It is a simple story about a trio of 50-something fellas who were a band when they were college age, returning to the scene of their exploits in Ibiza 30 years later.
Neil D’Souza not only wrote the play but also plays one of the lead parts, very convincingly – actually all of the actors do so: Catrin Aaron, Kerry Bennett, Peter Bramhill and James Hillier being the other four. Alice Hamilton does a grand job from the director’s chair.
The play is a comedy but it has a thoughtful and edgy twist to it too. In particular, the second half starts off full of fun and laughs, but soon “bloke meets woke” in a rather shocking way, changing the tone and bringing the story home in a nuanced way.
We really like comedies that have enough going on that we still have stuff to talk about over a meal or two afterwards. This is one of those.
…Rohan decided to try the National Theatre foyer bars as a venue this time around – cunningly timed with two quite long plays at the Olivier and Lyttelton both starting at 19:30. That gave us ample time to perform in the relative quiet between the start of the plays and the intervals.
The relative quiet was rather noisily broken by the bar staff hoovering up around us, very early in the reading of Geraldine’s piece, but we’ll put that temporary disturbance aside. The venue worked.
And we can all honestly claim now that we have performed at The National Theatre.
Rohan threaded our pieces together, as is his way. In this instance, with the topic “The Phone Call”, Rohan’s thread covered Alexander Graham Bell‘s innovation, the practical telephone. Also the contribution of the lesser known but colourful Florentine, Antonio Meucci, who largely invented that communication method before Bell, but was too polite to patent the critically novel elements of the technology he had discovered.
Geraldine’s piece came first. A charming throwback to 1973, Geraldine recounted her mother’s almost infeasibly regular long-distance calls to Geraldine (who had escaped to New York). Geraldine’s mum persistently tried, in vain, to persuade her daughter to return to “Hicksville” and resume the “normal” life into which Geraldine had, to her mother’s perception, been born.
Rohan then reminded us all that Alexander Graham Bell’s first phone call was to an employee who awaited his call…
Mr. Watson—Come here—I want to see you
…starting the mighty tradition of bosses using such devices to issue instructions to underlings.
Rohan was rather sniffy about my ability to follow a simple instruction – i.e. to write a story about a phone call. I cannot imagine what Rohan’s beef might have been.
The Phone Call by Ian Harris
We don’t go out so much anymore. Not since the pandemic. It’s not a fear of infection or anything like that. It’s just that we have got out of the habit. It now takes something especially interesting or unusual to lure us back to the theatre or concert hall.
One such interesting concert caught our eyes recently – a concert of African chamber music at the Wigmore Hall, led by Tunde Jegede, who is both a virtuoso kora player and a classically-trained cellist. The kora is a large West-African 21-stringed plucking instrument, sometimes described as a cross between a lute and a harp.
Janie and I like the Wigmore Hall. It is one of the few remaining public spaces where we still normally bring down the average age of the audience quite significantly. But we soon saw, on arrival at the Wigmore Hall for the kora concert, that this audience was different. Only sparsely populated with “the usual suspects”, the average age of the audience was, horror of horrors, below ours.
The front row still had a comfortingly senior look. Next to Janie was a beaming, white-haired woman you might have got from central casting had you requested “a left-over hippy”. The woman was very friendly and chatty – clearly not part of the regular front row mafia. Familiar with the kora – she had spent time in West Africa when younger – she was a fan of Tunde Jegede’s playing but had not previously managed to see him play live. She was, as the young folk say, super-excited.
The first half of the concert was truly magical. Tunde had brought with him a posse of chamber musicians from Lagos, together with a wonderful percussionist. We were transported by the music, not least the entrancing sound of Tunde’s kora-playing.
During the interval, our friendly neighbour said that she was delighted with the live music experience and thrilled that we had enjoyed it. She recommended and wrote down the names of a couple of Tunde’s albums for us to follow up, which we did.
I wondered what those silky-sounding kora strings are made of. Our otherwise-expert neighbour didn’t know. More or less at that moment, Tunde came on to the stage to rearrange the setting for the second half of the concert. As he was standing, with his kora, about three yards away from me, it seemed only polite to ask him about the strings.
I was expecting the answer to be something along the lines of, “skin from an antelope’s anus or a sitatunga’s scrotum“. But instead, Tunde simply said, “Nylon”. “Just Nylon”, I asked, hoping for more enlightenment. “Just Nylon”, said Tunde, gently.
The second half of the concert was also good but less to our taste. Tunde didn’t play his kora – instead he demonstrated his skills as a cellist. The fusion theme was retained, as the pieces were arrangements of traditional African music, but to us the real magic had been the kora.
I tried to work out the common theme in Tunde’s unusual choice of devices for his multi-instrumentalism. I concluded that Tunde likes making music while holding his instrument between his legs.
525 WORDS
I smiled to myself as I hit the save button and e-mailed my piece to Rohan Candappa for review.
Ninety minutes later, my iPhone buzzed.
It was Rohan.
“Ian, old chap”, said Rohan. “A charming vignette, but it has nothing to do with the subject and title – The Phone Call”.
“I beg to differ”, I said. “The piece is absolutely about The Phone Call”. The introductory story about the kora concert is a MacGuffin. The main story is about the phone call.
“Well”, said Rohan, “I did consider e-mailing you, but then…”
“…never explain”, I interrupted. “You and I have collaborated on and off for over 50 years now, Rohan. Many things don’t need to be said.”
It seemed that everyone else was able to understand and obey a simple instruction from Rohan…even Jan.
Strangely, Jan, like Geraldine, had set her story in 1973. Without conferring. The central conceit of Jan’s story, which revolved around an uprooted little girl whose family had recently moved to a different town, was a troubling phone call aimed at one or both parents, inadvertently picked up by the little girl.
Similarly strange was the structural similarity between Jan’s and Julie’s story, which was also about a troubling phone call picked up by someone other than the intended recipient of the call. Julie’s was not set in a particular bygone year, but the details within the story suggested 1970s as well.
David’s story was about a character who bought a vintage GPO rotary telephone through the internet and, as a result, got a phone call more than he had bargained for.
All of The Phone Call stories were charming, thought-provoking and enjoyable to hear. It was also very pleasing to spend time with the ThreadMash gang again, even though we were a somewhat depleted group on this occasion.
Sadly, Kay, who was going to join us, was unable to attend due to the recent death of her mother. Yet Kay made a charming contribution to the collection of stories by e-mail a couple of days later:
“Here is my belated contribution to “The Call”. In the endless process of clearing out my mum’s house, we found the tin in which I used to save my phone money when I was a kid. Like many others, I was expected to pay for my calls!”
They say a picture is worth a thousand words and my goodness that picture of Kay’s is worth at least that many. But Rohan had instructed us to limit our stories to a maximum of 800 words. Honestly, some people can’t comply with the simplest of instructions from the ThreadMaster.
There’s something gloriously quaint about the Finborough Theatre. Even by the standards of pub theatres, it seems gloriously wedded to the past.
In part, that’s because The Finborough is, at least at present, a few rooms above a corner building that used to be a pub, rather than an actual functioning pub.
But also, it is the sort of place that clings to its roots, even in the matter of archaic ticketing practices. These days we receive, when booking The Finborough, a very modern style e-mail ticketing with a QR code for each e-ticket. On arrival at The Finborough, though, the ticket office still asks for your name and digs out the old-style paper tickets, just like the old days.
Don’t you have a gadget that goes beep and reads our e-tickets?
I asked the nice young woman on the desk.
Do we look like the sort of place that has a gadget that goes beep to read tickets?
She asked in repsonse.
Not really. Except that you did send us -tickets with QR codes on them.
I persisted.
We have no idea why they do that.
The nice young woman thus closed that discussion.
Anyway…
…the reason we go to the Finborough is not to admire the ticketing system. We tend to see consistently good small-scale theatre there.
Jab was no exception. A very good two-hander set during the Covid-19 pandemic, about a marriage that disintegrates during the crisis…although you sense that the marriage had been doing a fair bit of disintegrating prior to the pandemic.
Very well acted and directed. Kacey Ainsworth, Liam Tobin & Scott Le Crass take a bow…well, the first two named actually did.
Just 80 minutes long, if you like your shows two hours plus this type of play is not for you. Janie and I have really acquired the taste for shorter plays. Never mind the young folk having short attention spans, we older folk have short buttocks-stuck-in-one-small-space spans these days.
We went home thoroughly satisfied, theatre-wise. After collecting and then, once home, eating our Mohsen dinner, our appetites for food were also thoroughly satisfied.
…and so taken with it were we, that we all agreed it would be a suitable venue for this slightly larger gathering. Which it was.
But first the Punch Room, which had a really good early evening ambiance – good music but not too loud – other trendy people, but not too many and not too loud. Interesting cocktails list. Nice waiting staff.
“Cheers!“, says JanieA cheery smile from Jilly, who said that she hadn’t seen John & Mandy for some decades
Mandy also looks cheery, while John is seriously choosing cocktailsDid somebody say British Gas?
The waiter took a lot of pictures of us (see headline example). We realised that the gathering included two whites, a black and (in maiden name terms) a browning. I thought we should go for a sepia version of the group photo in recognition of this colour palette.
We all go back so many years…
Then a five or six minute stroll through Fitzrovia to the restaurant, Pahli Hill . When you book, they say that you cannot dictate where you would like to sit, but I requested downstairs, where we had previously enjoyed the ambiance before and they e-mailed back to say that they would be able to comply with that request as ours was an early evening booking. John has been back there himself upstairs since our previous visit and concurs that upstairs has less atmosphere to his taste, so I’m especially glad I did that.
No pictures of Janie in the restaurant, sadly, as she took the following photos, while the rest of us focussed on eating and drinking.
As with our previous visit to Pahli Hill, by the time we’d finished with small plates and grills, we had no space for big plates, although we did find space for desserts.
It was a really lovely evening. Great food and drink, but most importantly very enjoyable company.
It’s been a while since I attended a Gresham lecture live. In Janie’s case, probably not since the most recent of mine…
…which took place before we met James Larkin in 2013 in the most stressful of circumstances, as Janie had a dismal diagnosis/prognosis of melanoma at that time.
The worst did not come to pass, against the odds.
We had been impressed with James Larkin and were keen to see what he had to say about developments with immunotherapies since our formal interactions with him on that topic.
A few of the usual suspects were at Barnard’s Inn Hall that night, including Basil and Lesley from the Gresham Society.
There was a drinks reception after the lecture, which gave me a chance to speak briefly with James. He hadn’t recognised us, unsurprisingly (just one consultation more than 10 years ago) but the dismal nature of that consultation clearly returned to his mind as we spoke.
So, she’s alright? Completely well?
James asked, looking at Janie with a slightly bemused expression on his face. Perhaps I was reading too much into it.
It might have had something to do with one of the FoodCycle head office communications team joining our shift at FoodCycle Marylebone in January. Soon after that, I had a message from someone else in communications there wondering whether we’d be prepared to be featured as a Valentine’s story.
It would have been churlish to say no.
We had no action pictures of us working together on FoodCycle in our FoodCycle shirts, except for some masked-up ones for the pandemic days. I asked if a sofa-selfie would do and we were told “yes”.
Don’t ask how many goes it took for us to obtain the half-decent picture that was used.
I should imagine that the library book club occasionally has evenings about books that don’t revolve around gritty Yorkshire cricketers whom I once met. But Ray Illingworth, like Geoffrey Boycott, had the joy of my company once. In Illingworth’s case, for considerably longer than my one-minute exchange with Geoffrey in 1969.
Janie’s interest in cricket tends to revolve around the people, so these talks about biographies please her, as does the charming, relaxed atmosphere of a light meal and talk on a winter’s evening.
We were seated next to Alan Rees, who runs the library and who introduced the speaker, Mark Peel, who was seated to Alan’s right. It was fortuitous sitting near to Alan, as he can help me find some rare real tennis history books in the MCC’s extensive collection to help with my research. A really pleasant, friendly and helpful chap.
Alan looks remarkably calm in the above picture, although he confessed to Janie that he feels nervous introducing such evenings. Alan’s calm look in such a photo reminds me of the deceptively calm look on my face when I am doing something that makes me very nervous, such as riding an elephant.
I don’t look terrified, but…
The pachyderm image leads us nicely to the subject of Ray Illingworth, who must have been one of the thickest-skinned cricketers ever to play for Yorkshire and England…which is a cohort of especially hardened characters.
Of course I met Ray in his dotage, by which time he had softened in the way that legends often do. I told him, as I am now telling you, dear reader, that I started taking an interest in cricket in the early 1970s, when he was the England Captain. I couldn’t really imagine anyone else being the England Captain until, all of a sudden, in 1974, someone else was.
Mark’s talk was excellent. Lots of detail, lots of interesting anecdotes, all delivered with aplomb. Mark also answered all of our questions thoughtfully and in depth.
Undeterred by the “strangely reflected” pictures Janie took last time, she couldn’t resist taking some pictures pointing away from the Writing Room, where the meal takes place. Again, she obtained a rather weird effect but I rather like this one.
Our first visit to the theatre of 2024 and it was worth the wait.
Set in an NHS mental health service unit for juveniles, the play tells the simple story of a youngster who enters the workplace imagining that he might make a difference in a hurry.
Then reality bites.
The play is beautifully written by Sophia Chetin-Leuner, and very well directed by Ed Madden, who should, if nothing else, pick up a nominative determinism award for directing this particular piece.
Despite the plethora of short scenes, the story and characterisation develop organically and clearly over the 90 minutes or so of the piece. I had to suspend a fair bit of belief around the central conceit that a youngster might implement an NHS patient administration system alone in just a few weeks without encountering or causing any profound issues, but that only proves that I have spent too much of my working life thinking about informatics.
The cast all performed their parts convincingly, with top marks to Debra Baker who played the “seen it all before administrator” Angela.
Denzel Baidoo was the most comedic of the three, playing the naïve trainee Jay. One short scene, set to music, when Jay thinks he is alone in the office will live long in our memories.
If you are reading this piece soon after I have upped it, you have a chance still to see this production at The Bush, as it has been extended to 7 March. In Janie’s and my opinion, it deserves a transfer to gain a wider audience. It is a fun piece that made us both laugh a lot, but it also tackles a great many pertinent issues of our times in a thoughtful and warm-hearted way.
We sat directly behind Andrew McGregor, who presented the concert for BBC Radio 3 listeners. It is the first time we have ever sat in those seats, which was enlightening and slightly distracting in equal measure. We did at least, from there, hear what the presenter is telling the Radio 3 audience, which is often a bit more than can be found on the programme.
Actually, for this concert, most of what we wanted was in the programme, which can be found through the Wigmore Hall link or, if that ever fails, here.
If you are finding this within a month or so of the concert, then you can hear it on BBC Sounds – click here.
In the concert hall we got a sweet encore by Pietro Locatelli, which made me realise that I had paid that composer far too little attention, so we listened to a fair smattering of Locatelli when we got home. We also discussed his football skills and his magnificence as a restaurateur.
One of the finest composers Juventus ever produced? And as for Zafferano…
