“8:00 Valentine Night The Square Restaurant” 6 Bruton Street W1 Karine”
…reads Janie’s more helpful entry.
Janie’s diary also informs me that we went to Sound On Wheels in North Harrow that morning, where the indomitable Maurice & Ray will have sorted out the latest arrival in our household, my souped-down Honda CRX, Nobby, with a sound system.
25 years on, Sound On Wheels has gone. As has The Square, which presciently closed down just before the Covid 19 pandemic.
When we went it was all the rage, having relatively recently moved to Mayfair. It was in the process of collecting its second Michelin Star had it not done so already.
Janie remembers this as one of the finest meals we have had, with superb service too. It was a very special evening.
Naked by Luigi Pirandello, Almeida Theatre, 21 February 1998
There had been a lot of hype about Juliette Binoche coming to tread the Almeida boards, so we were really looking forward to this one.
Our review:
Not as good as we expected – the critics were more convinced by Ms Binoche than we were
My recollection is that we found it hard to hear what she was saying despite the fact that we were sitting in the front row.
The critics fell in love with her, though. My friend, Michael Billington, going a little overboard. I agree with him about Juliette Binoche’s “eccentric inflections” and that Oliver Ford Davies put in a blinder of a performance.
David Benedict in The Independent leapt to Juliette’s defence, like a knight in shining armour, denying even the accusation that the inflections were eccentric:
Nicholas de Jongh in The Standard hated the play but loved Juliette Binoche. I would agree that part of the problem was the play – not one of Pirandello’s best:
I stand by our own review – we couldn’t hear clearly what Juliet Binoche was saying in a play that, in any case, would have been a fairly difficult watch.
We ate at Pasha afterwards. Another once-excellent eatery that is no longer there 25 years later:
“Back in the day” when we didn’t mind going off to the theatre in the pre-Christmas maelstrom.
Also back in the heyday of the Almeida. I’m glad we went, as this was a very good production indeed.
Tom Hollander as Khlestakov, the civil servant mistaken for the Government inspector. My neighbour, Iain McDiarmid, performing as the Lord Provost (rather than directing this time), Jonathan Kent directing. There is a Theatricalia entry for this one – here.
Nicholas de Jongh in The Standard was more taken with the production than the play…I am inclined to agree, not being a great lover of farce:
However, my friend Michael Billington in The Guardian suggests that it is the production, not the play, that, if anything, errs towards farce in this instance:
…we did the “theatre plus big night out dinner” thing again the next night.
Look, Europe! was, I think, a one-off awareness and fundraising evening for anti-censorship campaign Index, done under the auspices of Harold Pinter and primarily aimed and about Iranian censorship.
Fine cast too – joining Harold Pinter were Joseph Bennett, Anna Friel, Rhydian Jones, Andrew Lincoln, Roger Lloyd Pack, David MacCreedy, Nadia Sawalha, Nadim Sawalha, Christopher Simon and Malcolm Tierney.
David Lister wrote the event up brilliantly as a preview in the Independent:
Janie and I were both very taken by the evening at the theatre, which was good drama and very thought provoking for its cause.
Dinner At Granita
Then a few doors down to Granita in Upper Street, which we had been meaning to try for ages. Apparently the spiritual home of New Labour, as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are said to have made their leadership pact there a few years before our visit.
Tragically, not only were there no cabinet ministers to be seen in there on that Sunday evening, we didn’t even see Harold, Antonia and Co “after show”, which we thought must be a racing certainty.
We did still have a very good meal, though.
And to prove her superwoman credentials, after that action packed weekend, Janie went off at about 6:30 the next morning to treat her first domiciliary patient of the day. 25 years later – not a chance – we’d probably take the Monday off, if not the Monday and Tuesday!
I’ve never been sure about Shaw, but we thought we’d give this a try because it was The Almeida and because top flight Shaw productions were few and far between at that time.
Great cast and crew – see Theatricalia entry – including Emma Fielding, Richard Griffiths, Patricia Hodge, Penelope Wilton, Malcolm Sinclair and Peter McEnery, with David Hare in the director’s chair.
Despite all those good people, this one added to my/our sense of interminability, which had already been piqued by Suzanna Andler the previous week, which was soon followed by wall-to-wall coverage of Princess Diana’s tragic demise, which took ceaselessness to new levels.
Anyway, my contemporaneous words on Heartbreak House, speaking for both me and Janie:
Seemed interminable in the second half. Had “moments”, but all too few.
We were on quite a roll with our theatre going that spring. We thought this one was very good, as indeed we had consistently said for some time – certainly everything we had seen since our return from the Middle East.
We are both partial to a bit of Lorca, but Dona Rosita is considered to be a difficult Lorca play. This production did the piece proud.
A superb cast for this one, including Celia Imrie, Eleanor Bron, Phoebe Nicholls, Justin Salinger, Amanda Drew, Kerry Shale, Kathryn Hunter (she seemed to be everywhere at that time) with Phyllida Lloyd directing. Here is the Theatricalia entry for this one.
Our friend, Michael Billington, was suitably impressed with it.
In those days, Ralph Fiennes was one of my buddies as Lambton Place…
…OK, what I really mean is that I’d quite often see him there and we were nodding acquaintances.
Anyway, Fiennes was doing great theatre work in those days, not least at the Almeida, which was having a heyday under the joint leadership of Iain McDiarmid (also one of my nodding acquaintances in the Notting Hill neighbourhood back then, as it happens) and Jonathan Kent.
I wrote in my log:
Very good production. Ian McDiarmid near stole the show the night we went understudying as Kosykh.
My log says that we thought The Dance Of Death “superb” and why not? John Neville, Gemma Jones, Cheryl Fergison and Anthony O’Donnell makes for a seriosuly good cast.
Janie and I see a lot of theatre and on the whole go to see productions that we find good or very good. But just occasionally we see something that is a cut above and is truly memorable as one of the best productions we have ever seen.
That is how my memory (25 years later) recalls this adaptation/production of The Life Of Galileo and my log from the time registers the simple phrase, “excellent production”.
Iceman Standard de Jongh 15 Apr 1998, Wed Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Iceman Independent Taylor 16 Apr 1998, Thu The Independent (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Iceman Guardian Billington 16 Apr 1998, Thu The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
