The highlight of this weekend – or at least the most memorable event – was me being recognised by Elvis Costello when he and his misses were heading for their seats just behind us at the Albery.
I have written that up in my piece about the play/production:
Prior To the West End, A Jaunt To Lincolnshire & Nottingham
Our diaries indicate a flurry of activity on the Friday and the Saturday, which I only vaguely remember. Janie had a podiatry course at Nottingham University on the Saturday morning and we had chosen to take the Friday off to make that a more palatable affair, not least because Janie didn’t fancy the crack of dawn start to go to Nottingham and back in a day.
We lunched at The George At Stamford, in Lincolnshire, a place I knew and linked from “back in the day” when business took me up that way. Janie checked us in to The Village Hotel and Leisure Club in Nottingham, which enabled me to enjoy facilities while she was on her training course. Janie’s diary reminds me that she arranged for both of us to have massages there on the Friday evening when we arrived, which we both deemed to be a very ordinary “pitty-pat” experience, unlike our regular arrangements in London.
After Janie’s course we legged it back down to London and then on to The Albery. It all reads very hectic in the diaries – we’d for sure avoid such a crush 25 years later, as I write.
And The Next Day…
We went to the Barbican Hall for a concert, which I have written up here, with yet more celebrity name-dropping potential for me and Janie:
A star-studded audience our night: me, Janie, Elvis Costello…
…we didn’t/don’t normally go to celebrity gala preview evenings for productions. Indeed, I think we ended up at this one by accident.
If I remember correctly, Janie booked this one on an early priority booking as she was a member of the Almeida Theatre, which was responsible for (or at least heavily involved with) this production. We tend to like and book previews, because they are usually low key and precede the hullabaloo of press nights and the like. For some reason this one seemed to be different.
We got to the Albery and our seats in good time. Then someone in the row behind me taped my shoulder and said “hello” as he was going past towards his seat. It was Elvis Costello, whom I had got to know reasonably well in the 1990s at Lambton Place Health Club (now BodyWorksWest).
In fact, for several years at Lambton Place, I was aware of this friendly fellow who was obviously in the music business, as indeed were many members at Lambton’s. I had not recognised him as Elvis Costello, despite my having several of his albums and having seen him live several times in the 1980s. On one occasion, a few years before The Albery, he and I were chatting in the steam room and I asked him what he did. He said that he used to be in a band called Elvis Costello and the Attractions. “Oh yes”, I said “I have several of your albums and saw the band live more than once. Do you mind telling me your name?” He told me, and clearly found my embarrassment at my gaff funny.
I even reviewed one of Elvis Costello’s gigs for Concourse, our student newspaper, in 1983. That was only seven or eight years before I first met him.
Anyway, roll the clock to April 1999 again. We were still on “chat quite regularly at the health club” terms, hence Elvis Costello tapping me on the shoulder, saying hello and stopping for a brief chat as he was going through to his seat.
“Who was that?” asked Janie after he and his Mrs had moved on. “Elvis Costello”, I said, quietly and matter-of-factly I thought, but my words caused a flurry among a group of celebrity-spotters in the row in front of us, who proceeded to keep turning around at regular intervals, looking at Elvis Costello and quizzically looking at me and Janie whom, I suppose, they now suspected of being celebrities worth spotting in our own right. I found this more amusing than Janie did.
Unfortunately, the pre-show hullabaloo was probably the most entertaining aspect of the evening from my point of view. I didn’t much like the play and found Cate Blanchett’s character Susan incredibly irritating.
Not as good as we had hoped it would be
…was my log comment, so I am pretty sure Janie felt the same way.
It was all very well produced and had a tip-top cast under Jonathan Kent, but that couldn’t rescue the evening for us. Here’s a link to the Theatricalia entry.
Paul Taylor in The Independent shared our doubts about this play/production, although saying that he would sooner spend three weeks stuck in a lift with Hedda Gabler than have a drink with Blanchett’s character Susan is harsher than I could have been:
We had posh nosh at The Beaumont afterwards. I think it had recently had a makeover at that time – it will have had a makeover or two since (he says, writing 25 years after the event).
With the Royal Court in exile, we missed the original “Upstairs” version of this at the Ambassadors. With all the stuff we had been dealing with in 1998, this one almost passed us by completely when it transferred “downstairs” to The Duke of York’s. So when the Duke of York’s production returned to that Royal Court “home in exile”, at the start of 1999, to kick off a major tour, we booked early and were there at the outset.
Excellent play and production
I wrote.
That was to say the least. It was truly memorable and awe-inspiring drama. No wonder many critics had fawned over it when it first came out in 1997.
We saw a great cast and crew – most if not all the originals – Kieran Ahern, Brendan Coyle, Dermot Crowley, Michelle Fairley and Jim Norton acting, Ian Rickson directing. Here is a link to the Theatricalia entry for the production we saw. It was a privilege to have seen that production.
Janie and I thought this piece and performance was simply superb. In fact, I wrote:
Superb!!
…in my log and I am not normally the double-exclamation-mark type.
This was David Hare’s brave dive into performing a one-man-show on one of the thorniest topics he might possibly choose – the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Talk about high risk, but we thought Hare pulled off a blinder with this piece/performance.
This was one heck of a good evening at the theatre. A triple-bill of Pinter. I think it was Janie’s and my first visit to the Donmar Warehouse, not least judging by the detailed notes Janie wrote down while booking this, including the full address etc.
Janie paid £15 a ticket for Row C centre stalls. Not bad to say the least, even if £15 was real money in 1998. In those days, the Donmar was still regarded (and priced) as fringe. Janie noted the following timings:
A Kind Of Alaska 7.00 to 7.50;
Interval 25 minutes;
The Collection 8.15 to 9.10;
Interval 25 minutes;
The Lover 9.30 to 10.25.
What a cast…or should I say, what casts – as this triple bill had a separate cast for the first play and then one cast for both the second and third.
A Kind of Alaska starred Penelope Wilton, Bill Nighy & Brid Brennan.
The Collection starred Harold himself (always good value as an actor as well as a playwright & director), Douglas Hodge, Lia Williams & Colin McFarlane. The latter three also starred in the Lover.
We thought all three plays excellent and the whole production top notch.
Nicholas de Jongh in The Standard only really liked the first play:
Our friend Michael Billington clearly liked all three, although he did share de Jongh’s view that three Pinters in one night was possibly a Pinter too many:
“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:
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.
