Tag: Riverside Studios

Persona by Ingmar Bergman, Riverside Studios, 25 January 2020

We feel as though we have been waiting for ever to see the opening of the new Riverside Studios.

Word reached us in the autumn that the venue had opened for food and drink, so we looked it up to discover that the first theatrical production was to be a stage adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s astonishing movie Persona.

Ingmar Bergman – one of my heroes

I don’t do heroes much, but I make a few exceptions and Ingmar Bergman is one of those exceptions. I love most of his films. Apart from the occasional lemon, such as All These Women, which I am prepared to accept is a lemon.

Persona is a bit of a “marmite” movie – some people consider it to be a masterpiece, others dislike it intensely. I have always rated it highly as a movie – not his best but a very interesting piece.

The idea of it as a stage piece intrigued me…and Janie, who does not rate the movie as highly as I do.

Below is a preview video for the Riverside production, which explains how they transformed the piece from a film script and other archival material into the performance piece we saw:

I believe we saw a preview, just a few days into the run. Janie and I very much enjoyed the production. We both thought it worked well on the stage – possibly better on stage than it does as a film.

This version is sort-of narrated by an imaginary film professor (portrayed by Paul Schoolman) who finds himself sick with pneumonia in the very hospital in which Bergman wrote Persona. This fictional character metaphorically unspools the film into a stage piece.

One other excellent feature of this production is the musical instrument the Earth Harp, a huge installation which sits in one corner of the stage and splays out from there above the audience, dominating much of the studio space. It was performed by its inventor William Close.

It is hard to get a true sense from the video below of how this instrument sounds and vibrates through your body in a live performance, but you’ll get a nice tune and a bit of an idea:

Anyway, the performances were all very good and we were gripped by the piece.

We sensed that some of the audience were bowled over by it, others less so. I don’t suppose this production will be quite as marmite as the original film, but I expect it will divide audiences and critics.

Reviews, if/when they come, will be findable through this link.

We thought it was an excellent start for the revived venue. Slightly less excellent is the cold feel of the expanded, large space that is the venue as a whole. Early days of course and work in progress, naturally. But having dispensed with the shabby chic look of the old place, the Riverside crowd need to start developing some character to the space.

The large colourful paintings helped a bit, but with price tags in the thousands, it felt like a shout out to wealthy West London media types and a bit off-putting to us shabby chic returnees and/or to locals who might have been hoping for enhanced community space for real people.

But go judge for yourselves if you are able – you can see Persona at The Riverside until 23 February 2020. We recommend it.

Searching For Sugar Man, Riverside Studios, 10 May 2014

I’m not sure quite what put us on to this superb movie, but we booked an all-too-rare showing of it weeks in advance at the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith. I suspect this was our last visit there before the closure for major redevelopment of the site.

It is a most unusual, true story. The American singer-songwriter, Rodriguez, was for some time billed as “the next Dylan” (the kiss of death for many a career) but vanished into obscurity.

Unbeknown to him, he was a cult, underground figure in South Africa where his music was extremely well-known and where he was believed to have died. After South Africa emerged from the apartheid era, some fans tried to track down Rodriguez’s story, discovered that he was still alive and the rest is history.

Here is a link to plenty of resources on the film and Rodriguez’s story.

Here is the IMDb item on this movie.

And below is the official YouTube trailer for the movie:

I also bought the soundtrack album, which Janie and I have enjoyed listening too quite a lot.

It isn’t often that a movie sticks in our thoughts for a long while after we saw the movie, but this one really did. Highly recommended.

Dwelling In Bed Ain’t Bad by Paul Haenen, Riverside Studios, 14 May 2011

Billed as a sell-out wow show from Amsterdam and Antwerp, we thought we’d give this play with its short run at the Riverside a try.

In truth, it was a very slight but charming piece about a gay couple.

We quite enjoyed it, but in truth were not wowed.

There is a preview/teaser to be seen:

This search term – click here- will find other stuff on the short run at the Riverside (and to some extent the production generally.

I think we went to the Thai Bistro afterwards – not sure why that memory is quite strong but it is.

 

Andrew Lawrence, Riverside Studios, Then Dock Kitchen, Ladbroke Grove, With Nephews Paul & Scott, 17 July 2010

Originally this evening was set up with Paul and a young woman named Holly. But Holly was off the agenda some time before the evening came round and Scott elected to come down to London to see us instead.

From memory, dinner at the Dock Kitchen had always been on the agenda for this event, but once the dramatis personae changed we thought that some light entertainment before dinner might go down well.

So we booked an hour of stand up comedy at Riverside Studio 3: Andrew Lawrence. He turned out to be pretty good. Stand up comedy is not usually Janie’s thing, but the young men (all three of us) enjoyed it – as did Janie really. This was more thoughtful and less obvious than a lot of stand up.

Then we hot-footed it to the canalside at Ladbroke Grove/Kensal Road to try Dock Kitchen, a pop-up restaurant that had popped up the previous year and stayed around for several years.

It was a really good meal to round off a really good evening.

The Silence Of Lorna, Movie At Riverside Studios, Followed By Thai Bistro Chiswick Dinner, 23 January 2009

The Silence Of Lorna is quite a harrowing film about Albanians in Belgium trying to get an EU passport.

Perhaps not ideal fare at the end of a hard week’s work, but that’s what we did.

To cheer ourselves up afterwards, we took away food from the Thai Bistro in Chiswick – one of our favourites. It has changed its name a few times since 2009, including some infeasibly unpronouncable and unmemorable names, but at the time of writing, June 2019, it is named Tor Thai Bistro.

Mnemonic by Simon McBurney, Théâtre De Complicité, Riverside Studios, 18 December 1999

Janie and I have tended to have a soft spot for anything Complicité, not least because our first proper date was Théâtre De Complicité’s Street Of Crocodiles:

Janie and I Go On Our First Proper Date, The Street Of Crocodiles, Cottesloe Theatre, 29 August 1992

But Mnemonic didn’t need our soft spot – it was excellent in its own right.

Superb

…I said in my log and meant it.

Strangely, writing 25 years later, this piece has recently been revived (or rather, reimagined) by Complicité in London at the National.

This original production was at the more utilitarian Riverside Studios, a venue we have always liked.

Excellent cast, including Simon McBurney himself, the wonderful Katrin Cartlidge (who died tragically young) and Richard Katz, who had previously worked wonders with my material in NewsRevue – for example the Woody Allen role in Mama Mia Farrow:

Mama Mia Farrow, NewsRevue Lyric, 18 August 1992

…but I digress.

Here is the Theatricalia entry for this play/production.

Anyway, Mnemonic really was superb and we were lucky to have seen the original production of it.

Nick Curtis wrote it up at length in The Standard:

Mnemonic Curtis StandardMnemonic Curtis Standard 03 Dec 1999, Fri Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

The local rag loved it:

Mnemonic Tear HammersmithMnemonic Tear Hammersmith 24 Dec 1999, Fri Hammersmith and Shepherds Bush Gazette (Hammersmith, London, England) Newspapers.com

I think a lot of the usual suspects ignored it until it transferred to the National a couple of year’s later…and then was reimagined more than 20 years after that.

But we saw the original production…at The Riverside…have I mentioned that before?

The Fire Raisers by Max Frisch, Riverside Studios, 10 June 1995

We were having a veritable Max Frisch fest that spring, having seen Biography at The Questors just a few weeks earlier:

Biography by Max Frisch, Translated by Michael Bullock, Questor’s Theatre, 20 May 1995

In those days, The Riverside Studios were doing some quite large theatre productions. This was part of a season, I believe, hence the generic season programme cover above.

I rated this very good and I’m sure Frances de la Tour and Malcolm Tierney were excellent, but I’m not sure this is the best Fire Raisers production we have seen. We returned to the piece some years later to see Benedict Cumberbatch in this play (translated as The Arsonists) at the Royal Court, which I think was a more dynamic production.

The Arsonists by Max Frisch, Royal Court Theatre, 3 November 2007

Still, very good is very good. Michael Billington said these faint praise things about it:

Billington on Fire RaisersBillington on Fire Raisers Thu, Jun 1, 1995 – 30 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

Michael Coveney was also unsure about it:

Coveney on Fire RaisersCoveney on Fire Raisers Sun, Jun 4, 1995 – 78 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

We Interrupt Keele Festival Week To Dice With Death On A Strindberg Theatre Trip To London, 28 June 1985

Petra: “I wonder if someone here does advanced driver courses?”

The appointment diary reads “day off” in big letters, but I latterly inserted:

11:00 Day Nursery

Despite the fact that my term of office was over, I was still taking my students’ union duties very seriously and the meeting will have taken a good couple of hours – I have written about my experience of such a meeting previously:

Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Ronnie Frankenberg & The Keele Day Nursery Nurses But Were Afraid To Ask – Plus Other Tales From The End of Spring Term 1985

As a result, Petra and I set off from Keele for London a fair bit later than we had intended.

My personal diary entry skims over the details of this…

…but I remember the hair-raising aspects of this episode very clearly.

We took this trip in Petra’s car, as the idea was to have a Chinese meal in Soho’s Chinatown, see The Dance of Death at the Riverside Studios, and then return to Keele at night. That sort of round trip only makes sense in a car.

It also only really makes sense to do that sort of road trip if you allow plenty of time for the journeys and know your way around London by road. We were more than a little deficient in both of those regards.

Imagine the scene – Petra driving east along the Marylebone Road in Friday afternoon traffic, by which time we realised that we had not allowed enough time to eat before heading out to Hammersmith to see the play. I was trying to work out, by landmark and road sign, where we should turn off for Chinatown…or perhaps we now meant to turn off for Hammersmith…

…to be fair, my directions might have been less than perfect…to be equally fair, Petra’s knowledge of the road layout of the Marylebone Road must also have been less than perfect…

…but in truth, I couldn’t fathom then and certainly couldn’t fathom now how the next bit happened. We continued driving east along the Marylebone Road…on the wrong side of the dual carriageway.

I asked DeepAI to reimagine the scene for us. I did suggest that I should be depicted head down in the crash bracing position, but the technology wouldn’t depict that.

I think I adopted the crash bracing position. For sure I covered my eyes at least and no doubt expressed orally my terror. I vaguely remember Petra saying reassuring stuff like:

Don’t worry, don’t worry. It’ll be OK. I’ll get us out of this.

I think she must have manoeuvred across all of the lanes and turned right onto Judd Street, although how she managed to dodge all of the Friday rush hour traffic while doing that I can barely imagine.

I asked DeepAI at least to show me covering my eyes. Not much joy there. You’ll have to imagine the terrified gestures and sounds for yourselves. Still, thanks to DeepAI for the images

The irony of having diced with death ahead of going to see The Dance Of Death might have been wasted on me then, but it is not wasted on me now.

I also recall how bad the traffic was between Marylebone “Dice With Death” Road and The Riverside Hammersmith, such that we were cutting it fine ahead of seeing The Dance Of Death. But we did make it to the theatre in time and by gosh was it worth the trip and the trauma.

The Dance Of Death by August Strindberg, Riverside Studios

All we had forfeited was one day of Keele Festival week (and nearly our lives), but it transpires that the great Alan Bates gave up a Hollywood movie for the chance to play Edgar in this production. Here is a preview interview piece from The Standard:

Dance Bates StandardDance Bates Standard 17 May 1985, Fri Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

I had long wanted to see some Strindberg, having read plenty of it at school and then more during my working summers, when I tended to read plays voraciously while commuting to work. The opportunity to see Alan Bates opposite Frances de la Tour in a Strindberg play, albeit one I hadn’t read at that time, had been enticing to say the least.

Dance Of Death Promo Southall GazetteDance Of Death Promo Southall Gazette 17 May 1985, Fri Southall Gazette (Ealing, London, England) Newspapers.com

I don’t suppose I saw that advert in the Southall Gazette. I suspect I saw a review in The Guardian or The Observer.

Michael Radcliffe in the latter loved it:

Dance Ratcliffe ObserverDance Ratcliffe Observer 02 Jun 1985, Sun The Observer (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Nicholas de Jongh in The Guardian seemed less sure but still positive:

Dance de Jongh GuardianDance de Jongh Guardian 01 Jun 1985, Sat The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

John Barber in The Telegraph was not so sure about the play or the supporting cast, but waxed lyrical about Alan and Frances:

Dance Barber TelegraphDance Barber Telegraph 03 Jun 1985, Mon The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

That last article reminds me that the production we saw was The Dance Of Death Parts One & Two, barely expurgated, so it ran for a bum-numbing four hours.

That’s FOUR HOURS on those excruciating seats they had in The Riverside Studios back then.

Still, my review of The Dance Of Death was a one-worder:

Excellent

Petra and I will have arrived in Chinatown around midnight, by which time the choice of eateries was limited to say the least – I suspect the choice was either Yung’s or the notoriously and relentlessly rude Wong Kei.

Yung’s in Wardour Street

Extravagantly, and wisely, I plugged for Yung’s, sparing us the indignities and lesser food of Wong Kei. Clearly I thought the meal at Yung’s was very nice as I described it as such in my diary.

I like the diary description “returned through the night” for the drive home, which was, as far as I can recall, relatively incident free.

So was it good manners or post traumatic stress related amnesia that made me miss out the details of the “driving the wrong way along the Marylebone Road” incident from my diary? It’s hard to recall my diary entry mindset, forty years on, although my memory of the incident remains very clear indeed.

Oh yes, (DeepA)I remember it well…