Travel, Theatre, Music, Cricket, Tennis, Writing, Life
Wallace Collection – Great Hall, November 2023, with thanks to Chris Parkins
I have written up this visit on the Gresham Society website – click here.
If anything ever befalls the Gresham Society site, you can read my words on this scrape here.
This was my first visit to the Wallace for several years – Janie and I went in 2008, primarily to see an Osbert Lancaster exhibition – click here or below:
Gosh this was a powerful piece about a fictitious far right group in East London, centred around an enthusiasm for karaoke as well as unpalatable politics.
Really well written, excellent performers and well directed too.
It reminded us why we like the Bush so much…if for some reason we needed reminding.
Here is a link to the Bush resource on this play/production.
Below is the trailer:
The reviews were good, but the critics were not as unequivocally impressed with this piece as we were – click here for a link to a search term for the reviews.
This was a challenging piece that mad us think and question some of our preconceptions. Perhaps that made it harder for the reviewers. Me and Daisy – for sure we’re up for this sort of thing.
Most of the story of this visit is captured in the following King Cricket piece, published in April 2015:
If by any chance anything ever happens to the King Cricket site, here’s a scrape of that Proust-inspired piece.
Not only had the season flown by in a “lost time” manner, that day and evening similarly flew by.
There was a meet the players party in the evening which, if I recall correctly, was quite well attended by Durham guests as well as Middlesex players that year. Did Chas and I manage a quick chat with Colly at that one? Chas might remember.
And talking of remembrance of things past, the match turned out to be one to forget from a Middlesex point of view – see Cricinfo details here.
This was Paul Miller’s first production having assume the reins at the Orange Tree.
We were pretty impressed, although we were looking forward a bit more to the modern works we had booked to see later in the season.
This was a very slick production; well directed, well produced and skillfully acted.
It is a grim play, though. mercifully not too long for its period – or perhaps Paul Miller was prepared to cut a bit, whereas Sam Walters was always orthodox as far as the text was concerned.
Here is a link to the Orange Tree resource on this production.
Below is a vid in which Paul Miller explains himself:
The reviews were good – deservedly so – click here for a link to them.
Did we chow down at Don Fernando after the show? By ‘eck we did.
We so wanted to really like this one…
…and we sort-of did like it, but still felt a little let down by the piece. It could…we felt should…have been so gripping and exciting.
We loved Alecky Blythe’s verbatim piece a few years earlier, The Girlriend Experience – click here or below…
The Girlfriend Experience, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 20 September 2008
…so we thought a verbatim piece about the 2011 riots, complete with “community chorus”, would be a special evening of theatre.
Here is a link to the Almeida stub on the piece.
It all felt very different on arrival at the theatre, with the space transformed for this piece and entrances to the space where audiences normally fear to tread.
But the piece itself never really took off into the stratosphere as perhaps it should.
We heard a lot from the good-hearted middle class people who felt conflicted by the riots and/or tried to help those who got into difficulties during the chaos. We heard less from the rioters themselves.
To be fair on Alecky Blythe, she took the orthodox view on the play and stuck only to the verbatim material she could gather at the time, so I suppose that would be weighted towards those slightly safer situations…
…not least because people are not normally full of conversation while rioting…
…I imagine; not ever having been in the heart of a riot personally.
The reviews were a bit mixed – as Janie and I predicted when we saw the preview – click here for a search term that finds the reviews.
Below is the trailer:
Just occasionally we see a play/production that really sticks in our minds, so much so that we are talking about it and/or referring to it for years afterwards,
The Nether was such a piece.
Here is a link to the Royal Court resource on The Nether.
It is set in a dystopian future in which many of the real things we cherish (such as trees) have gone but humans spend much of their time in virtual reality worlds.
The play grapples with some of the ethical issues we need to think through in this context; not least moral injury.
But this is no mere preachy issues play – it is a gripping drama too and you end up really grappling with many moral dilemmas in 80 minutes.
Stanley Townsend led a tip-top cast.
The production deservedly got excellent reviews – click here for a search term link to those – and it got a west end transfer.
Below is a vid of a Royal Court debate with the playwright and Professor Anthony Beech:
The programmes hadn’t arrived, so (most unusually for the Donmar) we got a simple black and white printed A4 foldy. Standards.
The play was very good indeed, though, as was the cast. The usual high production values for the Donmar too.
A bit slow, but then this IS a 19th century Russian story and it IS Brian Friel, whom we like very much, btw.
The critics on the whole shared our enjoyment of it – click here for a link to reviews.
In short, this was a good’n.
Mercifully Janie didn’t go off on one of her, “isn’t that basically an Indian theorbo thing” at the sight of a sarod…
…which is a bit odd, really, because I suspect that the sarod is a much closer relative to the theorbo than Janie’s mystery punter outburst about the “basically Chinese theorbo thing” aka the pipa:
William Carter, Theorbist Extraordinaire’s Mystery Punter Outed, 24 September 2010
So how early an instrument is the sarod?
Well, if you accept that it is basically a rubab, very old indeed. And very lute-like.
Amjad Ali Khan believes that the modern form of the instrument was developed by his family in the late 18th or 19th century, seven generations ago. Amjad Ali Khan was our man of the evening (along with his kin) so who are we to argue with that.
Here is a link to the Wigmore Hall stub for this concert.
Below is a vid of a similar concert recorded a few months later, including Amjad Ali Khan with both sons who played that night in July, but I think a different tabla player. This is a truly lovely vid/recording:
We find this type of music incredibly relaxing…
…and assume it is meant to be relaxing…
…so it was not a bad thing to both nod off at times in a late night (22:00 start) gig at The Wig.
We loved this concert. revived, we also stuck around for a while to see the jazz in the bar: Dave O’Higgins Quartet – click here for listing – post bop, apparently, which was cool.
I could quickly and easily run out of adjectives to describe this concert…it was that good.
Our reluctance to go to Thursday evening concerts at that time (we were both still working full pelt) was mitigated by the promise of baroque music with a jazzy feel.
Also, we were both keen to see Philippe Jaroussky; he had impressed us so much on previous sightings/hearings.
Here is a link to the concert programme for the night.
It was mostly Purcell music from L’Arpeggiata’s then latest album Music For A While.
We ran into Eric Rhode that night, who (like some of the critics,, it turned out) wasn’t so keen on Music For A While. But Eric told us that L’Arpeggiata’s album Los Pajaros Perdidos was exceptional, so I procured both albums…
…and was so pleased with them that I ended up pretty much buying L’Arpeggiata’s back catalogue, all of which sounds delightful and we still listen to those albums a lot – especially Los Pajaros Perdidos, which, unlike the album Music For A While, is all about Philippe Jaroussky, who was on top form for that album.
Here is a short teaser vid which gives you a reasonable idea of the Music For A While album:
As for that concert in July 2014, it truly was a special evening at the Wigmore Hall for me and Janie.
This is the sort of play/production that reminds us why we like the Bush so much.
The play is set in Barbados and London; the play is a mature drama, full of insight into Bajan life and culture. Robin Soans has previous of course – not least Life After Scandal…
Life After Scandal by Robin Soans, Hampstead Theatre, 21 September 2007
…but this play is quite different as when we had seen his previous work it had been verbatim theatre before this play.
Here is a link to the Bush’s resource on this play/production.
Excellent cast, excellent production. Janie and I were discussing the issues and the relative merits (and demerits) of the characters deep into the weekend.
Below is a trailer:
More interesting, here is a short interview with Robin Soans and director Madani Younis:
Finally, here is a link to a search term that finds the (mostly excellent) reviews.
