So there’s more to Uxbridge than the cricket ground.
Seriously, Janie and I both really liked this play. Simon Stephens is one of our favourite playwrights these days and this one worked really well in the Cottesloe for us.
The eponymous lead is a big part; Lesley Sharp is a correspondingly big part actress who was able to deliver big time on this play/production.
Janie and I both carry fond memories of this play/production, although it was a long play and is the sort of play that we sometimes dislike.
Howard Brenton has a tendency either to pull off this type of history/personality play with aplomb (as he did with this one and the Ai Wei Wei one) or leave us stone cold, as he did with his play about drawing lines across India at the time of Independence.
Jeremy Irons isn’t my favourite; he’s always sort-of Jeremy Irons. But Jeremy Irons is sort-of Harold Macmillan, so that aspect worked.
One element of the play that I recall really working for me was the notion of the young Harold, played by Pip Carter, moving the narrative on, even in the later years when Harold was becoming an old duffer.
We really loved Elmina’s Kitchen and also enjoyed Fix Up, both by Kwame Kwei-Armah when we saw them at the Cottesloe, so we thought this one would be a “must see”.
In truth, Statement of Regret was nowhere near as strong as the other plays, although it was worth the trip. This one was about a black think-tank on the brink of folding. Interesting subject matter but the play was a bit all over the place.
My recollection of this one is extremely limited. We saw this on the Saturday evening between my father’s death and the funeral. The programme helps my memory, as does Janie’s recall (also dredged with the help of the programme) and the reviews.
Victoria Benedictsson was a Swedish writer who had a difficult time as a modern woman in the early days of women’s liberation. She killed herself relatively young, but not before writing this loosely autobiographical play in the late 1880s. The play is now seen as a precursor to Scandinavian works such as Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and A Doll’s House.
I note from the programme that Nancy Carroll played the lead; I subsequently discovered that she is an Alleyn’s alum; good for her. She is an excellent actress. I also spotted in the programme that Paul Miller (now taking the Orange Tree Richmond from strength to strength) directed this production. In the round too; good training for the Orange Tree.
A rare visit to the theatre on a Monday – this was Easter Monday.
Janie and I both love a bit of Tennessee Williams and we had only seen an amateur production of the Rose Tattoo before – at the Questors some 10 years earlier.
This was a top notch production at the National – no holds barred.
Zoe Wannamaker was exceptional.
Critics seemed to think the production and performances masked a less than brilliant play – I think I probably agree with that analysis – click here for a link to reviews.
Below is the trailer from the 1955 movie – very different style:
This is the third and final part of my 25th anniversary Ogblog trilogy on “how Janie and I got it together”. In case you missed the first two parts and are interested in reading them, here are links to the first two episodes:
So, the ossobuco supper gave me the perfect opportunity to phone Janie to thank her for her hospitality and ask her out.
As luck would have it, I was sitting on a pair of hot tickets, The Street Of Crocodiles at the Cottesloe Theatre. It was my habit back then to book up quite a few such productions a long way in advance, with Bobbie Scully in mind for first dips, but with an unwritten agreement with Bobbie that she couldn’t commit that far in advance and that I might need to find someone else to join me…
…anyway, I had these tickets for 29 August and they seemed an ideal way to reciprocate.
Janie seemed keen on the idea, so the date was set.
I also offered to cook Janie a pre-theatre meal, after first checking that she liked Chinese food.
I can’t remember exactly which dishes I went for, but I’ll guess I plugged for bankable favourites that were reasonably easy to prepare and which needed relatively little clearing up afterwards:
cha chieng lettuce wrap – probably using veal mince or a mix of veal and pork mince;
chicken and cashew nuts with yellow bean sauce;
I thought the second main dish was steak slices with onions, mushrooms and black bean sauce, but Janie reckons the second dish was prawns with ginger and spring onions and now I think she is right;
pak choi with oyster sauce;
steamed basmati rice.
No TripAdvisor review for the meal, but on reminding Janie about it just now, she has described it as “amazing”, so there you go.
But far more amazing than my meal was The Street Of Crocodiles. It really was a stunningly good show.
The play is based on the stories of Bruno Schulz, which (from what we can gather) were weird enough when written, but when given the Complicite treatment, they become a sensory overload of words, music and movement.
Janie had driven to my place and insisted on also driving to the National Theatre – the latter habit being one she rarely deviates from 25 years later.
The evening seemed to have gone splendidly well. Janie was very complimentary about my cooking and seemed very taken with the show.
When we got back to my place, I asked Janie if she wanted to come back upstairs to my flat.
She said no.
I asked her if she was absolutely sure.
Janie said that she was absolutely sure and drove off.
So that was that – although on this occasion I sensed that “no” meant “not this time” and that there would be plenty of other times.
