Hampstead Theatre

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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Another quiet week …

The week started with an interesting journey acrosss south London to see my granddaughter perform with the band Soulstice at BrockFest a music festival organised by Junior Open Mic which arranges monthly sessions for bands under the age of 18. This was a much bigger event in Brockwell Park in Herne Hill which I reached via a bus from home to Crystal Palace and then another to Brockwell Park. My daughter had equipped band and parents with branded merch. I had complained about being left out so today I was for the first time able to pull on my tee with SOULSTIC E GRANDAD appliqued on the back and keyboards on the chest as Daisy (Trixi in the band) plays the keys and flute. After some heavy metal and a plaintive female singer-songwriter it was time for Soulstice to perform their three-song set. The organisers had brought heir start time forward and there was a moment when they thought they may have to start with out their bass player. However she did make it on time – just – and they rocked the audience with a cover of Raye’s The Thrill is Gone and original compositions Still I Rise and Supersonic. As the applause rang out and they prepared to leave the stage the MC called them back for an encore and then a second one. A great start to the week and a proud grandad retired to the pub with some of the band and their parents to congratulate ourselves for the talent our genes had bestowed!

The next day it was me on the stage. I had been invited to read some poems at the Bangladesh Book Fair at the Brady Arts Centre in Tower Hamlets. I had a ten minute slot that I filled with a couple of poems inspired by my visits to Bangladesh back in 2009 and other more recent efforts which were politely received by the, fortunately, largely bilingual audience.

On Tuesday it was off to the Hampstead Theatre to see the transfer of Titus Andronicus from the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford. Having seen it there with Simon Russell Beale in the titular role it would be interesting to see how John Hodgkinson filled the space after SRB was sadly unwell and unable reprise his performance in London. Hodgkinson had apparently had only two weeks to learn the part and only one other public performance before we saw him. He was magnificent. His taller stature and natural authority gave the part a different feel. Despite the mutilations, murders and children-in-the-pie mayhem, you felt a degree of sympathy for Titus. The set had transferred to Hampstead slightly reducing the thrust which made it even more intimate than the Swan. Once again protective blankets were provided for front row guests against the blood spatter. The brilliance of Max Webster’s direction in using blackouts and audio to cover the goriest actions was still highly effective and the wardrobe choices for Romans and Goths worked really well. It was a stunning evening of theatre – again!

Then it’s off to the Kiln to see a play that Frances missed at the Galway Arts Festival last year but which has now happily got a run in Kilburn. The Reunion gathers a family on a remote island – maybe they used to holiday there when younger but I didn’t quite catch it – some coming from Dublin others from London – to commemorate the anniversary of their father’s death. After a cordial start, the cracks begin to show and develop into fissures and then chasms as sibling rivalry, jealousies, disapproval of lifestyle choices and parenting start to surface through the evening and into a nightmare of a night. There are a couple of great coups de theatre that I won’t reveal but alongside all the grief and misery there is a lot of humour, both verbal and physical.

And afterwards Fran had a chance to catch up with Paul Fahey the director of the Galway Arts Festival who remembered her photographer uncle Stan who used to photograph the festival for the local newspaper, about whom they chatted so it made for a great end to a fun evening.

I had missed Inter Alia at the National Theatre so was delighted that NT Live had recorded it and were showing it at the Greenwich Picturehouse on Thursday so I got three plays in three days albeit one of them on a screen.

The play is an amazing follow up to the sensational Jodie Comer spectacular Prima Facie and has an equally staggering performance from the central character Judge Jessica Parks played by Rosamund Pike. Unlike Jodie Comer, Rosamund is not alone on stage but still has the most incredible amount of stage business with props and costume changes as the awful story of a teenage rape unfolds through hints, evasions, suspicion and eventually confession. It’s a very moral exploration of social media’s effect on adolescents, understandings of consent and appropriate sexual behaviour – a theme explored in the eponymous Adolesensce on TV in 2025 and Micaela Coel’s I May Destroy You a couple of years ago. It’s a hot topic at present with toxic masculinity promoted seemingly unfettered by the big tech platform owners. The play calls for acting of a high order with both sides of dialogue in conversations, being an ever-present mother and a high-powered judge. Rosamund Pike delivers brilliantly with great support from her husband and son and a cast of children who pop in and out. It was most excellently filmed as NT Live shows usually are with enough wide shots including the audience to give a sense of being in the theatre but with the telling close ups of moments of joy and anguish that you don’t get when you are actually in the room. Shocking content, stunning performances, superb evening, applause in the cinema.

Having seen a part of the technical rehearsal for Creditors at the Orange Tree a couple of weeks ago it was now time to head off to Richmond to see the whole thing. Fortunately the journey time allowed me to watch the Red Roses complete their victory over France in the Womens’ Rugby World Cup and seal their place against Canada in next week’s final.

It’s been a week in which crucial issues have been aired in the theatre. War, power and empire building; family intrigue and betrayals; rape and social media and now Strindberg’s take on coercive control. The cast are outstanding in bringing a terrifying text of mysogyny and manipulation to us with compelling performances that deliver humour amid the horror and which draw gasps from the audience as Charles Dance’s Gustav ties Nicholas Farrell’s ailing artist Adolf in knots with a tissue of lies and innuendo. Missing for the first scene but the centre of the play is Geraldine James’s Tekla. She enters in scene two with comic flirting and her own level of manipluation of her husband Adolf to allow her to pursue other conquests in an ‘open marriage’. It all turns grim as Gustav’s poison pours out of Adolf in an attack on Tekla. Finally Tekla and Gustav play a scene in which many revelations occur. The adaptation by Howard Brenton and direction by Tom Littler make this a compelling evening in the theatre with actors at the peak of their powers. It appears that the three actors last worked together 20 years ago in the TV series The Jewel in the Crown. Their chemistry is intact.

And when I got home, there on the doormat was the latest edition of POL (Poetry Out Loud – Issue 7) in which I have a short story published. The magazine has a Bangladeshi slant and my story has a female British-Bengali protagonist in a tale of lost lovers reunited during a male lecturer’s trip to Yorkshire. You can get it from Amazon if you are interested.

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No Mow – No Blog – May

Well the lawn didn’t quite escape the mower despite the warm weather and slow growth of grass but it had to have a tidy up. What did escape was the keyboard – too busy to type this month! It all started on Saturday 3rd with the last game of the season – unlucky draw – followed by a farewell to the season lunch at L’Artista and then Frances, Rose and myself whizzing off for a pre-concert Guinness in the Toucan with Ian Prowse (he didn’t have one) before he took to the stage at the 100 Club. It was as always with him a brilliant evening’s entertainment.

Then on Monday 5th Fran and I went to see the new Conor McPherson play The Brightening Air at the Old Vic. It’s a wonderful depiction of dysfunctional Irish rural family life with a standout performance from Rosie Sheehy as the disruptive Billie. The next day I had to record one of the English Language Teaching audiobooks that I do a couple of times a year. My voice over actor John Hasler (doing 16 different voices in Aussie accents around an RP narration – amazing) is about to rejoin the cast of Fawlty Towers at the Apollo Theatre with a bigger role than he had in the first run so I’ll probably catch that at some point in the run that starts late June.

Next up was a favourite ukiyo-e printmaker Hiroshige at the British Museum. I am familiar with most of the images displayed but seeing the vibrancy of the originals compared with reproductions was astonishing. The exhibition also included several indications of the complexity of making multi-coloured woodblock prints, inking them up and making sure paper is accurately registered. A technical triumph but also witty, emotional and dramatic scenes of love, life and landscape. It was interestingly curated too with prints fixed to scrolls which themselves were often the destination of woodblock prints.

With my mind firmly back in Japan I spent the evening downstairs at the Hampstead Theatre in the midst of a video game. The play was Personal Values and combined characters’ real lives with their personae in the game they were endlessly playing. As a non-gamer it left me a bit confused but others enjoyed it very much.

Back at Hampstead the following Monday saw a very different set of games presented. This was an adaptation by Richard Bean of David Mamet’s 1987 film, Mamet’s debut as both writer and director. It was powerful, twisty, scary and shocking but immense fun. I hadn’t seen the film for ages but recall it being altogether darker and while there were some elements of that here, it was as you’d expect with Richard Bean rather more about the laughs. I’m looking forward to more card games and sleaze when we see Dealer’s Choice at the Donmar next month.

Music started the month and gave me a real highlight in the middle. Sunday 18th found me in the Temple of Art and Music in Mercato Metropolitano, the sprawling food fest at the Elephant and Castle. The group in which my granddaughter plays keyboard, flute and does backing vocals – elegantly called Soulstice – were asked to headline a Youth Open Mic session. There’s a clip here – not very well recorded and not by me! They are usually an all girl band but their drummer couldn’t make the gig so a brother kindly stepped in. I’m prejudiced of course but they are actually rather good with a soul-tinged mix of their own originals, Sade, Amy Winehouse and so on..

Different but no less enjoyable was the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s concert at the Royal Festival Hall with Sir Andras Schiff conducting from the piano in a Schumann programme with a little Mendelssohn in between. It started with the Konzertstück which is a very lively piece for piano and orchestra and was followed by familiar passages from Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Nights’ Dream and Schiff played Schumann’s only piano concerto after the interval. He had talked last year at an open rehearsal of his pleasure in having a brown Blüthner fortepiano rather than the shiny black Steinways that are usually provided.

He had it again tonight and did us proud, not only in the opening piece and the concerto, but gave us a solo encore of Brahms’ Albumblatt and then closed the piano lid very firmly and got the whole orchestra to play Mendelssohn’s Fingal’s Cave as a bonus encore. Coming at the end of an eight day tour to Vienna, Graz, Antwerp, Amsterdam and Munich the energy of Sir Andras and the orchestra was quite amazing. And with even more bonuses – a preconcert talk with Laura Tunbridge, professor of music at Oxford, and an interval drinks reception for friends – it was a night to remember.

Sir Andras Scxhiff leaves the stage, leaving behind his favourite instrument.

On my way to the OAE concert I went to the National Portrait Gallery to see the exhibition of Edvard Munch portraits. These were very impressive with clear characterisation of friends and family placed in relevant environments. He obviously didn’t like several of his subjects as these were not flattering portraits but reflected Munch’s relationship with them and indeed with himself. I couldn’t escape the musical theme of the month of May as my two favourites were The Brooch which is a lithograph of an English violinist who styled herself Eva Mudocci and a quick stetch of Edward Delius at a concert in Wiesbaden. I also liked his walking self-portrait and a double portrait of the lawyer Harald Norgaard and his wife Aase with whom he had a lengthy relationship. It’s an unusual composition and was quite striking. Munch knew Harald from his youth and painted Aase separately on a number of occasions.

I also made it to another British Museum exhibition after being a radiotherapy buddy to a friend who is going through the final stages of cancer treatment. She is great company despite the circumstances and we have spent some good times together. As I remember myself radiotherapy leaves you pretty wiped out so she declined the offer of accompanying me to the BM understandably preferring home and rest. The exhibition was mostly of objects from the museum’s own collections but shed a fascinating insight into the religions of India – Hindu, Jain and Buddhism through their artefacts and what they symbolised. The galleries also had birdsong, tolling bells and chanting played quietly to make it a multisensory visit.

Dancing Ganesha a fixture in all three religions

My next adventure was into the world of words. The British Bilingual Poetry Collective resumed our Bi-monthly Poetry Meets at Bard Books on Roman Road in Bow. Shamim Azad and I led a session of poetry readings, discussion, translation and an open mic session which was much enjoyed by all present.

The late May bank holiday was spent having an early supper with Rosa and then a visit to the Wigmore Hall to hear the amazing percussionist Colin Currie. I wish they didn’t have a photo ban because the array of drums, marimba, vibraphones, glockenspiel and other thing you can bang to make music filled the entire stage. A varied programme showcased his ability to make exciting, moving, thoughtful and adventurous sounds emanate from this staggering collection of instrumental forces.

My main motivation for going was the world premiere of Vasa a Concerto for Solo Percussion by Dani Howard, a young composer I’ve been pleased to call a friend for a few years now. It was a complex piece featuring a series of different tempos, emotions and melodies. Dani had worked with Colin to devise the final form and told us later that she had to have a diagram of the stage layout of the marimba, two vibraphones, cymbals, drums and other devices, many of them foot-operated, so that she could ensure she was writing things Colin could physically move around the instruments to execute. It was a very rewarding evening concluding with some excellent conversation in the pub.

Bass drum and woodblocks were foot operated and 1-5 are various cymbals

I had intended to give After the Act at the Royal Court a miss as I’m not a big fan of musicals. However the indisposition of Fran’s intended companion meant that she asked me to go. The content should have been – and was – of real interest. The ‘Act’ was the appalling 1985 Section 28 that forbade taechers in schools and colleges to mention homosexuality, Equally appallingly it was only repealed in 2003.

The play contained some verbatim quotes from individuals – teachers, parents and students – who had suffered from the act, recreations of protests including a daring 1988 abseil in the House of Lords and, for my taste, too many occasions when serious issues resulted in the cast of four bursting into song accompanied by onstage keyboardist and drummer.

The next evening was far more satisfactory. Because Terrance Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea was on at the Theatre Royal Haymarket we were able to pop into Yoshino for a quick pre-theatre sample of Lisa’s excellent cuisine and hosting. Some analysts feel that the doomed love affair represented in the play was Rattigan’s sublimation of his own homosexuality – still illegal when he wrote it in 1952.

Starring the wonderful Tamsin Greig with a fine supporting cast, this was a faithful period-set production that allowed the play’s veiled messages space to emerge from the context and the conversations around love and death, suicide and survival, protest and resignation, passion and comoanionship were brilliantly done, very moving and affecting.

Thursday saw Fran and I make our hat-trick of theatregoing with a trip to Islington to see Ava Pickett’s debut play 1536. The setting is sixteenth century Essex where three friends indulge in gossip – has Henry really ditched Anne Boleyn? – their own relationships with men and each other and the role of women in a patriarchal society. It’s bold, it’s funny. it’s sexy and it makes you wonder how much better things really are today. The rolling changes in friendships are brilliantly delivered in crisp dialogue and while history is all around, the play tells us a lot about today. As a writer on the brilliant The Great on Channel 4, Ava Pickett is clearly a name to watch out for.

The month’s finale was a trip with Frances to see Simon Russell Beale in Titus Andronicus at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. After a pleasant drive up we had a late lunch, checked into the hotel and then made our way to the theatre. It was my first time in the Swan and we were a bit surprised that this production was in the smaller space, not the main hall. However the intimacy of the location made the horrors of Shakespeare’s most violent play (or is it Coriolanus?) very clear.

The production certainly didn’t stint on Kensington gore but used brilliant lighting and sound effects to protect us from witnessing the worst atrocities. SRB was his usual excellent self but was by no means outstanding. The whole cast under the direction of the versatile Max Webster was superb and brought the subtleties of the text into play as well as the torrid drama. And on reflection, yes this is the most violent of Shakespeare’s works.

We went out to Anne Hathaway’s house next morning for a walk around the orchards, had an enlightening tour of the house from excellent guides and then made our way back to London. A fine ending to a full and varied month of culture. As Shakespeare’s contemporary Thomas Dekker put it “O, the month of May, the merry month of May”.

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Vampires Bach in Ramsgate

Monday sees me off to the Hampstead Theatre to join Frances for the press night of John Donelly’s new play Apex Predator. It’s directed by Blanche McIntyre who did Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love so brilliantly earlier this year so expectation was high. First sight of the auditorium was of a domestic kitchen-diner surrounded by towering scaffolding – well most of London is still work in progress – and rice paper screens that rise and fall to signal scene changes.

At the start, with exhausted new mum Mia rocking her young baby girl Isla who won’t sleep, I thought we were in for an update on Look Back in Anger or other kitchen sink dramas. Sophie Melville plays Mia very intelligently veering from utterly broken, unable-to-cope mother to a raging harridan when castigating her often absent on secretive IT-based police work husband Joe (Bryan Dick). Their elder son Alfie is being bullied at school and Mia’s encounter with teacher Ana, played by Laura Whitmore – a splendid mix of smooth confidante, encourager of excess and vengeful destroyer – is all friendly deviousness. The cast is completed by Leander Deeny who plays Aggressive Commuter, Park Flasher, Oopulent Womaniser and Vampire Victim. Because yes, into the domestic scenario comes vampirism in a fabulous coup de theatre at the end of act one. Blanche later confided that victim Leander had arrived at the first read through announcing himself: “I’m lunch”!

Under Blanche McIntyre’s direction, aided by dramatic sound, set and lighting design there are plenty of moments of high drama but also some very funny lines and situation comedy that kept the audience gripped. There are perhaps too many elements covered in the play but as a metaphor for greed and exploitation and increasing levels of unchecked violence the vampirism works well. It also expresses our fears for the future of the world we are just about clinging on to – an aspect highlighted in Alfie’s (played very subtly throughout by Callum Knowelden) school presentation. My immediate post show WhatsApp to a friend still stands: On train on way home – exhilarating, scary, brilliantly directed (as I was able to tell Blanche), full of familiar anxieties and I will be very careful shaving tomorrow.

*The OAE choir and the RFH organ in all its splendour.*

Thursday evening is spent at the Royal Festival Hall for a performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion by the Orchestra and Choir of the Age of Enlightenment. It was preceded by a talk with CEO Crispin Woodhead, leader Kati Debretzeni and singer Amy Wood. The discussion was enlightening (sorry) in showing how performers find something new in a very familiar work, how conductor-led and self directed performances differ and the panel pointed out various elements to listen out for. Not least the fact that the opening sung word of Part Twp lasts for a full fourteen beats. The word? Ach. (Ah).

The mass is a piece I’ve heard in several guises over the years and the story is familiar. After all I spent a long while in Israel back in 1992 producing a photographic The Bible Alive for Harper Collins publishers with photographer Tony May. Budget and logistics meant we could only use twelve extras so while the cruxifixion wasn’t too challenging we had fun with the wedding at Canaan and the feeding the five thousand spreads. And only affording to hire three camels made the Magi caravan cover spread a logistical nightmare with multiple walkie talkies across the hills. All this in the early days of image manipluation – years before Photoshop was developed, we used mostly the Quantel Paintbox.

The balanced forces of the OAE in two orchestras, the excellent soloists and a dynamic approach from Jonathan Cohen gave the mass a wonderful clarity and strong narrative sense. There were many highlights but for me probably ‘Erbarme dich’ (Have mercy) with the outstanding countertenor/alto Iestyn Davies interacting with Huw Daniel’s violin with muted string underscore was the pinnacle – suffering, compassion and humility all in a few bars of exquisite music.

It was altogether a wonderful evening in a hall with consummate musicians enjoying what they do best. At the end there was a stunned and respectful silence before an outbreak of rapturous applause and many recalls for bows from the soloists and Jonathan Cohen.

Theatre, music and now literature. Saturday saw me head off to Ramsgate for the launch of my friends Anna Błasiak and Lisa Kalloo’s latest book of poems and photographs – largely about growing up gay in Poland in the latter decades of the last century. But I was also able to take in some new areas of this fascinating town after having to be rescued by Anna after not reading the poster properly and going to the wrong (derelict) venue.

Liverpool Lawn terrace, end house and a seafront bus shelter and Spencer Square where Van Gogh lodged in 1876, some of the interesting architecture of Ramsgate

There are a number of ‘Lawns’ around Ramsgate – Anna and Lisa live in one too – and very elegant they are with their Georgian frontages and curved construction to enhance sea views. But now to the real purpose – the launch of Deliverance/Rozpetanie Anna and Lisa’s second collaboration in a volume of poems and photographs. It’s bilingual in Polish and English, often as you can see in the poems featured below in alternate phrases and sentences which produces a wholly different reading experience from the more conventional parallel text treatment. You can buy it here and it’s an emotional roller coaster with horrific stories of prejudice but lots of humour too and it is complemented by Lisa’s haunting photographs. Anna was interviewed about her work and read several of the poems to a thoroughly engaged audience.

Many of the photographs from the book were displayed in the gallery too and some of the concrete poems. I met a lot of new and interesting people and was able to pay for my overnight hospitality by assuming the duties of ‘wine pourer’ – well some things just come naturally.

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Groupie Grandad

On Sunday I had the great privilege of attending the rehearsal for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s Das Jahr concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Friends were invited to take coffee and cake in the Artist’s Bar at 13:00. So it was with great excitement that I entered as instructed through the Artists’ Entrance – this feels special already. Familiar faces were around, coffee was fine but the promised cake did not materialise. One of the familiar faces was composer Electra Perivolaris who I’d met a couple of weeks before at the OAE Season Launch. We had a chat about the piece of her’s that was being rehearsed and played today and it was soon time to enter the hall for the rehearsal to begin. I knew one of the other composers Roxanna Panufnik who I remembered from a previous occasion gives up chocolate for Lent. When I reminded her of this: “Ah,” she said, “but I’m a Catholic and today’s Sunday so we don’t have to fast!” She then introduced me to the other two composers Errolyn Wallen, appointed Master of the King’s Music in August last year, and Freya Waley-Cohen. I sat behind the four as they discussed each other’s work, prepared comments for the conductor and orchestra members. Seeing a cheeky thumbs up between Electra and tympanist Adrian Bending when a suggestion came good was fun to see. Watching them enhance the playing of their compositions was (sorry) enlightening. I’ve given lots of notes to actors and seen performances change for the better but in this new context it was exciting – literally in one instance when a segment of Freya’s piece was played for a third time with different intensity and I got goosebumps. I’m now a total women composer groupie!

Freya Waley-Cohen giving notes to the orchestra.

After the rehearsal concluded to everyone’s satisfaction, there was a break and then the composers joined Max Mandel (principal viola and artistic co-ordinator of the project) for a talk about Fanny Mendelssohn’s piano cycle and how it had inspired the four composers to write their own compositions. They also spoke of the challenges of writing for historically accurate period instruments.

Then it was off to the bar and a chance to catch up with more OAE regulars and to be joined by Frances for the concert itself. This consisted of several of Fanny’s original months from the cycle played brilliantly by Olga Pashchenko on an 1831 Erard piano similar to an instrument Fanny would have used. We also heard the only full orchestral composition she completed – it was an era when it wasn’t seemly for women to write for orchestras – the Overture in C major. It’s a shame she didn’t do more. Conducted enthusiastically by Natalia Ponomarchuk, the overture moved from haunting horn figures through strings and wind sections with strong melodies and frequent lively arpeggios that showed a mastery of composing for an orchestra. The three pieces by Electra (March), Errolyn (April) – as it happens their own birth months too – and Freya (After June) followed. The subtleties and reflexions of Fanny’s work became more apparent on this second hearing and I hope they’ll get many more outings which all three fully deserve. The second half of the programme started with Olga playing the summer months and then four principals from the OAE played a romanze from Fanny’s String Quartet in E flat major which again showed what an underrated, supressed compser she was. The word is that she was a far superior pianist than her younger brother Felix but wasn’t allowed to perform. The finale was Roxanna Panufnik’s piece Postlude inspired by the thirteenth section which Fanny had added to the year. It had witty echoes of Fanny’s own work and a rhythmic pulse which drove it along. There were minimalist passages and areas that fully exploited the orchestra’s capabilities – I really enjoyed it. Natalia Ponomarchuk brought both enthusiasm and precision to the whole concert.

*Olga Paschenko and Natalia Ponomarchuk take a bow with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.*

After a feast of music old and new it was time on to theatre new and slightly older. Monday was The Habits at Hampstead Theatre downstairs. It’s a first play by award-winning director Max Bradfield. It is set in a boardgame café in Bromley – very close to home! The action unfolds through a (to me) baffling game of Dungeons and Dragons (my son and grandson both play) and through the moments out of D&D character we learn of the participants’ real lives encompassing ambition, grief, addiction, fecklessness and perhaps love. It’s brilliantly acted with switches in and out of role done most skilfully and there are lots of laughs and some fabulous dressing up for the finale.

*Ruby Stokes as Jess with her dragon* in The Habits *at Hampstead.*

Across town to the Orange Tree in Richmond on Tuesday to revel in April de Angelis’s Playhouse Creatures. Written in 1993 and set in the 1660s when theatres were just opening up again after the Cromwell interregnum had closed down all forms of pleasure. It’s a period I was familiar with having done lots of research for a series of blogs and a script I wrote for Clive Myrie to present at the OAE’s concert of Restoration Music in 2021 when theatres and concert halls here were just opening again after the Covid lockdowns. In London theatre in 1660 there was a real sensation – women were allowed to appear on stage and took to it with gusto if Ms de Angelis is to be believed.

Some of the girl power here could have benefitted poor Fanny Mendelssohn a couple of centuries later. Funny, informative about acting craft in the Restoration period and with insights into the struggle for fair pay, the roles of women in those times both on and off stage, the play gives us plenty to think about that resonate in these uncertain times for actors and musicians as theatres try to recover from the lockdowns. It’s bawdy and brash and gives you plenty of belly laughs with a few winces of agonised reality thrown in.

The cast led by Anna Chancellor as Mrs Betterton – wife of theatre owner Thomas – are all excellent bringing depth to the on and off-stage characters they portray: Katherine Kingsley as sweary men-baiting Mrs Marshall; Dona Croll as Doll Common the drudge with attitude; Nicole Sawyerr pained at being supplanted as the King’s mistress by the younger version in the form of Nell Gwyn played with increasing assurance by Zoe Brough (that’s the character not Zoe’s performance).

Wednesday evening saw me again as a music groupie but also a grandad. Grandson Jake was playing his cello in the Royal Holloway Symphony Orchestra in a programme that included Felix Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture, Holst’s Planets Suite and the Trombone Concerto by Dani Howard who I’ve been honoured to call a friend and whose music in the Casa Battló in Barcelona I wrote about a few years back. I also attended the London premiere of the Trombone Concerto at the Barbican so was interested to hear how it sounded here. I had picked up my son-in-law (daughter at work sadly) and driven into a full, low, thoroughly disconcerting, huge red setting sun through Surrey lanes towards the M25 which was relatively free-flowing and we arrived at the magnificent Royal Holloway in time to grab a sandwich in the well-appointed campus shop. I remembered making a promotional recruitment video for RHU back in the 80s when I did a whole slew of such videos for KIng’s College London, Guy’s and St Thomas’s Medical and Dental Schools, Imperial College, Felsted and Harrow Schools. The Royal Holloway shoot was special as we had access to a helicopter to fly over the campus for the money shots – and also for the estates director to see close up footage of any necessary roof repairs!

Royal Holloway University Founder’s Building from the air

Who ever designed the auditorium clearly never expected 100 performers to be occupyingo the stage. People in the front row seats were in danger of injury during the longer slide extensions of the solo trombone. What was wonderful was to see so many young people being encouraged with whoops and whistles from their mates to entertain us with a programme of classical music. The players responded well. The Mendelssohn was a bit shaky to start but soon found its stride. Dani Howard’s trombone concerto was given an excellent reading under orchestral music director of the university Rebecca Miller with Amelia Lewis in fine command of the complex trombone parts.

*Amelia Lewis, Rebecca Miller and about half the orchestra at Royal Holloway Windsor Auditorium*.

After the interval the orchestra played Gustav Holst’s The Planets Suite and Chris and I – as well as being impressed by the massive forces deployed – reckoned that we very rarely heard all seven planets played together. The line-up included lesser-spotted bass versions of flute, oboe, clarinet and trombone and impressive percussion arrays. There was enthusiasm, energy and considerable musicality in the performance and it gladdens the heart to hear music of such quality from a youthful university orchestra at a time when university finances are so threatened.

After a debrief with Jake and some of the other players we managed to negotiate the insane Junction 13 from the A30 onto the M25 and the never-ending roadworks at Junction 10 and made it back home in reasonable time despite several overheads warning us of “Workforce in the Carriageway”. We saw few.

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Carry On Culture

After my slightly odd Valentine’s weekend I plunged into a fortnight of amazing cultural activity. Keeping on keeping on will, I hope, hold dementia at bay. Another life motto has always been ‘Do it while you can’. I don’t usually write about this stuff but the blog is partly for me to reminisce with when I can get out anymore. So ignore if you just like my travels not my opinions.

So here’s how it all kept coming. Monday 17 February East is South at Hampstead Theatre courtesy of Frances’ patronage. Company, canapes, networking first class play not so much. It was a semi sci-fi thriller/Line of Duty style interrogation about data leaks from a world changing computer programme Logos. Written by Beau Willimon the creator of the US version of House of Cards, its subject matter was highly apposite with the march of AI. However it sometimes felt as if the script had been written by AI with strange diatribes, a virtually unused character and rather cliched and confusing flashbacks.

The next night made up for any disappointment. Following my previous exploration of Sadler’s Wells East Tuesday saw me heading for the Rosebery Avenue Sadler’s for Pina Bausch’s Vollmond. Need Es to lift your spirits? Well they were here aplenty! Entertaining, exquisite, energetic, enthralling. It was one of the last things Bausch choreographed and it a lot lighter in mood than some of her work.

We had dancers flirting, arguing, courting and conversing often soaked in torrential water flowing from the flies. I got talking in the interval to a couple of professional classical musicians – she harpist, he oboe – which was an interesting precursor to Wednesday. We all absolutely loved the performance and my only regret was that two friends who would have loved it couldn’t be with me.

Wednesday evening saw me accompanied by local resident Frances to the launch of the 2025-26 season of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment of which I’ve been a long-time supporter and occasional contributor of blogs, scripts and articles. It was help in the wonderful brutalist hexagonal hall of their home Acland Burghley School in Tufnell Park. Alongside the exciting reveal of Fantastic Symphonies to be played between October and March at the Southbank Centre and on tour, we were treated to a recital by the mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston accompanied on the harpsichord by Satako Doi-Luck. Helen benefitted from the OAE’s rising stars scheme and now has a stellar recital career covering baroque, classical and contemporary repertoire. However she will find it hard to stop being asked about singing Dido’s Lament backwards in an OAE video. Satako is part of Ensemble Moliere that specialises in exploring the world of Baroque music. I’ve been to a couple of their concerts too. But the plans for celebrating OAE’s 40th anniversary are exciting with the return of early supporter Sir Simon Rattle who contributed a splendid video interview to the evening, alongside many other familiar figures in OAE history. Check out the programme here and let me know if you fancy joining me to hear this fantastic group of players and lovely people.

I stayed home on Thursday and on Friday joined my friend Opu Islam at the launch of an exciting heritage project in the Bengali community in the East End. It’s an initiative from the Season of Bangla Drama to which the British Bilingual Poetry Collective (of which I am a gtrustee) contributes each year. There were discussions with producers and poetry recitals as well. It’ll be interesting to see the outcome in the 2026 festival.

What a treat on Saturday with Celia Imrie and Tamsin Greig both on stage at the Donmar Warehouse in Backstroke! Two superb actors trading mother daughter love and insults in equal measure in a fascinating if slightly baggy play. It made me wonder if writers are always the best people to direct their own work. Still a hugely enjoyable evening.

I woke on Sunday at 10:15 after finally falling asleep at six after a horrendous night with acute toothache. This was too late for me to get to Watford to see our arch rivals Luton beaten 2-0 some revenge for our defeat in the reverse fixture. It was on the telly and the house was filled with shouting best left on the terraces.

I’d arranged to visit a friend Nuala O’Sullivan on Monday afternoon before going to join Frances at the Orange Tree in Richmond. Nuala was a BBC World Service colleague back in 2009 and then co-wrote on of my ELT series with me in 2014-15, She has subsequently founded and runs the highly successful Women Over Fifty Film Festival so it was great to talk film, literature and life with her. Walthamstow to Richmond is not the most straightforward journey but I’m glad I made it. Frances had been invited to a special staging of the play in the hope (successful) of luring her back as a patron. At a reception we had an opportunity to talk with Tom Littler the artistic director of the Orange and also the director of the play we were about to see. Both very impressive.

I’ve long been a fan of Howard Brenton from the controversy over The Romans in Britain back in 1980, through plays like Pravda at the National, The Arrest of Ai Wei Wei and Drawing the Line at Hampstead. This new work Churchill in Moscow in which two would-be world leaders slugged it out in negotiations could not be more timely. Dramatically it was frightening, funny and fascinating with wonderful supporting roles for the two interpreters who put their own palliative gloss on what Churchill and Stalin were saying to each other. In the compact space of the Orange Tree you really felt part of the action.

The rest of the week was calmer just on Thursday a pre-concert talk about and an electrifying performance of the Beethoven Violin Concerto with Vilde Frang and the Eroica Symphony in which Maxim Emelyanychev conducted the OAE in a rousing performance with no residual hint of Napoleon.

Then there was a trip to Watford as part of a consulting group helping plan the move of the Watford Museum from the old site in what was Benskin’s Brewery into the Town Hall later this year. Lots of interesting ideas with fellow supporters and friends. I also foolishly decided to have an occasional away-day trip to our game at Stoke on Saturday which proved beyond all doubt that we go for the people not the football – excruciatingly dull match – adjudged a bore draw by colleague Frances in her blog, but great beer and conversation.

And the next week was pretty similar …