We saw a preview on our first night in Stratford-Upon-Avon. The next day, we went back for a talk and discussion with several of the creatives for this production.
Janie and I really enjoyed this play/production. We had just arrived in Stratford on a four-day short break and were quite tired that evening. Nevertheless this play held our attention throughout, making us smile., laugh and think in equal measure.
It is set in an “English As A Foreign Language” class in Karaj, Iran, c2008. A class of four, each with their own reason for wanting or needing to attend this class and gain a “Test-Of-English-As-A -Foreign-Language” certificate are taught by a hugely enthusiastic Iranian woman who loves the English language and tries to instil that enthusiasm in her variously enthusiastic, reluctant and/or cognitively-conflicted students.
A recipe for some interesting drama, which is exactly what we got.
As we saw one of the last previews, I suspect that little will have changed since we saw this production. Having said that, as we ascertained at the talk/discussion the next day, director Diyan Zoya is very hands-on in working with a cast to improve continuously throughout and beyond the preview period.
In the discussion, we saw and heard from not only Diyan Zoya but also Maria Tarokh (movement and cultural advisor) and Sara Amini (assistant director text and dialect). The discussion was led by Conrad Lynch, who has produced the show.
We thought the play and production excellent. Reviews have started to come out (he says, writing just a few days after the press night). This link is a search term that should find most or all of them. The reviews so far have been mixed, with Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph not liking it a lot and Arifa Akbar in The Guardian slamming it. Yet it gets good or excellent reviews from Amya Ryan in the Times, Michael Davies in WhatsOnStage and Catherine Love in The Stage to name but three others.
Perhaps best to see it and judge for yourselves – Janie and I thought it was 90 minutes very well spent in the theatre.
It looked like such a good idea in the flyer months ago…
We love The Orange Tree Theatre and try to support as much as we can, especially when it gets around to promoting new writing on topics that interest us.
Lord’s, present day. It’s the Women’s Cricket World Cup: England versus India. There’s a rain delay. Tensions mount, ambitions are laid bare and a whole new tactical game begins. Calcutta in the eighteenth century. Two British administrators in colonial India encounter challenges on the field of play that threaten the entire regime.
In this game of integrity and power, past and present collide. Kate Attwell’s funny and provocative play explores and explodes the mythology of fair play.
You’ll also spot some good-looking summary reviews if you click that link, so might conclude that Janie and I are in a minority when we report that we both found this play and production a dud.
Heaven knows, I might sometimes look like a caricature of an MCC member trying to look young and hip at Lord’s…
The problems we had with TESTMATCH were many and varied. We thought the script repetitive, the jokes mostly unfunny and the important points, of which there were many, delivered without subtlety and often with counter-effective impact if impact at all.
In truth, the whole piece felt like an excuse to discuss a whole heap of very real issues around race, gender, commercial power and fair play, delivered like me trying to hit the cover off a cricket ball with a long-handled bat – i.e. terrible mishits such that they either missed the metaphorical ball completely or hit that metaphor up in the air for a dolly catch.
We are used to suspending belief for theatre, but the notion that such conversations and action could possibly take place in The Lord’s Pavilion during a rain interval in a major women’s international match shows ignorance of how professional the women’s game has become in the 20+ years since Janie and I started following international women’s cricket.
And don’t get me started on the notion that women cricketers might have been advocating roundarm and/or overarm bowling at the time of the Great Bengal famine.
It was hard to tell whether the cast was limited by ability, the script or some eccentric directing, but the style of delivery came across to us as more like “try hard am-dram” than professional performance.
But heck, if you are considering seeing this play, you should read the theatre reviews, which I hadn’t read before writing the above. On the whole, they support our criticisms, but come down far more favourably on this production than we did. Click here for links to reviews.
For me, the highlight of the evening was getting to bowl at one of the performers a couple of times at the end of the interval. Had I realised it was supposed to be 1770, I’d have bowled underarm. And had I realised that my 20-30 mph dobblers would seem fast in the restricted space of The Orange Tree, I’d have tried to bowl even slower than usual.
Is it possible to bowl slower than this?
A member of the audience even praised my bowling as we left. A gentleman who is easily pleased, he might well have also enjoyed the play.
It’s been a while, what with one thing and another, since John White and I have had a dinner and catch up…just the two of us.
It was time to put that matter right and through the trusty services of this Ogblog, which some consider to be a fifth emergency service, we ascertained that it was John’s turn to choose the restaurant and my turn to burst into tears when the bill is presented.
We washed that down with a bottle of Austrian Riesling (absent from the on-line wine menu, I notice).
We nearly chose the oysters, but as we were just one day away from the months with no Rs in them, we thought better of it.
All was going swimmingly well, until the portion of dumplings arrived.
Three dumplings to be precise.
Three absolutely succulent, delicious and tempting-looking dumplings.
The following dialogue ensued:
JOHN: Oh dear! Typical! A portion of three for two people to share.
WAITER: You’ll just have to fight over the third one.
ME: Do you have any boxing gloves?
WAITER: I think so, I’ll check at the back and bring them with the rest of your dishes.
Matters took a darker turn when the portion of three Black Tiger Prawns arrived -[did you see what I did there?]
WAITER: A portion of three prawns.
ME: Have you found the boxing gloves?
WAITER: No, can’t find them.
John and I were then briefly and thankfully distracted by the need to sing “Happy Birthday To You” to the nice Filipino gentleman at the next table to us, having been set up for the performance by the Irish partner of the birthday-nik.
This is exactly the sort of thing for which I have been taking singing lessons with John’s daughter, Lydia, for the last four years:
John & I talked about many things, not least our very different experiences of revising for our finals 40 years ago…or in my case finding extraordinary ways to avoid doing so. John basically put his head down for 12 weeks after being elected as a sabbatical, whereas I…didn’t. I only mentioned two of the three pieces linked below over dinner, as this first of them – relevant to John and other friends for many other reasons, was un-writ until the next day:
All too soon it was time to pay. It was at this juncture that matters took a potentially violent turn. While reaching into my pocket to get out my gadget…
…the smart phone which doubles as a payment card for goodness sake. What did you think I meant? And stop sniggering at the back…
…I dropped John’s new business card (or should I say card for his new business) on the floor. These days, contact details are mostly exchanged through QR codes and links like this one, but never mind.
John was apoplectic with faux rage and challenged me to a duel in Hanover Square.
I had visions that I needed to say yes in order to prevent the beautifully appointed Dania restaurant ending up looking like the scene below.
I realised afterwards that John’s Hanover Square challenge was merely a device to encourage me to walk in that direction with John, after dinner, where he could pick up the Elizabeth Line and I could pick up the Central Line.
In any case, surely John knew that there is a clear sign on the boundary of Hanover Square that reads, “no duelling, unless it is the first day of the month, with an R in it”.
Health and safety gone mad, but don’t get us old gits started.
John sometimes struggles with multi-clause rules, so I am reliably informed that he turned up at Hanover Square the next morning, 1st May, with his second, expecting me to do likewise and duel with him.
Naturally, I’ll now live in dread of 1st September for the next four months. Still, hopefully we’ll get together before that. If our next get together includes Mandy and Janie, I expect that the duelling challenge will be long forgotten by 1st September.
Last year all four of us at peace in Pahli Hill
Joking apart, it was a really enjoyable (and peaceful) evening, as always, with John.
We liked the participation elements of the show and threw ourselves into those with reckless abandon.
Mucking about inside a black bag…or rather, “performing Bag Piece” as I should properly describe it, seemed like my idea of fun…
…until I realised that I needed to get up again and get out of the bag…
Rescued by a helpful exhibition steward who also kindly consented to being photographedJanie seemed more at home in a black bag
Then on to an exhibit where you can draw (and/or photograph) your companion’s shadow on the artwork.
Some wags might suggest that I look better in the shadowthan in real lifeA rare opportunity to vandalise an art work with both a hammer & the artist’s consent.Has Janie missed me while I was messing with the art works?
Then on to the refugee boat piece for some more graffiti art
Janie was then horrified to learn that our next contribution to Yoko’s art required us to eulogise our mothers.
Oh crikey!Let’s work on this one togetherResultBottomsI think I’ll play whiteMore messages of peace even in the lobby outside the exhibition
And in the new swanky bar on the river side of the Tate Modern…
…a message in a bottle of ginger beer.
We enjoyed our afternoon. Shame about the rush hour journey home, saved by dint of using the Elizabeth Line westbound instead of the Central.
“Don’t mess with my partitas, mate!”, Heinrich Biber
Hmmm, we were neither of us sure about this one. We really enjoyed bits of it, while spending some of our listening time hoping for certain pieces to end.
Queenslander Brett Dean comes across as a genuinely nice bloke who surrounds himself with musicians who like to play with him. His compositions, though, borrow from well-known composers and tunes, deconstructing and reconstructing them in ways that could only please ears wired differently from ours.
Brett claimed that the music in his concert spanned the 16th to the 21st century, only omitting the 19th century. I would dispute that claim. His “some birthday” piece of 1992 is a sort-of variations on the tune we know as “Happy Birthday To You”, which was first published in 1893 as “Good Morning To All” in “Song Stories for the Kindergarten” by Patty and Mildred J. Hill. While the Hill’s copyright is famously disputed, that tune is surely 19th century.
Here’s the oldest known version – let’s not even think about what Brett’s version looks like on the page
Anyway…
…here’s a nice recording of the first movement of Biber’s 7th parthia, which was the first piece we heard:
Janie and I both found George Benjamin‘s piece too weird for us. George kindly turned up to take the applause afterwards – turns out he’s a Londoner. Here’s a recording of it enabling you to judge for yourselves:
Byrd’s Fantasia pieces are lovely little vignettes. That segment was too short (or there were too few of them) for my taste. Here’s a nice example of one played by a consort of viols (almost certainly what Byrd had in mind) rather than violas and cello – which we heard and still sounded lovely:
The highlight of the evening, for us, was to see the young gifted harpsichordist/pianist Xiaowen Shang play with such joy and expression. For us she played Byrd’s Earl of Salisbury pavan and galliard, plus The Bells – both favourites of mine – on the harpsichord. Below, a video of her playing a lovely piece of Bach on the piano:
The Earl of Salisbury pavan is such a favourite of mine. Xiaowen played it beautifully, if a little twiddley for my taste. Below is Janie’s hand-held recording of Reuben Ard playing it on the electric virginals at Hampton Court Palace last year, for my Gresham Society event there:
Let’s not talk too much about the things Brett Dean did to Byrd’s beautiful pavan and his take on Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No 6. Imagine PDQ Bach in a really bad mood, unable to make jokes.
“There’s nothing funny about feet either” (Janie, attrib. PDQ Bach)
It seemed to take an age to segue from Brett’s “treatment” to the concerto itself, which was a rather glorious and suitable choice of closing number for a concert that focussed to a large extent on the idea of two violas. By the time the concerto finally arrived, we thought we’d more than earned some ear candy.
Here’s a lovely rendering of the Bach by some sensible Dutch people who don’t mess with it:
“Is that it?”, asked Janie as the applause rang out for the Brandenburg.
To a late evening jazz concert in the crypt of St John’s Smith Square. The Harry Baker Trio. A young bunch. We’d not seen or heard of them before, but that’s our problem, not theirs.
A small, select audience. A few younger people, plus one or two other tables of seasoned folk like ourselves.
Here’s a short video of the three of them playing one of Harry Baker’s own moody compositions, which we thought were rather good:
But most of the evening comprised them playing standards, the most effective of which were the livelier ones: St Thomas by Sonny Rollins, Empty Pockets by Herbie Hancock, something less well-known by Thelonious Monk and Tempus Fugit by Bud Powell.
These three know what they are doing and play without pretention and with evident joy.
We very much enjoyed our evening. Good luck to them.
But somewhat out of the blue, a few weeks ago, Teresa got in touch to say that she would be making a rare visit to London and the timings worked for her to visit Noddyland for tea.
How very civilised.
Janie went to work immediately on the matter of home baked cakes…
…she called Cafe 11 up the road and ordered a huge chunk of lemon cake and a huge chunk of pistachio cake.
Top method for ensuring that you offer the highest quality of baked cakes.
It was really lovely to see Teresa again, after all these years. There was a fair bit of catching up to do on where life had taken us all, but we were soon able to move on to trying to put the world to rights:
One afternoon wasn’t quite enough to solve all of the world’s problems
The afternoon whizzed by, then Teresa went off to have an early evening meet up with her son John. As Teresa said in her note this morning, which Janie and I echo:
I’m not entirely sure what motivated me to book Joe Lovano, as I was aware that he had some connections with that school but also with many other schools of jazz. I played a few snippets on YouTube and reckoned that Janie’s love of the saxophone would conquer all.
The first two or three minutes did not go well. In particular, Marilyn Crispell’s first few bars on the piano sounded really free, really free, really-really-really free, to me.
Were I a praying person, I would have been praying for the gig to warm up.
It did warm up.
I was more impressed by Carmen Castaldi on the drums than Janie was. He was assisted at times by Joe Lovano himself, who not only played the saxophone but also the gongs and a shaky-stick thing which defies description other than the term “shaky stick thing”. It might have been a cacho seedpod stick. I think that both of them also used some loose seedpods a few times. It all felt a bit experimental and “do what you like” at that end of the percussion section.
But heck, this trio is old enough and experienced enough to do what they like. I have said many times that Wigmore Hall is one of the few places left where stewards refer to us, without irony, as young man and young woman. But these days we rarely feel, as we did that evening, that we are youngsters next to all of the performers. No matter.
Here’s a little documentary released by ECM in 2019 when this trio started working together:
Here’s a recording of a whole live gig from 2022 in Luxembourg, some of which will sound much like the music we heard:
At the end of the evening we ran into John Thirlwell, one of my real tennis pals from Lord’s. Come to think of it, Lord’s is the only other place left, apart from Wigmore Hall, where we are still addressed by stewards as young man and young woman without irony.
Totally genuine picture taken on the night in question
I needed to get one more Ogblog piece in before the end of the 2023/24 tax year, obviously, so have chosen briefly to write up the Ivan Shakespeare Dinner which took place on 4 April 2024.
These gatherings of former NewsRevue writers (most of us relics from the 1990s) are a source of great joy. As Graham said at the end of the dinner,
I laugh far more at one of these evenings than I would if I paid to see almost any comedy show in town.
We’ve been enjoying these events for decades now – a couple of examples below:
John Random is our ringleader for these get togethers. In real life John might not be the most organised person I know, but oh boy is he better than all the rest of us put together in the matter of organising these gatherings.
As the years have gone on, it’s not just been Ivan we have been memorialising but several other “fallen” from our ranks. On this occasion, Barry brought a little memorial photograph tribute, which was lacking a picture of at least one of the fallen and which lacks room for any additional pictures. Either hope way in excess of expectation, or Barry plans to cram in some smaller pictures when the time comes.
John deferred on the quizzing this time, allowing Colin and Graham to confound us with some good quizzy offerings. Graham’s revolved around hit song lyrics, which he (and Sue) expected me to smash [did you see what I did there?] but I came up well short on that game, failing similarly on Colin’s quiz. I don’t think I am much of a solo quizzer to be honest. I work better as part of a team…
Anyway, Ivan Shakespeare dinners are not primarily about the quizzing, they are about mirth and convivial dining. I think I’m reasonably good at that.
Colin commented that we don’t often take pictures at these events, which I realised is true. The six of us who gathered this evening: Barry, Colin, Graham, John, Mark, and me – might never again comprise the exact group of an actual Ivan Shakespeare dinner. So obviously the event needed to be commemorated with a picture – see headline and below.
Proof…not that proof should be needed…that we are all absolutely fine.
There is no reason for anyone to question the veracity of this picture. My plea, should the gutter press start to delve deeply where they are not wanted, is to scream, “leave us alone FFS”.
…Janie needed surprisingly little persuading to do it again. We are not getting away much at all at the moment, not least because of “The Duchess’s” frailty, which makes this type of long weekend away…but not too far away…an attractive propsition.
This time I managed to secure us, via Airbnb, a cottage in Petworth itself, which proved a far easier and more attractive proposition than the “village nearby”, Fittleworth, last time, which required us to use the car and taxis a fair bit.
Before West Sussex, we first we went to Brighton and Hove for a bit of clothes shopping at Pendulum and then a visit to Cousin Sidney & Joan.
The weather was less than special on the Friday, but Dumbo was in fine form (i.e. the car worked properly this year) and we got to do the things we intended to do within the timescales we had intended them.
After checking in to our Airbnb cottage and resting up briefly, we returned to Basmati, where we had dined last year, for an Indian meal on that first night. It was a treat to only have to walk five minutes to get there. Indeed everywhere we went in Petworth we only had to walk five minutes to get there. It’s that kind of town.
Janie-style picture. I look like Clement Freud’s dog while Janie cunningly removes the worst excesses of my bald patch by cutting off the top of my head.
We probably slightly overdid the choosing of blander options at Basmati – I had forgotten that this is a place where they understand “not too hot” and can adapt accordingly. Still, a tasty meal.
On Saturday, we mostly relaxed in our lovely cottage.
In the morning the weather was bright but very cold. We used that as our opportunity to stroll the town, do a little shopping (Janie only bought one item in Tallulah Fox this time, which is a bit of a record), including some grub for smaller meals at The Hungry Guest and a wander around Petworth’s Saturday Farmers Market.
Choosing the morning for our wandering made sense as the heavens opened for most of the afternoon – really heavy, wet, cold rain. We enjoyed the snug warmth of our cottage.
Then the rains topped, allowing us a pleasant stroll to E.Street Restaurant for an excellent dinner.
Janie took an infeasibly large number of pictures of me eating there, which remind me of the pictures “The Duchess’s” carers take every day to prove that “her grace” is eating.
No-one really wants to see that.
Here, instead, is one the maître d’ took of us both.
It was an excellent meal.
On the Sunday, to Petworth House Real Tennis Court, where I met with triumph and disaster…and tried to treat those two impostors just the same.
Handshakes all round after the triumph of my first goPeter Brunner and I, showing stoic resolve to no avail in my second go
Lunch and chat after my second go, after which we watched and cheered Peter’s second go, which was the final rubber and a nail-biter, through which he and his partner prevailed, to level the fixture and enable all to go home satisfied.
In truth, the purpose of fixtures such as these Dedanist matches is more the social and fun of it than the result. Robert Muir and his wife, Carol, expertly organise such days to be maximally convivial; competitive only to the extent that we all have fun playing the game we love.
In the evening, tired but happy, Janie and I supped on some of the cheeses we had bought the previous day, before taking an early night.
Naturally, we celebrated the end of our long weekend on our return to London on the Monday with a game of lawn tennis at Boston Manor, as oft we do.
