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And Feb ain’t started slow …

My goodness – we’re not yet halfway through the month and there’s all this to write about!

Following the rehearsal I attended last month at Acland Burghley School for the OAE’s planned concert featuring Mozart’s clarinet concerto, February started with the actual performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. It was fascinating to see how the subtle changes that had been suggested during the rehearsals had made their way firmly into the final version – except that no version is ever final as the room, the audience and the moment make every performance unique. The interplay between Kati Debretzeni as leader and Katherine ‘Waffy’ Spencer on her beloved basset clarinet ‘Grace’ was moulded into an outstanding piece of music. The concert opened with an overture by Juan Crisostomo Arriaga – often dubbed the Spanish Mozart for his precocity and the fact that he and WAM were both born on 27 January, albeit 50 years apart. This was written when Arriaga was 14 and who knows where he might be in the pantheon if he’d lived beyond the age of 20. At least there’s a theatre named after him in his home town of Bilbao where we saw a not very good zarzuela production in 2008. Each half of the QEH concert concluded with a mad encore devised by Waffy of arias from Die Enführung aus dem Serail with ‘Grace’ as Konstanze and bassoons as the males, Belmonte and the Pasha, with Acland Burghley students displaying large card captions to tell the story. The OAE as well as being great musically are also great fun (see below).

One of the things that endears me to this band – apart from their musical excellence – is that at the end of every OAE concert the audience are handed a ‘Thanks for coming card’ from a different member of the orchestra. It’s a really pleasing gesture that makes you feel properly involved in the evening’s entertainment. Tonight’s card of course was from Grace herself.

Next up was a visit to the Young Vic as a proxy for patron Frances who was in Hull for a football match. I’ve pretty much given up on long distance away games, especially midweek. This was an insight session into Arthur Miller’s Broken Glass which previews from 20 February so the cast are half way through rehearsals. The director Jordan Fein joined us with cast members Eli Gelb, Juliet Cowan, Nigel Whitmey and Alex Waldmann. The play covers the literally paralysing effect on the main character of the news of the infamous massacre of Jews on Kristallnacht in 1938. It was interesting to hear about the directorial and design decisions and to discuss the relevance of the play today with genocides taking place in several parts of the world. At these events it’s always interesting to see all the research material provided in the room for the cast to be fully informed of the subject matter. In this case the walls were covered with lots of photos of Brooklyn in the 30s with newspaper headlines and cuttings about Kristallnacht. All this and a glass of wine and a chance to spend an hour chatting to the team – cast and development executives. In a fun insight into the actor’s life, Alex Waldman said that after being in rehearsal all day with Americans and doing an American accent he often got told to drop it by his kids when he got home.

Jordan Fein courtesy Young Vic Theatre
Steve Gregson

The next day saw me head off to the British Museum to see the Samurai exhibition which had just opened this week. It’s a comprehensive review of all aspects of the samurai era from 700 to their dissolution in the 1870s. And it’s not all about war and weaponry although there are some magnificent examples of armour, swords and bows. There are displays on art and culture, domestic life and, a surprise for many, me included, the important role of women samurai. The spread of samurai and shogun myth and history into modern films, anime and artworks is also featured. I went in at 2.30 expecting to spend an hour or so and was kicked out when the museum closed at 5pm. Time very well spent among elegantly displayed objects with excellent explanations and a lot of learning about the samurai.

As it was one of the few days so far this year in which it didn’t rain (yet, don’t speak too soon)- and the National Gallery has no scaffolding at the moment so I snapped this on the way in from Charing Cross station. Given the surprise rain remission I decided to walk to the Jugged Hare pub near the Barbican where our first week of each month City Orns group of Watford FC fans was to meet to discuss our managerless team and a whole range of other unrelated topics. It was only a couple of miles and took me through Red Lion Square, along Holborn, through Smithfield and past St Bartholomew the Great before the final stretch through the Barbican tunnel. Pub, food and company were well worth the walk. But I did get wet on the way home.

Thursday saw me again at the Southbank Centre for an experimental evening called the Classical Mixtape Live. All six resident orchestras were presenting short concerts over the course of two and a half hours. First up was the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the Royal Festival Hall who played the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth – possibly the best known opening of any musical work – and then a suite from Howard Shore’s music for the Lord of the Rings. It was hosted by an Irish presenter Vogue Williams who gushed and stuttered from her notes up by the organ desk. Not quite sure why. She opined that the players must be exhausted after playing like that – for 7 minutes – perhaps ignorant of the length of many symphonies and concerts, let alone opera.Then came the fun part. Four orchestras were repeating the same 20 minute set in four locations around the centre. It could have been good except that someone didn’t really study the logistics of getting 2,700 people from the RFH into the four other venues despite inviting the Green Side and the Blue Side to head to different locations. So there was more queueing than listening. I only got to two of the four.

In the Clore Ballroom off the main foyer members of the Chineke! Orchestra were perched on podiums around which we all milled. It was a bit like a promenade performance at the Bridge Theatre without the stewards to guide us. Now Chineke! is admirable in being a largely BAME band giving opportunities to musicians who might not have found their way to a classical orchestra. They looked a bit nervous and the conductor probably struggled to see everyone given the set up – very dramatic lighting! They played Montgomery Variations by Margaret Bonds but it was difficult to get a sense of the piece while being on the move. In the Undercroft, a storeroom under the QEH, the London Sinfonietta played Steve Reich. Unfortunately the space is so small that there was a one out one in policy and I didn’t make it to the head of the queue. Nor did I ever get to the end of the lengthy line trying to get into the Purcell Room to hear the Aurora Orchestra performing music from Mahler’s time in the Alps.

However the delight of the night was the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in the Queen Elizabeth Hall foyer presenting a programme of Bavarian Oompah music including the Tristch Tratsch Polka and a selection from The Sound of Music. The Guardian gave the whole evening a two-star rating but noted that the OAE team were “having a whale of a time using beer glasses as percussion and proving they are most definitely game for a laugh.” They were led by Adrian Bending who noted, rather cheekily, in his intro that if people wanted to hear the fifth symphony as Beethoven might have heard it himself, they should come to the QEH on Sunday to hear the orchestra’s historically informed performance. Seeing them in lederhosen, dirndl skirts and with Adrian using tuned beer glasses as percusssion and Waffy Spencer singing ‘Do Re Mi’ it was something to behold. You can take a look at them here:

Finally we all reconvened in the RFH for the Philharmonia to take us into space with Mars and Jupiter from Holst’s The Planets and some of John Williams’ music for Star Wars. It was an interesting evening somewhat marred by the logistics but I hope they do it again with a bit more planning. It was good to see four of the six orchestras in a different light.

The next evening brought an altogether different experience. My granddaughter has a prominent gender-switched role as Arvide Abernethy in Guys and Dolls, the annual musical production at Langley Park Boys School where she is in the sixth form. I’m not a huge fan of musicals but had to admire the incredible professionalism of this young cast. Great set and costumes, singers all mic-ed up and fully commited to both lusty and subtle performances. At several points there were over 100 performers on the stage a testament to the depth of music and drama talent across the entire school. It is billed as the ‘whole school musical’, and what with all the people involved behind the scenes, it really was. The band, the lighting, sound and performances were of astonishing quality. As my son said after seeing it next day, it makes you rethink what is meant by ‘school play’ these days.

Saturdays seem to bring drama around Watford FC. I watched a narrow defeat at Southampton on TV and then learned a little later that the club has replaced Javi Gracia who resigned last week with a completely unknown manager. We’ll see. So on Sunday I was pleased to be back on more secure territory. The Hungarian conductor Adam Fischer is a long time and frequent collaborator with the OAE and being able to go to both the rehearsal and the performance of Beethoven symphonies 4 and 5 was a real privilege. I wondered how different the conversations with Fischer would be compared to the self-directed rehearsal for the Mozart last month – in truth not very. There was still lots of consultation with members of the orchestra, comments discussed and annotations made on their scores for dynamics, expression and so on. The two symphonies are very different with the fourth being much less familiar. It was a delight to see them shaped by a maestro with a top orchestra and then enjoy the end result a little later.

Player list and the view from the stalls

Between the rehearsal and the concert was a talk with Adrian Bending, Phil Dale (not in lederhosen today) and Christopher Rawley They talked about the differences in self-directed and conducter-ledconcerts and agree that Adam Fischer is someone who excites them with his interpretations which often catch them by surprise. They clearly have the greatest respect and affection for him. The session also featured a wonderful contrabassoon and three trombones about which Christopher and Phil talked. The contrabassoon was made by a maker well-known to Beethoven and might have been used in the early performances of the fifth and ninth symphonies. There is a campaign to keep this instrument which bears the number 001 in the country as it is currently up for sale. Christopher demonstrated the deep notes this piece of wood can deliver and Phil expressed his delight at Beethoven scoring for three trombones in the fifth symphony – a pattern followed by many other composers keeping trombonists gainfully employed.

Pre-concert talk with Adrian, contrabassoon, Christopher and Phil

On Monday I had a lovely Zoom call with Daisy Scott in Boston, Mass to discuss theatre, music, retirement, families and lots more – but not world affairs as there is not much to say except mutual despair. It is a real pleasure to be in regular touch with our Boston family.

Tuesday evening featured a trip to Watford for a thank you party from the council for the work several of us have been doing with the relocation and redisplay of Watford Museum. It was a nice gesture to thanks us volunteers and we all look forward to the opening of the museum next year after a major building refurbishment. The group I was with had focused on the football club so it was good to see the work of other teams looking at grassroots sport, the diverse community and entertainment and to meet up with old and new friends. It rained in Watford too! Heavily, but one of our team Alan kindly gave me a lift back to the station.

In Bangladesh in 2009, Manzur E Mawla was co-presenter with Eeshita Azad of the pilot television programmes I made for the BBC World Service aimed at encouraging young Bangladeshis to learn English as a Foreign Language. He later relocated to the UK and we have been in touch with him and his family on a number of occasions. He emailed this week to say he was in a play at the Drayton Arms Theatre and would I like to go. Well, interest piqued, what else could I do?

It’s a venue I’ve not been to before – a small 50-seater above a lovely pub. The play was called Modern Romance and was a series of twelve scenes – six pre-filmed and projected, six acted live – about the various whacky ways people get together these days. Scatalogical, filled with innuendo – how do you make paper clips and staples sexy ?- it was funny and revealing. My friend Manzur did a two-man scene with Jay Ramji as a gay Under 21 football couple one Arsenal (guess!) one Fulham who among other escapades embrace at a goal being scored while playing against each other to the consternation of coaches. It was written by Giles Fernando and directed by Penny Gkritzapi who I had a pleasant chat to in the bar afterwards and spent time with Manzur and other cast members. Manzur had done some acting back in Bangladesh before we worked together and had started acting classes again here only recently. It transpired that this was his UK stage debut, and very well he did, having joined the cast at very short notice. A totally unexpected fun evening added to my calendar by a chance email.

The live action cast with Manzur and Jay third and fourth from left.

Last outing for this post is to see Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov at the Royal Opera House. Another soggy trip into town and no drinks beforehand as it’s a bladder-challenging two hours and twenty minutes with no interval. Susie Stranders’ insight talk last month was very helpful in making both the story and the musical motifs clear so I could look out for particular moments in the piece. The choral singing was incredibly powerful and included a children’s chorus which Susie had prepared – great job! I took my seat being slightly panicked about being a long way from the aisle should nature call. Then it was suddenly time for the final black out and curtain calls. How on earth to two and a half hours pass so quickly? Answer: engrossing story from Pushkin, marvellously varied score with simple tunes and powerful orchestration, brilliantly sung, accompanied by an orchestra on top form and a superb overall production directed by Richard Jones. A brilliant night at the opera.

Mark Wigglesworth invites us to applaud the orchestra after a stunning performance led by Bryn Terfel as Godunov and a cast of hundreds.

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Where did January go?

So after a refreshing break in Alicante it’s home to reality: car for MOT; final eye test after cataract surgery and the promise I made to sort out 45 years worth of company paper work for shredding. So glad I did take my Christmas break.

The first play of the new year was the intriguingly named Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo at the Young Vic. The tiger of the title is the ghost of an animal shot by a US marine stationed in Iraq during the ill-founded war. It (in human actor form) prowls around the stage bringing memories for the marines and philosophical questions for their interpreter Musa who used to be the gardener to Saddam Hussein’s two sons, who appear later, and cause a guilt-trip for Musa who allowed them to exploit his daughter.

It was surreal, written by Rajiv Joseph and directed by Omar Elerian who has a track record with surreal with Ionesco’s The Chairs and Rhinoceros which we saw at the Almeida. It was funny. moving, if a bit erratic, but a worthy start to a year of theatregoing.

I loved Maggie O’Farrell’s book Hamnet. I did not like Lolita Chakrabarti’s stage version which a gang of us went to see at the Garrrick with great expectations and emerged with great disapppointment. I had misgivings therefore about the much talked-about film version, somehat allayed when I noted that Chloé Zhao co-wrote it with the book’s author. So I booked a matinee showing at Picturehouse Central and decided to go into town early and take in the last few days of Wayne Thibault at the Courtauld Gallery. I don’t think I’d heard of him but an email from the gallery intrigued me so off I went and am very glad I did, The exhibition was entirely of works from the 1960s when he was grouped with the Pop Art movement. He painted still lives of everyday Americana – slot machines, deli counters, cakes and the like. They were very affecting in making you look intensely at the ordinary and think about things in a new way. He also made prints of several of the subjects one of which on display he had hand coloured twenty years after making the original etching.

I loved the thick paint around the lollipops

I had an hour to spare before the film so popped into Yoshino to say Happy New Year to Lisa, collect my supply of gyokuro tea – my first drink of every day – and have a delightful light lunch chatting to Lisa as she prepared the space for a 30 strong party of Japanese bankers that evening.

Hamnet the film did not disappoint. It matched the slow reveals of the book, filled the screen with nature, glovemaking and the love and the games of young children. The storytelling was clear and excellent and the child actors were all very accomplished. The tragedy was well handled and the closing scenes at the Globe had me welling up. What a performance from Jessie Buckley! I knew she was good but this was astonishing.

From time to time, the orchestra of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment organises trips for Friends. I wrote about a visit to the amazing Hatchlands keyboard collection with Steven Devine last year. This one was to explore the wonder that is the V&A East Storehouse with Martin Kelly, my viola-playing team captain when we won the Chistmas Quiz. Martin had selected a number of instruments from the extensive V&A catalogue and gave us fascinating insights into the contruction, history and use of instruments ranging from the tiny kit fiddle used by dance masters to the enormous Dragonetti bass via a serpent and a harp and others from the racks. Some of the detail of design, carving and inlay was phenomenal. The breathtaking size of the storehouse and the randomness of displays made for a fascinating visit even after Martin had finished his excellent part of the tour.

Then it was back from drenched Hackney Wick to the Royal Opera House for an insight evening on the subject of Boris Godunov with my friend Susie Stranders taking us expertly through Mussorgsky’s score. I got there early and spent an hour not reading my book but chatting to a gentlemen with shared widowerhood and love of music as topics for conversation. As we left the table to go to the talk we shook hands and he said, “By the way I’m Mike”. “Me too,” I replied. Susie’s talk was peppered with anecdotes from performances and some excerpts sung by cast members including Bryn Terfel who is Godunov.

I’ve seen Sheridan’s The Rivals several times but went with Frances to The Orange Tree on her recommendation, She’d already seen it when I was away and came to see it again. I congratulate her on her taste. Updated to the flapper era 1920s, Tom Littler’s production was wonderfully funny and Patricia Hodge as Mrs Malaprop was outstanding. The rest of the cast were superb too in the intimate Orange Tree space where you feel part of the action. I recalled going with my grandchildren to see the Richard Bean and Oliver Chris update Jack Absolute Flies Again at the NT a few years ago. Sheridan’s work from 1775 stands a lot of different interpretations. Must be something about the core material!

The OAE often invites friends and the local community to open rehearsals at its base in Acland Burghley School. On this day there was a Friends event at 2 pm followed by a Community one at 4. I was very impressed to see the numbers of people streaming into the school as I was leaving. The orchestra was rehearsing mostly Mozart’s clarinet concerto played by principal clarinetist Katherine ‘Waffy’ Spencer and directed from the violin by leader Kati Debretzeni. Waffy was at pains to point out that the work was written for the basset clarinet and she has had one made specially so that the concerto can be heard as Mr M intended. As always it’s fascinating to eavesdrop on the discussions that form the final performance and the exchange of ideas around this most democratic of orchestras. They were off to the Anvil in Basingstoke, Oxford and the Warwick Arts Centre before coming into the Queen Elizabeth Hall on Sunday 1 February. Waffy then introdued a piece they were going to play as an encore – an adaptation of an aria from Mozart’s Die Entfuhrung where the warring male and female protagonists were a bassoon and her clarinet. It was lively and very funny.

Kati makes notes, Waffy cradles her basset clarinet ‘Grace’

I then made an interesting cross north London journey on the C11 bus – Gospel Oak, Hampstead Heath, the Royal Free Hospital, Belsize Park and eventually Swiss Cottage – to the Hampstead Theatre to join Frances for a new play in the smaller downstairs space The Ghost in Your Ear.

This was an interesting event in which we were all equipped with headphones to hear the script of a ghost story being read by an actor in a sound studio for an audiobook. It’s written and directed by Jamie Armitage and the sound design is buy the brothers Ben and Max Ringham who did such a great job with Blindness at the Donmar back in the lockdown days. As someone who has spent a lot of time in the control room of audio studios it was intrinsically interesting and the story getting progressively scary was very well paced. Frightening it was, but not heart-attack inducingly so.

I got a final sign off after my cataract operations and can now revert to my familiar state as ‘a bloke who wears glasses’ with varifocals with no correection for distance and enough for close up that I can type and read my phone and kindle without need to rummage about for reading glasses. I then had the pleasure of two trips to the Union Club, first to have lunch with my dear friend Michele who has had a hard year as as a make-up artits as the film and TV industry shrinks and then for dinner a couple of days later with newly-master’s Guildhall graduate Kristina, a fine soprano, her boyfriend Luka and Paola who looks after tickets and data for the OAE and who I know well from my many visits to their gigs. On both occasions food, wine, service and company were excellent.

I went ( slightly by mistake and rescued by checking my ticket folder) to a matinee of Woolfworks at the Royal Opera House. This ballet had been heavily advertised in ROH emails and I had hoped Rosa might be back from Spain to come with me. Not to be however so I set off on my own and didn’t pick up any new friends called Mike on this occasion. The ballet by Wayne McGregor is based on three Virginia Woolf books: Mrs Dalloway; Orlando and The Waves. I’d read the first two but not The Waves, which I’ve now purchased. The work is classed as a three-act ballet but I felt it was three one-act ballets given the variety of source material and treatment. Mrs Dalloway was all bustling charatcters around three huge revolving wooden frames introduced by Gillian Anderson reading an excerpt from Woolf’s essay On Craftsmanship. The stories of Clarissa and the shell-shocked Septimus intertwine with elegant moves. Orlando matches the surreal nature of the book by having gold-costumed charaters with ruffs anf bustles making their way through several centuries and a gender change all accompanied by a startling laser display that carved up the stage and indeed us in the auditorium. The Waves was played out against a projected backdrop of extremely slo-mo monochrome waves and ends with her suicide note being read. The score was specially composed by Max Richter and was very filmic, dramatic and emotional. It’s still on and comes to cinemas from 9 February if you fancy a look. Highly recommended. https://www.rbo.org.uk/tickets-and-events/live-in-cinemas-woolf-works-details

The last week of January contained three remarkable outings to the theatre. The first was Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, generally acknowledged as his masterpiece and you can see why. With its time shifts, a quest for the unknowable, dangerous relationships and moments of side-splitting humour it makes for a mind expanding evening. I’d seen the original NT production and this version at the Old Vic couldn’t be more different, but as with Sheridan earlier, the class of the work shines through. Whereas the NT production was naturalistic with vistas of stately home parkland, the design of which is an imporatnt factor in the play, Carrie Cracknell’s version at the Old Vic is sparse, in the round with a few props and helps you to concentrate the interplay of the characters and the richness of the language. It was a bit of a shock also to see the venerable Old Vic transformed for an in the round production as apparently all this season’s plays will be.

The Old Vic transformed for a season in the round

The mood changed abruptly the next evening when we went to see Guess How Much I Love You at the Royal Court. Written by actor Luke Norris and directed by Jeremy Herrin it is a play about a couple’s loss of a child through a non-viable pregnancy. Their grief and their reactions to it are powerful and moving. Rosie Sheedy and Robert Aramayo – newly Bafta-nominated for I Swear that day – display an array of reactions to the terrible news the ultrasound scan brings them through changing scenarios over time. But within the overall sadness of their plight the play has great moments of lightness and humour. Very effective set design and lighting gave a real sense of their enclosed and captive lives as they lived through the intensity of loss and eventually move towards a more promising future.

After intellectual exercise and emotional turmoil the week ended with J B Priestley’s When We Are Married at the Donmar. Sheer madness and hilarious farce ‘oop north’ when three couples discover that they weren’t officially married by a young curate 25 years ago. Facades fall away, roles reverse, past pecadillos intrude and there is a literally staggering performance from Ron Cook as the photographer from ‘The Argus’ who has been sent to snap the triple anniversary for the paper. Told to go away he gets progressively drunk, his cheeks redder at every new appearance, and crashes his way through the set. It was a shock to see John Hodgkinson as the host of the celebrations Joseph Helliwell since we last saw him covered in blood as Titus Andronicus. I’d never seen this play before and it made me rethink Priestley who I only knew from An Inspector Calls and Time and The Conways.

The month ended with a final piece of drama on the stage of Vicarage Road Football Stadium where I had the pleasure of Frances’ company in the hospitality Sir Elton John Suite which I’d won through The Supporters’ Trust lottery. We had good food and wine, visits from Luther Blissett and Tommy Mooney, a poor loss to Swansea City on the pitch and later the news that our much-loved manager Javi Gracia had resigned. He’d been back to his family in Malaga earlier in the week and I think decided that wet, grey Watford was not where he wanted to be. The club have gone through many managers (23 I think, some twice as with Gracia) over the fifteen years the current owners have been in charge but only a few have got in first by resigning.

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Last day in Alicante

Last days can often be difficult on holiday, not least this one with a flight booked to depart at 10 pm. I took breakfast in the hotel for a change, packed and left my luggage at the hotel and set off for another stroll around this city I have come to like. There are some fine buildings, I love the chairs randomly glued to the pavements so you can take a break whenever you feel the need. There are some excellent examples of turn of the century (19-20) archictecture dotted around the streets.

My route takes me past the book cabins I’d seen before and this time they were open. Paperbacks ranged from 5 to 12 euros with some deals three for 12 euros. There were a few English and German titles among them as well and all the kiosks seemed to be doing steady business. Good to see lots of children’s books, history and philosophy as well as fiction from popular Spanish authors like Perez-Reverte, Carlos Zafron. Javier Marias and Almudena Grandes and of course translations of John Grisham and Dan Brown. I didn’t see any Harry Potter.

Also attracting a lot of attention was the four sided display of belenes in front of the Town Hall with scenes of the birth, shepherds and three kings – Los Reyes – who are of course all-important in Spain with the 6th January almost bigger than Christmas.

Down by the marina a lone saxophonist busker was trying hard but basically was practising his scales in public with scores on a phone attached to his alto.

Wandering back up through the avenues what should I come across but another museum, The Palacio Principal, with displays of – you guessed it- belenes but also an exhibition by Francisco Rubio which involved an interesting mix of abstract and figurative work, sometimes in combination.

I’m not fan of photographing meals but my lamb cutlets for my last lunch were worthy and very tasty as well – but no hot padron peppers! Then back to the hotel to collect cases and the C6 bus to the airport. It’s every 15 minutes and whisks us via the train station and then through the newish suburbs, past a huge desalination plant and along the beach at Playa de Agua Amarga before turning west to the airport.

In the hotel there was an exhortation to be very sparing of water – keep your towels, take shorter showers as there has always been an acute shortage of water in the area. One woman I was chatting to before the music the other evening told me that 80% of Alicante’s drinking water – I had declined any alongside my meal – comes from desalination and that she had frequently in her childhood faced water being turned off in her home. I tried to joke that Christmas Day had changed all that but am not quite sure it worked.

I had equivocated for quite a while about whether to make this trip – can I bear the inevitable airport hustle, am I too old to be doing this stuff, can I better last year’s wonderful week in Madrid and Granada? I am so glad I did. I’ve explored a new city, found new artworks, architecture and archaeology. I’ve been to classical and jazzy gigs and had great food. Apart from the soggy Christmas Day the sun has shone and temperatures have been around 17-18 degrees Celsius in the day. People have been friendly and I’ve actually managed a few conversations. I have one regret. I’ve ogled other people’s arroces – you mustn’t call them paella here. These rice dishes come with seafood, meat and vegetable versions and are very similar to the Valencian staple with crusty base and pan-cooked rice and accompaniments. Problem? They are always for a minimum of two people. So I’ll just have to find someone to come back with me.

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Last weekend of the year

This is a phrase that crops up at lot on news and entertainment channels on the television. Also here in Spain it is in the context of warnings of snow and road closures in the Pyrenees and sea surges and flood warnings in Malaga and Cadiz – Global heating is humbug, right. It features large in the Ian McEwan book. The news tells me also that in Spain, physical shopping is beating online by a distance – and seeing the number of bags being carried around Alicante, I can believe it.

However I didn’t go shopping this morning as I had a couple more museums on my list. The first was in the old tobacco factory, Las Cigarreras which is now a multi-use cultural centre. It was walkable in 20 minutes so off I set in the sunny morning after another excellent breakfast near the bull ring. As I arrived there was a jazz combo doing a sound check for a lunchtime gig. They sounded OK but nothing to wait around several hours for.

Inside one of the grey former factory buildings was a photographic exhibition with a series of experimental images from a variety of photographers. One of the exhibitor’s work reminded me of my friend Lisa Kalloo’s in the use of pinholes, Vaseline and other distorting factors to produce amazing images. Others used reflecting metal objects under water, scratched lines on negatives, printed out and made into a montage wall and a social comment on homelessness with a bed featuring in various locations.

I had had no idea what to expect as the Cigarreras website wouldn’t work for me in the UK, but I thought the buildings were worth a visit anyway. It was a thought-provoking show that made me vow to go to more unconventional exhibitions back at home and broaden my view of what constitutes art. It needs to raise emotion, stimulate ideas and challenge conventional attitudes. This did all of that.

MARQ – the Museum of Archeology – was feted as European Museum of the Year in 2024 and it’s easy to see why. It’s in a former hospital and has displays not only of objects found in the area from the Bronze Age onwards but has reconstructed videos of life in each of the main eras of Alicante history – Iberian, Roman, Jewish, Arabic, Christian and modern democracy. Sadly only the introductions to displays are in English so my Catalan and Spanish got stretched now and then.

One of its great features that Dee, who always wanted to go on a dig, would have loved was the reconstructions of archeological investigation sites throughout the eras. We had been to Empurias in Catalonia so knew about Spain’s lengthy history but MARQ made it clearer in a dramatic and intelligent way. Well worth the walk to both morning venues and my lunch saw me have my first slices of Serrano ham – how can I been five days without?

On the way back from MARQ a different view of the castle

Most Spanish cities have an interesting rail terminal – not Alicante. But I walked there and then back down through interesting streets to find myself back at the southern end of the marina past an amusement park and passing by the lovely fisherman’s terminal.

I spent another period in the sun finishing my book and then thirst prevailed and I went back into the mad centre of the city where every bar was full and families were meeting up noisily after shopping. Busy!

Things were no less busy when I went out to eat a bit later but one of the older restaurants Labradores – well you have to solid with the workers don’t you – found me a table and delivered a fine series of tapas – gambas al ajillo, pincho moruño finished off with some brilliant blue cabrales cheese. Oh and some excellent local wine. One thing I’ve discovered here is that tapas are much bigger than I’d experienced elsewhere in Spain, so care is required when ordering!

The Rambla is pedestrianised on Saturday evenings

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Christmas boxed

Oh dear, this is not right. I go out for breakfast in torrential rain. El Sabio street is flooding and palms are reflected in the puddles that pigeons have been drinking from with gusto. I’m boxed in. What to do?

Well there are lots of people to WhatsApp and email with greetings, I have the most brilliant Ian McEwan book to read and I need to book somewhere close for dinner as I’d been warned that lots of places are fully booked on Christmas Day. I pop out again briefly for lunch and later catch the film Hedda being streamed. Having seen the version at the Orange Tree recently, this film was interesting in its Downton Abbey silliness but I was glad I’d seen a more faithful version as well. Then it was back to McEwan’s What we can know while listening to Radio Classica. The book is a masterly conflation of literary detective work, post-apocalyptic vision, love, infidelity, sex and academia – so far. It was still raining, and apparently from El Tiempo on TV next morning there was snow in the Pyrenees. Fortunately the Lobo Blanco was only three minutes away and well worth the visit. Friendly staff who didn’t speak to me in English – result! – an open kitchen where I could see my fabulous duck breast being prepared – I asked for it rosa and indeed it was beautifully pink and tasty with excellent skin-on fries. And as it was Christmas Day when they said would I like a brandy to finish off the meal, it was hard to resist. Santa came late to Alicante but he came!

Normal service was resumed on Boxing Day with sun slanting on the buildings opposite when I woke up. I’m spoiled for breakfast choices and chose a new one for Boxing Day which was well up to scratch. I strolled then through the Barri Vell again with its fine buildings like the Basilica de Santa Maria in the sun.

I soon found the Museo de Belenes open today. It’s a large collection of finished tableaux as well as vitrines of characters that may be used to form them. They can be in wood, plaster, clay and papier maché. There was one enormous one prepared specially for the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the Association in 1959. Also there were examples from Argentina and Venezuela and the text suggests that Francis of Assisi started the trend back in 1223.

I then move a little further towards the sea to MACA the Museum Of Contemporary Art which enchanted me for several hours.

My friend Maria’s friend Eusebio Sempere had been instrumental in setting up the several foundations that were eventually incorporated into this fine institution.

Elegant display rooms featured a local painter Juana Frances who I’d never heard of but enjoyed her work especially some charcoal drawings that were mystical. Her land and seascapes were interesting too. She did a lot to ensure women were properly recognised in the arts as well so I’m glad to have met her.

There was floor devoted to Sempere which had both his excellent sculptures but also an array of silk screen prints including a sequence of 12 that showed the process of building a screen printed image. One of the things I always enjoy is when an artist who has decided to go abstract shows that they had the technique to be conventional too. Sempere did with his portrait of his partner.

There were several other rooms with works that varied in their appeal but a few really caught my eye. There were pieces by Miro, Tapies, Calder, Chillida, Giacometti and many Spanish artists I was pleased to be introduced to. There were interactive areas too where you could contribute to art in progress – altogether an impressive gallery. These are a few of my favourites – sorry I didn’t always get the artist.

After a cultured morning it was time to go for a beer and wander back through a different area of the city. Some elegant facades presented themselves and I couldn’t help noticing how many buildings were in the hands of MyFlats – clearly AirBnB equivalents are moving in here big time. There were a few ‘Tourist Go Home‘ graffiti that I’d noticed and hoped that being in a purpose-built hotel I wasn’t preventing locals from getting a home. Big dilemma – they want my money but not my presence.

I had a lovely lunch in Plaza Luceros with scallops and then cheese with anchovies and a good Rueda Verdejo wine, white for a change, and then back to the hotel to watch my next Christmas present – Watford winning 2-1 away at Leicester. Then I wrote some of this and thought about the evening ahead.

Quite close by is a music bar Entre Bambalinas which had a group of singer, piano and percussion called the Palosanto Trio. They played salsa, bossa nova and Spanish standards that lots of the audience knew. The bar had beer, food and wine and while the music was not my core taste, live music is always a good thing. They were lively, committed and gave me a couple of sets of enjoyment.

On my way back lots of people were filming themselves in front of the e-tree in Avenida de la Constitucion but I waited for a clear shot to wish everyone a Happy Boxing Day – Leicester 1-2 Watford! Yay!

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A Christmas Eve of strolling

Well the cloud didn’t come so I ventured out for a different breakfast venue – a successful quest with OJ, tostada with tomato and ham and a coffee of course. I then went walkabout in the old quarter – the Barrio Vell. Lots of steps and slopes but some very pretty houses and a few of my favourite signs in tiles. I passed the Museo de Belenes but it was closed today and tomorrow. Maybe Boxing Day to find out when the nativity tableau movement started. Equally closed but for a month is the Museo de Fogueres which features the giant figures that are processed through the streets in June and then ceremonially burned. So I will miss out on understanding what that’s all about.

After yesterday I decided on a more gentle day so took myself down to the marina – well it’s got be flat hasn’t it? Indeed it was and very sunny.

I was struck by this bust of Archibald Dickson who had rescued 2,368 doomed anti-Franco citizens on his ship the Stanbrook at the end of the war in 1939. I’ve read a fair bit about the Spanish civil war but hadn’t come across this story.

The marina is a busy place with lots of vessels of different sizes. There was a salvage tug that reminded me of a video I produced many years ago about the salvage industry. We filmed in the UK, France, the Netherlands and Greece but not in Spain. There was also a sail training schooner from Gdansk, Kapitan Borchardt, that would have excited our dear departed friend Toddy. It is, it seems, the oldest sailing ship flying the Polish flag. I had very pleasant stroll and then sat in the sun for an hour reading my book looking up at the castle with a sense of satisfaction – it was like being on holiday!

The waterfront is a bit of a mish mash of buildings but there are a few lovely examples of classical architecture such as the Casa Carbonell built in 1925. It didn’t get off to a good start – a seaplane crashed into one of its domes killing two on board and causing the dome to be rebuilt.

As everything closes this evening I thought I’d better do lunch today. There was a massive choice of restaurants in Calle Major (Main Street) as you might expect. My food was great – grilled vegetables and a calamari also grilled. The problem was that in Alicante it appears that tapas are raciones and raciones a whole meal. So I had far too much and have some in Tupperware for this evening in the hotel. I also got wine and beer so I won’t starve if I actually want to eat again today. I took this back to the hotel, had a brief sit down and a coffee and then set off to explore an area I hadn’t ventured into before. The airport bus had dropped me off on Avenue Alfonso El Sabio so I now walked the length of this to Plaza Luceros where this one and three other major avenues meet. As a favourite venue for Alicantinos to meet, I just had to sit in the sun with a beer.

Leading from Luceros towards the sea is Avenida Federico Soto which is lined with ten or more book cabins – all closed today but encouraging to see such an appetite for the written word. I’ll be back to see how busy they are later in the week. Further down they morphed into Christmas stalls but not as tatty as many.

My wandering roughly described a square and took me back to the Teatro Principal which I had walked past before. Sadly there is nothing on of interest to me this week but it’s an impressive building. It also has a bus stop which I had researched before coming here, along with the purchase of a travel card. However I have found everywhere so far eminently walkable so have only used the bus to get in from the airport. Opposite was a church which is a lot more impressive than the cathedral.

One of the good things about the hotel is that the TV has BBC and ITV channels so I could catch Only Connect and University Challenge after a couple of weird Spanish game shows. Music, wine and reading now so Happy Christmas everyone.

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Christmas trip

After a week of brilliant music, family and theatre in London I now find myself in Alicante.

Thursday saw neighbours Les, Sean and Maria and me make our way to our local wine bar and then to Blackheath Halls to see the Andy Sheppard quartet. Dee and I and a colleague had recorded an hour long to show with Andy back in 1999 and guitarist John Parricelli was still part of the group.

He is still a complete master of the soprano and tenor saxophones and was given great accompaniment from Dudley Foster on bass and Nic France on drums in an evening of varied old and new material. He made me cry by playing ‘Dancing Man and Woman’ which Dee and I had as our play out music from our wedding back in 2001. Happy memories through the tears.

My friends Anna and Lisa ventured up from Ramsgate to see Ute Lemper visiting Marlene Dietrich. They had a spare ticket and invited me to join them.

I didn’t really know what to expect but thoroughly enjoyed Ute telling us about a three hour long telephone conversation she had with Marlene in Paris. She had written to convey her horror at the press calling Ute ‘The new Marlene’ and the diva had phoned her back. This story interspersed with the great songs made for a most enjoyable evening

Sunday was little short of a miracle when son and daughter-in-law, daughter and son-in-law, two grandchildren and I were all free for lunch at the same time. Amazing fun and great stories all round. A great start to Christmastime.

Monday saw me go with Frances to the press night of Indian Ink at the Hampstead Theatre. It coincided with Tom Stoppard’s funeral and we were a bit worried about how it might affect the cast, especially Felicity Kendall. They were all superb and particularly Felicity playing the older role rather than the one of poet Flora Crewe she had created twenty years ago and Ruby Ashbourne Serkis playing Flora in front of Felicity. Gavi Singh Chera was also excellent as the beguiling – to Flora – Indian painter. As always the witticisms and hilarity were countered with serious debate about the role of Britain in Empire. Not his best play but definitely worth seeing for the acting and the brilliant set and lighting design – oh and the incidental music is good too.

I had a lovely lunch with Camilla Reeve the publisher of BBPC’s anthology Home and Belonging. It was a generous thank you from her for my chairing the discussion panel at her literary festival back in November. An enjoyable discussion ranging over many topics.

Wednesday was at the Almeida for Christmas Day, the second play in a month featuring a Jewish family (not) celebrating Christmas. This was provocative with references to Gaza and antisemitism, family bickering and made some good points but for me was a bit disjointed and I felt needed longer in development to get a better play out.

Twelfth Night came early with Frances, Farzana, Richard and me heading to the Barbican, some of us via the excellent Jugged Hare for dinner. This was the RSC`s production starring Freema Agyemang as Olivia and Sam West as Malvolio with Gwyneth Keyworth at Viola and Michael Grady-Hall as a brilliant Feste – brush up your juggling skills if you’re in the front rows! It was hilarious, but also touching, emotionally grabbing and was spoken with such clarity that your respect and admiration for the genius Bard of Avon rocketed even higher.

I had Friday at home to tidy up the place and think about packing. Saturday was my last Watford match of the year and we actually won 1-0 against Stoke, so another good omen for the festive season. Sunday evening I drove to Stansted in a horrific downpour which made my arrival in Alicante so welcome. I’d been equivocating about coming away for Christmas this year and am already glad I finished up with a decision to make the trip. I checked in to a very pleasant well-situated hotel where I think for the first time in my life my room is right opposite the lift not the 200 yards race I had to make last night at Stansted. Legs thus spared, I went walkabout to get my bearings in a city I have only been to once so long ago that not much sticks in the mind. A quick tapas lunch with a beer confirmed the decision to make the trip. The bar had no menu but served tapas of the day on wood blocks and a bit like Yo Sushi, they count up the blocks to make your bill. With a big party you’d get a Jenga game thrown in. The Christmas spirit and the love of tapas were well in evidence.

Further down towards the Mediterranean the welcome was even clearer at the end of the palm-lined promenade.

I then crossed to the marina to select my yacht when I win the lottery. It’s a very pleasant harbour to be further explored tomorrow.

And on the way back up (gentle slopes) through town there are some lovely examples of modernisme architecture which I shall also explore further.

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Masterpieces metamorphosed

Les Bonnes by Jean Genet was one of the plays I read at university in the 60s and I’d seen the film version with Glenda Jackson, Susannah York and Vivien Merchant a decade later, so it was with great anticipation that I went with Frances to see what Kip Williams would make of it. After last year’s Picture of Dorian Gray with Sarah Snook we expected screens to play a part. And they did. And how! The filmy curtains initial framing the set gave us the feeling of trangressively entering madame’s boudoir and then the fun began. The role-playing maids of the title act out fantasies of dominating and eventually killing their disdainful mistress.

Quite how the actors managed to use their cameras and select filters to produce the effects on the screens that dominated the background, I’ll never know. Emotional performance while managing tech – the demands are high on acting skills these days! Phia Saban and Lydia Wilson met them with apparent ease. Yerin Ha was a little too camp and age-adjacent for my taste as the draconian madame but it was a great evening’s entertainment. With Kip Williams you learn to accept that things will change – it was billed as ‘a version’ after all.

Before going to the Donmar, I had been to the Dulwich Picture Gallery with Jadwiga to see the exhibition devoted to Anne Ancher, a Danish painter I confess I’d never heard of. Living all her life in the town of Skagen at the extreme northern point of Denmark she was devoted to capturing light in the landscape but especially in portraits and interiors where there were hints of the influence of Vermeer in the lighting effects. She died in her seventies in 1935 and the paintings cover most of her long life. The exhibition runs till March 2026 and is highly recommended not just by me – it got 5 stars in The Guardian.

Next up was a group outing with Frances, Farzana, Richard and me to see Assembled Parties at Hampstead. It’s a blackish comedy written by Richard Greenberg and was a great hit on Broadway in 2013. Set two decades apart in the same apartment of screen star Julie, we find a Jewish family celebrating Christmas with assorted relatives, friends and others. In Act 2 Julie is widowed and has a feel of a Norma Desmond who life has passed by and only survives in her rather less opulent surrounding by the invisible support of others.

Among these is her sister-in-law Faye, superbly played by Tracey-Ann Oberman in scintillating form who gets the best lines and attitude. We all found Julie, as played by Jennifer Westfeldt a little unconvincing but the poignancy of the reduced means and expectations of a once proud family showed through the many laughs that the script also gave us.

Talking of metamorpheses, how do you make a 500+ page 2004 Booker prize-winning novel into a two hour stage play? Fran and I had been to an Almeida insight session earlier at which the answers were clear – get an ace adaptor in Jack Holden and a great director in Michael Grandage. The resulting script clearly had to leave a lot out for those of us familiar with The Line of Beauty, but author Alan Hollinghurst had been involved throughout and the evening gave us a good account of the early days of Thatcherism, the gay scene in the 80s with the spectre of Aids and the class system in full flow. And it did contain some very explicit scenes of sex and drug taking that were so much a part of the source. The lessons of a dangerous era seem not to have been learned – the wealth and class gap is ever wider, tolerance of ‘otherness’ is at a very low ebb again and politics and politicians remain completely out of touch with everyman.

And follow that with another great challenge. How do you bring “one of the most important English-language poems of the 20th century” to the stage? Adrian Dunbar has produced and directed a staging of T S Eliot’s The Waste Land. There’s the full text of the 434 lines of the poem spoken by four actors but it’s interspersed with music by Nick Roth for a jazz quintet and the Guildhall Session Orchestra conducted by John Harle. Added to this melange was some of the earliest colour footage of London which evoked and echoed Eliot’s words about his adopted city such as “Under the brown fog of a winter dawn / A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many / I had not thought death had undone so many.” Hearing Eliot’s complex work recited added greatly to my appreciation of it. The music was an interesting complement, never overlapping with the text and the footage was just stunning. A fascinating hour in the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

I was up bright and early the next morning to drive down to Hatchlands House near Guildford for one of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s periodic Friends’ excursions. The house contains the Cobbe Collection which has a staggering array of keyboard instruments owned and played by some of the great composers among them Purcell, Johann Christian Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Chopin, Mahler and Elgar as well as the piano that Napoleon gave to Josephine. We were conducted through this historical tour by the OAE’s principal keyboard player Steven Devine with added insights from the eponymous collector Alec Cobbe, a little jet lagged after flying in from Ireland that morning. Their shared knowledge and Steven’s keyboard artistry made for an engaging trip and added substantially to my own musical education.

I travelled back in good time to join Frances, Farzana and Richard for a trip to the Pinter Theatre to see the revival of Conor McPherson’s The Weir. Timing was such that we were able to have a pre-theatre dinner in the wonderful Yoshino. Lisa was her usual welcoming self and managed to feed us elegantly as well as the late-arriving Farzana (thoughtless colleagues on Zoom calls!) with food that delighted her on her first visit before we all set off.

It’s a play I’ve seen before – nothing happens in a rural Irish pub, but everything happens in the minds, interplay and scary stories of the four male locals and the incomer Valerie. With Brendan Gleeson and Sean McGinley in the cast it was a super evening of witty dialogue, hidden back stories and brooding atmosphere. Lots of Guinness and scathing references to Harp drinkers – remember Harp?

23 years ago I filmed a studio interview and a gig at the Cavern Club in Liverpool with a young indie singer songwriter Ian Prowse. It was part of a language teaching video series for teenagers in Europe that we did in a yoof magaziney style. Dee and I loved his music and attitude and we remain friends after all this time. So on Saturday I set off for the Half Moon in Putney for a set from his current band Amsterdam. Frances joined me at the pub hot foot from Derby where she’d seen Watford’s first away win for eight months! I settled for the TV experience and was glad I’d conserved my energies as the evening was an all singing all dancing show with the band on top form – standin’ and boppin’ for two hours takes it out of us old uns!

The next day Frances and I and Farzana went to a new venue in London that led to another incredible evening – this time of multi-influenced jazz. HERE at Outernet is beside Centre Point and Tottenham Court Road Station. It’s deep in the basement but we weren’t bothered by noise from the tube. We were enthralled by a brilliant set from Nubya Garcia and her band. Anyone who has read my blogs knows I am a huge fan, following her from her early days in Lewisham pubs. This set – mostly songs from her latest album Odyssey – was supported by visuals on the giant screen at the back of the stage. Nubya herself was in great form with her mix of musical cultures inflecting her music, but with some lovely old school touches like references to My Funny Valentine and other classics in her solos. This lady does jazz. An ever-present in her line up over the years has been Sam Jones on drums. What is it about drummers called Jones? Jo held Count Basie’s band together, Philly Joe was Miles’ and Bill Evans’s favourite, Elvin was inseparable from Coltrane and now there’s this guy Sam whose propulsive and imaginative work takes the band into the stratosphere. Farzana and Fran had to put up with me hustling one of Nubya’s former managers as I’ve quoted Nubya in a pitch for BBPC to the Deptford Literary Festival next year. (I later got her blessing so forgive me!) What a night!

Next up was a theatre road trip. Fatherland by the precocious Nancy Farino who also starred in it, is a journey of discovery between an ominously named father, Winston Smith, and his daughter Joy in a converted school bus to County Mayo to discover some newly discovered heritage. Car seats on wheels and lighting effects neatly deliver the bus to the stage. There’s a great deal of barbed and bitchy banter among the deeper affection and interpolated scenes with father and a solicitor indicate that Winston’s life coaching practice has led to a suicide for which he’s being sued. Joy also lets us into her mind world of fears and fantasies. Nancy Farino has come through the Hampstead Theatre’s Inspire programme. More power to it if it continues to produce work of this quality.

Work of high quality was a trademark for Josef Hadyn. The OAE had been touring a programme of symphonies and a piano concerto through Germany, Switzerland and Italy with Sir Andras Schiff at the keyboard and as conductor (I nearly wrote with the baton but his hands are expressive enough). The did a concert in Udine and I had to wonder whether any of the Pozzo family attended – the Pozzos own both Udinese and Watford football clubs. The last date on this tour was at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

I like Haydn’s rhythmic impulse, his unpredcitability and his sense of fun and the two symphonies – one from his early period No 39 at the Esterhaza Court and No 102 from his prime in London showed real development of style and technique and were a joy to listen to as was Sir Andras’ performance of the concerto No 11 played on a Walter fortepiano just like one we’d seen at the Cobbe Collection a few days earlier.

Another busy month concluded with BBPC’s last bimonthly poetry meet up of the year at the Whitechapel Gallery which took the form of a review of the year’s activities and an open mic session for a dozen poets to share their own work or read from their favourite poets.

Many of us then went to the nearby Altab Ali Park for the launch of this year’s bijoyphool. This is the Bengali victory flower which has evolved from the British Remembrance Day poppy.

The green and red flower is worn for the first two weeks of December and commemorates the Bengali language wars of 1952, the war of independence of 1971 and the countless citizens who died in them and since. Three of the freedom fighters from the latter war were present in front of a replica of the Shahad Minar matryrs’ memorial in Dhaka. It was a privilege to be asked to say a few words for the local TV chanel about what it meant to be there at this moving ceremony.

The final event of this year’s Season of Bangla Drama was a play Joyontika produced by Trio Arts about post partum depression, a topic little discussed in the community but which affects many women. It was a mixture of drama, dance and polemic with some interesting technical tropes and delivered a powerful message. I was able to catch up with a few friends and indulge in some super spicy biryani to conclude a successful Season – delivered this year with no funding from the Arts Council. All hail to the indefatigable Kazi Ruksana Begum the Arts Development Officer for Tower Hamlets for bringing it all together.

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Music, mystery, movement and more

I had the privilege a couple of weeks ago of seeing an hour of the technical rehearsal of The Unbelievers at the Royal Court as part of Frances’s patrons’ deal. It was fascinating and set up a sense of great anticipation for the play itself. It did not disappoint. The central performance of Nicola Walker was quite stunning as a woman grieving the mysterious disappearance of her teenage son. Spoiler alert – he doesn’t appear but his absence hangs over the three intercalated time periods after his failure to return home.

The whole cast remains on stage throughout except for a couple of costume and role changes in a set that has a sparse domestic interior at the front with what looks like a police or doctors’ waiting room at the rear. Fear, anger, incomprehension, blame and violence swirl through the mother, her two ex- husbands, children and step-children. Some people, it seems, found the mingling of the day after, a year after and seven years after time periods confusing but I thought it added to the power of the writing, depicting clinically the way grieving does affect your sense of reality and time. It sounds bleak but had quite a few moments of hilarity. A serious examination of grief, guilt and sanity leavened by tender, moving and funny moments.

Next it was off to the downstairs theatre at Hampstead where new playwrights are given space to experiment. The Billionaire Inside Your Head by Will Lord was an examination of greed, ambition, entitlement and fantasy in an office setting. Echoes of Glengarry Glen Ross and other Mamet two-handlers spring to mind as a thruster and a slacker trade dreams and insults. The entitled slacker Darwin is the son of the company’s owner who as well as appearing in the drama, opens it with a chorus-like prologue as The Voice, that sets the scene for us all to examine our thoughts. The debt-collection nature of the company is perhaps a bit less exciting than Mamet’s realtor wheeler dealers but the tension between Darwin and the OCD Richie is well depicted. It was exciting, engaging and thought-provoking – just what Hampstead downstairs aims to be.

There was lots of the movement of my title in both the above but the prime expression of it this week came in Akram Khan’s Thikra: Night of Remembering at Sadler’s Wells where I had the pleasure of Rosa’s company. Devised in conjunction with the Saudi visual artist Manal AlDowayan, this is an intense hour of modern dance infused with classical Indian forms and a sound track that moves from a foreboding drone through ragas, Balkan chorale, drumming and hints of Purcell.

The twelve female dancers all have waist-length black hair that forms an important part of the performance. Would have been an interesting casting call: “Find me twelve women with equal-length black hair who can dance classical Bharatanatyam choreography”. Nine of the dancers were uniformly clad in olivey long dresses while the sacrificial victim was in white, the matriarch in red and her sister in black. AlDowayan’s involvement gave it a very graphic look that comes from her work in exploring cultures, heritage and change. The narrative didn’t really matter but was essentially about annual rebirth and renewal through sacrifice. Visually stunning, musically stimulating – an hour of total transportation into a world of magic and wonder. You can get a short glimpse of it here.

A select group of us returned to the Bridge Theatre for The Lady from the Sea. I haven’t been there for ages as it’s been wall-to-wall Guys and Dolls. I wrongly thought this was a version of Hedda Gabler but Ibsen actually wrote a play with this title so I need to brush up my Scandi classics knowledge. This was a Simon Stone adaptation, so after the Billie Piper Yerma, expectations were high for something off the wall. And we got it – the usual Ibsen anguished captive bride played bravely by Alicia Vikander resisting the cage into which her husband Andrew Lincoln, in great form, had placed her. The drama plays out on a thrust stage (the Bridge is so versatile as a space) which becomes soaked with rain in Act 2 and then turns into a swimming pool. Writing, acting, sound and lighting were all excellent but the award of the evening has to go to the set design and build – the vision of Lizzie Clachan. Another exceptional evening of entertainment.

After all this fun it was back to work – as a producer! A couple of times a year for the last few years, I’ve recorded an audiobook version of a reader for use in teaching English as a Foreign Language in Germany. I’ve now, it appears, done 11 of them – here are a few from Hueber Verlag in Frankfurt.

I have a small repertory company of actors who are brilliant at producing a range of characters in the course of the narrative – teenage protagonists, their parents, threatening outsiders, police and other officials. The stories are often a bit Famous Five but tackle issues like single parenthood, criminal behaviour, the environment and relationships. For this one, Joining the Circus,I invited Gyuri Sarossy, who I met at a Hampstead Theatre party a while back, to perform the script. It doesn’t sound the most likely name for an English language project but he is English born of a Hungarian father and English mother. The story involved a farming family setback by the father’s accident and a circus family devastated on finding their usual pitch was waterlogged and wouldn’t work. Gyuri was born in Bristol so we opted for a West Country accent for the farmers and an East Midlands for the circus people. It worked extremely well and I am constantly amazed at how these actors can switch characters seamlessly in a single sentence. After the recording Gyuri was off to Budapest to record his final scenes in a vampire movie. Another spoiler – he dies. A week later we hear that the client likes the results of the session. Great news – we’ll all get paid! A little.

It was then on to my main unpaid role as a trustee of the British Bilingual Poetry Collective. I was invited by the publisher of the collective’s anthology Home and Belonging, which resulted from a series of translation circles like the last blog’s reference to the Barbican, to chair a discussion panel at the Palewell Press Literary Festival. The day also included readings from a number of poets including Chika Jones and Nasrin Parvaz who feature in our anthology. It was fixed a long time ago and so I missed Watford’s best game of the season so far, a 3-0 demolition of Middlesbrough – such dedication to the cause, such a fair weather fan!

However the occasion was very interesting with my panellists translating from Arabic with Dr Amba Jawi and Catherine Temba Davidson as collaborators, Barbara Mitchell who translates from Spanish and Caroline Stockford who does Turkish and Welsh and finds striking and unexpected parallels. We ranged over the process of translation and the difficulties of rendering essence and spirit rather than words, the degrees of faithfulness and liberties translators are allowed and the reactions of the original authors.

In all the cases featured here there were difficulties since all the authors were in prison on political charges. Palewell Press specialises in human rights publications so this was only to be expected. The overriding message was that all art forms have to continue to expose and challenge human right abuses whever they occur.

Next day, to make it a full weekend of poetry, I co-hosted BBPC’s annual contribution to the Tower Hamlets Season of Bangla Drama. The season has a theme each year – we’ve done ‘love’ and ‘hope’ and this year it’s ‘kindness’. We decided to go all alliterative and call the session Kindness with Kazi using the poems and songs of the national poet of Bangladesh Kazi Nazrul Islam. Shamim Azad and I hosted the occasion which had performances by the brilliant singerJoyeta Chonchu of a couple of Nazrul songs , my colleague Milton and I recited one of his most famous poems “I Sing of Equality” followed by a discussion of his work and influence on people’s lives. After a short break we then broke up into pairs to talk about kindness given or received in our personal lives after which everybody wrote a short poem or piece of prose. There were some very moving contributions and very positive feedback that participants found it both enjoyable and valuable.

Monday saw me joining Frances at the Orange Tree Theatre for Hedda. Ibsen is all the rage these days it seems – well I guess he has been for a while. This is an adaptation by Tanika Gupta – well really more of a new play based on – Hedda Gabler, relocated to Chelsea in the post-war, post-partition of India period. Tanika’s take is based around the need to conceal the ethnicity of Hollywood’s Anglo- Indian stars, in particular Merle Oberon. The evening was pacy, directed by Hettie Macdonald, twisty and with a full range of emotion, fear, deception, devotion and angst.

From the dramatic opening with her lifelong maid, brilliantly portrayed by Rina Fatania, asking which face whitening she’d like today through to the realisation that she’d made a disastrous marriage believing her screen career to be over, Pearl Chanda was Merle Oberon.

A powerful performance with hints of her former influencer status dashed by the creeping reality of her current dull life. It touched a real nerve with me as I was currently reading Kiran Desai’s Booker nominated The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny which brilliantly examines the whole question of identity, ethnicity and personal authenticity. I was fortunate to be able to speak to Tanika about our Kindness event and she said her father used to sing Nazrulgeeti (KNI songs) around the house all the time. That was before seeing the play so sadly I wasn’t able to tell her how much I enjoyed it.

Another part of the Season of Bangla Drama was a presentation of kindness stories collected by long-term Bangladesh resident Peter Musgrave who had taken part in our BBPC Kazi session so it seemed only right to go to his. An added attraction was that Gitabini, the singing group featuring my friend Rumy Haque was to perform. There were stories to bring hope of new flood resistant ways of building houses and farming being demonstrated by NGO staff to educate the Bengali populace, particularly in the most threatened areas. One of the countries most prone to disappearing into the Bay of Bengal if climate change continues unchecked – not sanguine about the current COP to prevent it – but good to see alternative approaches to mitigate the effects. Gitabini sang a Kazi Nazrul Islam song and Rumy recited her conservation-oriented poem about a banyan tree and I was able to chat with a number of old and new friends at the post-event Koffee and Kake.

I’m fortunate to call the young composer Dani Howard a friend and so when her saxophone concerto was finally to receive its UK premiere I just had to whizz off to Poole to the Lighthouse Arts Centre to hear it. I did some voluntary work a few years back for the London Chamber Orchestra which had originally commissioned the concerto but then got into financial difficulties and couldn’t complete the contract. So I’d waited nearly two years to hear it. Stockholm Philharmonic and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra came to the rescue and while I didn’t make the world premiere in Sweden, I wasn’t going to miss out on the first UK performance. The journey was horrendous. The train was 30 minutes late arriving at Waterloo because of earlier signalling problems, and quite a bit more than that departing. Then we couldn’t get into Southampton Station because of other trains blocking our platform. Finally they decided to skip some stops and head directly to Poole after Bournemouth. At least Delay Repay will kick in and I’ll get some dosh back. By the time I’d checked in to the hotel, checked out the location – my first time at The Lighthouse – and gone for a walk down to the Quay it was dark. I guess one benefit of this was the bright lights of the Poole Museum shone out. A quick beer and back to the hotel to prepare for the concert. Was all the hassle worth while? Oh yes.

The concert opened with a Wagner piece I’d never heard – the overture to his first opera, a comedy called Forbidden Love. A comedy from Wagner! It failed miserably and lasted for only two performances in 1836, but the overture was fun, very jolly and lively, opening with castanets of all things! But the main event came next. Dani had written the concerto specifically with the versatile Jess Gillam in mind. In three contrasting movements the music showcased Jess’s talent but also wove evocative call and response moments with different sections of the orchestra. Lush pastoral passages alternated with bold percussive swathes and the brass were strongly featured – Dani does like her brass – one of her first pieces I heard was her trombone concerto for Peter Moore at the Barbican in April 2022, another amazing performance. Dani says the concerto is a homage to Adolf Sax who invented the wonderful instrument which finds its place more frequently in jazz clubs than in the concert hall. I love the way Dani combines pure and simple sounds from nature with a clear understanding of the power of complex orchestration. She’s a master of the medium. The Times critic liked it too: The first movement bubbles and chatters, passing ideas between soloist and orchestra, while the finale is a dazzling moto perpetuo, dispatched with seeming ease by Gillam. Best of all was the central movement, an extended cadenza for Gillam, who made it seem as if we were hearing Sax’s innermost feelings.

Jess Gillam is a master too and for her encore, chose a piece she’d played in BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2016 – Pedro Itteralde’s Pequeña Czarda – when the conductor was Mark Wigglesworth, now principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, whose home base is the Lighthouse. Most appropriate. After the interval we heard the orchestra in full flow with Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. It will be interesting to compare this rendition with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s approach in June next year on period instruments under Sir Simon Rattle.

Dani takes in the applause with Jess just visible beside her

What made the evening extra special was that Dani invited me to the pre-concert reception where I met her mother, Belinda, again – we had both been at the Barbican gig in 2022 – meet her sister Sam for ther first time and catch up with boyfriend Sion Jones who I’d met at the Colin Currie percussion concerto at the Wigmore Hall. Dani was of course the centre of attention with a former pupil effusing over her influence on his career and her former music teacher from Hong Kong, now working in Poole, bringing a class of her primary pupils to say hello. After the concert, Dani had some formal duties but after a while she and Sion were able to join Belinda, Sam and me in the pub where I’m afraid we stayed till they kicked us out. After all the music it was an evening of fascinating conversation eavesdropped and joined in with by locals Jeff and Jonny and covering coping with bereavement, mine and the Howards’ who lost a husband/father last year, music, the arts generally, contracts, 2027 paradigm shift and blogging among others which were continued outside the pub until we all decided to head for our rather tardy beds in three different hotels.

News

Too busy to blog …

It’s been a long time since I last did this. There’s been a lot going on. Cataract operations and follow ups. British Bilingual Poetry Collective’s first appearance at the Barbican. Football matches. Women’s World Cup cricker. Copy to prepare for Watford Museum and editing for TU Delft. A massive crop of quinces to be cooked and made into jelly, pickles, marmalade and membrillo. But still time for a few theatre and concerts. And while my last post began with a trek west across south London to see my granddaughter play in her band, this one starts with a diagonal trip north to Alexandra Palace to see my son-in-law perform.

It’s 20 years since The Thick of It hit our screens and so why not have a party to celebrate? The creator Armando Ianucci was joined by the stars Peter Capaldi, Rebecca Front and Chris Addison, who at the time was mainly known as a standup comedian rather than an actor. The evening was elegantly hosted by Miles Jupp. There was lots of chat about the provenance (Yes Minister), about the semi-improvisatory nature of the scripts and the fluid filming style. There was a lot of swearing of course and a pre-interval recreation of the Tucker/Reeder sacking scene. It was a very entertaining evening although as a fellow-traveller on the bus back to Finsbury Park said: “It turned a bit into the Chris Addison show in the second half.” When tasked with this Chris confessed it was PTSD from all those panel shows he used to do.

Next up was another visit to Acland Burghley School for a recital by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s new intake to their Rising Stars scheme. Every two years the OAE recruits young singers to serve a kind of apprenticeship with opportunities to appear at their concerts and develop their professional lives. This year’s group seemed pretty well set to me with well-delivered introductions to their Handel arias.

They were left to right Sofia Kirwan-Baez (soprano), Angharad Rowlands (mezzo-soprano), Hugo Brady (tenor) and Peter Edge (baritone). Chosen from over 100 singers who applied they were accompanied by a chamber group of OAE players conducted from the harpsichord by Steven Devine. It’s really encouraging to see so much young talent embarking on their chosen careers.

The last Sunday of every other month finds me co-hosting a BBPC poetry adda (get together). We read, perform and often translate poetry and have voluble discussions about what we hear. This month we had a performance poet Pip McDonald perform a couple of pieces and then engage in a valuable discussion about the art of performance with many tips for budding performers. It was a friendly and positive occasion, with tea and snacks, as I hope the photos demonstrate.

So what’s occurring at Marble Arch? After the horror of that artificial hill, it was a delight to discover that there’s a new MOCO in town. I’ve visited the museums in Barcelona and Amsterdam but had missed out on the fact that MOCO London opened in September last year but had an email with a voucher for half-price entry so off I set. It’s a similar collection of modern and contemporary works with Banksy, Emin, Hirst, Kusama, Opie and Warhol all present and correct but with some excellent pieces that were completely new to me. One of thee first images to confront me was a photo of Elton John by Chris Levine, currently in a dispute with a collaborator over his holographic portraits of the late queen. I was then lured into a fascinating psychedelic infinity mirror room and then to its exact opposite in a contemplative installation Lunar Garden by Daniel Arshan inspired by the classic Japanese Zen gardens I enjoyed so much in Japan. There were a lot of really interesting artworks on display so it will be firmly on my agenda of museum visits as they have changing displays as well as the permanent collection. And it’s a spacious and elegant space over three floors.

I don’t often go to see a play twice in ten days but when Frances and I went to see The Land of the Living at the Dorman Theatre at the National, I said “I should have brought Rosa to this”. So I told her about it and we went together a week later. Rosa is my artist friend, one of whose major installations Lost treats the adoption scandal that took place in Spain between the late 30s and early 90s, known as the Spanish Stolen Children and she is currently working on a similar work featuring the American US Adoption Re-homing scheme. You can check Rosa’s work out at https://artcollaboratif.com. This play by David Lan, who used to be the creative director at the Young Vic, is about the attempt to repatriate children who were stolen from Ukraine and Poland by the Nazis because of their suitability to breed the super Aryan race. It was disturbing, thought-provoking and contained a masterful performance by Juliet Stevenson, an actor I’ve long admired. But there were also moments of humour and theatricality as when the Dorfman’s traverse stage is converted into a swaying train taking children back to their homes.

Both Frances and I have marvelled at the genius of Indhu Rubasingham and her work transforming the Kiln Theatre. Now she’s the artistic director of the National and as someone said after the play she’s spent a year of the Kiln’s budget on her first production as director in the Olivier. Bacchae is losely based on Euripides in a debut play by Nima Taleghani – a brave commission to open your first season at the nation’s principal theatre. Did it work? Hell yes! Rambunctious rapping, rhyming, big revolves, flying and dancing brought the contrast between the lifestyles and philosophies of Dionysus and Pentheus sharply into focus and the ever-present chorus of bacchantes led by Clare Perkins kept the whole spectacle flowing through mood swings and emotional turmoil. Ukweli Roach, James McArdle and Sharon Small shared the lead roles. There were lots of laughs, lots of theatrical in jokes and while it may not be what conventional NT audiences were expecting all the people we spoke to thought it was great fun.

My friend Jadwiga likes lunchtime recitals and has a list of churches and venues where she goes regularly so I was delighted to be able to take her to a lunchtime recital in a venue she hadn’t been to before. Some time ago on a vist to Ramsgate for the launch of Anna Blasiak’s latest book, I met Gabriela Mocan of the Romanian Cultural Institute and had taken my friend Dana to an evening concert there. The upshot is that I’m on their mailing list and was attracted by a recital by a Romanian pianist Kira Frolu in St Bartholomew the Great in Smithfield.

Jadwiga was suitably impressed by this ancient church and we were both enthralled by the young pianist’s performance of an Georges Enescu suite – Mélodie, Mazurk mélancolique and Burlesque from Suite No.3 Op.18 – to keep the Romanian theme running followed by a wonderful performance of one of my favourite pieces Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition which is great in Ravel’s orchestration but rather special in the original piano form. It was made all the more poignant as the last movement is called ‘The Heroes’ Gate at Kyiv’.

Once again it was a privilege to experience the wealth of talent emerging from British conservatoires (Royal Academy of Music in Kira’s case) and a tragedy that so many of them will struggle to make a living because governments plural don’t care about the arts. We had a light lunch after the concert and walkedpast St Paul’s Cathedral and then through Postman’s Park with its fascinating plaques to people who died trying to save others’ lives. We then crossed the Millennium Bridge and along the south bank where I peeled off to meet Rosa for an early supper in the Archduke before making my second trip to the Dorman for The Land of the Living. It was interesting to see it from a different viewpoint and its powerful messages rang through again. I’m pleased to say Rosa was impressed too.

The Barbican Centre ran a series of October events under the title Voiced: the Festival for Endangered Languages. My poetry group BBPC was invited to contribute in three sessions. We ran a Translation Circle on Saturday 11 October (top below), our chair Shamim read poems in Sylheti in person on Friday 17 (left below) and in a foyer display through headphones and Eeshita and Anahita produced a polylingual audiovisual poem at the final session on Saturday 18. (Eeshita introduces the poem and the BBPC team celebrates.)

Shamim and I have run a number of translation session together but we usually know several of the people present. Not this time. Because of GPDR the barbican couldn’t even let us know who had signed up. However we did enlist the talent of Anna Blasiak to prepare a poem in Polish and Kashubian (endangered mix of Polish and German used on the north coast) which we then translated as a group which contained speakers of ten different languages. Interesting! However, the organiser got good feedback and we had a good party after the final session.

A change of mood on the Sunday as I moved back into the world of music with the OAE performing their first concert of their 40th anniversary season at the Queen Elizabeth Hall – Handel’s oratorio Solomon. It’s a fine work that includes the ever popular Arrival of the Queen of Sheba. Conducted by John Butt who has a long association with the OAE, it was great to see two of the rising stars from last week in the two choirs with Angharad having a small solo role as the second harlot involved in the famous judgement. The main character of Solomon was sung by one of the first intake of Rising Stars Helen Charlston, Zadok by Hugo Hymas and a Levite by Florian Störtz fellow alumni of the scheme. The three sections of the oratorio are very different in style and emotional impact but it was a pleasure to hear the crisp playing of the orchestra and the beautiful antiphonal choirs raising the roof.

The period was rounded off with visits to the Young Vic and the National again. A couple of weeks’ ago Frances was invited to an insight event in the Young Vic rehearsal room at which we heard from some of the actors and from director Nadia Fall about the forthcoming production of Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr Sloane. I think I saw the first revival at the Royal Court in 1975 with Beryl Reid and Malcolm Macdowell. It raised a lot of scandalous outrage among certain elements of society and the media.

Tamzin Outhwaite is the central character Kath in this production with Jordan Stephens as Mr Sloane. Poor Joe Orton is best remebered for being murdered by his boyfriend but he actually wrote some very funny plays (Mr Sloane, Loot, What the Butler Saw).

Within the frequent elements of farce are strong messages about unwanted pregnancy, homosexuality, promiscuity, race and class and hints of criminality. Well worth reviving in our once again intolerant times.

Another of the benefits of friendship with Frances was an invite to a talk to staff in the archive and design departments of the NT followed by a matinee performance of Hamlet. This is the second production in Indhu Rubasingham’s first season at the National and was directed by her deputy artistic director Robert Hastie. Hiran Abeysekera plays the prince quite brilliantly with much more humour than usual and a very emotional reading of the role. He’s matched by an outstanding performance from Francesca Mills as Ophelia who skips and dances across the stage enlivening every scene she’s in and casting a shadow over others after her death. It’s brilliantly staged in a palatial ballroom with an amazing mural which we were told in the pre-meet contains portraits of everyone who has played Hamlet at the National.