi Goreng. Rohan went for a more spicy version and for some roti canai, which I tasted and reckon was a pretty darned good roti. I shall forever more associate that dish with Rohan, so much so that I’ll think of it as…Rohan Kanhai. Coincidentally, I shall similarly forever be reminded of that Guyanese cricketer when I recall Rohan Candappa’s visit to Lord’s with me, last year:
I’m thinking of naming my novel genre “Mock Tudor Rock”
Rohan, who plans to manage my band, made several branding suggestions – I responded to those thoughts subsequently as follows:
The Wessex Petards might work better as a band name the The Wessex Pistols and I still feel that Sir Michael Smear is a more visceral nom de punk than Sir John Rancid. But I cannot better your album name – Never Mind The Bailiwicks – it ought to go gold or platinum on the name alone, before we release so much as a tiny sound sample…in fact it had better go gold or platinum before we release so much as a tiny sound sample.
I very much hope my thoughts were helpful and that Rohan can find a way to make the Threadmash idea work for all concerned.
I had allowed loads of time between lunch and tennis, so brought plenty of reading matter with me which I enjoyed reading over a couple of excellent cups of coffee at Café Laville, overlooking the canal in sunshine.
Then on to Lord’s in order to be taught a lesson by one of my favourite real tennis opponents who has recovered from injury since I last played him and seemed keen to let me see how well he can now move around the court. A surprisingly close match in the circumstances – I thought I did well to get close.
On Thursday 7 March I had a music lesson with Ian Pittaway, who passed expert judgement on my Mock Tudor Rock…
Place the rascal in the stocks at once!
…while helping me with some other silly ideas (watch this space) and sensible techniques (don’t hold your breath).
Then a visit from John Random for a bite of lunch and the second of two sessions of NewsRevue archiving. The first session was 25 January. John has a large collection of NewsRevue programmes, flyers and reviews, which simply needed to be digitised.
We succeeded in scanning it all in two sessions, despite lots of chat, listening to some music and cricket-match like breaks for lunch/tea.
Following some cheerful chat about murder rates around the world, which identified Mexico and especially Tijuana as a hot spot, we both agreed that Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass must have a lot to answer for. So we listened to a fair smattering of Herb. John was especially taken with his version of the Third Man theme…
…and his version of A Walk In The Black Forest:
We decided that this type of music is, in many ways, the soundtrack of our childhood. Of course we like to remember the cool stuff from the 1960’s and no doubt have listened to far more of the cool stuff in later life, but when we were kids this was the music that was being played on the radios and gramophone players most of the time in our homes and the homes we visited.
We also of course chatted about NewsRevue casts, shows and material gone by. We discussed one of my own classics from more than 25 years ago, Mad Frogs And Englishmen, which I realised I hadn’t yet Ogblogged. I have put that right now:
Job done in terms of the archiving, it was time for us to set off for one of our regular Ivan Shakespeare Memorial gatherings – at which NewsRevue writers from years gone by gather to eat, chat, laugh and informally quiz.
It was International Women’s Day today, so we found ourselves an all male gathering this time. In addition to me and John: Gerry Goddin, Mark Keagan, Barry Grossman, Colin Stutt and a rare but much appreciated visit from NewsRevue founder and “father of the house” Mike Hodd.
The venue was the Spaghetti House in Holborn this time; a good notch up in service and food quality from Cafe Rogues in my view. My first time there but not the group’s first time.
For many years John Random has talked about his vicarious support for a football team by the name of Blyth Spartans. His home town, Hartlepool, is John’s real team but he has carried a torch for this other team for decades.
John excitedly reported that he finally got to visit Blyth Spartans and saw an exciting match there just the other week. I believe it was this match. I feel that this momentous event needs recording for posterity, as does an image of John wearing his new Blyth Spartans titfer.
John reported on the event as follows:
I would like to say a big thank you to all those of you who came out to the Spaghetti House on Thursday night. Thanks also to Mike, Colin and Gerry for their entertaining quizzes. Falling as it did, almost on International Women’s Day I regret to report that NewsRevue has still not come clean on its gender pay gap. We haven’t even had any jokes about it, yet – though I have a feeling, we will – and soon.
As I said earlier, it had been a funny week.
Funny ha-ha, not funny peculiar.
Well, maybe funny ha-ha AND funny peculiar. Good times with good friends.
…Rohan Candappa implored me to attempt Sound Of The Suburbs by The Members in a similar style.
My problem with Sound Of the Suburbs, though, is that I never found it convincing as a new wave or punk anthem. On that track, The Members always felt like a “me too” act, performing in a style that wasn’t authentically them.
Indeed, my research uncovered a few uncomfortable facts about The Members. Firstly, they were from Camberley, which is not what I’d describe as a suburb; I’d call Camberley “home counties”.
I also discovered that the lead man in The Members took Nicky Tesco as his “nom de punk”. Not very punk in my view, next to names like Sid Vicious and Rat Scabies.
Hence my adaptation being, “The Sound Of Home Counties” – a mash up of Sound Of the Suburbs with Tell me Daphne by William Byrd.
My nom de punk is Ged Waitrose
Rohan Candappa said, “never explain”, but then I don’t listen to everything Rohan says.
Rohan also said, “Ian, you’re a Rock God”. I’m rolling with that idea; Rohan talks a lot of sense sometimes.
Here’s The Sound Of The Suburbs by The Members:
While here, believe it or not, is the version of Tell Me Daphne with the highest number of YouTube hits in the whole of the webosphere:
In truth, Inside Bitch is not quite such a visceral, blow the audience away piece. It is a thoughtfully and entertainingly devised workshop-style piece in which women who have actually been to prison go through a post-modern process on stage of trying to devise a women in prison drama based on reality rather than the sensationalism normally seen in films and TV dramas on that topic.
The show is just over an hour long. Some bits worked better than others for us but for sure we found the piece entertaining throughout. That, despite the fact that many of the references to film and especially to TV drama on the topic were wasted on me and Janie because we simply don’t watch/have never seen that stuff. But we could imagine.
The place was packed with the cast and crew’s nearest and dearest the night we went, which was preview Saturday, so the tumultuous reception was to be expected but was nevertheless deserved.
I have long been a fan of Athol Fugard’s plays. I started reading them in the mid 1980s when on a play reading spree: The Road To Mecca, Master Harold And the Boys…
…they don’t come around all that often to get sight of them. Yet, like London buses, sometimes two come along at roughly the same time. Next week we’ll go and see another one; Blood Knot at the Orange Tree.
Coincidentally, I have lately been writing up my 1988 theatre visits – which was another period during which two Fugards came along in quick succession – A Place With The Pigs:
This one, A Lesson From Aloes, was right up there, in my view, as a memorable night of top notch theatre drama.
Janet Suzman has directed a fine cast; Dawid Minnaar, David Rubin and Janine Ulfane, in this wonderfully claustrophobic play, set in the early 1960s, about left-leaning folk in the Eastern Cape having had their lives ruined one way or another by Apartheid.
As is so often the case with Fugard, the political undertones are played out in a drama about family and relationships.
In many ways Janie and I weren’t in the mood for this depth of drama on that Friday evening – we’d both had busier, more tiring weeks than we’d pre-planned – but the sheer quality of the play, performances and staging kept us both gripped throughout.
At the time of writing this production has only just opened and has not yet been formally reviewed, nor is it yet sold out. My advice, if you are reading this in time, is to book early to avoid disappointment. Here’s the link again…
…while here is an interesting rehearsal video from this Finborough production:
Janet Suzman was there on that Friday evening (I think the last preview night) so I was pleased to be able to tell her personally that I thought the production was extremely good.
.jpg)
