Janie and I went threee times in a fortnight to see RNT Studio plays at the Cottesloe. This was the first of those three visits. It was a modern Liverpudlian play of the post-Thatcherism variety. We thought it was a very good play and really enjoyed (if that is the right word) this production.
Michael Church gave it a very good review in the Observer:
I liked this play and production far more than Janie did. Where I liked the intellectual aspects of the content, Janie found them pretentious and at times confusing.
Janie and I felt motivated to see a professional production of The Real Thing a few years later at the Donmar Warehouse.I recall the play working much better, especially for Janie, second time around.
Still, I don’t think the evening went too badly. I’m pretty sure I treated the pair of them to dinner after show, but I do not recall where and both our diaries are silent on the matter.
It almost certainly would have been either Wine & Mousaka, Lisa’s or Noughts & Crosses in those days. I don’t know why, but I think it was Wine & Mousaka that first time.
The “programme” – or rather the single sheet of printed A4 you tended to get at the Orange Tree Room – went missing for this show, which is a shame.
It was one of three plays we went to see in that room above the Orange Tree Pub, which they kept going as a second venue for a while but stopped using I think later that year.
This was Janie’s and my first visit to The Orange Tree together…my first visit there full stop.
I cannot reconstruct the whole cast and creatives list, but we can ascertain that the cast included:
Michael Higgs;
Henrietta Garden;
Mairéad Carty;
Ian Angus Wilkie.
Rachel Kavanaugh directed.
I remember really liking this play and the production and really liking The Orange Tree Room. It reminded me a bit of The Gate, a small fringe venue of which I was already fond.
Did they really make more money turning that prime space into hotel rooms?…
What a cast: Maggie Steed, Trevor Baxter, Caroline Quentin, Peter Wingfield, Stefan Bednarczyk, Marcello Magni. Joint directors Mike Alfreds and Neil Bartlett.
No wonder I was keen to see it.
Still, I don’t think Janie and I were wild about this one. I was fast learning that Janie doesn’t like classics as much as she likes modern pieces, nor does she like farce. Marivaux was never likely to float Janie’s boat.
Yet worse, from a “what Janie does and doesn’t like” point of view, this production had re-located the piece in the 1930’s, adding a Cowardesque flavour to it that didn’t go down well with the reviews that are currently ( as I write in 2019) on-line/clippable.
Despite that, the sheer weight of talent on show carried the day for us, as we both found the production entertaining and could not question its quality of production.
Below is Michael Billington’s review from the Guardian:
I was reminded of this day in conversation with John Random in February 2021. I have just received a bundle of scripts and ephemera from Erica Stanton, Chris Stanton’s widow, including materials pertaining to the show, Swing Low Sweet Testicles.
John reflected on the show and mentioned a diary note about promoting the show on 15 December. I remembered seeing the show at that time, checked my diary and discovered that I saw the show on 17 December.
Below is the B-Side of the flyer for that show. The reviews must relate to an earlier Noel Christopher extravaganza, known simply as The Show, scripts for which also arrived in Erica’s bundle.
Swing Low Sweet Testicles itself mustered at least one decent review:
Can’t imagine where City Limits got that date range from – it ran from December 9th 1992 to January 17th 1993.
The cast and crew were NewsRevue stalwarts and most had been somewhat involved in my early successes with that mob.
I don’t think that Cliff Kelly had yet overlapped with my material in NewsRevue, but I might be mistaken.
Chloe Lucas had done a magnificent job of belting my Coal Digger song in the Autumn NewsRevue run preceding Swing Low Sweet Testicles. I’m pretty sure that the Coal Digger song, along with a couple of my others, was in the Christmas run of NewsRevue which I saw (for a second time) after Testicles.
Anyway, I rather enjoyed Swing Low Sweet Testicles. I was partial to Noel’s writing and was glad of the opportunity to see some of his less-topical, more-enduring material.
Below is the programme for the NewsRevue show that night, which I stayed on to see for a second time, having seen the opening night on 26 November.
Earlier That Day…Getting Into The Zone
My diary also records a memorable working day. Memorable for inadvertent, comedic reasons.
I was working as a management consultant for Binder Hamlyn at that time. On that day, I accompanied the National VAT Partner, Alan Buckett, to visit a large European Manufacturing Group, whose UK headquarters were out on the M4 corridor, to help them get their heads around something or other.
We were done with that by lunchtime and Alan suggested stopping for a bite to eat in Earls Court – a convenient stop on the way back to the City for him and a short hop to home for me, as I had an early-evening engagement with Testicles and didn’t want to go back to the City.
Alan parked his car and we walked down the Earls Court Road, in search of a wine bar/restaurant someone had recommended to him.
Ah, there it is…
…said Alan, striding towards the place he had been aiming towards.
But instead of walking down the stairs to, as I could see it, the entrance to the wine bar in question, Alan marched up the stairs and into…
Clonezone. I believe it is accurate to describe that particular store as a Gay fetishist fashion emporium.
I tried to stop him, but Alan had his stomp on and disappeared into the shop.
I waited outside for what seemed ages but was probably only a few seconds.
The tall, besuited Alan, who normally looked every inch a City gent, retreated from Clonezone rather sheepishly.
I smiled.
Alan and I went into the wine bar restaurant for a light lunch and a debrief.
Towards the end of the lunch, Alan said,
When you get back to the office, I’d just prefer it if you didn’t mention…
…I said that his Clonezone secret was safe with me. Alan is long-since retired now and I’m pretty sure, if he remembers the story at all, it’d be the funny side of it that has stuck in his mind.
Alan might well have shocked the clones within as much as they (and the place) shocked him.
Janie and I saw a preview of this one and thought it was absoutely great. Janie has since formed an aversion to Dame Judy Dench…or perhaps Janie liked this one despite Judy.
But before that, only a couple of months after getting it together, we took in some theatre and dining on a long weekend in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
My diary is not terribly helpful with the details:
In those days, bookings and arrangements would have been made by telephone, so there is no electronic trail to speak of. But I did save programmes and started retro-logging theatre visits a bit later in the 1990s. That, combined with our memories, gets us quite a long way towards remembering this trip, even as I write 25 years later.
29 October 1992
We drove up from London to Stratford-Upon-Avon, probably in quite good time (if Janie was already hopeless at packing she would have hidden this from me back then and been ready with her bags, even if had taken her hours to pack).
We would have driven up in Red Noddy, my (or I should say, at that time, still Binder Hamlyn’s) Honda Civic.
We checked in to Twelfth Night Hotel in Evesham Place…recommended by Janie’s client Margaret if Janie’s diary is anything to go by…£22 per person per night according to Janie’s diary…
…(I originally thought The Shakespeare Hotel in Chapel Street, but Janie’s diary is explicit and I now recall that The Shakespeare was from our second visit)…
I think we did a bit of gentle sightseeing during the day. Both of us had been to Stratford-Upon-Avon several times before, but neither of us had done much of the “Shakespeare trail” sightseeing stuff. So much so, that I recall we left some sightseeing stuff over for a future visit.
We weren’t going to the theatre this evening, so we booked a “top notch” place to eat; Lamb’s in Sheep Street. We had a very good meal on that visit and at the time of writing (October 2017) if TripAdvisor is to be believed it has become top notch again. But I do recall a subsequent visit (perhaps late 1990’s or more likely during the twenty-noughties) when the place was in dingy decline. Anyway, top notch it was for our first long weekend together.
31 October 1992
I think we chose to hold back on the sightseeing today (deferring to a future visit) to avoid the weekend crowds. So we mooched around and had a light lunch, ahead of a marathon effort to see a preview of Antony and Cleopatra at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, where Janie recalls we ate and drank in situ, before during and after the performance.
1 November 1992
We drove home. The diary suggests that we went to see NewsRevue at the Canal Cafe Theatre that evening. I suppose I was hopeful to see some of my stuff in the show and I don’t suppose I was disappointed at that time. It might have been Janie;s first visit, although we shall do some archaeology into Janie’s old diaries in the fullness of time. Janie’s diary appointment notes might reveal more details about her NewsRevue experiences and perhaps also about our very first long weekend away together in Stratford-Upon Avon.
It seems that Janie decided to “give Shakespeare a go” with me (we have done a few in our time) but in truth she has never got on with Shakespeare. I have got on with Shakespeare but didn’t get on so well with this play and/or this production.
It is a very long play and in truth I don’t think one of Shakespeare’s best. My log records:
We didn’t go great guns on this one.
Good cast: Richard Johnson (Antony), John Nettles (Caesar) and Clare Higgins (Cleopatra).
This production probably helped to put Janie off The Bard, but fortunately did not seem to put her off me, despite the fact that (as I recall) the back-aching and thirst-inducing length of the play did little for our moods, especially mine.
This was the first of two plays Janie and I went to see on our first long weekend away together in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
I had seen The Changeling before, at the RNT in 1988, thought highly of it as a Jacobean revenge tragedy and thought Janie might like it. I didn’t yet realise that she was not so keen on classics/old plays. I’m not sure she realised it yet either.
My log reports:
Not quite to Janie’s taste – I rather liked it.
It was a superb production. Looking through the cast and creatives list you can see why. Cheryl Campell as Beatrice-Joanna, Malcolm Storry as De Flores, Michael Attenborough directing. Also a stellar list of youngsters who would break through in their own right later; Sophie Okeonedo, Barnaby Kay, Dominic Cooke (assisting Attenborough). Even Tracy-Ann Oberman (prior to her NewsRevue & SportsRevue days) puts in an appearance as an inmate of the asylum.
The Swan is an ideal venue for this type of play, much better than the Lyttleton. Very high production quality both times though – hard for me to rank one production above the other.
Observer May 1993 Cottesloe Sun, May 9, 1993 – 55 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
Billington Springboards May 1993 Tue, May 4, 1993 – 23 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
