Much Ado and A Curious Incident

Two old friends.

A visit to London means a visit to a London theatre - or two. Here's a couple of real contrasts:

Much Ado About Nothing

'Much Ado About Nothing' - Shakespeare at the Old Vic, with Beatrice played by Vanessa Redgrave and Benedick by James Earl-Jones; Mark Rylance directing. With those kind of names, how could you go wrong? But permit me a little whinge here about the self-indulgence of famous directors. I've been irritated a couple of times by some very obscure plays thrust upon unsuspecting audiences by Benedict Andrews, saved (and sometimes even not saved) by the inclusion of Cate Blanchett. "Oh, Ive always been enthralled by this peculiar and obscure foreign drama since I had to study it in drama college..." - OK, but leave us out of it, please.

In the case of Mr Rylance, for whom I have the very greatest respect, and the two extraordinary performers he cast as his 'young lovers'...well, it didn't really work all that well. It worked, because they all are who they are, but just not that well. Try something else next time.

Apart from the elderly character of the lovers, there were the American accents. Shakespeare's 'Much Ado' was transported to England in 1944, a change I think worked. But one reason for this choice (according to the program) was so that Mr Earl-Jones, and others, did not need to alter their usual speaking accent. Perhaps I'm the only one who'll say it, but Shakespeare doesn't translate easily to delivery in an American accent. One's ear has to make enough of an adjustment to old English - old English with a drawl is even harder. I snoozed through much of the first half.

I'm pleased to report, however, that the second half had me far more engaged, principally due to the brilliant duo; and also because the story is so annoyingly sexist (that father should be shot for believing the worst of his daughter so easily...) But I digress... Perhaps I'm making much ado about, er, nothing.

But wait...here's a reviewer who was also unimpressed:

This production came about when Mark Rylance saw Vanessa Redgrave and the great American actor James Earl Jones starring together in Driving Miss Daisy in the West End.
Rylance went backstage to congratulate them and, never a slouch when it comes to oddball ideas, suggested that they should play Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado. Redgrave jumped at the chance so long as Rylance directed and now here are all three of them together at the Old Vic.
There are moments, quite a few actually, when one wishes that Rylance had kept his big mouth shut. Beatrice and Benedick may be past the first flush of youth, but I don’t think anyone until now has thought of them as old age pensioners.

Ah yes, 'Driving Miss Daisy' was a much better casting decision.

Mathematical curiosities.

A Curious Incident

Across town, at the Apollo Theatre on Shaftsbury Avenue, is the long-running National Theatre production of, of all things, "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" - not a book you'd think would be easily translated to the stage. Mark Haddon's book about an autistic boy (or at least one at the Asbergers end of the spectrum) has been rather brilliantly adapted by Simon Stephens.

The pivotal and demanding role of Christopher Boone was performed by the young actor Mike Noble when I attended, and -- well, wow! The rest of the cast were very able: his teacher Siobhan - Rakie Ayola; his father Ed - Trevor Fox. his mother Judy - Amanda Drew; and a busy ensemble playing everyone else. Plus a live rat playing 'Toby.'

The set is a cube covered in a an mathematical grid which cleverly acts as everything from a blackboard to a train track. The whole thing melds so beautifully that you're never left wondering what's going on. The story, of course, is brilliantly told from Christopher's point of view in Haddon's book, and that sense also comes across in the play. A 'must see.'

Here's a review (though of a different, earlier, cast).

Eat, Pray, Laugh

It was a privilege to catch a session of Barry Humphries' 'Farewell Tour' of the UK (I think it's already toured in the antipodes). Dame Edna, who's been around since the mid-1950's will be missed. The show filled the London Palladium, a big old theatre dating from 1910, and the audience were in stitches. This could have been because of the thoroughly non-PC jokes, or it could have been because the English find Australians ridiculous. In any event, a great night was had by all.

We were regaled in the first half by the gross Sir Les Patterson, who managed to enquire if there was anyone left in Poland? "It must be the Marie Celeste of Europe." The farting and toilet jokes wore a little thin after an hour or so; but before Edna joined us for the second half, we segued into a wonderful Humphries character named Sandy Stone.

The Guardian reviewer, like me, is very fond of the character Sandy Stone:

"But my favourite Humphries creation is Sandy Stone, a suburban oldster who reminisces about a contented, if unfulfilled, life from beyond the grave. "Since my cremation," Sandy announces, whistling through his false teeth, "I've kept a pretty low profile." But Humphries is at his best when Sandy talks of the treatment inflicted on his wife as a "care recipient". There is a Swiftian anger in Humphries' account of the way the strict job demarcation of the "wellness team" prevents them helping an old woman writhing on the floor in agony. Even the way Sandy's wife is taught to reply to the simplest question with "fantastic" when she means "yes" is an index of society's casual disrespect for senior citizens."

Edna then does her thing, involving those foolish enough to take seats in the front rows. Her material is well worn, but still produces many laughs. The show ended with the touching appearance of Barry Humphries himself, having shed all his characters (excepting only Edna's fingernail polish), to bid us adieu. He ended with an anecdote from his earliest days in theatre, when he'd been mis-cast as a Shakespearean Lothario in tights. "Why do they always laugh when I go on?" he asked his director. "It's not the tights," the director answered. "You're just naturally ridiculous." So true.

Amalfi The Musical

Would you trust this man to put on a good show?

On arrival...

Amalfi Musical. It could have been a touristic piece of rubbish, but in fact it was a a well-performed, professional and enjoyable night at the theatre - or rather, in the ancient Arsenale of Amalfi, the stone vaults that used to be ship-building yards in the time of the medieval maritime republic. So bravi to all concerned - particularly the writer, director, costume designer, and - on the night I was there - leading man of the show, Ario Avecone.

Check out the company's website here; including a video taste of the show.

Yes, in Amalfi you can go to live theatre, and it can be good - based (possibly a bit loosely) on history, the story set in the year 839, as the republic of Amalfi struggles under the thumb of a Lombard tyrant. Interwoven is a whole lot of fiction about a love story, treachery and a dashing rescue -- it's all charmingly Italian: dramatic, full of arguments and soppy amore, fine looking clothes, handsome people, and lots of singing. What more could you ask?

The stone vaults of the Arsenale - a museum in the day time - were filled with fake smoke, the uplights giving dramatic flair to the stone walls. The action takes place on two small stages at each end of the long gallery, and on the flagstones in between. 'A fully immersive experience!' the advertising promised -- and indeed it was, when the dastardly Lombard tyrant died realistically at my feet.

The show is spoken and sung in Italian, with surtitles on screens in a couple of languages. I must say that the music - lyrics and music original, written by Ario Avecone - is surprisingly good, though presented a little over-amplified (like most musicals). The English surtitles could use a little tidying up, but it was easy enough to follow the simple story. I was impressed by the actors/singers -- all excellent professionals; and their sumptuous historical costumes were very well done.

I've mentioned Ario Avecone, who played the lead 'Antonio' the night I attended the performance. But the whole cast are a pretty impressive lot. Check them out here. (You can also see them sometimes around town, selling tickets to the show in their costumes.)

As the website claims, rather floridly:

From the union of the past with the present and the joining of history with musical theatre Amalfi® is created. A modern, folkloristic musical based on the intriguing history of Amalfi  and real events which have taken place over the centuries. Only a magical place can tell the emotional story of entanglements of love, war and passion, that the thousand- year- old rocks hide and protect from the consuming wind of time. It is the year 1000, close your eyes and breathe in the scent of the ancient rocks, whilst listening to the sound of the great masters of carpentry at work in Amalfi. You are in the dockyard of the Republic, the gateway to a journey through time that Amalfi can offer. This is where you will experience the opera Amalfi Musical Show®. Taken from real historical events, Amalfi Musical Show® gives a new  theatrical interpretation of the birth of the great Amalfi Republic. Antonio and Giovanna, their love, the wicked Sicardo’s hatred, court intrigues, all in one spectacular production of Saracen invasions and high treason. The play will alternate rapid emotions with power games and spectacular battle scenes, where the music will move you and excite you.

You can check out Ario Avecone on FaceBook here and his MySpace page here.

A good night out at the, er, ancient shipyard...





Some images from the show's website.

London Arts Again

London.

Visiting London, so theatre, opera, galleries are a must. The British capital is an overwhelming cornucopia for an arts lover. Here's the round up from a recent week:

* 'Relatively Speaking' - Alan Ayckbourne

* 'Gloriana' - Benjamin Britten

* Vermeer: The Art & Love of Leisure - The National Gallery

* Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life - Tate Britain 

* Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum - British Museum

* Summer Exhibition - Royal Academy

Felicity Kendall, Jonathan Coy, Kara Tointon
in 'Relatively Speaking' by Alan Ayckbourne

'Relatively Speaking' - Alan Ayckbourne

Who wouldn't want to see the lovely Felicity Kendall on stage? And she surely do not disappoint in the clever comedy from the 1960s. Her co-stars were Jonathan Coy, Kara Tointon and Max Bennett, all excellent. It was directed by Lindsay Posner, and delightfully designed by Peter McKintosh.

While I'm a little wary of 'yet another' Alan Ayckbourne play, this one is very cleverly plotted. Check this link for information and this short synopsis:

Ginny goes to the house of her older lover in order to end a relationship and retrieve some compromising letters. Matters are complicated when her current partner also turns up and meets the wife of the lover, believing her to be Ginny's mother, leading to misunderstanding and confusion.

Guardian Review
Telegraph Review

Felicity Kendall

'Gloriana' - Benjamin Britten

My visits to Covent Garden have been fewer and more carefully chosen this year, but there was never any doubt that Britten's 'Gloriana' would make the cut. This rarely-performed Britten opera has been staged for his centenary year, and despite some hard-to-please reviewers, I found it gorgeous. 

It has a somewhat curious history, having been commissioned to commemorate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. face with this invitation, Britten chose a story of Queen Elizabeth I, in the dying years of her reign - the elderly Queen enarmored of the dashing younger Essex, whose death warrant she eventually has to sign. The exquisite production at ROH places the performance - in Elizabethan costuming - as an amateur drama play in a village hall in 1953 -- with a young Queen Elizabeth II in the audience.

The moment at the end when the young Queen faces the old Queen, though an addition to Britten, is a great moment of theatre.

In a village hall somewhere in England, 1953

Toby Spence and Susan Bullock

Richard Jones directs a production of Britten's Gloriana for our time. Commissioned by the Royal Opera House to mark the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953, the opera explores tensions between affairs of state and affairs of the heart.
Benjamin Britten's Gloriana was commissioned by the Royal Opera House to mark the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953. William Plomer drew on Lytton Strachey's Elizabeth and Essex to create the libretto, which artfully combines modern and archaic forms of English. Britten's score is similarly diverse: it mixes the sounds and manners of Tudor England -- from lute songs to courtly dances -- with the composer's own distinctive style.
Moving from the pomp of state ceremony to the intimacy of the Queen's private rooms, Gloriana depicts the public and private faces of the Virgin Queen, and the deterioration of her relationship with the impulsive Earl of Essex. [ROH]

The Guardian review This reviewer seems rather disappointed - or hard to please? I certainly agree with one of his comments: Brindley Sherratt's Blind Ballad Singer is a superb cameo.

Brindley Sherrat - the blind balland singer

As the reviewer describes it:

...an exercise in post-second world war nostalgia. This opera about the first queen Elizabeth is presented as a historical pageant put on in a municipal hall somewhere in England (Aldeburgh's Jubilee Hall perhaps?) to mark the coronation of Elizabeth II, where it's performed in front of the newly crowned queen herself. Throughout the performance, the trappings of am-dram are ever present: producer, prompter and St John Ambulance man hover in the wings, a local musical teacher conducts the choir; there's some suitably naff dancing, while in the Norwich scene (a pageant within a pageant within an opera as it becomes here) the royal monogram is spelt out in vegetables, as if at a harvest festival.

Vermeer: The Art & Love of Leisure - The National Gallery

This blog has already waxed lyrical over Vermeer, and the exhibition at The National Gallery was cleverly curated around the music of the time, with some lovely original musical instruments on display, alongside the paintings. In the Sainsbury Wing.

See the paintings here.

Put sound to picture as curator Betsy Wieseman explores the fascinating role of music in 17th century Dutch painting and society in this accompaniment to 'Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure' which runs from 26 June - 8 September 2013.
'Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure' offers an opportunity to enjoy a selection of 17th century Dutch masterpieces alongside period musical instruments, with accompaniment from the Academy of Ancient Music. Featuring five rare works from Johannes Vermeer, including three paintings of women with musical instruments from 1670 - 1672, which forms the culmination of the exhibition and offers a unique opportunity to view these works as a trio. [source]

Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life - Tate Britain 

Over at Tate Britain I queued to see a very popular exhibition of a British painter I'd never come across before: L S Lowry (1887 - 1976). His paintings seemed at first to be a version of naive art, but on closer inspection are very much more. For me the most interesting aspect of the exhibition was the incredible documentation of Britain's industrial north in the early twentieth century. Those 'dark satanic mills' you hear mentioned - Lowry lived amongst them (as a tax collector, of all things) and documented them not only with visual accuracy but a deep and moving connection to what he was seeing.

I saw the industrial scene and I was affected by it. I tried to paint it all the time. I tried to paint the industrial scene as best I could. It wasn’t easy. - L.S.Lowry

Exhibition website

For Lowry modern painting needed to represent the remaining rituals of public life: football matches and protest marches, evictions and fist-fights, workers going to and from the mill. Without his pictures, Britain would arguably lack an account in paint of the experiences of the 20th-century working class. [source]

Lowry at Tate Britain.

Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum: British Museum

Portrait of baker Terentius Neo and his wife. Pompeii, AD 55–79. 

The special exhibitions at the BM rarely fail to please, and the current one on Pompeii and Herculaneum is proving incredibly popular. Tickets need to be booked days ahead. I was very keen to see this one, as the artefacts would presumably come from my part of Italy -- I have visited the sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and the Archeological Museum of Naples. The exhibition and the catalogue were not very forthcoming on exactly where the exhibits usually reside, but apart from a few which 'belong' to theBM itself, they seemed to be from the Naples Museum or from something called the
La Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei. All I can say is that the Soprintendenza has some real treasures.

At the BM.

Compared to what the Italians manage in the treasure-filled but cash-strapped Archeological Museum of Naples and at the sites themselves, the BM has done it's usual marvellous job of curation. The Exhibition traces the events of the eruption of Vesuvio, but also focusses on what the remains, preserved by volcanic ash, teach about the everyday life of Roman people in AD 79. Brava, BM.

BM's Exhibition Website

In Spring 2013 the British Museum will present a major exhibition on the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, sponsored by Goldman Sachs. This exhibition will be the first ever held on these important cities at the British Museum, and the first such major exhibition in London for almost 40 years. It is the result of close collaboration with the Archaeological Superintendency of Naples and Pompeii, will bring together over 250 fascinating objects, both recent discoveries and celebrated finds from earlier excavations. Many of these objects have never before been seen outside Italy. The exhibition will have a unique focus, looking at the Roman home and the people who lived in these ill-fated cities. [BM press release] 

A fresco showing a garden scene, AD 30-50

Plaster cast of a dog, from an ash cavity in Pompeii.

Guardian review of the BM Exhibition.

Summer Exhibition - Royal Academy

Installation view of Gallery I with Marilène Oliver's 'Dreamcatcher' (detail).
Summer Exhibition 2013. [source]

Each year the Royal Academy holds a 'Summer Exhibition' - everything is for sale. There were some things this year I'd love to hang on my walls, but sadly my selections (two lovely paintings by Academician Anthony Eyton) were somewhere north of the £20,000 mark. Ah, well. It was fun to imagine which I'd choose to take home from the more than 1,000 works displayed.

Royal Academy website

Now in its 245th year, the Summer Exhibition remains a much anticipated highlight of the arts calendar, serving as a unique window on to all areas of the contemporary art world. It is the world’s largest open-submission exhibition, displaying more than 1,000 works in all styles and media, including painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture, architectural models and film.
All works are fastidiously selected by a panel of celebrated artists and architects from across the disciplines, and it is their task to narrow down more than 10,000 entries to those that go before the public. The majority of the works are also available to buy, offering an unrivalled opportunity to own work by high profile and emerging artists.

On the facade of the Royal Academy building:

El Anatsui's work on the facade of the RA.

El Anatsui has garnered much international acclaim for a range of spectacular site-based installations. This large-scale bespoke piece, created for the Royal Academy, measures 15m x 23m and is entitled TSIATSIA - searching for connection. It will hang from the balustrade of Burlington House for the duration of the Summer Exhibition. The sculpture is an intricate, shimmering, metallic ‘wall-hanging’ created from aluminium bottle-tops, printing plates and roofing sheets, amongst other materials.

And inside:

Grayson Perry RA is showing his series of six tapestries entitled The Vanity of Small Differences, telling the story of the rise and demise of Tim Rakewell, inspired by Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress. See the tapestries on the Victoria Miro website. 

The Sublime and the Ridiculous

Renée Fleming is one of the greatest sopranos singing today and a renowned 'Strauss soprano'. Richard Strauss is one of the greatest 20th century composers. And his last opera, Capriccio, is - IMHO - his greatest. Thus, we had a winning combination at the Wiener Staatsoper - Vienna State Opera. Ms Fleming was stunning, and equalled by her excellent fellow cast members, under the baton of Christoph Eschenbach. Sublime indeed.

Capriccio (1941) is an intriguing opera about opera. It is a charming, reflective, intellectual conversation piece composed of a great swathe of mesmerising music that continues for two hours and a quarter. At the end, you're walking on clouds. There's very little action as such, but the premise is a debate between friends over what is more important, the music or the words. Music is represented by the tenor, a young composer named Flamand (Michael Schade); and words by the baritone, a poet named Olivier (Markus Eiche). Both are in love with the Countess, Madeleine (Ms Fleming), she playing the role of muse for both of them. The argument in favour of the director, the staging, the production and the design is made by La Roche, a humorous bass role (Kurt Rydl); and we also have Clarion the actress (Angelika Kirchschlager) and the Count, Madeleine's brother, playing an unmusical critic (Bo Skovhus).

The cast of Capriccio takes a well-earned bow.

In the course of this careful debate, Strauss manages to reference all kinds of musical motifs, including some of his own, and to criticise Italian opera rather obviously -- there is an interlude with two Italian singers melodramatically performing 'in the Italian style', and some cutting lines about triumphal marches (take that, Verdi). Strauss has his characters consider the subject of opera itself - and then compose one, in fact, the one we're hearing. A clever conceit. The opera ends with the Countess, in a long and extraordinarily beautiful monologue, still unable to decide between her two suitors or between words and music, which she decides are best entwined. We end with one of the most trivial finales in all opera - the major domo appears and says, 'Dinner is served'. Bliss.

The drawbacks of opera are also frankly aired -- the loudness of the orchestra drowning the singers, the absurdity of discussing politics in song, or dying while singing a loud aria.

And the very next night, the Wiener Staatsoper treated its audience to a resounding example showcasing most of these absurdities (excepting only the triumphal march). A performance of Gounod's Roméo et Juliette (1867) included several prime examples of quarrels performed in song, to say nothing of the incredibly long and forceful death scene, with the two main protagonists spending at least half an hour dying, vigorously. The staging also included just about every cliché in the repertoire -- after the fireworks, the on-stage photography, the banks of candles, the twilight stars, what else could there be? Ah yes, someone rides on a bicycle, there's an on-stage band, with a piano accordion; and wait - there's another bicycle. Sadly, though the tenor singing Romeo did his best alongside an excessively loud Juliet -- and I have to say they both worked very hard -- the singing did not save the production or the composition.

However, the cast did not appear to realise this, and a small portion of the audience was very enthusiastic. Perhaps they like loudness in their sopranos. I always make it a point to stay for the curtain calls of the cast. Whatever the evening has been like, they do work hard. But on this night they kept coming back and back...and back...most of the audience had left long since, but a few hardy fools remained applauding, which seemed to encourage the cast to come back yet one more time. Couldn't they see that there's only six people left clapping? Placido Domingo was conducting, too - you'd think that a fine old hand like him would have stopped their foolishness. I think they were still rushing back to take another bow to two or three appreciative fans as I made my way out of the theatre.

As if to make sure that all the awful things that can go wrong in an evening at the opera were taken care of in the one visit, this evening also included a small child in my box who insisted on kicking, pulling and climbing on the back of my chair throughout, when she wasn't prodding me in the back. Could anything could be more distracting? Yes! The deplorable English translation of the libretto for the sur-titles was so astoundingly awful that they managed to take my attention, with awful fascination, away from kicking child, bicycles and foghorn soprano. A few samples linger in my memory...and always will, I fear.

....How bright thy front. A palace it outvies.
...She looks at me and raises.
...I embrace your knees.

Ridiculous indeed.

Vienna State Opera advertises Roméo et Juliette. Don't be tempted.

Tea with Edie and Fitz

Patti Roeder & Madison Niederhauser

Following a very English theatre experience in London, a recent quick round of theatre in the USA turned out - of course - to be a very American experience.

‘Anything Goes’

'Anything Goes' must qualify as one of the classic American musicals - all those Cole Porter songs, high kicks, tap dancing, broad accents and clever, if dubious, lyrics...’If baby, I’m the bottom, you’re the tops!’ This despite the fact that it’s based on a book by that redoubtable Englishman, P G Wodehouse. Although not a frequenter of musicals, I blushingly admit to a weakness for Cole Porter - ‘It’s delightful, it’s de-lovely!’

The production I saw in Chicago seemed the perfect sort of show for the ornate marble gilded-age-style Cadillac Palace Theatre. Once I got over the over-the-top foyer and snuggled into my plush seat I enjoyed my night at the show. I’d seen this one before, years ago in Sydney, and knew and loved all the songs -- a recipe for enjoyment at a musical. One or two of the cast could perhaps have been better chosen, but our ‘Roxy’ (Rachel York) was pretty good, and they were all certainly excellent dancers.
Three stars.

Love those Cole Porter songs.

‘Tea with Edie and Fitz’

Nora Ulrey and Madison Niederhauser as Zelda Fitzgerald and F.Scott Fitzgerald

A complete change of pace was provided by a new play by Adam Pasen at the small Greenhouse Theatre in Chicago, performed for me and only about ten other people. It deserved more attention. I enjoyed ‘Tea with Edie and Fitz’ very much, but then I’m a book nerd and the thing is replete with literary reference. It concerns a meeting between two of the giants of American literature, Edith Wharton and F Scott Fitzgerald, and is set in 1925. Such a meeting did take place, and afterwards they never spoke again (despite sharing an publisher). The play imagines the meeting, and includes the disintegrating Zelda, wife of Fitz, and the ghost of henry James, friend and mentor of Edith. There were rather too many characters and the structure was a little complex, but I enjoyed it.

This was the play’s first professional production and I was there on opening night. It was ambitious, well acted and beautifully designed. One of our little band of ten in the audience was clearly a reviewer. I think I’ve found her review here.

Here’s another, a little less admiring:

“Edie and Fitz did indeed meet once for tea in summer 1925. That event provides Pasen with an excuse to serve up a groaning board of literary references and biographical details”

I’d give this play four stars, and hope to see it tighten up a little and make the big time.

‘Lucky Guy’

Tom Hanks

To round out the full American experience, what could be more local than a Broadway play about a New York newsroom in the 1980s, written by Nora Ephron and starring Tom Hanks? As the noosroom boys would say, ‘f*** yeah!* 'Lucky Guy' is a great show - with those kind of names involved, you’d expect so. It’s the story of the life and career of a tabloid journalist, Mike MacAlary. The stringing together of the event is handled by the actors talking directly to the audience, rather than relying on an acted storyline. It does sound a bit like a collection of anecdotes, but in the end it works, not least because the direction of George C. Wolfe is so good, especially in the first half where he captures the wild days of the ‘80s in New York. And what’s not to like about Tom Hanks? Fab. Four stars.

London arts smorgasbord

Programme

A flying visit to London, and in three short days I was able to fit in three plays and three exhibitions - although that was merely scratching the surface of what London had to offer the arts fan, it was nevertheless a marathon effort. The plays were all infused with English-ness:

Helen Mirrin in Peter Morgan's 'The Audience', playing Queen Elizabeth II against all of her twelve Prime Ministers was a treat. Fascinating to watch the Brits watching themselves. Here's what the show's website has to say:

For sixty years Elizabeth II has met each of her twelve Prime Ministers in a weekly audience at Buckingham Palace – a meeting like no other in British public life – it is private. Both parties have an unspoken agreement never to repeat what is said. Not even to their spouses.
The Audience breaks this contract of silence – and imagines a series of pivotal meetings between the Downing Street incumbents and their Queen. From Churchill to Cameron, each Prime Minister has used these private conversations as a sounding board and a confessional – sometimes intimate, sometimes explosive.
From young mother to grandmother, these private audiences chart the arc of the second Elizabethan Age. Politicians come and go through the revolving door of electoral politics, while she remains constant, waiting to welcome her next Prime Minister.

Rowan Atkinson with Felicity Montagu in Quartermaine's Terms

Over at The Wyndham Theatre Rowan Atkinson gave the best last thirty seconds of any play anytime anywhere - in 'Quartermaine's Terms' - here's the Guardian's review:

At first the casting of Rowan Atkinson looks perverse. In fact it's inspired. The truly startling stroke in Simon Gray's 1981 play is that it makes its main character a void. Less of a presence than an absence. Not Mr Bean but scarcely being. Atkinson is on stage almost constantly, but as an often silent, almost transparent figure, a hopeless teacher who prises himself from his staffroom armchair to make a gaffe or meekly receive a snub.

Frances de la Tour and Linda Bassett

And just to catch up with what was on at The National, a visit to 'People' a new play by Alan Bennett - about the necessity of handing the crumbling family pile to the National Trust. As reviewer Michael Billington said:

....Bennett's play fascinates because it shows the two sides of his nature coming into fruitful conflict. His more conservative side shares Dorothy's resentment that the crowd should find its way into the secret garden. His radical side is appalled at the corrosive legacy of Thatcherism. All this comes across clearly in Nicholas Hytner's production and in Bob Crowley's design, which shows the shabby mansion being tartily and spectacularly transformed.

So as you can see, a thoroughly British trio of plays --just the thing for reacquaintance with London.

And the galleries? Manet portraits at the Royal Academy (brilliant), Man Ray photographs at the Portrait Gallery (interesting, especially the celebrity portraits), and the Northern Renaissance at the Queen's Gallery (Her Maj has some very nice Durer prints...and the Holbein, wonderful as always)

Visiting Manet - a highlight

Durer (being cheeky)

Durer to Holbein

Performances

With all this sport about, you may be thinking that I have been neglecting my cultural attendances. You would be wrong - I just haven’t had time to tell you about the recent ones. So here’s a round up:

HITCHCOCK'S 'THE LODGER'

The British Film Institute has been working hard, and its archivists have recently restored this early (1927) Hitchcock silent movie, about a landlady who suspects her lodger of being a dastardly criminal. The Barbican gave it a wonderful showing, complete with live soundtrack performed by none other than the London Symphony Orchestra. The score was a brand new one, composed by Indian-British composer Nitin Sawhney. With the suitable silent-movie-hero-looking Ivor Novello on the grainy black-and-white screen, the London fog, the ditzy blond, and the LSO in full film-music flight, this was fabulous.

******

YES, PRIME MINISTER

I expect you’ve heard of the television program of this name, and you may also know that it has transmorgified into a stage show, written by the same writers, Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn.

The production is playing at the New Trafalgar Theatre, a small venue, where the stage set represents the study at Chequers. The Prime Minister is dealing with a crisis, and with Sir Humphrey, and the redoubtable Bernard is beside him. There is also a new character, a political aide named Claire. At first it is hard to forget the memorable actors who created the original TV characters - quite a task for the stage actors, to make us forget. But by the second half, I’d become absorbed in the shenanigans and had mentally embraced, so to speak, the new actors. Bernard was the best - thanks, Clive Hayward.

******

RICHARD III

The evil King was on at Shakespeare’s Globe, so of course it rained on the yardlings, someone fainted, and our seats were of Elizabethan uncomfortableness. But the sublime Mark Rylance was in the title role, so from the very first line -- “Now is the winter of our discontent...” -- the rain and the seats were completely forgotten in absorption with the stage. As is usual at The Globe, we had the accompaniment of minstrels; and for this play we also had the female roles played by young men. It was all quite fabulous - I think that will suffice for my review. You can read another here.

But let me just say that Rylance’s Richard had some unusual features. Often, the audience laughed at him - this is, to say the least, unusual for the king who famously murdered the two boy princes in the Tower (according to Shakespeare, anyway), as well as numerous other people who stood between him and his throne. The reviewers have not known what to make of this, one suggesting that the director should do something to eliminate the phenomena; and another comparing the characterisation to Tony Blair - a jolly fellow who goes on to do great evil (!!) It puzzled me a bit; but I did think that Rylance made Richard III very human, and very clever. Perhaps not creepy enough. But “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!” was utterly believable, and you kinda wanted someone to find him a horse, despite his evil deeds. The jury’s out.

Later, I read that Rylance had suffered a bereavement in his family just a few weeks before, but had decided to go on with his Globe season (though he pulled out of the Olympics Opening Ceremony). Very poignant. Thank you, Mr Rylance.

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PORGY & BESS

At the Coliseum, home of the ENO, the visiting Cape Town Opera Company put on a quite fabulous evening. The all-black South African cast playing the moving “Porgy & Bess” gave it a new frisson. It was not possible to dismiss the tableau of poor black waterfront folk as a history piece from Gershwin’s 1940s - the South Africans reminded us that there are plenty of communities like this today.

Gershwin’s music is so lovely, and the cast sang magnificently. “Summertime”, “I Loves You Porgy” -- the favourites were all there. Our Porgy (Xolela Sixaba) had a huge, beautiful rich bass voice; and the voice of his Bess (Nonhlanhla Yende) was big enough to match him. The supporting cast and the chorus were all exemplary. I shed a tear - always a sign of a good night at the opera. 

I loves you, Porgy.

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THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

This has to be one of my favourite Shakespearean comedies, about two sets of twins separated at birth and then reunited in an hilarious confusion of mistaken identity. As the Royal Shakespeare Company's site puts it, "In a town the size of Ephesus, events like these can only lead to confusion." My favourite line in the whole play is when Adriana, wife of one of the twins who enjoyed a steamy evening with the man she thought was her husband, learns that there's an identical twin. She interrupts the reunification to ask: "Which of you two did dine with me today?" 

The very good cast of the RSC at Stratford-Upon-Avon is listed here.

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German Politics

Hard to make this exciting.

You know that a night in the theatre hasn't really worked when the program notes are more interesting than the play. Michael Frayn's "Democracy", written in 2003 (and performed in Sydney by the STC in 2005) has been revived this year and is presently playing at The Old Vic. It is, famously, a play about men in suits, dense with complicated political detail from the 1970s. However despite - or perhaps because - of this, I found it a struggle to stay awake. Some of the lines were memorable in a self-conscious kind of way, but their enunciation - German politicians with distinctly English accents - was often unclear. Until the slower paced, more personal second half, it was an effort to work out what they were saying, who was who, and what was going on.

Fortunately, the program contained several interesting articles, including one by Neal Ascherson, which explained the sad and heady times in German politics which followed its defeat in WWII and the end of Nazism. At the end of 1945, the defeated German people were cold, hungry and homeless. The country was divided into four zones controlled by the four Western allies, Britain, America, France and Soviet Russia.  Well, that was never going to work for long, and so it proved. Soon the Western democracies started to fear infection from Communism, and a fateful line was drawn through Germany, dividing it into the West and the East.

Aidan McArdle as Guillaume and Patrick Drury as Brandt

West Germany elected Adenauer as its Chancellor, and adopted a number of poorly-thought-out policies which kept the two halves isolated from each other. For a start, as Ascherson explains:

West Germany claimed to be the only legal German state under the frontiers of 1937. In other words, Bonn held that the eastern provinces annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union after 1945 were still rightfully German, even though their German population had fled or been expelled. Although nothing short of a third world war could regain these territories, West German television news continued to forecast the weather in Silesia and East Prussia. This claim handed the Communist regimes in east-central Europe their only telling domestic argument: that without the Soviet alliance the Germans...would come marching back.

Despite its isolation - it refused to have diplomatic relations with any country that recognised the GDR - West Germany powered on to an economic resurrection. The Berlin Wall went up in 1961. It wasn't until Willy Brandt became Chancellor in 1969 to 1974 that any real moves were made towards reunification. Although it would not be until Kohl's Chancellorship in 1990 that the wall would come down and reunification happen, Brandt is credited with taking the first steps in that direction. He was a popular Chancellor, and promoted a policy of Ostpolitik - an Eastern policy - signing treaties of reconciliation with Germany's eastern neighbours, and making tentative moves towards the GDR.

But the play centres on the incident that triggered Brandt's downfall - the so-called Guillaume Affair in 1974. Gunter Guillaume was a minor functionary who became Brandt's personal assistant; but it turns out he was a spy, a member of the  GDR foreign Stasi. Thus we have themes of duplicity, being torn between two sides, dissembling, and similarities in the characters and lives of the two men. It has the potential to be more interesting than it has turned out.

Mention of the difficulties of coalition governments and duplicitous politicians raised some knowing titters from the audience, reminded presumably of contemporary British politics; though really, 'twas ever thus.

Here's  a commentary. And here's a review.

Images from:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/must-see-democracy-old-vic-london-se1-7897032.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2012/jun/24/democracy-frayn-review
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2012/jun/16/this-weeks-new-theatre-and-dance