Janie and I are partial to a bit of Poliakoff on the stage, which is all too rare these days, so we were had been very much looking forward to this one.
Tracey Ullman has tremendous stage presence. The conceit of the play – an old primary schoolteacher wandering around London telling stories about the place – sounds great.
Yet, in truth, this play was not quite top drawer Poliakoff in our eyes. It was revisiting many of his themes and styles, but perhaps without hitting the heights that earlier works hit. Perhaps it is the familiarity that detracts from the sense of excitement.
We had a very enjoyable evening at the theatre, but concluded that Poliakoff is probably, now, doing his best work for TV rather than for stage.
At a very geeky level this is an exciting Wigmore Hall concert, because this was our first concert of the 2011-2012 season, which was the first season that Wigmore Hall archived fully on-line.
In truth, Brad Mehldau concerts tend to be a bit geeky anyway. The fellow has so many influences and blends so many styles in with his jazz piano, the concert is almost like a music quiz.
Back then, I was less fascinated by the mandolin than I am now at the time of writing (January 2018)…
…but I have long been intrigued by the instrument and it was very interesting to hear it used as a jazz pairing with Brad’s inimitable jazz piano style.
I think technically Brad was no longer the curator of the Wigmore Hall jazz seasons by the time this concert came around, although it might have been, technically, the tail end of his 2010/2011 commitment to the venue.
I seem to recall that I enjoyed this concert more than Janie did…
…I also seem to recall that we both felt that we had “done” Brad Mehldau now, this being the third of his we had been to, unless the concert works or partner musicians were the main attraction for us…
Also there was the backdrop of the riots that summer, which were unfolding as we arrived and during our stay, although leafy Harborne seemed unaware of or at least untouched by them.
Naturally Nigel and I made the most of it without Chas. It would be cruel to harp on about the extent to which we were nevertheless able to enjoy ourselves despite Chas’s indisposition. In any case, I doubtless harped sufficiently when I saw Charles again a bit later that season.
It must have been especially galling for Chas as I seem to recall he had gone to a great deal of trouble that year to secure our “honorary” front row seats, book nets, book rooms, book an Indian feast…oy!
I believe that I drove up that year having booked the extra night after the second day’s play. That might have been Nobby’s only visit to Harborne Hall.
I hadn’t thought about this before, but Graham seems to be a bit of a rainmaker, if the story of his 2011 and 2017 visits to Lord’s might be deemed to be a reasonably-sized sample.
We only got just over half a day’s play on the Thursday; quite slow stuff at that.
Whereas Janie and I got a giant-sized day of cricket on the Friday, with fair weather and a Kevin Petersen double-hundred.
Thank you very much indeed for an excellent day at the cricket. I thoroughly enjoyed it and it was a very welcome distraction from the office. I am only sorry our enjoyment was cut short by the rain.
I will follow the remainder of the match with extra interest.
I replied to his message by saying:
It was a pleasure and was good to see you. Janie felt badly on Friday that she and I did so much better weatherwise that day!
Janie and I were struggling to remember all the details of this short break in Buxton with Chris and Hilary, in part to take in the Buxton Festival Fringe. Strangely, no photos.
I think we intended to walk but I don’t think we walked much, if at all. Perhaps the weather failed to smile on us.
Janie remembers speaking quite a lot with Todd at Nat’s Kitchen, before we stayed and also while we were there – he was helpful and full of advice. Perhaps I’ll be able to expand this entry when we do some archaeology on Janie’s diary.
I’m pretty sure there were one or two things that Hil and Chris were interested in seeing that we really didn’t want to do.
I have a feeling Janie and I went to see a folky-fusiony outfit in a basement bar type place one evening while Hil and Chris went to see a naff-sounding show which even they admitted afterwards had not been worth the candle.
The Importance Of Being Frank was a bit of a compromise choice which I’m pretty sure we all went to see and found funny in parts.
We also dined at the Old Hall Hotel one time – I think Hil and Chris were staying there and I think that was the first night…but our memories on this one are not great.
The only other thing I remember is the backdrop of the trip supposedly being an opportunity for the workmen to finish off snagging Noddyland (Janie had moved in a few weeks previously).
We returned to find only a couple of items from the list done; the rest of the time they had no doubt spent, as they had spent most of the preceding weeks, giving priority to the next big job. It took tears to invoke enough shame and sympathy to get them back in to finish off in the following few days.
For those who have the stomach to look (i.e. most often neutrals and Surrey fans for these occasions), actually it looks as thought his was a pretty good match, despite the fact that I must have missed quite a fair chunk of it – click here for the scorecard and reports.
One extra bit of evidence on who, from “Ged Ladd & Co”, attended that time, in addition to “The Tiberellis”, comes from Jez’s e-mail to me a few week’s before the match:
Mark
Monique
Steph
Ben
Rich
David
Simon Strez would also like to come as it’s his last chance to see a cricket game in England before returning home to New Zealand. I also have 3 friends that will be coming to the game.
This was a really entertaining and thought-provoking play by the very promising playwright Penelope Skinner. I think this was our first sight of one of hers; Linda at the Royal Court a few years later – click here or below – confirmed our suspicions that she is a special talent.
The Village Bike had a very fine cast for an upstairs production, not least Dominic Rowan and Romola Garai, both excellent. Indeed the whole cast was excellent, as was the set, directing, the lot.
A rare visit to the theatre on my own and on a Wednesday. No point trying to get Janie to a Georgian comedy; she doesn’t do classics and she doesn’t do farcical comedy of any kind.
But for reasons of my own – I still have some distantly related ideas for a comedy play on a jotter – I very much wanted to see this show, which had but a short run at the Barbican before going on to the Holland Festival.
As it happens, I had been invited that day to Lambeth Palace for lunch by the Church Commissioners (as Ian Theodoreson’s guest), so it seemed a suitable day for me to take the rest of the day off and therefore be free to spend the early part of a midweek evening at the theatre.
While suitable in practical terms, it was perhaps not quite such a suitable cultural switch from a dignified Lambeth Palace lunch under the auspices of Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to a bawdy Georgian comedy under the auspices of Deborah Warner, the radical stage director. Neither the irony nor the culture shock of the switch seemed to affect me unduly on the day.
The Lambeth Palace lunch was delightful, btw. I met several interesting new people (this was the only occasion I met Rowan Williams) as well as getting a chance to chat with Ian T and the people I know in that Church of England circle. I was particularly impressed with the dignified informality and grandeur with a tasteful lack of ostentation to the whole Lambeth Palace event.
Afterwards I had plenty of time to do some reading at the Barbican Centre over a coffee or two in the afternoon before seeing the play.
Here is an explanatory vid with Deborah Warner talking about her production of the School For Scandal:
It had some super people in the cast and I thought some of the modernising ideas were quite interesting. But on the whole I thought it was a pretty standard production of a Georgian play with a few nods to modern touches.
Of course it isn’t easy to refresh ideas that have been around for centuries and get their relevance across to modern audiences…
…perhaps the two halves of my unusual day had more in common than I thought about at the time.
The main plan was to have a tapas meal at Barrica. Janie and I were perhaps inspired by the tapas at Providores a few weeks earlier, perhaps we were all inspired by Charlie’s suggestion that some of us might be eating more than others of us due to various lunchtime arrangements.
Anyway, we met for a drink first of all at the trendy MyHotel just the other side of Tottenham Court Road. It is now (2022) called MyBloomsbury. I went with some trepidation as, some months earlier, I had taken coffee there with Mary, debriefing after a meeting nearby. A miscommunication meant that both of us thought the other had paid and we had both walked out without paying. I discovered the inadvertent wrongdoing only come expense claim time at the end of that month.
I thought openness and transparency would be the best approach, so on arrival I informed the waiter of the mistake on the previous occasion and said that I owed the place for a couple of cups of coffee.
The waiter laughed nervously and told me not to worry about it. I think he thought I might be a dangerous lunatic.
Still, the place is indeed trendy so cocktail hour had the right buzz and the right sorts of drinks. I enjoyed a dry white wine as per usual.
Barrica’s food was pretty good, authentic Spanish tapas, although it seemed a bit crowded and noisy (I guess it was a Friday evening) compared with the other excellent tapas places I had previously tried around that area.
Janie and I were supposed to go with Hari and Mawju, both Sri Lankan people we know, Hari from the Lloyd’s bank in Ealing and Mawju from the Atari-Ya Japanese fishmongers (long story, don’t ask).
Also don’t ask why Mawju didn’t turn up and didn’t call to excuse himself or return his ticket.
Anyway, we had a very pleasant day at the cricket with Hari, who loved our picnic and we loved the cake he brought from home as his offering. It all sounds a bit TMS commentary box, doesn’t it? In some ways it was.
The match had been badly rain-affected the day before so we got an elongated day on the Monday. England did very well to turn a seemingly nailed-on draw into a possible winning position by the end of the day, although we had a sneaking suspicion that it would end up a draw anyway.
