Travel, Theatre, Music, Cricket, Tennis, Writing, Life
We were excited about Joshua Redman taking up residency at the Wigmore hall and thought this concert might be right up our street.
In truth, I don’t think the Patrick Zimmerli music on show that night was quite to our taste.
It was an interesting idea blending a string quartet with a jazz trio, but it didn’t quite work for us with this music.
We liked bits of it and were glad we’d been to the concert.
Janie is not quite as keen on St John’s Smith Square as she is on the Wigmore Hall. It’s not quite the same sort of warm, intimate space.
But whenever we go there she realises that she likes the bar in the crypt and that we often hear music that sounds great in a church, which is of course exactly what this venue used to be.
Easter weekend and some baroque music suited to that time of year:
Very high quality singing for a semi-professional choir.
It all sounded beautiful.
Janie and I both really like Simon Gray’s plays and we really like the Hampstead Downstairs.
So this project; taking all four of Simon Gray’s attempts to write about a quirky pair of brothers in The Vale of Health, seemed like something we should do in full.
We saw them in this sequence/timing:
We’d often see the same faces in the audience again. One gentleman who sat next to us on the last night, we’d seen at least once before. I said to him that it would be like saying goodbye to close friends when this little season ended and he said, “that’s exactly what I was thinking”.
Very intimate plays, beautifully written (it’s Simon Gray after all) and very well acted/directed.
I’m cutting and pasting this same piece for all four evenings; the above and the links below basically apply to all four.
Here is a YouTube interview and stuff:
I remember that this was a really splendid meal at Dabbous – one of the very best restaurant meals we’ve had.
(Coincidentally, writing in November 2017, as John and I had a cracking good meal just the other day, at La Chapelle.)
It was a busy time. John was in the process of changing jobs (I think he’d handed in his notice to the Timber Trade that week).
Also, we had both been busy sending notes to Keele about our interactions with Neil Baldwin, ahead of the making of the film Marvellous.
Anyway, Dabbous was quite simply superb. Modern European with a sort-of middle-eastern twist of ingredients. Here is a link to a search term that should find you reviews if you want them.
John had chosen the place (well done him) so I had to deal with the damage; it was well worth it.
I wonder whether John can remember what we ate. I remember describing the meal in detail to Janie afterwards and all of us (including Mandy) agreeing that it would be a good place to try together, but we didn’t get round to that. Nor can I remember now what I ate.
But that evening and meal at Dabbous was marvellous…tremendous even.
Oh joy – ’twas the new cricket season and I took a day off work to see cricket with Charles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett.
I rather like that write up in retrospect. I think you get a sense of the joy to be had just passing a day with a friend (or friends) watching cricket.
If anything ever happens to King Cricket, I have scraped the above report page to here.
If anyone reading this is desperate to know what actually happened in the cricket that day, here is a link to the scorecard.
Janie and I both tend to like Simon Stephens plays, so there was little debate about booking an early sighting of this one at the Royal Court.
We enjoyed our evening, but neither of us could honestly say that this was one of Simon Stephen’s best or most memorable plays.
The play is about a rock star at the end of a long tour. The issues covered, while done well, seemed superficial compared with most of Simon Stephens’s plays. The dialogue glistened, but then what do you expect?
This search term – click here – will find you plenty of the (frankly, mixed) reviews.
Below is the video trailer:
Janie didn’t like this one at all.
I rather liked it in parts; far more so than Albion – Mike Bartlett’s most recent play at the time of writing (November 2017), also directed by Rupert Goold at the Almeida.
The conceit of the play is a Shakespeare pastiche, imagining a future King Charles III stumbling into a constitutional crisis with the government. (Three and a half years on, that scenario seems more likely than it did in April 2014, but I’ll leave that thought to one side).
That Shakespeare pastiche style worked in places but grated on me at times.
This was to be our last sighting of Tim Pigott-Smith, whose fine acting we enjoyed many times over the years. The whole cast was good and it was magnificently staged and produced.
Here is a link to the Almeida resource on King Charles III.
The play/production got mostly rave reviews – this search term will get you to the bulk of them.
Below is the trailer they used when it was up for a Tony:
An evening visit to the National Portrait Gallery to see David Bailey canonical exhibition.
Janie and I went with Toni Friend.
We really liked the exhibition, as did most but not all of the critics.
Afterwards we went on to Haozhan chinese restaurant for dinner – we felt this place had gone down since our previous visit, but still was a good enough and convenient place to end an enjoyable evening.
I had a funny feeling I skived the Middlesex AGM in 2014. My diary says “day off”, but by reviewing my electronic records, it seems that I took most of the day off, then went to the Middlesex AGM via a bit of work at the flat.
I don’t recall much/anything about that AGM, but I did exchange e-mails with Richard Goatley about it afterwards, setting up a lunch with him the following week (9th), so cannot deny that I was there.
I better recall the Seaxe Club AGM, which took place four days later. We were still in the old Middlesex Room that year. My memory of that event assisted by the report in an electronic version of the subsequent newsletter – a novel development for the Seaxe Club that season, partly as a result of “youngsters” such as me and Barmy Kev pushing the idea.
The panel discussion was an especially good one that year; Gus Fraser, Mark Ramprakash and Ryan Higgins.
We were bowled over by this piece/production. We thought it was brilliantly acted and gripping from start to finish. It is about two feral sisters, both damaged by abuse in different ways.
It divided the critics but it did not divide us.
Ellie Kendrick and Sinéad Matthews are both young actresses to look out for. Vivienne Franzmann is yet another super female writer emerging via the Royal Court.
Here is the rather limited Royal Court resource on this one.
Here is the trailer: