Never So Good by Howard Brenton, Lyttelton Theatre, 22 March 2008

Janie and I both carry fond memories of this play/production, although it was a long play and is the sort of play that we sometimes dislike.

Howard Brenton has a tendency either to pull off this type of history/personality play with aplomb (as he did with this one and the Ai Wei Wei one) or leave us stone cold, as he did with his play about drawing lines across India at the time of Independence.

Jeremy Irons isn’t my favourite; he’s always sort-of Jeremy Irons. But Jeremy Irons is sort-of Harold Macmillan, so that aspect worked.

One element of the play that I recall really working for me was the notion of the young Harold, played by Pip Carter, moving the narrative on, even in the later years when Harold was becoming an old duffer.

There’s a decent Wikipedia entry for this play – here – which also provides the links to the main theatre reviews (saving me the trouble), which were very favourable on the whole.

Having said that, Wikipedia’s critics list is short and perhaps selective:

Official London Theatre kindly archived its synopsis and list of cast and creatives, saving me a lot of typing. Thanks for nothing, RNT, which, with all its funding, provides far less past production archive than most half-decent fringe theatres.

Barcelona, Northern Spain and Rioja, 10 to 19 March 2008, placeholder and links

This short break visiting several places in Spain emerged from a very simple idea; that it would nice to visit nephew Paul while he was temporarily living and working in Barcelona; a good excuse also to “take that town”.

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Then we thought about our desire to see Santiago de Compostela after hearing the wonderful music in this concert…

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…and our desire to see the Guggenheim in Bilbao…and we’d heard that Santander is nice…and also those wonderful reports we’d read about Rioja and the new boutique hotel and the Marquis de Riscal winery…

…the result was an out of character 10 day whistle-stop break. We wouldn’t do it at that pace any more, but we had a great time and there will be plenty of good individual pieces to dredge out from my trusty journal notes and brain, when I get around to it. Download/try to read my scrawl if you dare.

Barcelona, Northern Spain, Rioja March 2008 Journal Notes

Or if you are an itinerary-ista instead, here’s the itinerary, produced with care by Ultimate Travel/Kirker’s “Auntie Janet”: March 2008 Barcelona, Northern Spain and Rioja.

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On 15 March, we went to the Guggenheim in Bilbao before setting off for Santander. We saw an excellent surrealism exhibition and more besides (programme retained). We took some good pictures of  outdoor exhibits too.

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Indeed we took a lot of photos for a 10 day break in Europe, divided into three mini Flickr albums

At Riscal in Rioja, we found this wonderful deli in the village…

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…where we bought Iberico ham for our Easter gathering soon after our return. Not the most kosher idea we’ve ever had, but there you go.

(I Don’t Think We Did See) Florilegium With Lucy Crowe, Wigmore Hall, 9 March 2008

My diary says “Wigmore Hall” for that Sunday, but no further details and (most unusually) no programme in my collection.

Further, we went off crack of dawn the next morning as we were due to take an early flight the to Barcelona – even in those days I don’t think we booked up stuff so tight.

So my guess is that we attempted to book that concert but didn’t get the seats we wanted; then planned our trip to Barcelona accordingly.

But if by any chance we did see this concert, it is written up very nicely on Intermezzo – here.

Middlesex County Cricket Club Members Forum, MTWD Report, Lord’s, 3 March 2008

In truth I only vaguely remember this particular members forum.

But the world has Seaxe Man to thank for an astonishingly detailed account of the event, which will surely enable anyone who was there to relive the occasion.

For some reason, perhaps connected with “will to live” issues or more likely our imminent departure for Spain, Barmy Kev agreed to edit this piece for the Middlesex Till We Die (MTWD) website.

Fortunately for detailed completists out there (but perhaps unfortunately for some who would just like a summary), Barmy Kev’s definition of editing was “slapping it all up there and seeing what happens”. So brace yourselves for a long one.

Here is a link to MTWD to read the article in its native place.

Alternatively, if anything has happened to MTWD in the meantime, I have scraped the article to here.

The report doesn’t mention me being there…nor does it state that I wasn’t. I don’t recall, frankly, but the e-mail chat makes it clear that I was there, as was Barmy Kev, but we agreed that I had time for no more than a quick post forum imbibe before getting back to nose and grindstone activities that week.

The Man Who Had All the Luck by Arthur Miller, Donmar Warehouse, 1 March 2008

We are both very keen on Arthur Miller and thought we would probably enjoy one of his rarely performed early works.

We went to the second preview of this production, so possibly didn’t get it at its absolute best.

While we enjoyed the play and production, with some of its parable qualities reminding us of great Miller plays, I would suggest that the play is not a great Miller play and the production was not one of the Donmar’s greatest productions. The acting was superb, as we pretty much expect at the Donmar, the cast mostly unfamiliar folk to us.

Here is a link to the excellent Donmar downloadable “Study Guide” resource for this production.

The critics were somewhat divided in their opinions, even individually in some cases:

There’s a good Wikipedia piece about the play – here – which mentions the Donmar revival and others besides. It also provides a bit more analysis about the play.

We’re very fussy when it comes to the Donmar these days, as we find that Covent Garden location so awkward, but on balance we certainly felt that this was a worthwhile trip.

 

CFDG And Ivan Shakespeare Evenings, 27 & 28 February 2008

On the Wednesday evening I went to the Charity Finance Directors Group (CFDG) 20th anniversary reception at St Paul’s Cathedral. Quite grand it was, but I cannot find the details of the event other than those stated. I think Phil Hope MP might have said some well-chosen words at that event and no doubt wine flowed and nibbles went down.

The next day was an Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner. John Random organised thus:

I have consulted the entrails of a sheep and the signs tell me that February 28th is a good time for the next meal at the Cafe Rouge. Can I have a show of electronic hands please? Who can make it? Who can’t?

I replied thusly:

I similarly consulted sheep’s entrails, and all that told me was that I needed to wash my hands pdq. But the entrails also said “see you 28 February”, which I find a little worrying. I think I might stick to fish or vedge that night just in case.

Unfortunately, John’s roundup from that particular gathering was quite generic:

Just a quick thank you to all those who came out on Thursday night to the Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner. Those of you who weren’t there were much missed. I’ll send out the quizzes if you want me to, though.

Another one where the details are lost in the mists of time.

I said the mists of time, not the mists of Tokyo. Gratuitous eye candy, this is.

Baby Girl by Roy Williams, DNA by Dennis Kelly and The Miracle by Lin Coghlan, Cottesloe Theatre, 23 February 2008

A mixed bag evening, mostly good stuff in the mix, with three short plays all with a “yoof” theme, at the Cottesloe.

We weren’t going to miss this one. Roy Williams we liked a lot when we first came across him at the Royal Court a few years before. Ditto Dennis Kelly, whose work we’d very much enjoyed at the Hampstead. Lin Coghlan was new to us.

We weren’t overly familiar with Paul Miller’s name as director then, although we had seen his work before and now (writing in 2016) know his work well at the Orange Tree.

Apparently this production emerged from the National Theatre’s Connections programme, getting young people involved in performing, although this production was picked up by and delivered by professionals, albeit some of them very young professionals.

There is an excellent, free RNT education workpack for these plays, which includes synopses and other educational materials to accompany the pieces – click here to download.

LondonTheatre.co.uk provides a useful cast & crew list and a short synopsis of each play.

Interesting reviews:

I think we liked the first two plays a fair bit more than the last, but two out of three really ain’t bad for this sort of evening, so we were thoroughly satisfied.

3 Sisters On Hope Street by Diane Samuels and Tracy-Ann Oberman after Anton Chekov, Hampstead Theatre, 22 February 2008

This one didn’t really work for us, despite the good reviews it mostly received.

It was one of those plays/productions that we thought we ought to have really liked, but didn’t much. We like Chekhov. We like Tracy-Ann Oberman (formerly of NewsRevue in our world, Eastenders in most other people’s). It was a superb-looking cast. Lindsay Posner is a terrific director.

The idea of transferring the Three Sisters to the large home of a relatively wealthy Jewish family in austere post-war Liverpool seemed to be up our street. But Hope Street is not our street; not three hours of it anyhow:

Hampstead Theatre stubs don’t go back this far…yet…but Liverpool Everyman one’s do – so there – click here for cast and crew details.

We no doubt ate at Harry Morgan’s before seeing this production, which would at least have got our bellies into the right mode for the three hour “Chekhov meets Wesker Fest” that followed.

The Savages, Unspecified Cinema, 16 February 2008

We don’t go to the cinema all that much. On the rare occasions we do go, it tends to be on an impulse. So most of our visits to the cinema prior to my live blogging (i.e. prior to December 2015) will be lost in the mists of time.

However, my diary for this day reads:

John and Mandy?  Savages

I was a little perturbed by this entry at first. Surely I wasn’t cross with John and Mandy for postponing our get together for a few weeks, especially as it had been put in the diary with a question mark. In any case, I would never describe our friends as savages.

Then I remembered seeing a film named The Savages and discovered that the film had indeed come out around that time. Mystery solved.

Here’s the IMDb entry for that film.

I remember that we both really liked the idea of it – I was just getting used to the idea of having a dependent parent at the time, some 6 months after my father’s death. I suspect that Newsnight Review put us on to it (we do miss that arts programme) and we both would have liked the thought of Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman heading up the cast.

We weren’t disappointed. It was both very amusing and touching. A bit long for the slightness of the story, but an enjoyable couple of hours nonetheless.

No idea which cinema we went to – probably the Vue Acton or whatever it was called back then – still the nearest/quickest to get to at the weekend, even since the move from Janie’s maisonette to the house. Might have stayed at mine and seen this one at The Gate – that’s the other thing we often did back then.

If you haven’t seen it, well worth looking out for when it comes around on the box or through whatever Prime/Netflix type service you use if you are a movie-fiend.

The Savages, Watermans Art Centre, 16 February 2008

At that stage, Janie and I must have both been retaining enough of a sense of humour and curiosity about the challenges of looking after ageing parents, not least the onset of dementia, to have been attracted by the reviews of this movie, The Savages.

Just a few years later, I can imagine saying, “I can get all that at home” and not wanting to see it. But then, we were clearly so keen to see this movie,
unusually, we made an appointment to view in our diaries, hence me knowing years later (writing in January 2019) that we went to the Watermans Art Centre in Brentford to see The Savages – click here for IMDb listing.

In part we would have been keen to see Phillip Seymour Hoffman, whose theatre work had impressed us so much by then. In part the great reviews and subject matter would have drawn us.

By that time we were not so keen on the Watermans, finding it rather cold and utilitarian, especially at that time of year. But we were that keen to see this movie and the Watermans was the most convenient place to go and see it.

Below is an embedded link to the movie’s trailer:

We thought this movie was simply excellent. We laughed, we felt sad, it made us think.

Highly recommended to anyone who is on the verge of or is currently having to deal with parental decrepitude.