Travel, Theatre, Music, Cricket, Tennis, Writing, Life
Unusual for us to go to a concert on a Thursday evening in those days. I don’t think I’d yet heard The Goldberg Variations live and was keen to do so.
Jean-Louis Steuerman, that boy can sure tinkle the ivories.
Take my word for it.
Actually, no need for you to take my word for it – here’s that very chap playing that very aria:
I told you he can play.
Did you see what I did there?
Janie and I had a day off.
We went to the Dorcheter Hotel for lunch at the Oriental Restaurant. We had been dying to try the place and had been tipped off that the lunchtime offering was a much better deal than the evening meal.
We both remember it being excellent scoff.
Jay Rayner in The guardian wrote up the notion of going to the place for lunch a few years after we worked that out. I don’t recall our lunchtime meal revolving around dim sum – I think that was a later lunchtime innovation there.
Then on to the Royal Academy to see Monet In The 20th Century, which was an excellent exhibition.
Big thumbs up from Laura Cumming in The Observer:
Monet Cumming Observer 24 Jan 1999, Sun The Observer (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Sebastian Faulks in The Standard seemed less sure.
Monet Faulks Standard 22 Jan 1999, Fri Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Oh dear! I wrote the following in my log:
It was so bad we walked out at half time.
In those days, that meant REALLY bad.
Here is a link to the Theatricalia entry.
Nicholas de Jongh liked it:
Forest de Jongh Standard 29 Jan 1999, Fri Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Our friend, Michael Billington in The Guardian, also liked it:
Forest Billington Guardian 30 Jan 1999, Sat The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Susannah Clapp in the Observer was a little more equivocal:
Forest Clapp Observer 31 Jan 1999, Sun The Observer (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
While Robert Butler in The Sunday Indy didn’t really like it, finding it TV cosy in the way that probably put us right off:
Forest Butler Independent 31 Jan 1999, Sun The Independent (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
I logged that this play/production was:
One of the best things I have seen at The Questors.
Praise indeed.
Here is a link to The Questors archive page for this play/production.
We went with The Duchess, as was always the case at The Questors. She was a member and got a certain number of guest passes “thrown in” with her membership. She was determined to take advantage of those.
Janie’s diary informs me that she collected oxtail that earlier day and that we all went to Mama Amalfi for dinner after the show.
The log is unusually silent about this event. Especially unusual, as I was regularly recording my thoughts, even if just solo word, at that time.
I suspect this means that we didn’t think much of the piece/production but didn’t want to rubbish it.
Our diaries are also silent on what we did afterwards, other than a note in Janie’s diary to expect the show to end no earlier than 10pm. I suspect we picked up shawarmas on our way home.
Here is the Theatricalia entry for this play/production.
Nicholas de Jongh in The Standard was quite vocal in not liking the play:
Guiding Star de Jongh Standard 12 Nov 1998, Thu Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
John Gross was similarly unimpressed in the Sunday Telegraph.
Guiding Gross Sunday Telegraph 15 Nov 1998, Sun Sunday Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
25 years ago, Janie and I decided to party like it’s 1999 at the start of 1999. What better to do that than a concert of baroque music at The Wigmore Hall.
These are the pieces we heard/saw:
The Standard previewed the concert thusly:
Standard Kontrabande 6 Jan 1999 06 Jan 1999, Wed Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Perhaps there was a change of programme or perhaps my notes missed out the Handel by mistake. I’ll check back to the programme when next I can face the thought of an archaeological dig into my programme collection.
For sure we saw the small chamber ensemble, Kontrabande, with Charles Humphries doing the counter-tenor bit and Clare Salaman on the baroque violin. Sadly, I learn that Clare, who was an expert on strange and ancient instruments, didn’t make it to the 25th anniversary of this Kontrabande concert.
Here’s a video of Clare playing a strange and ancient instrument – the nyckelharpa – I don’t believe I have ever seen this instrument played live:
Here is an audio YouTube of Charles Humphries singing one of the Bach arias we heard, vergnugte Ruh, accompanied by Kontrabande:
While here is the Bremer Baroque Orchestra (similar scale to Kontrabande if I remember correctly) playing the very Telemann concerto we heard back then:
With the Royal Court in exile, we missed the original “Upstairs” version of this at the Ambassadors. With all the stuff we had been dealing with in 1998, this one almost passed us by completely when it transferred “downstairs” to The Duke of York’s. So when the Duke of York’s production returned to that Royal Court “home in exile”, at the start of 1999, to kick off a major tour, we booked early and were there at the outset.
Excellent play and production
I wrote.
That was to say the least. It was truly memorable and awe-inspiring drama. No wonder many critics had fawned over it when it first came out in 1997.
Here’s John Gross in The Sunday Telegraph:
Weir Gross Sunday Telegraph 13 Jul 1997, Sun Sunday Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Nicholas de Jongh thought that the Royal Court overdid Irish drama, but still liked this one:
Weir de Jongh Standard 11 Jul 1997, Fri Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Charles Spencer thought it superb:
Weir Telegraph Spencer 14 Jul 1997, Mon The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
We saw a great cast and crew – most if not all the originals – Kieran Ahern, Brendan Coyle, Dermot Crowley, Michelle Fairley and Jim Norton acting, Ian Rickson directing. Here is a link to the Theatricalia entry for the production we saw. It was a privilege to have seen that production.
Photo by Richard Bartz, Munich Makro Freak, CC BY-SA 2.5
Quite a big do. This was Michael’s 40th. Live music if I remember correctly. All the usual suspects were there. And us.
In those days you didn’t take a gazillion pictures at parties. Perhaps someone did take pictures, but I don’t recall seeing any from this party. If Michael and Elisabeth have some and want to provide digital versions thereof, I’ll gladly put a few of them into this article.
We ate, we drank, we danced, we made merry. it was a party.
There’s little in the diary about this, other than a tell-tale note that the taxi would cost £32, which was almost certainly an Ealing to Streatham price in those days.
I suspect that Jacqueline, Len and Hils were there that year. I also suspect that this was one of the last times, if not the last time, that my mum did Christmas day at Woodfield Avenue.
It will have been turkey for main, I’m pretty sure.
The tell-tale note in Janie’s diary is an order for a rack of wild boar from Harvey Nicholls “for next Sunday”. This was one of Janie’s specialities at that time and boy was it good. We have never since found a source of excellent wild boar rack since Harvey Nicks stopped doing it.
The cast for that evening (again made clear from Janie’s diary) was Kim & Micky, Anthea [Simms] & Mitchell [Sams], plus Rupert [Stubbs] & Ana. Janie rather impressively remembered that Ana was Ana Limbrick, who (as well as dating Rupert at that time) was, indeed still is, a physiotherapist to whom Janie occasionally refers clients.
It will have been a jolly evening, despite the fact that several of the guests no doubt said “what a boar” when praising the meal.
I know that Mike and I had tried to meet up for dinner in London a few times in the mid 1990s without success. This might even have been the first time that our diaries conspired to enable us to meet for dinner in The Smoke. We dined in Silks and Spice
We certainly weren’t conspiring in the manner of Bryce Taylor & Max Clifford, who famously had liaised in that very restaurant in the matter of Princess Diana photographs a few years earlier. Nor would we have been discussing my Princess Diana lyrics, e.g. this one, which to all intents and purposes died with her the previous year.
But no doubt we were discussing his forthcoming Actor’s Workshop New Year Revels show and possibly his plans for writing a couple of plays and shows, which Mike wrote and produced over the next few years.
I remember the restaurant being quite a good one. it is now, 25 years later, Foley’s Restaurant, a modern fusion take on South-east Asian food. Just around the corner from the old Harris family homestead, as I now know. Back then, who knew? Well, I sort-of knew but didn’t pay the matter much heed back then.
Mike and I will have had a very pleasant evening no doubt.
The end of a weird quarter, during which we only went to the theatre five times, all of those visits being in Richmond.
Anyway, we both rather liked this play/production, rating it:
A good one.
Very much an off-Broadway play, Lips Together, Teeth Apart worked really well in the round at The Orange Tree.
Nick Curtis was quite taken with it in The Standard:
Lips Curtis Standard 17 Nov 1998, Tue Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
No doubt we ate at Don Fernando’s afterwards – we pretty much always did, although I seem to recall trying an alternative place (Italian I think) that proved less satisfactory on one of those five autumn 1998 visits to Richmond.
