Category: Theatre

Royal Courts And Good Houses In Renaissance Italy & Sloane Square, Not Least: A Good House by Amy Jephta, Royal Court Theatre, 11 January 2025

The worlds of tennis and theatre were intertwined for several centuries from the Renaissance onwards. I describe these connections in some detail, in the context of late Renaissance England, in the performance piece I wrote for The Gresham Society event at Hampton Court in the summer of 2023:

Hampton Court, Tennis, Gresham, Music & Drama

And there is surely no-one in the world who knows more about late medieval tennis and theatre than Cees de Bondt, who wrote THE book about tennis in Renaissance Italy, including a whole chapter entitled Tennis Courts Used As Theatres.

So, when Chris Bray, the senior real tennis professional at Lord’s, told me in early December that Cees de Bondt would be visiting in early January, that Chris thought we’d have a lot of shared interest in Renaissance tennis to discuss, and asked whether I would like to join them for lunch, I said:

yes please.

Then I got one of my attacks of imposter syndrome. I thought, I’d better mug up on the subject of tennis in Renaissance Italy, so I ordered a copy of Cees’s book, and, ahead of its arrival, arranged an appointment with the MCC library copy of said book.

My copy arrived during Twixtmas. I was just over half way through the book come the appointed day for the lunch, 9 January. I brought my copy with me for Cees to sign. I even remembered to bring a pen with me for the signing, which is more than can be said for my own first ever book signing:

My First Ever Book Signing, Clean Business Cuisine (the book), Actors’ Workshop Halifax (the venue), Yet Something Was Missing, 5 July 2000

But I digress.

A Good Lunch, Lord’s Tavern, 9 January 2025

Cees and Chris Bray go back several decades, to 1986 to be precise, when Cees and the Dutch Real Tennis Association had their first real encounter with real tennis. It was very kind of Chris to invite me to join them for lunch. Also at lunch was Cees’s charming travelling companion, Lenne Van Leusden, who is studying English and Theatre at University.

I told Cees that I had quite a few questions for him about Renaissance tennis in Italy.

That’s OK, I have a few questions for you too,

said Cees, before answering my questions very thoughtfully and engaging in lots of interesting discussion about real tennis, past present and future.

Some of Cees (and Leene’s) questions, to me, were about theatre, not least because they were keen to find some good serious, perhaps fringe, theatre to see that weekend.

Rather short notice, I thought, but I skimmed through the listings with them pointing out one or two possibilities, before mentioning A Good House at the Royal Court, as Janie and I would be going to that one on Saturday evening.

As luck would have it, there was a pair of good seats available for that evening (returns I should imagine given the dearth of seats left for that night), which Chris Bray helped them to snap up after our lunch and the mini-tour of Lord’s upon which I hastily took the visitors.

Lord’s Pavilion (top) & Villa D’Este (bottom) – A Good House brings good fortune, eh?

Janie and I arranged to meet Cees and Lenne for a drink before the play at The Royal Court, which was a lovely opportunity to continue our conversations, a little more in the modern theatre context than the medieval tennis context this time, and for Janie to meet these good people.

A Good House, Royal Court Theatre, 11 January 2025

We loved this play/production. By we, I am sure I can add Cees and Leene to the votes of me and Janie. We saw the first preview and/but the production was very slick and the play seemed to work extremely well, so we imagine we saw the production pretty much as it will run.

Amy Jephta is a South African playwright and this piece is very much a modern South African play. It is a co-production with the Bristol Old Vic and The Market Theatre Johannesburg, the piece having been commissioned jointly by The Royal Court and The Fugard Theatre.

Here is a link to the Royal Court rubric for the play/production.

While the piece is firmly rooted in a South African style middle-class suburban community, the issues with which the piece grapples: community, identity, race, class and the fear of invasion from the outside…

…all seemed to be very relevant and topical issues to Western societies, indeed the whole world today.

The play was funny (mostly but not only “comedy of embarrassment”), dramatic, sad and thought-provoking. The acting throughout was excellent. Stand out performances, for me, were Sifiso Mazibuko and Mimî M Khayisa, who played Sihle and Bonolo respectively, but all four other performers, Kai Luke Brummer, Olivia Darnley, Robyn Rainsford & Scott Sparrow performed their parts very well.

Nancy Medina is proving to be a very reliable director – Janie and I saw her production of Strange Fruit at The Bush before the pandemic and were similarly impressed.

This production runs only until 8 February, so I would suggest that interested readers book early to avoid disappointment, as we’ll be most surprised if the formal reviews after press night on 17 January don’t lead to a rush to snap up the remaining seats.

Once reviews are out, click here to see them.

Anyway, that’s what Janie and I call a good start to the “going out year”.

Lies Where It Falls by Ruairi Conaghan, Finborough Theatre, 20 December 2024

We found this piece absolutely fascinating and an engrossing piece of drama at The Finborough. Here is a link to the Finborough page about the play/production.

Just in case anything ever goes awry with that link – here is a scrape of it.

In short, Ruairi Conaghan’s uncle Rory was brutally gunned down during the Northern Ireland troubles when Ruairi was a young lad. The trauma of that family tragedy manifested itself big time in Ruairi after he had played IRA bomber Patrick Magee and moved on to the role of The Player King in a major production of Hamlet.

Lies Where It Falls is Ruairi Conaghan’s before, during and after story of his near-breakdown some ten years ago – forty years after the tragedy.

Janie and I both got a great deal out of this piece and Ruari’s performance.

We stayed on for a panel discussion which included playwright Seamus Finnegan, director, teacher and writer Andy Hinds, plus multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker Corie McGowan.

In truth, the panel discussion did far less for us than the gripping piece. But it did give me the opportunity to ask Ruairi the question that had been burning in my mind through most of the play:

IAN: Was/is the process of writing and performing that piece cathartic for you?

RUAIRI: Writing it was cathartic for me, my performing it is cathartic for you, the audience.

Good answer. Good writer. Good performer.

Lies Where It Falls got deservedly rave reviews at Edinburgh this year and should progress to bigger audiences elsewhere than the short run at the Finborough Theatre allows.

Tender by Eleanor Tindall, Bush Studio, 23 November 2024

Janie and I love the Bush Theatre and we love the Bush Studio.

Sometimes love puts people through trials and ordeals. On a horribly wet, blowy night, Janie and I wondered whether we love the Bush THAT much when we set off to see this show.

No pressure, but it had better be good…

…said a windswept me to the faintly-amused-rather-than-horrified young woman who sold me the play text.

We needn’t have worried. The Bush Studio has, once again, found and produced a truly excellent piece of small-scale theatre.

Here is a link to the Bush page on this play/production.

Light on plot and heavy on coincidence, the play explores the love trials and ordeals of two young women who fall for each other but who both, in different ways, working their way out of relationships with men. The piece is laced with symbolism and surrealism, at times reminiscent of Lorca, at other times reminiscent of Greek tragedy. We both liked its weirdness.

The play is performed as a two-hander by Nadi Kemp-Sayfi and Annabel Baldwin. We had seen Nadi Kemp-Sayfi before – in A Museum In Baghdad. Both are excellent actresses. The strength of the theatrical experience is surely down to those two and the director, Emily Aboud, who surely got the most out of their undoubted talents.

We saw the last preview. The audience was a little sparse, but perhaps that was a preview thing; a stormy Saturday before Monday’s Press Night. The audience was mostly people who were a lot younger than us; makes a change to go to places where we bring the average age up considerably.

We left the theatre feeling thoroughly exhilarated and genuinely glad that we weathered the storms to see that production. Having foreshadowed the tempestuousness of the relationships on show in the play, the weather then pandered to us as we left The Bush, keeping the wind and piss to a minimum for our journey home, before letting rip again soon after we got home.

It looks as though some tickets, especially for later in the run, are still available, whereas some nights are sold out or down to the last few. We’d thoroughly recommend this play/production, so if you fancy it, book early to avoid disappointment. Runs until 21 December 2024.

I, A Facilitator: Beyond The Library, The Mulberry Bush by Angus Wilson c/w Giant by Mark Rosenblatt, Royal Court Theatre, 29 October 2024

Angus Wilson from Wikipedia, used on the same fair use basis as Wikipedia.

I wonder whether Angus Wilson would have seen the funny side of this?

As it happens I wasn’t working on Monday (the previous day). In fact, Janie and I had just got home from a specialist’s rather gloomy prognosis on my right hip (“got to go”) and were just heading off to play tennis…

…yes I know those two phrases seem incongruous, but if the hip is more or less worn out I might as well wear it out completely before it goes…

…when I picked up an utterly unexpected e-mail from the Royal Court Theatre.

…I found you from your website, as you wrote about Mark Rosenblatt’s Giant. 

I’m reaching out from the Royal Court Theatre’s Living Archive, where we’re working on a series of events called Beyond the Library and I’m hoping you might be able to help us with a last-minute facilitation opportunity tomorrow at 5.30pm.

I know this is very out of the blue and very short notice, but we’d be grateful for your consideration…

Included was the script for The Mulberry Bush and a Facilitator Guide.

I did indeed write about Giant by Mark Rosenblatt:

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

It was obvious to me that someone had pulled out at the last minute and that the Royal Court was a bit desperate. There was a modest fee to be had, but not at the level that would get me out of bed unless I was interested/intrigued. I was interested/intrigued.

I picked up the phone and explained, truthfully, that my primary emotion was one of imposter syndrome at the thought of helping them with this. Yes, I am a seasoned facilitator, but normally for organisational/strategic topics, not the arts. Yes, I was familiar with Giant. And yes, as it happens, I have read some Angus Wilson in my time – probably more than 40 years ago. But I have never read or seen The Mulberry Bush.

I’m sure you’ll be great at it. Don’t worry about not being an arts facilitator. We’re looking for diversity in our pool of facilitators.

I suppose I offer diversity from your regular drama facilitator, but perhaps not the kind of diversity you are looking for in your stats.

Janie thought I’d get a buzz out of doing it and was prepared to put up with me hijacking the afternoon to prepare the event, so I said yes.

Janie even did some research for me, finding this excellent documentary about Angus Wilson:

I enjoyed reading The Mulberry Bush and then did some digging into how it was received when it was first shown at The Royal Court. Spoiler alert: it was not received well. I was reminded that I have heard of the play simply because it was the very first play that George Devine put on in 1956 when he started up the English Stage Company at the Royal Court. It actually felt like an extraordinary honour to be facilitating the Royal Court’s event on the topic of that seminal production.

Here is the review from The Birmingham Post:

Mulberry Bush Birmingham PostMulberry Bush Birmingham Post 06 Apr 1956, Fri The Birmingham Post (Birmingham, West Midlands, England) Newspapers.com

Here is Ken Tynan’s Observer review – sadly a bit difficult to read from the Newsppaers.com scan, but you should get the gist:

Tynan Mulberry BushTynan Mulberry Bush 08 Apr 1956, Sun The Observer (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Anyway, I got my facilitator notes ready and sent them across on the Monday evening – here they are if you want to read them, and then got on with my other activities for the next 20 hours or so.

Coincidentally, my other activities that Tuesday morning included going through my Autumn 1984 diaries, where I discovered my very first visit to the Royal Court. 8 December 1984, to see The Pope’s Wedding – what a cast! That Living Archive looks like a fabulous project, btw, and I shall no doubt be contributing observations from my 40 years or so of visiting The Royal Court.

When I got to the flat, I was able to locate my copy of Hemlock & After by Angus Wilson, but I didn’t have time to do more than skim it.

Still, I was one step ahead of my victims…I mean, the attendees, and that one step ahead seemed to be enough to get me through on the evening.

It was a pretty lively, bright bunch; a mixture of drama students, young folk new to working in theatre, writers and a few more senior folk who were just interested in having a book club style discussion.

Everyone contributed and I thought the quality of the discussion was very high. But then, what would I know? I’m not really an arts facilitator. The feedback was good, so I think it went well.

Also, I note, that the Beyond The Library series, which had plenty of spaces left for the November & December sessions when I looked on the Tuesday, has now (by Sunday) sold out. I understand that The Royal Court is considering extending the idea into 2025, so watch that space if you are interested in future such events.

It was hard work preparing, at such short notice, a discussion around a play I had never read or seen before. I fed back that 28 days would be a more suitable advanced notice than 28 hours under normal circumstances. But then, as Angus Wilson said in No Laughing Matter:

“Life isn’t just to be found, you have to work for it.”

Brace Brace by Oli Forsyth, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 26 October 2024

Janie and I were really taken with this one.

Here is a link to the Royal Court resources on this play/production. The advance description pretty much tells you all you need to know/ought to know before you see the play.

We didn’t see any reviews of the play/production before we went. Here is a link that should find most/all of the reviews.

The piece seems to have divided the critics/reviewers. The conventional press focuses on valid criticism that some elements of the plot seem unconvincing. It is hard to imagine a hijacker, who, only by dint of a passenger intervention, fails to kill hundreds of people in a plane crash, being allowed to walk free on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

But we saw through that to enjoy the dilemmas and interpersonal drama between the honeymooners whose life was ripped apart by the incident.

Oli Forsyth clearly has talent as a writer and should persevere; I’m sure there should be better yet to come from him.

But our praise is really for the production. Excellent acting, especially Anjana Vasan as the “have a go hero”, but also Phil Dunster and Craig Els. Also hats off to the production team, in particular director Daniel Raggett, who certainly helped get a quart of entertaining drama out of this pint-sized (70 minutes) play. Big ups also to Alex Payne & George Mann (fight and movement directors respectively), who managed to achieve some excellent effects in an unusually tight and three-dimensional performance setting.

Yes, there is violence in this play, but it isn’t gratuitous violence, as it is central to the story and the unfolding plot. Janie, who is even more allergic to stage violence than I am, didn’t spot the essence of the coup de théâtre at the end of the play…possibly just as well, given her reaction when I explained it to her afterwards. 😜.

Running only until 9 November 2024. It deserves a longer run or a transfer.

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

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.

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.