This double bill was part of a Vaclav Havel Season that autumn at the Orange Tree. We only attended this one evening.
Vaclav Havel is one of those writers that you really want to like and there are always some very clever lines and some interestingly weird scenes in his plays. Yet somehow Havel never quite seems to work for me or for Janie.
Still, we enjoyed the evening. The Mountain Hotel one was a typically Havel peculiar mix of people thrown together in a hotel garden being absurd together. I think we even considered sneaking away a half time, but stayed to see what the second play was like. Audience is a short quasi-autobiographical piece about Vanek, who works in an absurd beer factory. It did not motivate us to return and see the other short Vanek plays later in the season.
It was all very well acted and well directed; David Antrobus is an Orange Tree regular and is reliably good.
I recall being most impressed by the performances and the production. Also, the play did its job of getting me and Janie talking about its big issues for the rest of the weekend. Yet this didn’t feel like premier league David Hare to me; I felt there was something lacking in the play.
Sarah Hemming in the FT clearly liked it a lot, comparing it favourably with The Vertical Hour as drama (whereas I would say that The Vertical Hour worked better for me as drama) – click here to read what she wrote;
It was that sort of play/production – influential people were supposed to talk about it but not all that many people got to see it. Janie and I saw a preview, so had every right to wax lyrical from an informed perspective and from the outset.
What good news for everyone that Janie and I tend to keep our counsel to ourselves on such matters.
We have done this sort of play on a Friday evening at The Gate before (and since), because it is sometimes so convenient to see them and stay at the flat on a Friday, but heavy/dystopian drama is not my first choice of activity for a Friday night.
Anyway, beyond our temporal reasons for being unsure about it, the critics also seemed unsure:
The acting was top notch and as always we marvel at the way they manage to turn that small space above a pub into a proper space for drama. But Janie and I concurred with the reviewers about the play.
Not sure whether I cooked or whether we grabbed some Turkish food from the (now late, lamented) Manzara. As I’d delivered my Gresham lecture the night before and (it seems) gone off early on the Friday morning to see clients, I’ll guess the latter and jolly tasty it will have been too.
Here’s the YouTube of it so you can watch from here instead (but for the resources as well, you need to click the above link):
More observant followers of this lecture (e.g. John White) noticed that I strung some lines from songs and stuff through the slides. I made up an iTunes playlist for the lecture – back then, iTunes playlists felt like fun things to try. Here it is:
We held a traditional Z/Yen-Gresham reception in the Headmaster’s Study after the lecture. Doubtless someone pointed out my resemblance to the Chandos Portrait of Shakespeare in that room – someone always did. As I explained on Facebook to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death:
After the reception, Michael Mainelli escorted an honoured few of us to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese for one of his traditional post lecture meals. Not sure exactly who attended but I do recall Michael, Elisabeth, Kim, Micky, Charlie, Me, Janie and a few others.
The set was effectively a small studio apartment which we, the tiny audience, was observing from above. You really almost felt you were in the apartment with the couple. And the couple were discussing very intimate stuff.
Janie and I took Charlie (Lavender) with us to this one, which I think she enjoyed very much. We’re struggling to remember what we did for grub on this occasion; we think we possibly ate at the Royal Court itself.
This one turned out to be a bit of an Alleyn’s alum-fest, with Sam West directing and Nancy Carroll performing. But that won’t be the reason we booked it.
Janie and I have been Almeida members for donkeys yonks – indeed I have been going there fairly regularly since the late 1980s.
This looked like a cracking production on paper, so we’d have had no hesitation in booking it.
We agree with all of that lot. It was a cracking production of a rather wordy play – Harley Granville Barker was a decent playwright but Ibsen or Strindberg he ain’t.
We were very glad to have picked this production. Seeing a lesser production of this play would have been a bit of a waste.
Leo Fishman – nothing like her grandpa in matters tennis
Professor Peter Lawrence (who had been my P2 economics tutor) got in touch with me about this conference and I was delighted to make space for it.
Firstly, I had very fond memories of Les Fishman, Peter Lawrence and indeed other tutors from the economics department at Keele.
Secondly, with the 2008 recession having just kicked off big time and no-one knowing what was going on, it seemed a good opportunity to find out what my alma mater’s economists thought about it all.
Thirdly, with only a month or less to go until my Gresham lecture on Commercial Ethics, I thought some clear head time in the rarefied atmosphere of the Keele Hill might do me some good for that project too.
Peter Lawrence offered to put me up, but I explained what a terrible house guest I am, so checked in to the Crewe Arms in Madeley Heath. I don’t think we ate there that night – I think Peter picked me up from there and took me to a gathering elsewhere. Several of the other academics and visitors were there that night, including Keith Tribe and I think also Shirley Dex.
Here is the programme from the Wednesday conference:
I also was sent a copy of Les Fishman’s seminal paper about the effect of the Vietnam War on the US economy: vietnampaper-1 and also a paper by Norman Flynn about the economic impact of the Iraq War econwar.
The conference was very interesting. I especially remember David Leece (who was my P1 tutor) explaining how relevant the work of Hyman Minsky was becoming in the light of this particular recession – spot on.
2016 picture – thanks to Mark Ellicott
I visited the Students’ Union briefly, its appearance had changed somewhat since my previous visit but the print room was still populated by Pat Borsky and (I think temporarily) also Barbera, so it really was like stepping back in time 25 years seeing those two.
Pat Borsky: could not be described as retiring…apart from the day she retired in 2016 – thanks again to Mark Ellicott for the 2016 pictures
Fun networking with several of my former tutors/lecturers, a few other former students (Paul Smith I recall), several delightful members of the Fishman family and others too.
One strange unintended consequence was meeting Leonore Fishman who (with a bit of encouragement from her dad, David) subsequently asked me for a job and ended up working for Z/Yen for a few years. Stuff happens.
Leo Fishman at Jez Horne’s “Z/Yen Stag Do”, 2010. Thanks to Monique Gore for this picture.
Janie really likes the Glenn Miller sound and was less familiar with the Benny Goodman sound. We’d also been checking out the Cadogan Hall at that time, so this seemed like an interesting concert to try, albeit a Sunday evening with busy day’s the next day both.
We’d had quite a busy day on the Sunday too, as Tony and Phillie visited for lunch that day, presumably after a refreshment-free visit to “Grandma” in the morning, while Janie and I played tennis.
This type of replication concert isn’t really our thing. Cadogan Hall is the right size of hall for it, though. Be both like clarinet and Pete Long is for sure a good enough musician, as are the rest of his “Goodmen”.
We enjoyed the gig.
I couldn’t find much on this concert on-line, except that Cadogan Hall clearly has repeated the dose occasionally and the following resource was still (perhaps only temporarily) up at the time of writing (March 2017), from 2014, so I have scraped it:
