Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams, Comedy Theatre, 10 April 1999

We do like our Tennessee Williams, do Janie and I. This is a rarely performed play and I have always been fascinated by it.

Indeed, we must have been very keen to see this one, as we booked for the first Saturday of the West End run. We tend to avoid the West End these days.

We loved it. I wrote in my log:

Superb. One of the best so far this year.

Sheila Gish was predictably excellent, but we were also much taken with a young Rachel Weisz; I think this was the first time we saw her. There was more to the cast than those two – see tags in this piece – the Theatricalia entry unusually lacks them. 

We were wowed; not much else that we can say.

Nicholas de Jongh in The Standard was also wowed

Suddenly Standard de JonghSuddenly Standard de Jongh 15 Apr 1999, Thu Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

But wait! Our friend, Michael Billington, didn’t like it:

Suddenly Guardian BillingtonSuddenly Guardian Billington 17 Apr 1999, Sat The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

We need a third opinion. Charles Spencer in the telegraph. Pretty darn positive:

Suddenly Telegraph SpencerSuddenly Telegraph Spencer 16 Apr 1999, Fri The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Dinner At Club Gascon With Michael & Elisabeth Mainelli, 9 April 1999

CLUB GASCON [2]  CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

This was a memorable evening at Club Gascon in Smithfield. It was a new place (it had only opened a few months earlier) and all the rage when we visited it with The Mainellis in April 1999.

That was our first but certainly not our last visit.

I’m pretty sure the place became a reasonably regular haunt for Michael, at least for a while.

Janie was especially taken with their use of foie gras, which was celebrated in Club Gascon’s early incarnation. I too was taken with the food, but I am not partial to foie gras.

The restaurant gained a Michelin Star a couple of years after our first visit and still thrives at that location – here is a link to its website.

Betrayal by Harold Pinter, Lyttelton Theatre, 3 April 1999

Very good.

Our verdict in the log back then.

This was a major revival of Pinter’s classic, directed by Trevor Nunn with a cracking cast including Imogen Stubbs, Douglas Hodge, Anthony Calf and several other fine actors.

Here is a link to the Theatricalia entry for this production.

Unusually, we got to this one late – it had been running at the National for a while, since November 1998, by the time we saw it, towards the end of its run.

Charles Spencer had given it a rave review in The Telegraph:

Betrayal Telegraph SpencerBetrayal Telegraph Spencer 26 Nov 1998, Thu The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Our friend, Michael Billington, in The Guardian, confessed that he hadn’t “got” this play first time around but got it through this production:

Betrayal Guardian BillingtonBetrayal Guardian Billington 25 Nov 1998, Wed The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Nicholas de Jongh in The Standard also liked it:

Betrayal de Jongh StandardBetrayal de Jongh Standard 25 Nov 1998, Wed Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Snake by Rona Munro, Hampstead Theatre, 27 March 1999

Very good indeed…

…was our judgment on this one.

Lynn Gardner in The Guardian wrote well of it:

Snake Gardner GuardianSnake Gardner Guardian 23 Mar 1999, Tue The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Nicholas de Jongh did not get it in The Standard:

Snake Standard de JonghSnake Standard de Jongh 22 Mar 1999, Mon Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Quite a short play, this was, so we were able to eat at Harry Morgan after the show.

Good by CP Taylor, Donmar Warehouse, Followed By Dinner At Zafferano, 20 March 1999

By gosh, we seemed to be specialising in previews of Nazi stuff that month, having been to see Speer at the Almeida a couple of weeks earlier:

Speer by Esther Vilar, Almeida Theatre, 6 March 1999

My log comment for Good was less complimentary than that for Speer:

Didn’t quite do the business for us.

Great cast, with Charles Dance, Emelia Fox, Ian Gelder, John Ramm and several other stalwarts under the direction of Michael Grandage.

It might not have done the business for us, but it sure did for Nicholas de Jongh in The Standard:

Good Standard de JonghGood Standard de Jongh 24 Mar 1999, Wed Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Charles Spencer in The Telegraph shared our sentiments:

Good Spencer TelegraphGood Spencer Telegraph 25 Mar 1999, Thu The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Anthony Holden in teh Observer also seemed equivocal in his praise:

Goood Holden ObserverGoood Holden Observer 28 Mar 1999, Sun The Observer (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

We ate at Zafferano after Good. Zaffs was very good indeed.

Speer by Esther Vilar, Almeida Theatre, Followed By Dinner At Granita, 6 March 1999

I wrote but one word in my log for this one:

Excellent

It was creepy, though.

The play is set some decades after the war, with Albert Speer somewhat rehabilitated as someone ancillary to the Nazi atrocity machine, despite his Nuremberg conviction. This play was about the unravelling of that more favourable image. David Edgar also wrote a play on this subject which was produced the following year, but this Esther Vilar one was the only one of the two we saw.

Here’s the Theatricalia entry for that production.

Excellent performances from Klaus Maria Brandauer and Sven Eric Bechtolf.

We saw a preview. Subsequently, mixed reviews abounded (mostly good) for this production. Here’s Nicholas de Jongh in The Standard:

Speer Standard de JonghSpeer Standard de Jongh 10 Mar 1999, Wed Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Michael Billington, on the other hand, found the debate “rigged”.

Speer, Guardian BillingtonSpeer, Guardian Billington 10 Mar 1999, Wed The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Charles Spencer in the Telegraph was impressed:

Speer Spencer TelegraphSpeer Spencer Telegraph 11 Mar 1999, Thu The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

My records show that we ate at Granita after this play, as was our habit on occasion when visiting the Almeida back then.

Unfinished Business With Schubert & Bruckner, London Symphony Orchestra Under Lorin Maazel, Barbican Hall, 28 February 1999

Another Sunday evening, another trip to the Barbican to see a cracking concert.

Janie thinks that one of her generous Lebanese clients gave us the tickets to this concert and the one the week before, because she had been called away at short notice. Sounds plausible and also most fortuitous, as I might well have chosen both concerts myself.

Schubert’s Symphony No 8 in B Minor, “Unfinished” followed by Bruckner’s Symphony No 7 in E Major.

London Symphony Orchestra under Lorin Maazel.

This was a terrific concert.

The Schubert would have sounded a little like this – a live recording of Lorin Maazel conducting Sonorum Concentus:

The Bruckner would have sounded a bit like this – a live recording of Maazel with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra:

Thanks again to the lovely lady who kindly gave us her tickets.

Shakespeare In Love, A Cinema In Ealing, 27 February 1999

I hadn’t quite acquired my “Bard look” in 1999, but nevertheless we interrupted our brace of weekend visits to the Barbican to see large scale concerts with a visit to the local cinema in Ealing to see Shakespeare In Love.

It was one of those films that you had to see at that time because everyone was talking about it.

These days, he says writing 25 years later, we tend to avoid films that everyone is talking about.

Anyway, we enjoyed this one, even the silly bits. We did not imagine we were having a history lesson.

Here’s what IMDB says about it, including trailers and stuff.

No doubt we had a glass or two over a very pleasant meal at home afterwards.

Resurrection With Myung-Whun Chung & The London Symphony Orchestra At The Barbican Hall, 21 February 1999

Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No 2 in C Minor “Resurrection” to be precise.

This was a very good concert. I hadn’t heard of Myung-Whun Chung before I booked this concert but was mightily impressed with what we heard and saw.

It possibly looked and sounded a bit like the following – Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France conducted by that chap:

Rick Jones in The Standard lauded it…

Myung-Whun Chung StandardMyung-Whun Chung Standard 22 Feb 1999, Mon Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

…while berating the fact that the hall was far from full. Lorin Maazel was coming later in the week, which might have held some people back.

We most fortuitously got to enjoy a bit of both…

…see next!

Michael & Elisabeth For A Japanese Meal, 20 February 1999

OK, it won’t have quite looked like this

Janie has never kept a narrative diary. But the wonderful thing about Janie’s diary is that she makes copious notes in the diary around her plans, especially if she is preparing a meal and going to specific places to buy specific ingredients.

This meal was Japanese food and Janie no doubt used the services of our now regular sources in Noddyland, such as Atari-Ya, to source sashimi and tempura as noted in her diary.

No doubt much saki was imbibed to help such dishes go down.

This will have been a rare evening out for Michael and Elisabeth at that time, as Xenia was just turned one. I cannot remember whether a babysitter was involved or whether they brought the infant Xenia with them. At that age, probably the latter.