In truth we remember little about this one. I was taking some time off – mostly to “supervise” the fraught business of Gavin renovating my flat. Janie was trying to work half days and take a bit of time off too. We saw several plays and exhibitions that week.
We had discovered the Chelsea Place Theatre a few months earlier when we saw Home Body/Kabul…
This was the last ever production in the Room above The Orange Tree pub itself. The bespoke Orange Tree Theatre had been up and running for a while by then and the decision was made to stop doing some shows above the pub still. A shame in a way, as we loved that small venue. But understandable.
Here is a preview of the show from the Richmond & Twickenham Informer:
Judging by the markings in both of our diaries, we had planned to go away for a couple of weeks that October and then changed our minds. Probably because we didn’t think we could leave Gavin unmanaged doing the works at Clanricarde Gardens. This was one of several things we booked up to replace the holiday. We both did some work but worked light during those weeks.
It wasn’t a great play or production, but the story was interesting and Mairead Carty was always very watchable.
I don’t remember a great deal about this one. I don’t think we were particularly impressed, although we wanted to be, because the idea of former prisoners making drama feels like a wonderful idea to us.
Our friend, Michael Billington, took the trouble to go and review it for The Guardian. We’ll take his word for it.
A successful night at The Questors with the Duchess (Janie’s mum). I wrote,
very good,
in my log, which will be a comment on the play/production rather than The Duchess’s conduct.
Janie and I subsequently saw a superb production of this play at The Donmar.
I recall having some reservations about seeing an amateur production of this great play, but actually The Questors had actors and creatives of sufficient quality to carry this work well.
Janie’s diary suggests that we went to eat at a place named Rastificia afterwards, on Ealing Broadway, at 10:30. Sounds like Jamaican food from the name.
Just what Janie and I will have needed on a Friday evening after a long week’s work. No doubt the waiters made a fuss of The Duchess and no doubt she wanted to stay for one more cigarette at the end of the meal, so we’ll have got home very late indeed.
Also, no doubt, the deal was that The Duchess did the theatre tickets, Janie did the interval drinks and I did the meal. [Note to historians – The Duchess got several pairs of guest tickets free each year with her membership of The Questors – I’m pretty sure we didn’t go any more often than the using up of the freebies allowed].
“Parsimony is the best policy” – The Duchess of Castlebar
It was the play that lacked coherence. Janie couldn’t see past the fragile conceits of the play.
Our friend, Michael Billington, in The Guardian, seems to have shared our reservations. He says that the plot “has more holes than a second-hand colander”…
…(does a new colander have fewer holes than a second-hand one, Michael?)…
The conceit of this play is basically a Maria Callas masterclass towards the end of the great diva’s life.
We saw this one on a Friday evening. This was a touring production by Theatre Royal Bath Productions that was starting off at Richmond for just a few days.
My log reads:
Janie got more out of this one than I did.
So there you have it.
I think I found the play not so interesting. The production did a pretty good job with the material, as I saw it. Jane Lapotaire played the lead and she was very watchable.
Here is a clip from the Surrey Herald as the productions et off on its merry way:
I wrote “very good indeed” in my log for this one, which means that we both must have thought it very good indeed.
Paines Plough tended to do good stuff and Vicky Featherstone knows how to direct. This long precedes her dystopian miserabilist phase at The Royal Court, of course, although it had traces of misery in it.
In those days the Lyric Hammersmith Studio was putting on quite a lot of good stuff of this kind and getting good notices in places that mattered too.
According to my diary, we ate at Riso in Chiswick afterwards. I cannot find anything about it on-line and cannot remember anything much about the place. My handy copy of the 2003 Harden’s suggest that the place was not so memorable. That might explain it.
Still, the play/production was memorable, which matters more.
Excellent concert, this. Sonnerie was a superb but fluid ensemble, led by the indomitable Monica Huggett.
On this occasion they comprised Monica Huggett, Gary Cooper, Wilbert Hazelzet, Pamela Thorby, Catherine Latham, Katherine McGillivray, Catherine Martin, Emilia Benjamin, Alison McGillivray and Sarah Groser.
Here is the playlist from the gig:
Jean-Philippe Rameau – Pieces de clavecin en concerts No 3 in A major
Georg Philipp Telemann – Concerto for Flute, Oboe d’amore, Viola d’amore, Strings and Continuo in E major
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi – Concerto for Violin, Strings and Continuo in D major (“Il Grosso Mogul”) RV208
Georg Philipp Telemann – Concerto for Flute, recorder, Strings and Continuo in E minor
Johann Sebastian Bach – Sonata No 1 for Violin and Harpsicord in B minor BWV 1014
Johann Sebastian Bach – Concerto for Harpsicord, 2 Recorders, Strings and Continuo in F major BWV 1057
Here is a clip from an earlier but lovely recording of the E major Telemann piece, which includes Monica Huggett with the Academy of Ancient Music
While here is a lovely video of Ensemble Odyssee playing the Bach concerto we heard that evening:
We both went straight from work and both had early starts the next morning, so I guess we supped light at Sandall Close after the gig.
The log reminds me that we ran into Rob Pay, Susan Pay & Jay Jaffe at that show. In those days, Rob & Susan lived very near to my place, but my place was a building site that autumn and I was staying with Janie in Ealing at that time.
As for the play, I recall that Mike Alfred’s Method & Madness project was a bit Complicité-like, without quite the oomph (and certainly not the longevity) of Complicité.
The piece was basically adaptations (by Mike Alfreds) of a few Isaac Basevis Singer short stories.
Nick Curtis in The Standard was not very impressed:
The diary suggests that it was a long/late-finishing show, so I suspect that we picked up shawarmas after this show on the way home. The diary also tells me that we went to Gary [Davison]’s birthday lunch the next day. The diary is silent on where we went but in those days Gary tended to hold that event at Lemonia in Primrose Hill.
Sweet Dreams, Halliburton, Independent 20 Oct 1999, Wed The Independent (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
