Jubilate Deo, Southbank Sinfonia, St George’s Church Hanover Square, 14 April 2007

The weekend after Easter, we visited the London Handel Festival for this tasty Baroque concert by the (then) fairly new Southbank Sinfonia.

We heard:

  • Handel’s Overture to Giustino HWV37
  • Rameau’s Grand Motet: In Convertendo Dominus
  • Vivaldi’s Concerto Con Molti Istromenti RV 576
  • Lully’s Suite from “Isis”
  • Handel’s Te Deum for the Peace of Utrecht

Janie couldn’t complain that it was cold this time – we were having a bit of an April heatwave in London. But still she felt that St George’s was austere as a venue…

…”it’s bum-aching, like sitting in Church”…

…”it IS a Church”…

…so she reiterated her strong preference for the Wigmore Hall.

We both agreed that the music was lovely, though.

Below is a delightful later performance by the very same orchestra (under Julian Perkins) of the Giustino:

Below is a beautiful video of the Rameau In Convertendo with William Christie conducting but no identification of the orchestra ( Les Arts Florissants presumably) nor the wonderful soloists – perhaps some of the Early Music Group aficionados can help with the identification of those:

If you click through this link instead, you can then also hear the other parts in YouTube.

I have the whole festival programme, but here is the one-pager with most of the relevant information about that particular, excellent gig.

Tom Fool by Franz Xaver Kroetz, Bush Theatre, 13 April 2007

One of my abiding memories of going to the Bush on a Friday evening to see this production was our irritation at the draconian Friday evening parking regulations and driving around desperately seeking a legitimate space.

“This had better be worth it”, I recall Janie saying before the show, followed by “yes it was worth it” afterwards.

Quirky play, very well performed.

The Bush resource on this one can be found by clicking here.

Reviews and stuff can be found through the search term that clicks through here.

A good one.

Middlesex & MTWD Stuff, 28 March 2007, 11 April 2007 & 13 April 2007

I can see from my diary and correspondence that we had an MTWD get together just before the start of the season – 28 March.

No sign of me going to the Seaxe Club AGM that year – I don’t think I’d really started going to those yet, but I did go to the Middlesex AGM on 11 April.

True to the committee’s requests, we did not report the AGM nor can I find any private correspondence about it. It cannot have been a corker.

On 13 April I published a template for away match reports using Janie’s and my visit to Trelawny in Jamaica a few week’s earlier as the example – click here.

I’ll write up that visit in a more Ogblog stylee when I write up the holiday as a whole.

Just in case anything ever happens to MTWD, I have scraped the report to here.

The Rose Tattoo by Tennessee Williams, Olivier Theatre, 9 April 2007

A rare visit to the theatre on a Monday – this was Easter Monday.

Janie and I both love a bit of Tennessee Williams and we had only seen an amateur production of the Rose Tattoo before – at the Questors some 10 years earlier.

This was a top notch production at the National – no holds barred.

Zoe Wannamaker was exceptional.

Critics seemed to think the production and performances masked a less than brilliant play – I think I probably agree with that analysis – click here for a link to reviews.

Below is the trailer from the 1955 movie – very different style:

The Skin Game by John Galsworthy, Orange Tree Theatre, 7 April 2007

Sam Walters really had got himself locked into the early 20th Century by this time. Frankly, we didn’t think this Galsworthy piece had aged very well. Add to that Sam’s strict orthodoxy about not cutting text, it was quite a long evening at the theatre.

Well acted and directed, we stuck it out for both halves although we did consider making a break for it at half time.

Click here for a link to the Orange Tree resource on this play/production.

The critics liked it rather more than we did. Click here for a link that finds reviews and stuff.

Dying For It by Moira Buffini, Almeida Theatre, 31 March 2007

This was a very entertaining evening in the theatre, Sounds odd, but it was a very amusing play about suicide.

Click here for a link to the Almeida’s resource on this play/production.

We rate Tom Brooke very highly and he was superb in this piece – a free adaptation, by Moira Buffini, of a subversive Soviet era Nikolai Erdman book.

It was well received by the critics on thew whole – click here for reviews and stuff.

Sizwe Banzi Is Dead by Athol Fugard, John Kani, Winston Ntshona, Lyttelton Theatre, 24 March 2007

Two weeks in a row to the National Theatre (RNT) and two theatre visits out of three to see John Kani perform in one of his own plays.

This one, a revival of one of the most famous works to come out of the defiant anti-apartheid theatre in South Africa in the 1970s, in some ways pleased us less than Nothing But The Truth at the Hampstead a few weeks earlier. 

Nothing But The Truth by John Kani, Hampstead Theatre, 9 February 2007

Again, we really wanted to like it. We had loved The Island when we saw the revival of that one. But Sizwe Banzi seemed an altogether lighter and more dated work. The play has some great lines and some excellent points to make, but didn’t move us as we felt it should.

Yes, we were glad to have seen it, but it was a bit like seeing a band of ageing rockers whom you wished you had seen “back in the day”. The point was back in the day.

It got pretty good reviews – click here to find them.

Below is a short excerpt of John Kani and Winston Ntshona performing the play back in the day – early 1980s I think.

Dinner At Merkato With John White, 20 March 2007

Judging by the e-mail correspondence and crossings out in the diary, the arrangements for this one were a bit messy but it all came good in the end…

…appropriate for this form of cuisine, because…

we ate at Merkato, an Ethiopian institution in Kings Cross. Quite a messy business, Ethiopian-style dining, if you do it in an authentic stylee.

This was about a year after Janie and I visited Ethiopia, so I wanted John to experience Ethiopian-style eating and my description of it had sparked John’s curiosity to try it.

Me and our guide, Dawit, dining in Ethiopia, 2006, taken by Daisy

Trip Advisor speaks of Merkato thus – click here. Clearly still doing OK at the time of writing – April 2018.

John and I had a good evening at Merkato – certainly I remember it fondly. We were in part looking forward to and plotting a gathering of the four of us (including Janie and Mandy) for a few week’s hence at John and Mandy’s place.

The Reporter by Nicholas Wright, Cottesloe Theatre, 17 March 2007

I remember us both finding this piece about low-level BBC shenanigans interesting and enjoyable – despite a suicide forming the denouement (that is not a spoiler). I suspect, given subsequent events at the BBC, it would seem tame and much beside the point today.

I think I picked up the terms “cruel spectacles” and “waning powers”, both of which I use a fair bit, from this particular show.

Great cast, with Ben Chaplin, Paul Ritter, Bruce Alexander, Angela Thorne and Leo Bill really standing out.

Well directed by Richard Eyre and produced of course to RNT standards.

Reasonably well received by the critics – click here for a search term to find reviews.

It was worth seeing at the time for sure.

Cuba and Jamaica, Placeholder and Links, 17 February to 9 March 2007

Janie and I took this great trip to the Caribbean in early 2007.

We used Abercrombie and Kent as the agent for this one – at that time it was hard to find an agency well geared up to do Cuba in an interesting way – A&K’s ideas were top notch – click here to see our itinerary.

I kept loads of notes and shall write up the events from those notes in the fullness of time. For now, here are links to the notes for those who can deal with exotic cyphers:

Lots of great photos split into five Flickr albums – click on the image for each album to view the pics:

01 18 February - Daisy relaxes in our Hotel Santa Isabella Suite P2180001B

01 21 February 2007 Pigs at a tobacco farmer's house, Pinar del Rio province. Guess the bacon here is smoked P2210067A

001 24 FebruaryCentral Square, Cienfuegos. Jose Marti (who else) statue P2240101A

001 27th February 2007 Bayamo scenes P2270005D

01 5 March 2007 Some sunset P3050001E