Leighton House and Sambourne House

14 April 2023

On Saturday we were in London to visit Leighton House in Kensington, London, the home of the late Victorian artist Lord Frederic Leighton. One of a series of houses and studios designed and built by artists in the streets around Holland Park in the 18060s, Leighton House has recently reopened to the public after a major refurbishment. It’s an amazing building, packed with textiles, pottery and other objects collected by Leighton on trips to Turkey, Egypt, Syria as well as his own works of art. The building is part showpiece, part home and part studio and the exhibitions about Leighton and his contemporaries are fascinating to see within the house where he lived. We also visited the nearby partner property Sambourne House, which was the home of the illustrator and Punch cartoonist Linley Sambourne - a contemporary of Leighton’s. This is a more conventional Victorian town house, but the lavish decoration and furnishings are a celebration of late Victorian society. And every room is crammed with Sambourne’s drawings. Both museums are well worth a visit.

‘The Island of Missing Trees’ by Elif Shafak

14 April 2023

I’ve never been to Cyprus, and my understanding of the history of the division of Cyprus could best be described as hazy. Reading Elif Shafak’s 2021 novel ‘The Island of Missing Trees’ has filled in a lot of gaps for me. It’s a beautifully written family saga, told mostly in flashback with the constant presence of a fig tree that spans the generations (and takes its turn as the narrator). When two teenagers - one Greek, one Turkish - fall for each other in Cyprus in 1974 they may have chosen the worst possible time to be star-crossed lovers. Seeing their story through the vantage point of modern-day London makes us assume we know what must have happened but Elif Shafak cleverly teases us with unexpected twists along the way. Though it has its own individual style, ‘The Island of Missing Trees’ felt a little like a mixture of ‘Captain Corelli's Mandolin’ by Louis de Bernières and ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’ by Amor Towles (reviewed here in September 2021) - showing us the passage of a tumultuous period of history through the personal tales of people caught up in it.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

26 March 2023

Saturday's Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert was the first in the 130 year history of the orchestra to consist entirely of works by female composers. The 'Women of Note' concert at Christchurch in Northampton was an exciting evening: it has been a really enjoyable process for the orchestra getting to know unfamiliar repertoire and exploring the stories behind the pieces and their composers. All the works we played deserve to be better known so I have included links here to recordings by other orchestras.

We started the concert with the suite 'Penillion' by the Welsh mid-twentieth century composer Grace Williams - a lovely piece that draws on the eisteddfod tradition of improvised penillion singing, usually accompanied by harp. This four movement work for full orchestra features a prominent role for the harp, but the faster second and fourth movements also feature Eastern European and Spanish influences. Listen to 'Penillion' by Grace Williams, played by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIU2vT0tJ5Y

Errolyn Wallen's 'Triple Concerto', for a trio of violin, viola and accordion, accompanied by string orchestra, is an entertaining, genre-defying piece written in 2018 for the Kosmos Ensemble. It was exciting to see Kosmos perform it with the NSO - featuring Harriet Mackenzie on violin, Meg-Rosaleen Hamilton on viola and Miloš Milivojević on accordion. And Kosmos brought the house down with their encore of Astor Piazzolla's 'Libertango'.  You can watch Kosmos playing Errolyn Wallen's 'Triple Concerto' with Worthing Symphony Orchestra in 2018 at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdR7oM2BYPw

The second half of the concert opened with 'Turbulent Landscapes' by Thea Musgrave - a suite in which, like Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition', each movement is inspired by an artwork, in this case paintings by JMW Turner. Each movement also features one member of the orchestra as a soloist. I wrote here previously (in February 2023) about the significant challenge of playing the solo horn part in the third movement, ‘Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army crossing the Alps’. It was a nerve-wracking experience, particularly having to stand up to play it, but I think it went pretty well. The other soloists within the orchestra sounded fantastic: Nick Tollervey on tuba, Sarah Mourant on oboe, Terry Mayo on trumpet, Robert Reid on bass clarinet, Paige Johnson on piccolo, and Naomi Muller on clarinet. These solos were not like the short solo passages we often have to play within a symphony: here each movement is almost a mini concerto, and I know from my own experience how much time each of my fellow soloists must have spent preparing for the concert. 'Turbulent Landscapes' was a really challenging work to play but I think our performance was very impressive and I've really grown to like this unusual, programmatic work. You can listen to Thea Musgrave's 'Turbulent Landscapes' performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, while looking at the relevant Turner paintings at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnokpA37ieY

At last year's Edinburgh International Festival I saw the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, performing Florence Price’s ‘Symphony No 1’ (reviewed here in September 2022). This symphony, premiered in 1932, was the first work by a Black woman composer to be performed by a major US orchestra. We finished our NSO concert with Florence Price's Concert Overture No. 2 - one of several of her works that might have been lost had it not been discovered among Price’s affects in an abandoned Chicago residence where she lived toward the end of her life. You can listen to Florence Price's Concert Overture No. 2  played by the BBC Concert Orchestra at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk4ST2sGDvI It's an enjoyable weaving together of several well known spirituals and was a lovely way to end what felt like a very special concert. As one audience member said on Facebook: “If you missed this, you missed a fantastic evening. I knew none of the pieces and only one of the composers (Florence Price) and yet I'd rank that as one of my best orchestral evenings ever. Wonderful.”

Danny Baker

24 March 2023

Regular readers may remember I'm a big fan of the writer and broadcaster Danny Baker. When we saw him at Warwick Arts Centre in 2018 (reviewed here in May 2018) his anecdotes and reminiscences focused on the 'rock ‘n’ roll years’ – recounting his experiences of working as a journalist at the NME and getting his break as a television presenter. When we caught his latest tour (possibly his last - he seems determined to retire on his 66th birthday this June) at Milton Keynes Theatre last Saturday, he promised to bring his story up to date. But he still spent the entire first half of the evening (an hour and three quarters before the interval) recapping his childhood and early career for anyone who had missed his previous shows. After the break he covered the happenstance of his discovery of radio broadcasting as his true home, and his extensive career as a writer, for Angus Deayton, Jonathan Ross, Chris Evans, Rob Brydon, Peter Kay and many others. Danny Baker is a compelling storyteller and this performance was an amazing tour-de-force. Eager to squeeze in as many stories as possible, his rapid nonstop delivery, with barely a pause for breath and no sip of water to ease the throat, while constantly pacing the stage, lasted more than three and a half hours. And even then you felt he was disappointed he hadn't managed to get through everything he had wanted to say. But it never felt like the marathon ordeal this makes it sound. I felt completely drawn into every story to the point I sometimes forgot I was in a theatre watching a bald middle aged man wearing a fez and clutching a snooker cue (to point to the pictures projected on a screen above the stage). Danny Baker's reflections on his life are jaw-droppingly incredible, laugh-out-loud funny and surprisingly humble - and brilliantly performed. If he does retire this summer I'm so glad I got to see him one last time.

'Henry V' by William Shakespeare

17 March 2023

On Saturday we were at the Royal Theatre in Northampton to see 'Henry V' - a joint production by Royal & Derngate, Northampton, Shakespeare’s Globe and Headlong, with Leeds Playhouse, directed by Headlong’s Artistic Director Holly Race Roughan. This was an interesting take on 'Henry V', played in casual modern dress on a bare stage with all the actors on stage for most of the performance, sitting on chairs to watch the scenes that didn't involve them. Dispensing with the role of Chorus, the cast took turns to introduce each scene, speaking the stage directions and announcing which characters they were playing, making the audience feel like we were eavesdropping on the rehearsal room. Oliver Johnstone played Henry V, not as the traditional soldier king but more like Hamlet, a troubled soul who talks to his dead father (introduced at the start with a scene from the end of 'Henry IV Part 2') and a reluctant leader. His "Cry God for Harry, England and Saint George!" is spoken quietly to himself as if rehearsing what he plans to say to his troops. And the final words of his rousing St Crispin's Day rallying cry are interrupted by another character changing the subject. While it was interesting to consider Henry as someone whose miraculous transition from the playboy Prince Hal to warrior monarch might have been more political spin than reality, the production's host of clever ideas removed much of the emotional punch of the play. I was, however, fascinated by the essay in the programme by Jane Grogan which relates the way Shakespeare portrays Henry's imperial ambitions to  conquer France with the political context when the play was written. Elizabethan England had no empire but had established plantations in Ireland and Virginia, and the ships of the joint stock trading companies were setting off from London to trade with the powerful Ottoman empire. Shakespeare was writing in a time of emergent empire and used Henry V to reflect on the new 'empire state of mind'. Having just been listening to the wonderful 'Empire' podcast (reviewed here in January 2023) discussing the Ottoman empire it was really interesting to connect this to what was happening in England at the same time.

'The Merchant of Venice 1936' by William Shakespeare, adapted by Brigid Larmour

10 March 2023

Last Saturday we were at the Watford Palace Theatre to see ‘The Merchant of Venice 1936’, Brigid Larmour’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, set in the East End of London, starring Tracy-Ann Oberman as Shylock. Casting the Merchant, Antonio (Raymond Coulthard), Portia (Hannah Morrish) and others as black-shirted followers of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists immediately shifts your sympathies to Shylock’s East End matriarch. And showing the events of the play against the backdrop of The Battle of Cable Street gives a very different feel to most productions of ‘The Merchant of Venice’. This idea, suggested by Tracy-Ann Oberman, is not just a very clever way of dealing with a ‘difficult’ play, but allows for a much wider exploration of anti-semitism and prejudice. Watford Palace Theatre has used Brigid Larmour’s production as the basis for a wider project which includes an extended online storytelling platform: https://www.merchant1936.co.uk/ Tracy-Ann Oberman is excellent as Shylock and Hannah Morrish’s Portia as Diana Mitford is a very clever mix of sensible and sinister.

'Othello' by William Shakespeare

3 March 2023

On Saturday we were at the Curzon cinema at Milton Keynes Gallery to see the NTLive stream of Clint Dyer’s production of ‘Othello’ from the National Theatre in London. Using a bleak, monotone set dominated by broad stone steps on three sides, this production suggests a 1930s fascist state with almost everyone dressed in black shirts. Giles Terera’s Othello is the only person of colour and the constant refusal of other characters to accept his offered handshake is subtle but noticeable. Rather than simply seeing the play as a study in jealousy, Clint Dyer focuses on its racism and misogyny. Paul Hilton’s Iago, complete with an Enoch Powell thin moustache, is perhaps a little too obviously dastardly. Giles Terera gives an outstanding performance as Othello, and Rosy McEwen is great as Desdemona but I felt Tanya Franks as Iago’s wife Emilia was the revelation here. Clearly showing her as a woman physically and emotionally abused by her husband made sense of her willingness to assist Iago’s deceit of Othello. Having Iago address his interior monologues to a Greek chorus of actors sitting on the steps across the stage, rather than breaking the fourth wall to address the audience directly, was a clever way of implicating the wider society in his prejudices and his actions. It’s a fairly bleak production of a very grim play but excellently acted.

Lucy Porter

24 February 2023

Last Saturday we were at The Stables in Wavendon to see the comedian Lucy Porter. I was familiar with Lucy Porter from her appearances on ‘The News Quiz’ on BBC Radio 4 but I had not seen her live before. This show was part of her ‘Wake-Up Call’ tour which focuses on midlife crisis management and happiness. She is a very accomplished stand-up comedian with a likeable personality and a gentle approach. She is clearly a very thoughtful writer: her set was carefully crafted with lots of clever running jokes and returning themes. Her material is mostly domestic and observational - nothing too political - but very funny. And it was lovely to see a 2-hour stand-up comedy performance with hardly any swearing and a comedian who never stopped smiling.

'Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army crossing the Alps' by JMW Turner

17 February 2023

One of the things I most enjoy about playing in an amateur orchestra is discovering, learning and understanding music I didn’t previously know. And the more you find out about a piece of music, the more you appreciate it. We have just started rehearsing for our next Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert, on Saturday 25 March, which is a complete programme of works by female composers (see: https://www.nso.org.uk/). One of the pieces we are playing is ‘Turbulent Landscapes’ by Thea Musgrave - a suite in which, like Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition', each movement is inspired by an artwork, in this case paintings by JMW Turner. Each movement also features one member of the orchestra as a soloist. I am beginning to get to the grips with the significant challenge of playing the solo horn part in the third movement, ‘Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army crossing the Alps’. I thought I should have a look at the painting so I searched for it online and went down a fascinating rabbit hole. Turner’s picture depicts, as you might expect, Hannibal and his soldiers (complete with elephants) crossing the mountains in the face of an oncoming storm, during the Punic War in 218 BC. But what I hadn’t initially realised was that Turner was painting it during the Napoleonic Wars and it is really a jibe at Napoleon. The French painter Jacques-Louis David had previously painted a triumphant portrait of ‘Napoleon Crossing the Alps’ over the Great St Bernard Pass in May 1800 and this was Turner’s response. Turner shows Hannibal/Napoleon as a tiny figure on an elephant in the distance, overwhelmed by a whirling blizzard as mountain-dwellers attack his troops. Turner’s painting was first exhibited in 1812, and was considered to have been prophetic when, later that year, Napoleon was forced to retreat from Moscow by the Russian winter (the subject of another famous piece of music - Tchaikovsky’s ‘1812 Overture’). So as I practise playing Hannibal’s rallying cries to his troops over the ominous rumble on the approaching storm, I am now also reflecting on the subtext of the Napoleonic Wars.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

8 February 2023

The composer Malcolm Arnold - who, as I never tire of telling people, played trumpet in the Northampton Symphony Orchestra as a schoolboy in Northampton - wrote the music for many films. These included ‘The Heroes of Telemark’ - a 1965 British war film directed by Anthony Mann based on the true story of the Norwegian heavy water sabotage during the Second World War. Like many films of its era, the music commissioned for the soundtrack became the property of the film company and the parts used by the orchestra during the recording were routinely destroyed afterwards. The music from ‘The Heroes of Telemark’ had therefore never been performed live, until the Malcolm Arnold Festival decided to attempt to resurrect this classic film score. In 2017 John Gibbons was asked to reconstruct the music and spent several weeks in a cottage in the West of Ireland listening to the film over and over again to piece together the orchestral score. This was a painstaking process of detective work and careful listening - aided by a deep understanding of the way Malcom Arnold orchestrated his symphonies. John was also fortunate to discover a note in Malcolm Arnold’s archive which told him the key of the film’s main theme (as the running speed of cine film can vary, so what you hear is not always exactly the pitch the music was performed). John’s concert suite of the music from ‘The Heroes of Telemark’ was performed at the Malcolm Arnold Festival in 2017 and this week it got a second performance by the Northampton Symphony Orchestra at our concert in St Matthew’s Church, Northampton, conducted by John Gibbons. It was fascinating to talk to John about the process of arranging the music into a piece that would work as part of a concert - which involved changing the order of some of the main themes to make more sense as a single piece of music, rather than simply following the plot of the film. The music includes a typically stirring heroic Malcolm Arnold tune, lots of tension-building dissonant chords, the whole orchestra whistling innocently and a German marching band - which featured some stunning tuba playing by Nick Tollervey. It was great fun to play ‘The Heroes of Telemark’, particularly having recently watched the film on BBC iPlayer - and exciting to be part of this rediscovery of a classic film score. Our concert also featured the lovely ‘Piano Concerto No 5’ by Saint-Saens, brilliantly played by Julian Chan. We finished the concert with ‘Scheherazade’ by Rimsky Korsakov. This is the third time I have played ‘Scheherazade’ with the Northampton Symphony Orchestra (I reviewed our previous performance here in March 2012) and I don’t think it is recency bias to say this was the most complete of the three performances. The wind and brass solos were all wonderful - with Sian Bunker (bassoon), Naomi Muller (clarinet) and Graham Tear (flute) all truly outstanding. And the solo violin part was played beautifully by Emily Groom, with the haunting final high harmonic note floating, almost inaudibly quiet but somehow catching your ear throughout the closing orchestral chords. It’s a thrilling piece to play - particularly the rapid fire final movement which feels physically exhilarating to be part of. It was a thoroughly enjoyable concert.

'Black Cuillin' by Duncan Chisholm

3 February 2023

‘Black Cuillin’ is the new album from Scottish folk fiddler Duncan Chisholm. The album is inspired by Sorley MacLean’s poem ‘The Cuillin’, written in 1939, which uses the Cuillin mountain range on the Isle of Skye as a symbol of hope for the war with Nazi Germany. I’ve long been an admirer of Duncan Chisholm, particularly his gentle, lyrical fiddle playing. I loved his 2008 album ‘Farrar’ - a hauntingly beautiful collection of slow airs and laments - and I wrote here about its successor ‘Canaich’ (reviewed here in December 2010) - truly beautiful music. Duncan Chisholm has the ability to make the fiddle sound like a human voice. I was lucky to see him live in 2014, accompanying Julie Fowlis (reviewed here in May 2014). ‘Black Cuillin’ is a varied collection of instrumental tracks, some more upbeat folk/rock and some the slower, wistful melodies that he does so well.

'Bournville' by Jonathan Coe

27 January 2023

Regular readers will know I am a big fan of the books of Jonathan Coe. When I wrote about his 2019 novel 'Middle England' (reviewed here in January 2019), the third in the series he began in 2001 with ‘The Rotters Club’, I said it felt like he was writing specially for me. The new Jonathan Coe novel ‘Bournville’, which I have just read as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Peter Caulfield and Cara Horgan, is similarly on my wavelength. It’s a moving family saga, starting on VE Day in 1945 and following Mary Lamb and her relatives through to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Set in and around Bournville in Birmingham, there is a lot of chocolate in this book. It will keep Jonathan Coe fans happy as it reprises all his favourite themes - from Birmingham to Brussels to some great writing about classical music: there is a whole section of the book themed around Messiaen’s ‘Quartet for the End of Time’. The story of generations within the same family set against the backdrop of key historic moments (the Coronation, the 1966 World Cup final etc) reminded me of Kate Atkinson’s ‘Behind the Scenes at the Museum’. Showing the lives of the main characters against the backdrop of real political events across the latter half of the 20th century also reminded me of Peter Flannery's ‘Our Friends in the North’ (reviewed here in April 2006), particularly in the poignant final chapters. While not strictly part of the series, ‘Bournville’ is a novel clearly set in the Rotters Club universe - with links to, and appearances by, members of the Trotter family. We also re-encounter Thomas Foley, the protagonist of another Jonathan Coe novel ‘Expo 58’ (reviewed here in September 2013). Like the Rotters Club books, there are cameos by some real figures - including Boris Johnson (though Jonathan Coe’s Author’s Note points out that “Whether he's a fictional character or not remains hard to determine”). And the sections about the pandemic are a valuable record of the peculiar period of lockdown that is already fast receding in the memory. Like ‘Middle England’, ‘Bournville’ is a comic tale about our recent history with a melancholic feel.

'Empire' podcast

20 January 2023

I’m completely hooked on the ‘Empire’ podcast which looks at how empires rise, why they fall and how they have shaped the world around us today. ‘Empire’ uses the classic podcast formula of simply bringing together knowledgeable enthusiasts and allowing us to eavesdrop on their conversation. The historians William Dalrymple and Anita Anand, plus expert guests, weave a series of truly fascinating, shocking and revealing stories which provide much needed context and nuance to many of the challenges facing us today. The first series of ‘Empire’ focussed on the British in India, covering the East India Company, the Raj, Gandhi, Independence and Partition. The second series, which started in December 2022, looks at the Ottoman Empire. But the podcast format, with new episodes recorded each week, enables ‘Empire’ to respond to current events, such as the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the appointment of the UK’s first Indian-origin Prime Minister. The episode featuring David Olusoga discussing the Queen, the Commonwealth, the future of the monarchy and the long shadow of Empire, and the episode with Sathnam Sanghera talking about his book ‘Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain’ are both brilliant. All episodes of ‘Empire’ are still available to download: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/empire/id1639561921

New York Youth Symphony album

13 January 2023

When Covid halted live performance in 2020, the New York Youth Symphony - an orchestra for musicians between the ages of 12 and 22 - decided to channel its musical efforts into recording its first album. Following the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matters protests it was agreed that the album should be made up of works by Black composers. Because of the pandemic the album had to be recorded one section of the orchestra at a time so they could be socially distanced - and the recordings were painstakingly stitched together. Now, amazingly, the eponymous New York Youth Symphony album has been announced as one of the five nominees for the “Best Orchestral Performance” Grammy - an incredible achievement for a youth orchestra, nominated alongside some of the biggest and best professional orchestras in the world. I’ve been listening to the album, which is conducted by Michael Repper and produced by Judith Sherman, a 13-time Grammy winner, who is also nominated as classical producer of the year. It includes works by Jessie Montgomery, Valerie Coleman and Florence Price - whose ‘Symphony No 1’ we saw performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra at last year’s Edinburgh Festival (reviewed here in September 2022). The first piece on the album by Florence Price is ‘Ethiopia's Shadow in America’ - a three movement work composed in 1932 which was lost for many years and only rediscovered in 2009. It’s an entertaining and moving work with a lovely slow movement. The album also features Florence Price’s ‘Piano Concerto in One Movement’, played by Michelle Cann - a very tuneful, cheerful work. For more about the story of the New York Youth Symphony Grammy nomination, see: https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/entertainment/2022/11/16/new-york-youth-symphony-nominated-for-a-grammy

‘How to Disappear’ by Gillian McAllister

6 January 2023

I really enjoyed Gillian McAllister’s quirky time-travelling crime thriller ‘Wrong Place Wrong Time’ (reviewed here in July 2022) so I was keen to read something else by her. ‘How to Disappear’, published in 2020, is a more conventional thriller which tells the story of a family entering witness protection. Told through a series of very short chapters, each alternating between the points of view of the main family members, it completely gripped me. It’s a believable contemporary tale which emphasises the difficulties of adopting a completely new identity, and avoiding contact with people from your previous life, in the age of social media. Gillian McAllister makes the novel pacy and incredibly scary: it’s the most tense I have felt while reading a book for years, but I couldn’t put it down.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

14 December 2022

The Northampton Symphony Orchestra’s Christmas Cracker concert has become a much-loved annual fixture in the calendar which always feels to me like the start of Christmas. I can remember when it still felt daring for members of the orchestra to don santa hats and reindeer antlers for the second half of the concert. These days the whole event feels like a massive fancy dress party - for the orchestra and the audience. This year we were playing Dan Welcher’s narrated piece ‘Haleakala: How Maui Snared The Sun’ - a Polynesian folk tale that tells the story of how Maui captured the sun and caused the summer and winter seasons - so the orchestra’s dress code was Christmas jumpers or Hawaiian shirts. As I don’t own either of these I started searching online and found a wonderfully garish Hawaiian shirt, decorated with tiny French horns. I shared this with my fellow horn players who loved the idea of us all wearing matching shirts. Sadly we then spotted that these shirts would be coming from the United States and wouldn’t be delivered until after the concert. By this time we were all hooked on the idea and determined to make it happen. Rather brilliantly, Callie Scully bought some cheap, fairly plain Hawaian shirts from Asda and printed a series of transfers of French horns which she painstakingly ironed onto the shirts for all six of us. Some of the horns ended up being blue or pink because the transfers quickly used all her yellow printer ink, but we liked the somewhat psychedelic mixture of colours. Callie brought the shirts to our penultimate rehearsal but didn’t bring them into the hall, as we didn’t want the rest of the orchestra to see them until the concert. So at the end of the rehearsal we went out to Callie’s car in the car park where she handed out the shirts - covered by bin bags to keep them secret - and, at Josh’s suggestion we all then split in different directions! This excellent example of ingenuity and everyday creativity was a great success and the horn shirts attracted much praise at the concert. ‘Haleakala’ is a really effective piece of storytelling, excellently narrated for us by John Griff, with the orchestra creating some fascinating filmic audio effects. And I got to start the whole piece by blowing a conch shell which created a beautiful resonant note. Our recent Christmas Cracker concerts have featured lots of film music, alongside the usual festive tunes. This year was a bit different with the programme including an eclectic mix of classical pieces. Our Artistic Director, John Gibbons, had come up with the idea of conjuring up a Christmas stocking, stuffed with oranges (Prokofiev’s suite from ‘The Love for Three Oranges’) and a toy train (‘Pacific 231’ by Arthur Honegger) - though I think he may have run out of ideas at that point. Nevertheless it was a lovely concert at the Spinney Theatre in Northampton: it was wonderful to have a large audience and the welcome return of mulled wine and mince pies for the first time since the pandemic.

'The Ink Black Heart' by Robert Galbraith

9 December 2022

I have been enjoying ‘The Ink Black Heart’ - the sixth Cormoran Strike detective novel by J K Rowling (writing as Robert Galbraith) - which I am reading as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Robert Glenister. Like the Harry Potter series, the Strike novels seem to be getting longer and longer: the audio version of ‘The Ink Black Heart’ lasts nearly 33 hours. This feels too long - it would definitely have benefited from an edit - but it is an enjoyable and intriguing crime thriller. This time Strike and his partner Robin Ellacott enter the world of online gaming, YouTube and Twitter. Some of the chatroom conversations are a bit tedious to listen to as an audio book, with every @ and # pedantically read out, and the extensive cast of suspects is multiplied by their online pseudonyms. But it’s an engaging puzzle. I think I now actually look forward to spotting J K Rowling’s odd misunderstandings of budget hotels (see my review here of the previous Strike novel, ‘Troubled Blood’, in January 2021). The descriptive writing is often a bit clunky, and some of the online terminology also feels slightly suspect: does anyone refer to their “Instagram page”? But the best tribute I can pay to ‘The Ink Black Heart’ is that I have 3 hours left to listen to but I decided not to rush through it at high speed in order to write this review!

'Stay with Me' by Lorraine Ellison

2 December 2022

Once again I am indebted to Jess Gillam’s podcast ‘This Classical Life’ for drawing my attention to an artist I hadn’t come across before. Lorraine Ellison was an American soul singer and songwriter who died in 1983 at the age of 51. I have been listening to her 1969 album ‘Stay with Me’. The title-track is her best known recording but was only made at a last-minute booking, following a studio cancellation by Frank Sinatra, for whom a 46-piece orchestra had already been hired. The song is only three and half minutes long but feels like an epic - incredibly theatrical with a soaring chorus that punches you in the face. Lorraine Ellison’s voice is powerful and pure, bringing her experience of singing in gospel groups to R&B. ‘You Don’t Know Nothing About Love’ shows off her brilliant high register and she deserves comparison with Aretha Franklin and Dionne Warwick. Listen for yourself at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pDBuPK0_DU

'Klara and the Sun' by Kazuo Ishiguro

25 November 2022

I’ve long been an admirer of the novels of Kazuo Ishiguro. A few years ago I was lucky to see him at the Royal Festival Hall, in conversation with another of my favourite novelists, David Mitchell (reviewed here in February 2016). As well as Kazuo Ishiguro’s wonderful 1989 Booker Prize winning novel ‘The Remains of the Day’, I also really enjoyed 'When We Were Orphans' and even the impenetrably surreal dreamworld of 'The Unconsoled'. I have just finished his latest book, ‘Klara and the Sun’. Set in the near future, this is the tale of an artificial intelligence android, developed to serve as a child’s companion or Artificial Friend (AF). The story is told in the first person by the AF, Klara, a naive narrator whose voice reminded me of the child narrators of ‘The Trouble with Goats and Sheep’ by Joanna Cannon (reviewed here in January 2022) and Mark Haddon’s 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time'. This technique allows the reader gradually to piece together how this future world differs from the present day. There’s an ominous feeling throughout, as you quickly realise that Klara’s optimistic vision of the world is likely to be unravelled once she has experienced more of it. ‘Klara and the Sun’ reminded me most of the dark future reality of Ishiguro’s 2005 novel 'Never Let Me Go' (reviewed here in September 2006) but I don’t think it worked as effectively, not achieving the same level of emotional connection with the characters and their plight.

'The Banshees of Inisherin' by Martin McDonagh

18 November 2022

Last Friday we were at the Curzon cinema at Milton Keynes Gallery to see 'The Banshees of Inisherin', the new film written and directed by Martin McDonagh. If you are familiar with McDonagh's previous plays and films, including 'The Lieutenant of Inishmore', 'Hangmen' (reviewed here in March 2016), 'In Bruges',  'The Guard' and 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri', you will have an idea of what to expect. 'The Banshees of Inisherin' is a very black comedy - incredibly funny but with some brutal violence. Set on a small island, off the coast of Ireland, the film reunites the stars of 'In Bruges', Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, together with a terrific performance from Kerry Condon (who was in 'Three Billboards'). Farrell and Gleeson play two friends who spend every afternoon together in the village pub, until one day Colm (Gleeson) decides, for no obvious reason, that he no longer likes Pádraic (Farrell) and doesn't want to speak to him ever again. Pádraic's attempts to understand and reverse this change of heart lead to a series of increasingly violent confrontations between the two former best friends. (Warning: animals never fare well in Martin McDonagh stories.) The film is beautifully shot, laugh-out-loud funny, shocking and moving. I enjoyed it as an absurdist black comic tale. But when I belatedly (on the journey home from the cinema) spotted an underlying allegory (which I won't give away here) I began to wonder whether this is Martin McDonagh's masterpiece. Much as I felt about the enigmatic film 'Caché' by Michael Haneke (reviewed here in May 2006) I now want to see 'The Banshees of Inisherin' again immediately to test my theories on what it's really about.

‘De Todas las Flores’ by Natalia Lafourcade

11 November 2022

Natalia Lafourcade is a Mexican singer/songwriter who, over the past 20 years, has become one of the most successful singers in Latin America - having won 2 Grammy Awards and 13 Latin Grammy’s. I’ve been listening to her new album ‘De Todas las Flores’ - a collection of original songs that draw on Mexican traditional music but also incorporate gentle dreamy pop music and jazz. There’s a laid-back Brazilian bossa nova feel to several tracks. The album was recorded entirely on analogue tape and unrehearsed. The acoustic instrumentation, slick arrangements and quiet vocals suggest a group playing late at night in the corner of a classy bar. Here’s a sample of the album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpwSV1QBd8M

‘To Be Taught if Fortunate’ by Becky Chambers

3 November 2022

Becky Chambers writes gentle, charming science fiction novels that imagine a multi-species universe where everyone is mostly kind and polite to each other. Through showing how beings with completely different metabolisms and methods of communication can manage to understand each other and get along, she makes us think about issues of diversity and inclusion closer to home. I would recommend her Wayfarer series of novels (starting with ‘The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet’), each of which is a completely different type of story in a completely different setting, subtly linked to the rest of the series by one or two common characters. I’ve just finished reading ‘To Be Taught if Fortunate’ - her lovely bite-sized stand-alone novella which focuses on the human crew of a spaceship on an exploratory mission which takes them many light-years, and therefore many decades, from Earth. Becky Chambers doesn’t write conventional SciFi battles, mystery or horror: she is more interested in science than fiction, thinking plausibly about how life might arise and develop on different worlds. She creates likeable characters and places them in challenging situations where they need to work together to survive.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

25 October 2022

Last Saturday I played in the first Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert of the orchestra's 2022-23 season - a wonderfully varied programme which attracted a packed audience to St Matthew's Church in Northampton. The concert opened with 'An American in Paris' by George Gershwin, which NSO last played in 2010 (reviewed here in April 2010). Hearing the piece again also brought back happy memories of Christopher Wheeldon's brilliant stage adaptation (of the Vincente Minnelli film) in London in 2017 (reviewed here in April 2017). It was a bright, cheerful performance with a great trumpet solo by Terry Mayo and a perfect lugubrious tuba solo towards the end by Nick Tollervey.  We followed this popular work with another perennial favourite, Sergei Rachmaninoff's 'Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini', with the Ukrainian pianist Dinara Klinton. Dinara previously played with the Northampton Symphony Orchestra in 2017 when she dazzled in the ‘Piano Concerto for the Left Hand’ by Maurice Ravel - a performance that no-one who was at the concert will ever forget (reviewed here in November 2017). Famous for the slow, lush, romantic 18th variation, the 'Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini' is a challenging piece to pull together, full of fast variations with flurries of piano notes punctuated by precisely placed orchestral stabs. So it was worrying when we discovered, during our final rehearsal on Saturday afternoon, that our pianist's train had been delayed and she might not arrive in time to run through the piece with the orchestra. We started to play it through without the piano solo and, while we were playing (and unseen by conductor John Gibbons) Dinara Klinton ran up the central aisle of the church, threw herself onto the piano stool and instantly joined in the music, just in time to launch into a cadenza - without having removed her backpack from her shoulders. She gave a stunning performance in the concert, taking much of the piece at a dramatically fast pace and lovingly playing with the tempo (and our expectations) in the slow passages. It was a privilege to be accompanying her. We finished the concert with 'Symphony No 9' by Ralph Vaughan Williams - celebrating the composer's 150th anniversary this month with his final symphony. It's a serious, dramatic work, not very well known and not the easiest piece to understand, but it really grew on me as I got to know it over the past couple of months. And it was interesting how much better it seemed to work in performance than rehearsal - perhaps needing the additional concentration and pin-drop silences that you only get in a live concert. Among many fantastic solos, the stand out moments for me were Dan Newitt's gorgeous flugel horn solo in the second movement, the violin solo by orchestra leader Emily Groom and the distinctive saxophone passages, excellently played by Eva Jennings and Vicki Reamsbottopm. It was a great concert which felt like our most complete performance for some time.

'Towards the End of the Morning' by Michael Frayn

20 October 2022

Michael Frayn's 1967 novel 'Towards the End of the Morning' depicts a bygone era of Fleet Street newspaper offices - young men in suits spending their days staring out of the window, the slow manual compilation of nature notes and crossword clues, a mysterious unseen Editor, long liquid lunches and the dream of escaping the dead-end of print journalism through appearances on radio, or even television. It's a gentle, poignant satire punctuated by some brilliant set-piece farce scenes. The whimsical tone reminded me of Jerome K Jerome's 'Three Men in a Boat', daydreaming through slow, endless days and never taking itself too seriously. 'Towards the End of the Morning' is a slight novel but Michael Frayn manages to draw sympathetic, likeable characters who may be flawed, and ultimately doomed, but feel like friends.

‘John Gabriel Borkman’ by Henrik Ibsen

20 October 2022

On Saturday we were at the Bridge Theatre in London to see Henrik Ibsen’s 1896 play ‘John Gabriel Borkman’ in a new version by Lucinda Coxon, from a literal translation by Charlotte Barslund. This story of a disgraced former banker, imprisoned for speculating with his investors' money, feels all too topical. It’s a play with three leads - the titular banker, his wife and her sister - and Nicholas Hytner’s production boasts three star performances, from Simon Russell Beale, Claire Higgins and Lia Williams. Simon Russell Beale’s Borkman bears a striking resemblance (both physically and behaviourally) to a recent UK Prime Minister, and ends up looking like a blatant audition for King Lear. (Regular readers may remember I am patiently waiting for Simon Russell Beale to play Lear - see my review of his Prospero in ‘The Tempest’ here in November 2016.) I particularly liked the comic exchanges between Borkman and Vilhelm Foldal (Michael Simkins) which were wittily scripted and delivered in perfect dead-pan. But I felt Lia Williams stole the show with her performance as Ella. I had a feeling we had seen her on stage before and I now see I reviewed her super Rosalind in ‘As You Like It’ here in November 2005. I really enjoyed ‘John Gabriel Borkman’, more so for not having seen it before and discovering the unravelling plot for the first time.

‘All’s Well That Ends Well’ by William Shakespeare

14 October 2022

On Saturday we were at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon to see the RSC production of ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’ directed by Blanche McIntyre. I had only seen ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’ once before - in a Royal Exchange Theatre production at Upper Campfield Market in Manchester in 1996. It is sometimes described as one of the ‘problem plays’, with an uncomfortable plot that is essentially: girl falls in love with boy - boy rejects girl - girl persuades king to force boy to marry her against his will - boy runs away - girl stalks boy across Europe, tricks him into sleeping with her by pretending to be the girl he actually loves and thereby forces him to return to her. It is also one of those Shakespeare plays that feels like he is trying out ideas that he will use to greater effect elsewhere. The imprisonment, blindfolding and humiliation of Parolles, for example, has a clear connection with the treatment of Malvolio in ‘Twelfth Night’. Blanche McIntyre gives the play a contemporary setting, with social media feeds projected across the back of the stage - which does prove useful in clarifying some of the main off-stage plot developments. The acting was impressive and entertaining, with a great central performance by Rosie Sheehy as Helena. But it’s not a great play.

BBC Young Musician 2022

14 October 2022

One of the lesser-noticed impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic was how it broke my proud record of having reviewed here every one of the biennial BBC Young Musician competitions since 2006. The 2020 competition was interrupted by lockdown, with the Concerto Final eventually going ahead in May 2021. I did manage to watch it - and percussionist Fang Zhang was a worthy winner - but it took place while we were away on holiday and I wasn’t able to post my review. I am delighted to say that normal service has been resumed in 2022, and even more delighted to say that the television coverage of this year’s BBC Young Musician was the best I can remember. Wonderfully the BBC bowed to the inevitable and asked Jess Gillam (a finalist in 2016) to present the coverage, as a double-hander with the equally impressive Alexis Ffrench. And remarkably (and I like to think this must be in part a result of my moaning here since 2008) they have finally reinstated a final that features five full concertos - rather than cruelly depriving two of the five category winners from their moment on stage accompanied by an orchestra, as has happened since 2010. It was brilliant to watch the live broadcast, on Sunday evening, of five full back-to-back concertos - a thrilling, incredibly varied and fantastically moving concert. I was very smug at having correctly predicted all five finalists from watching their category finals (which moved me to tears several times). But I must admit I was completely wrong-footed by the decision to award the overall title of BBC Young Musician 2022 to the percussionist Jordan Ashman. He was brilliant, and gave a very impressive performance of the spectacular Percussion Concerto  by Jennifer Higdon, but I really thought the choice was going to be between two of the other finalists. Nevertheless the whole competition was really enjoyable and very fully and respectfully presented. Finally BBC Young Musician is once again as good as it used to be!

You can read all my previous posts about BBC Young Musician at: http://culturaldessert.blogspot.com/search/label/BBCYoungMusician

‘Jack Absolute Flies Again’ by Richard Bean and Oliver Chris

7 October 2022

Just over ten years ago the National Theatre had a big hit with ‘One Man, Two Guvnors’ - Richard Bean’s loose adaptation of Carlo Goldoni’s play ‘The Servant of Two Masters’ (reviewed here in October 2011) which was a great star vehicle for James Corden. Now Richard Bean and Oliver Chris (who was in the original cast of ‘One Man, Two Guvnors’) have taken a similar approach to Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s classic restoration comedy ‘The Rivals’ to create ‘Jack Absolute Flies Again’. This sets the action in 1940 in the grounds of an English stately home which has been commandeered to host an RAF squadron. The National Theatre production, directed by Emily Burns (which we saw this week at The Odeon in Milton Keynes as an NT Live filmed broadcast) boasts a beautiful set by Mark Thompson. ‘Jack Absolute Flies Again’ is cartoonishly broad comedy - extremely silly but enjoyably likeable. From the start there is plenty breaking of the fourth wall (with characters pointing out “that didn’t happen in the original!”). Caroline Quentin’s Mrs Malaprop stretches her malapropisms to the limit and beyond, before playing with our expectations. The cast are all having a ball - and there is a great 1940s dance sequence. But Richard Bean and Oliver Chris also manage to inject a little serious wartime poignancy into the pantomime.

‘Apples Never Fall’ by Liane Moriarty

30 September 2022

I’m new to the Australian novelist Liane Moriarty (the author of ‘Big Little Lies’ and ‘Nine Perfect Strangers’, both now adapted for TV) and have really enjoyed reading her 2021 novel ‘Apples Never Fall’. This is a family story, very much in the same territory as the novels of Anne Tyler, where the subtle interactions between siblings and parents tell so much while saying so little. But ‘Apples Never Fall’ also cleverly weaves in a genuinely gripping mystery plot which Liane Moriarty resolves very satisfyingly, with painstaking attention to detail: every little incident comes to have some significance as the truth is revealed. The relationships between the four tennis-playing Delaney children and their professional tennis coach parents reminded me a little of Jesse Armstrong’s brilliant black comedy-drama TV series ‘Succession’. This is a dysfunctional family full of regret and recrimination but whose members still love each other deeply. I’m looking forward to reading more Liane Moriarty novels soon.

‘Venomous Lumpsucker’ by Ned Beauman

30 September 2022

Regular readers may remember that I'm a big fan of the young British novelist Ned Beauman. I loved his last book ‘Madness is Better Than Defeat’ (reviewed here in October 2017) which was clever, surprising, baffling, hilarious, and completely bonkers. Ned Beauman’s new novel ‘Venomous Lumpsucker’ (which I’ve just finished reading as an unabridged audio book, narrated by John Hastings) is set in the near future and takes on themes of climate change and species extinction. I had forgotten how much I love the absurd, almost poetic nature of the names he invents for characters and, in this book particularly, the Latin names of obscure species, the constant repetition of which (especially when you are listening to the audio book) have a hypnotic quality. In ‘Venomous Lumpsucker’ Beauman takes us to future versions of several Northern European countries which are recognisable but quirkily different from present day. This slightly adjusted parallel world reminded me of the bizarre alternative-reality visions of the UK in the novels of Jasper Fforde (see for example 'Early Riser', reviewed here in October 2018). But Ned Beauman, while often very funny, is more interested in ideas than gags. And his ideas are fascinating as he explores where climate change and current policies might logically take the world. ‘Venomous Lumpsucker’ is a picaresque journey around the Baltic and the cast of eccentric characters that our two protagonists meet along the way made me think of Douglas Adams’ ‘The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy’. But I didn’t enjoy this book as much as Ned Beauman’s previous novels. ‘Venomous Lumpsucker’ has too many lengthy interludes to explain its ideas, at the expense of plot, and lacked the comic set-pieces of his earlier books.  If you haven't experienced Ned Beauman yet I would still suggest you start with 'The Teleportation Accident' (reviewed here in July 2013).

'Watch Her Fall' by Erin Kelly

23 September 2022

I hadn’t heard of the thriller writer Erin Kelly before we saw her at the Ampthill Literary Festival earlier this year (reviewed here in April 2022) talking about the process of writing her latest book ‘Watch Her Fall’ during lockdown. I read ‘Watch Her Fall’ on holiday last week and I would strongly recommend it. It’s a psychological thriller about a dancer, which uses ‘Swan Lake’ as its inspiration and structure. The book is very cleverly plotted: it is really hard to see where it is going and Erin Kelly very effectively pulls the rug out from under you on several occasions with some stunning twists. A good twist needs to be both unexpected and believable and it is a sign of the writer’s skill that I now want to read the whole book again to spot the little clues I should have seen the first time around.

Norway

23 September 2022

We enjoyed our holiday in the Norwegian fjords on the P&O cruise ship Iona last week but we were fairly unlucky with the weather, with lots of heavy rain coinciding with our time ashore. It was still good to revisit Stavanger, Olden, Alesund and Bergen but my photos are less spectacular than those from our previous trips to Norway. Iona is the biggest cruise ship we have been on (5,200 passengers) and is in its first season. It’s a beautiful new ship and we really enjoyed the food and the entertainment: it just would have been nice to have a little sunshine!

'Much Ado About Nothing' by William Shakespeare

9 September 2022

It was very strange to be taking our seats to watch a Shakespeare comedy just as we heard the news of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. We were at the Curzon Cinema at Milton Keynes Gallery to see the NT Live broadcast of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ from the National Theatre in London. National Theatre Artistic Director Rufus Norris appeared on screen, wearing a black tie, to announce that the show would go ahead, following a minute’s silence and the playing of the national anthem. It felt like a hand-brake turn to then launch into Simon Godwin’s screwball comedy production of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’, set in an Art Deco hotel in 1930s Italy. Simon Godwin is one of my favourite theatre directors (see, for example, my review of his National Theatre production of George Bernard Shaw's 'Man and Superman' in May 2015). His ‘Much Ado’ started as very broad comedy, with Katherine Parkinson’s Beatrice and John Heffernan’s Benedick milking every line for laughs. But as the play turned darker the pathos was all the more affecting for its contrast with the earlier pantomime clowning and both the leads were very moving as well as funny. This ensemble performance also included impressive and very believable performances from Eben Figueiredo as Claudio, David Judge as Don John and Phoebe Horn as Margaret. And David Flynn’s blend of dimness, slapstick and a hint of being slightly more knowing than he first appeared made his Dogberry more genuinely funny than usual.
 

Edinburgh Festivals 2022

2 September 2022

It was great to be back at the Edinburgh Festivals last week, for the first time since 2018. It did feel a little less busy than our last pre-pandemic festival, and the streets were strewn with rubbish because of strike action affecting bin collection. Nevertheless, in most aspects it did seem like things were getting back towards normal. We managed to see 27 shows during our week in Edinburgh - almost all of a surprisingly high standard. We saw two brilliant orchestral concerts at the Usher Hall as part of the Edinburgh International Festival: the Czech Philharmonic, conducted by Semyon Bychkov, gave a stunning performance of Mahler’s ‘Symphony No 7’; and the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, were incredibly engaging and entertaining in Florence Price’s ‘Symphony No 1’. This symphony, premiered in 1932, was the first work by a Black woman composer to be performed by a major US orchestra and it’s a lovely piece which deserves to be more widely performed. At the Edinburgh International Book Festival we saw the actor Alan Cumming talking about his recent memoir ‘Baggage’. Our pick of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival included fringe veteran comedian Simmon Munnery - on particularly good form this year - and our belated discovery of the wonderfully funny and likeable musical duo Jonny & The Baptists (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdR8e08ng9M). We enjoyed two excellent quintessential fringe one-person biographical plays: Alison Skilbeck’s ‘Mrs Roosevelt Flies to London’ and Tayo Aluko’s ‘Call Mr. Robeson’. Seeing the Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh production of ‘The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart’ by David Greig and Wils Wilson in the amazing setting of the University of Edinburgh Playfair Library felt like proper ‘event theatre’ and was great fun. Emily Bruni was brilliant in Matt Wilkinson’s one-woman play ‘Psychodrama’ at the Traverse Theatre. And we rounded off our week in Edinburgh with another outstanding solo performance - Samuel Barnett in ‘Feeling Afraid as If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen’, written by Marcelo Dos Santos and directed by Matthew Xia, at the Roundabout at Summerhall. As always Edinburgh in August felt like a cultural top-up which should keep us going for the next year.

'The Hanging Tree' by Ben Aaronovitch

17 August 2022

It was 2018 when I discovered Ben Aaronovitch’s series of novels about London police officer Peter Grant who is seconded to the Metropolitan Police’s secret division of wizards dealing with magic and supernatural crimes. ‘Rivers of London’ (reviewed here in June 2018) was a very entertaining blend of real-world policing and fantasy that was clever, thrilling and very funny. Since then I’ve been gradually working my way through the other books in the series and I’ve just finished the sixth novel ‘The Hanging Tree’, which I read as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Kobna Holdrook-Smith. I think this was the best yet - beginning to bring together the historical backstory of magical practitioners that Peter Grant has been trying to understand, and taking Peter and his wizard boss, Detective Chief Inspector Nightingale, ever closer to their arch-enemy – The Faceless Man. It’s a peculiar combination of crime fiction and fantasy, rooted in a very real contemporary London but forever slipping into the magical demi-monde - and never taking itself too seriously.

'Prima Facie' by Suzie Miller

12 August 2022

On Tuesday we were at the Curzon Cinema at Milton Keynes Gallery to see the NT Live screening of 'Prima Facie' by Suzie Miller from the Harold Pinter Theatre in London. This new play is presented as a partnership with the charity The Schools Consent Project which was set up in 2014 by barrister Kate Parker to send lawyers into schools to teach 11-18 year olds the legal definition of consent and key sexual offences. 'Prima Facie' looks at the issue of consent through the story of Tessa Ensler, a young barrister who has made a name for herself defending men accused of sexual assault. It's a remarkable one-woman play which marks Jodie Comer's West End debut. Justin Martin's production uses an inventive set by Miriam Buether framed with towering bookshelves filled with legal ring binders, and features music by Rebecca Lucy Taylor AKA Self Esteem. Suzi Miller's script is powerful, witty and cleverly constructed. But this is very much Jodie Comer's show and she is superb. Like many monologues, the script would make a good radio play. But Jodie Comer's physical acting is fascinating, constantly moving the furniture to construct different scenes in her story, leaping onto the desk to deliver a speech and pouring a full glass of water perfectly without looking. And her facial expressions, wonderfully clear in close-up in the cinema screening, tell much of the story by themselves. She has an incredible skill for accents (as she demonstrated in 'Killing Eve'), here seamlessly switching between two characters when recounting a conversation. It's a captivating, compelling masterclass in dramatic storytelling which reminded me of Kizzy Dunn’s brilliant one-woman performance of ‘Henry V’ that we saw at the Edinburgh Fringe four years ago (reviewed here in August 2018). 'Prima Facie' is an amazing show - funny, distressing and enraging: an extraordinary solo performance by Jodie Comer.

'As You Like It' by William Shakespeare

9 August 2022

Last Friday evening we were at Wrest Park in Silsoe to see an outdoor performance of ‘As You Like It’ by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men who specialise in very traditional productions of Shakespeare plays, with an all male cast and Elizabethan costume – giving you a good idea of what it must have been like to see the plays when they were first performed. A year ago, at the same venue, we saw their production of ‘Macbeth’ (reviewed here in August 2021). ‘As You Like It’ provided another opportunity to see one of Shakespeare’s gender-swapping comedies making much more sense than it usually does - as we experienced with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men production of ‘Twelfth Night’ (reviewed here in August 2009). Somehow, with a female actor playing a woman pretending to be a man you never believe anyone would actually fall for the disguise. But when (as it would have been in Shakespeare’s time) it is a male actor playing a woman dressed as a man, it is easier to suspend your disbelief and go with the plot. Peter Stickney’s production of ‘As You Like It’ was great fun, with a very impressive cast including stand-out performances by Ben Lynn as Rosalind and Jonny Warr as Celia.

WOMAD 2022

1 August 2022

Last weekend saw the return of the WOMAD Festival after a two-year break for the pandemic, and celebrating 40 years since the first ‘World of Music, Arts and Dance’ Festival in Shepton Mallet in 1982. I first went to WOMAD in 2003 and I’ve been at every UK WOMAD Festival since. WOMAD moved to its current home - the enormous Charlton Park, near Malmesbury in Wiltshire - in 2007, and it was lovely to return there last Friday in glorious sunshine. Over the weekend I managed to see 16 full performances, and caught snippets of many others. I enjoyed Khiyo, a band from Bangladesh and the UK who play a rock-version of Bengali folk and film songs. Sam Amidon from Vermont USA gave a stunning performance on the Charlie Gillett Stage, reinterpreting early 20th century American folk music for a contemporary audience. It was lovely to see the Gambian kora player Sona Jobarteh talking about her music and playing duets with her 15-year-old son on balafon in the intimate World Rhythms tent. And it was a real treat to finally get the chance to see the poet and rapper Kae Tempest (whose recordings I have written about here before - in October 2014, October 2016 and August 2019) performing the new album ‘The Line Is A Curve’ in its entirety, to a packed Siam Tent. I liked Afghan singer Elaha Soroor’s collaboration with the group Kefaya - turning Afghan folk songs into rock, electronica and dub. It was wonderful to see Nitin Sawhney again - the highlight of my first WOMAD in 2003 - giving a brilliant performance on Saturday evening. But my pick of WOMAD 2022 was the amazing Korean band ADG7 (Ak Dan Gwang Chil). The group consists of six traditional musicians playing acoustic Korean instruments, accompanying three flamboyantly dressed female vocalists with impressively choreographed routines. They take Korean shamanic folk traditions and present them in a catchy K-pop style. The concept sounds horrendous but the result is surprisingly wonderful. To give you a flavour, here is a clip of the band performing at Womex in 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9XTmH8U4nA You can see a selection of my photos from this year’s WOMAD Festival at: https://culturaloutlook.blogspot.com/search/label/WOMAD2022

David Sedaris

27 July 2022

When we last saw the American humourist David Sedaris at the Derngate in Northampton (reviewed here in June 2015) he was careful to avoid using any material that had previously been used on his BBC Radio 4 show, treating us to new writing and work in progress. Last Sunday we were at the Corn Exchange in Cambridge for another evening of David Sedaris reading his essays, and almost all the pieces he read were written since he finished his latest book in February this year. It still seems odd sitting in a theatre watching a writer simply reading aloud - but he does it so well! I was struck by how many of his anecdotes seem to come from things people say to him at his book signings. So it was fascinating to see the enormous queue in the foyer at the end of the evening as everyone waited for their moment with David Sedaris, and their opportunity to be featured in his next collection.

'Great Circle' by Maggie Shipstead

22 July 2022

I bought Maggie Shipstead’s novel 'Great Circle' purely on the following short recommendation in The Guardian: "shortlisted for the Booker and now the Women’s prize, this is the story of an early female aviator and the Hollywood star who investigates the mystery of her disappearance. A gloriously immersive historical epic." I wasn’t disappointed: ‘Great Circle’ is a compelling saga covering more than 100 years, beautifully written and elegantly constructed. The central tale of the life of aviator Marion Graves is framed by the modern-day story of the making of a film about her. We also see Marion’s life through the perspectives of some of her closest friends and family and through the ‘found narratives’ of letters, diaries and memoirs. It’s an engaging and wide-ranging journey through the first half of the 20th century, interspersed with factual accounts of the achievements of other early aviators. Marion faces some grim challenges - both in her chosen profession and her personal life - which are not always easy reading. But there’s a lightness and wit to Maggie Shipstead’s writing and there is fun to be had for the reader in knowing more about what actually happened to Marion than those making the film have discovered. ‘Great Circle’ feels like an instant classic: I didn’t want it to finish.

‘Wrong Place Wrong Time’ by Gillian McAllister

15 July 2022

When we saw the thriller writer Erin Kelly at the Ampthill Literary Festival earlier this year (reviewed here in April 2022), one of the authors she recommended was Gillian McAllister. I have just finished reading ‘Wrong Place Wrong Time’ - the new novel by Gillian McAllister (as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Lesley Sharp) and I loved it. This is a crime thriller with a twist. Jen - a successful Liverpool solicitor - witnesses an horrific murder directly outside her house. This traumatic experience has a profound effect on her and when she wakes up the following morning she discovers that it is actually the previous morning and the murder hasn’t happened yet. Armed with her knowledge of the future could she prevent the crime from being committed? The device of travelling back in time to relive the same events in order to try to change their outcome reminded of ‘The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle’ by Stuart Turton (reviewed here in April 2019) and the Netflix series ‘Russian Doll’. But ‘Wrong Place Wrong Time’ is less concerned with the science fiction of time travel and more an exercise in searching your own memory for clues that were there all the time but that you hadn’t noticed before. There were multiple twists in Jen’s story, almost all of which caught me completely by surprise. But the really clever thing about Gillian McAllister’s novel is how it manages to replicate Jen’s experience for the reader, showing you that you had read the clues to each unexpected twist earlier in the book without noticing their significance. I had no idea where the plot was taking me and this made it a very enjoyable and ultimately satisfying read.

'The Importance of Being Earnest' by Oscar Wilde

13 July 2022

On Saturday we were at the Roman Theatre of Verulamium in St Albans to see the OVO Theatre open-air production of Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’. Like their adaptation of ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ which we saw at the same venue in 2020 (reviewed here in September 2020) the play was interspersed with live music performed by the cast, this time featuring a jazz band interpreting modern pop songs in a 1920s swing style. The production, directed by Adam Nichols and Matt Strachan and musically directed by Tom Cagnoni, was great fun. ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ is such a brilliant play it would be hilarious if you just read the words directly from the script but an excellent cast added a real panache. Charlie Clee was perfect as Algernon Montcrieff but I thought Paul Manuel almost stole the show as Lane the butler - all the funnier for playing it very straight and drole in the manner of Jeeves, and joining in the musical numbers in a bemused expression. It was a lovely afternoon but the heat was hard work for an outdoor audience with no shade to shelter in. By the second half we had retreated to the back row so we could try to escape the sun under an umbrella - feeling like Cecily and Gwendolen in the garden of Jack Worthing’s country house.

‘The Southbury Child’ by Stephen Beresford

13 July 2022

Last Thursday we were back at the Bridge Theatre in London to see ‘The Southbury Child’ - a new play by Stephen Beresford, directed by Nicholas Hytner. Alex Jennings plays a Church of England vicar who provokes hostility in his rural Devon parish by not allowing a young mother to decorate the church with Disney balloons for her child’s funeral. The drama takes place around the kitchen table of the vicarage as various local residents plead with the vicar to relax his principled stand in sympathy with the emotional devastation of the family dealing with the loss of a child. Stephen Beresford’s script finds gentle humour within a tragic situation and has the feel of an Alan Bennett play. ‘The Southbury Child’ is entertaining and thought provoking, with an impressive cast including Phoebe Nicholls as the vicar’s wife.

Wimbledon 2022

13 July 2022

We had a fantastic day at Wimbledon on the middle Saturday of the Championships on Court Number One. We saw Nick Kyrgios beat Stefanos Tsitsipas in what many commentators said was the game of the tournament and was certainly the most exciting match we have ever seen in many years of going to Wimbledon. It was a high-quality, but extremely bad-tempered, battle which ended just after 9pm under the roof - making the final set even more dramatic and incredibly noisy. Our seats were high up in the stadium and at times it was quite difficult to know what was going on between the players and the umpire without consulting the BBC Sport app. But it was an electric atmosphere: a genuinely thrilling experience. Earlier we had seen the impressive run of British player Liam Broady come to an end in straight sets against Alex de Minaur. We also witnessed Alize Cornet completely outplaying the World No. 1 and No. 1 seed Iga Swiatek - which was set to have been the story of the day before Kyrgios vs Tsitsipas.

Spiers & Boden

1 July 2022

Last Friday we were at the Stables in Wavendon to see English folk duo Spiers & Boden. John Spiers (melodeon) and Jon Boden (fiddle) are the founders of the wonderful folk big band Bellowhead (reviewed here on many occasions, most recently in December 2020). We last saw them as a duo in 2008 (also at the Stables, reviewed here in December 2008) and it's wonderful to see the two of them touring together again after many years devoted to Bellowhead and their own individual projects. Friday's concert mainly featured tracks from their 2021 album 'Fallow Ground' - a great collection of traditional songs and their own new tunes. Spiers & Boden do sound (unsurprisingly) like Bellowhead without the other instruments, and Jon Boden is a brilliant front man, even when his band is simply John Spiers. Here’s one of the tracks from their new album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poFJINnaA4w

'Lockdown in Little Grimley' and 'Murder in Little Grimley' by David Tristram

23 June 2022

We had only recently discovered the TADS amateur theatre group in our neighbouring village, Toddington, when we saw their hilarious production of David Tristram's wonderfully silly detective spoof 'Inspector Drake and the Black Widow' in 2009 (reviewed here April 2009). Since then we've been back to the lovely little TADS Theatre to see three more 'Inspector Drake' plays. On Saturday we were at TADS to see two one-act plays by David Tristram from his Little Grimley series about a less than perfect amateur theatre group. 'Lockdown in Little Grimley' saw the fictional company's four actors reuniting to work on their first post Covid production (complete with plenty of jokes about toilet rolls and facemasks). And 'Murder in Little Grimley' further stretched the boundaries of meta fiction with the Toddington amateur theatre group playing the Little Grimley amateur theatre group devising a new murder mystery play about the death of a sweet shop owner whilst also becoming implicated in the actual death of a sweet shop owner. These plays reminded me of The Farndale Avenue Housing plays (such as 'The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society’s Production of Macbeth’ - a comedy by William Shakespeare, David McGillivray and Walter Zerlin Jnr, reviewed here in November 2016). Both Little Grimley plays had the characteristic David Tristram zany surreality and corny gags, though they felt a bit slight compared to the Inspector Drake plays. But David Sachon's production was great fun with a very strong cast and it was lovely to see some TADS regulars again after the long break imposed by the pandemic.

Canada and Alaska

17 June 2022

We had an amazing holiday over the past couple of weeks - driving through the Canadian Rockies, followed by a cruise from Vancouver to Alaska. We visited Canmore, Banff, Lake Louise, Jasper, Golden, Kelowna and Vancouver in Canada, including two journeys along the incredible Icefields Parkway - which must be one of the most stunning drives in the world. We had some lovely weather but it was still cold in the mountains, with many of the lakes frozen. We were fortunate to see black bears on six separate occasions (and fortunate that all were from a safe distance!). On our cruise we sailed around the Glacier Bay National Park - one of the most beautiful landscapes I have seen, but it was sad to see the extent to which climate change is affecting the glaciers. One of our highlights was a boat trip along the Tracy Arm Fjord near Juneau during which we saw lots of wildlife and got a close-up view of the deep blue colours of the South Sawyer Glacier. You can see a very small selection from the thousands of photos I took at: https://culturaloutlook.blogspot.com/search/label/Canada-Alaska2022

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

24 May 2022

Our Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert last Saturday was dedicated to the memory of Luke Roskams, a long-time member of the orchestra who died suddenly and unexpectedly in April 2021. Luke was a violinist who played for many years with the Orchestra of the Welsh National Opera before moving to Northampton. Our concert featured Luke’s son Benjamin Roskams playing Max Bruch’s ‘Violin Concerto No. 1’ - a gorgeously romantic work that felt particularly poignant. Ben had previously played Bruch's 'Scottish Fantasy' with us (reviewed here in June 2015) and the ‘Romantic Fantasy’ by Arthur Benjamin (reviewed here in February 2019) and it was great to have the opportunity to hear him again. It was a stunning and very moving performance. We started the concert with another emotional piece, the orchestral rhapsody ‘A Shropshire Lad’ by George Butterworth - a young English composer who was killed by a sniper at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 at the age of 31. It’s a beautiful pastoral piece in the style of Vaughan-Williams, which we last played in a NSO concert in 2014 (reviewed here in October 2014). Our performance on Saturday featured some wonderfully delicate playing by the violas and clarinets. We started the second half of the concert with Samuel Barber’s haunting ‘Adagio for Strings’ - a piece that has become increasingly used in memorium. The concert finished with one of the works we played during lockdown in the NSO online rehearsals using Jamulus (open source low latency software), the ‘Symphony in D minor’ by Cesar Franck. This symphony was incredibly popular with audiences in the early twentieth century but then fell out of fashion and is now rarely performed. It’s a very likeable, tuneful piece and our performance featured impressive solos by Jo Bell on cor anglais, Rowena Bass on harp and Ian Jones on horn. It was a lovely concert.

'Lucky Stiff' by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty

19 May 2022

On Friday we were back at the tiny TADS Theatre in Toddington for the first time since October 2019 - not for a TADS performance but to see another very impressive amateur theatre group, St Andrew’s Players from Luton. They were performing the 1988 musical ‘Lucky Stiff’ with book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and music by Stephen Flaherty, based on the 1983 novel ‘The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo’ by Michael Butterworth. ‘Lucky Stiff’ is a very silly farce about the battle to inherit the fortune of a distant uncle, which involves taking the uncle’s corpse on holiday to Monte Carlo. It’s a nicely constructed plot, with slightly more to it than first appears. The songs have a narrative style which reminded me of Stephen Sondheim and were excellently performed by a cast full of strong singers, led by Musical Director Richard Cowling and accompanied by Martin Hart. The leads, Barry Hyde and Jo Yirrell, managed to make their ridiculous characters surprisingly sympathetic. Dee Lovelock’s production was a hoot. You can see the St Andrew’s Players trailer at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am2WFLpEe_w

Tom Robinson

13 May 2022

We really enjoyed Tom Robinson’s wonderful solo gig at the splendidly refurbished Drapers’ Hall in Coventry last year (reviewed here in November 2021). But last Friday it was even better to finally see his twice-postponed appearance at The Stables in Wavendon (our tickets having been carried forward twice from the originally planned date in 2020 because of lockdown). This was a concert with his full band - including long-time collaborators Adam Philips and Lee Forsyth Griffiths - and it was great to see them back together. Having followed Tom Robinson for almost 30 years, it always surprises me how many people in the audience say they have never seen him before (about a third of this sold-out crowd). It is great that he is still picking up new fans at this late stage of his career. And Tom was in good voice, showcasing updated verses for several of his classic songs to rage against the ‘beyond parody’ behaviour of current politicians.

'Don Quixote' directed by Orson Welles

6 May 2022

This week’s ‘The Signal From David Katznelson’ newsletter describes how Katznelson has been meaning for many years to read ‘Don Quixote’ by Miguel de Cervantes and has now finally done so. His experience of tackling this genius “first modern novel” sounds remarkably similar to my own (described at length in my review here in January 2012): it was a bit of struggle but the transition into meta-fiction in the second part of the story (when the knight and his squire encounter people who have read the earlier volume and are familiar with their history) is fascinating. David Katznelson also makes the point I did in my review of James Fenton’s stage adaptation of ‘Don Quixote’ (reviewed here in January 2019) that the laughs at the expense of what is effectively mental illness feel a bit uncomfortable at times. Best of all The Signal provides a link to Orson Welles’ unfinished film of ‘Don Quixote’ - which Welles started in 1955 and was working on intermittently until his death in 1985. It’s a bizarre curio, well worth a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RZaalXvhIk

Amp Literary

29 April 2022

On Saturday we made the short journey to the Parkside Community Hall in Ampthill to attend ‘Amp Literary’ - the Ampthill Literary Festival - an event postponed from 2020. The journalist and Sunday Times bestseller Erin Kelly spoke about her ‘psychological gothic’ novels and explained the process of writing her latest book ‘Watch Her Fall’ during lockdown. ‘Watch Her Fall’ is a thriller about a dancer, which uses ‘Swan Lake’ as its inspiration and structure. It was fascinating to hear how she had used the ballet to develop the novel. Erin Kelly was one of the most engaging, articulate and well-prepared authors I have seen at a book festival: we really enjoyed her session. It was also wonderful to rediscover the poet/comedian Henry Normal who I first saw live at a comedy club in Peterborough nearly 30 years ago. Henry Normal disappeared from view as a performer when he set up Baby Cow Productions with Steve Coogan and spent 17 years as its Managing Director. During this time he focussed on writing (he co-wrote ‘The Mrs Merton Show’ and ‘The Royle Family’) and producing shows including ‘Gavin and Stacey’, ‘Red Dwarf’, ‘The Mighty Boosh’, ‘Nighty Night’ and ‘Alan Partridge’. Since retiring from Baby Cow in 2016, Henry Normal has written and performed a lovely occasional series of BBC Radio 4 shows (all still available on BBC Sounds: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/b09rwvwt) which showcase his brilliant poetry. His poems are alternately childishly silly, beautiful, hilarious and breathtakingly poignant. The Scotsman newspaper called him "The Alan Bennett of poetry". I still treasure my copy of ‘Nude Modelling for the Afterlife’ - Henry Normal’s 1993 collection which I bought after seeing him at the Edinburgh Book Festival. It was very exciting to see him again after so long, in the intimate setting of the Ampthill festival. He is a brilliant performer and had the audience in the palm of his hand. He was there to promote his new book ‘The Escape Plan’  which includes all of the poems from his Radio 4 shows, together with the most popular poems from each of his previous collections. I’m looking forward to reading my signed copy! We finished our visit to Amp Literary with a very enjoyable performance from The Antipoet - an anarchic duo with their own unique blend of poetry, comedy and music.

'Henry V' by William Shakespeare

22 April 2022

On Thursday we were at the Odeon in Milton Keynes to see the NT Live screening of Max Webster’s new production of ‘Henry V’ recorded live at the Donmar Warehouse in London, starring Kit Harrington. This modern dress production creates a disturbingly realistic picture of war in Europe. The intimate setting of the tiny Donmar auditorium gives a claustrophobic feel to the battle scenes. Kit Harrington is very impressive as the King, showing his transition from party animal to inspirational patriotic leader to a cruel victor, guilty of war crimes. Andrew T Mackay’s excellent original music uses a quartet of operatic voices within the cast to evoke an eerie melancholy. And Millicent Wong is great as the Chorus, joining in as part of Henry’s army rather than standing aloof from the action.

'Straight Line Crazy' by David Hare

21 April 2022

Robert Moses was a legendary urban planner in New York State during the first half of the twentieth century. He invented the concept of the State Park, transforming Long Island into a series of parks to provide leisure opportunities for the workers of New York, to the annoyance of the wealthy families who owned large swathes of the area. He achieved his vision with determination and impatience that didn't wait to be given permission to proceed, often literally bulldozing through, ignoring legal obstacles. And his obsession with the motor car as the vehicle of liberation (despite not driving himself) made many of his developments inaccessible to the poorest communities, with no rail or bus provision. Moses was a fascinating, controversial, larger than life character and I can see the attraction for David Hare, whose new play 'Straight Line Crazy' we saw at the Bridge Theatre in London last Friday. Hare has chosen to dramatise two particular incidents from the life of Robert Moses - in 1926 and 1955 - which form the two acts of his play. Both stories would have made brilliant episodes of the design podcast '99% Invisible' or BBC2 documentaries but they don't quite add up to a completely satisfying stage play. The writing is witty and entertaining but it often feels a bit too much like a George Bernard Shaw play where the characters have unrealistically lengthy conversations about ideas. Nevertheless, we enjoyed Nicholas Hytner's production and its great cast, which included Samuel Barnett, Siobhan Cullen and a show stealing turn from Danny Webb as the sweary, cigar smoking New York Governor, Al Smith. But the main attraction was the chance to see Ralph Fiennes as Robert Moses. I had seen Fiennes in the live broadcasts of Simon Godwin's National Theatre productions of 'Man and Superman' (reviewed here in May 2015) and 'Antony and Cleopatra' (reviewed here in December 2018) but I had never seen him in person before. He didn't disappoint: Fiennes is a compelling presence, a very physical actor whose movement reveals the mood and thinking of his character. His careful attention to gesture and stance reminded me of seeing Kenneth Branagh on stage in 'Ivanov' (reviewed here in September 2008). And his transformation into the older Moses of Act 2 is subtle and convincing. 'Straight Line Crazy' was obviously conceived as a star vehicle for Ralph Fiennes. It's not a perfect play but well worth seeing as an acting tour de force.

Van Gogh Self Portraits

21 April 2022

When we visited the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, in October 2019, rather than just following everyone into the first room on the ground floor, we thought we would try to beat the crowds by starting on the top floor and working our way down. Unfortunately this wonderful gallery, devoted solely to the life of Vincent Van Gogh, tells his story chronologically, starting with his birth. We managed to start our visit (spoiler!) with his suicide and bizarrely then followed his progress as a painter backwards! Despite this we really enjoyed the museum - and would highly recommend a visit. Last Friday we were at the newly refurbished Courtauld Gallery at Somerset House in London to see the Van Gogh Self Portraits exhibition. In total Van Gogh painted 35 self portraits: this exhibition has assembled 16 of them, including some of the most well known. It’s a small exhibition, but that allows you to spend plenty of time with each picture. And because it is the same face featured in each portrait, the contrast in styles and techniques feels even more fascinating. It’s a lovely exhibition, and it was also great to visit the Courtauld’s permanent collection and to see the beautifully restored rooms which only reopened last November.

Glenn Tilbrook

13 April 2022

We probably all know the feeling when you go to a concert you have been really looking forward to and, just as it is about to start, you realise there is going to be a support act before the main attraction. But the support act slot is where many artists get their first break, and I have seen many really impressive support acts. I often wonder how artists choose their support acts: I guess you would want someone who your fans will appreciate - so music of the same broad genre but not too close to your own style because you don't want anyone outshining you at your own game. So when we went to The Stables in Wavendon last Friday to see Glenn Tilbrook from Squeeze, I was surprised that the unintroduced young male singer-songwriter who strode on stage to open the concert seemed to echo Glenn Tilbrook's impressively intricate guitar style and had a falsetto voice that sounded remarkably like the Squeeze front-man. Then, from a few of his comments between songs, I realised we were watching Leon Tilbrook - Glenn's son. Like his father, he is an amazing guitar player and his songs were catchy and likeable. And, like all the best support acts,  he didn't outstay his welcome (and returned to duet with his dad in a couple of encores later in the evening). When we last saw Squeeze (at Milton Keynes Theatre, reviewed here in October 2015) Glenn Tilbrook's voice was sounding as good as it had in Squeeze's 1980s heyday. Though he is now a few years older (and strangely looking increasingly like Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys) his voice is still pure and clear. This solo performance gave me a chance to hear most of my favourite Squeeze songs in stripped down arrangements - and to appreciate even more the songwriting genius of Tilbrook and Chris Difford. As I've said here before, you know more Squeeze songs than you realise you do: they have an incredible back catalogue. But it was also interesting to hear Glenn Tilbrook performing some of the covers he recorded for his YouTube channel during lockdown, including the Human League's 'Don't You Want Me'. It was a fantastic gig.

Seville

7 April 2022

We had a lovely holiday in Seville last week – our first trip abroad since 2019. We stayed in a hotel in the middle of the maze-like alleys of Barrio de Santa Cruz - the old Jewish quarter. The weather was lovely – particularly when we heard it had been snowing back home! The old centre of Seville is beautiful. We loved Plaza de Espana - a spectacular fairytale crescent building and courtyard with canals full of rowing boats: it was easy to see why it is often used as a film set. I think the highlight of our visit was the Real Alcazar – the Royal Palace - a fascinating collection of buildings and gardens in Moorish styles with lots of painted tiles, water features and spectacular wooden ceilings. The gardens were extensive and stunning, with palm trees, peacocks, grottos, water gardens and hundreds of orange trees. We saw gardeners shaking oranges out of the trees and gathering them in buckets. Seville Cathedral is also very impressive - the largest gothic church in the world which features the tomb of Christopher Columbus and the stairless Giralda Tower (which you climb via an unusual set of sloping ramps). We also caught the train to Cordoba to visit the Mezquita Mosque-Cathedral - an incredible building: the candy-stripe double-arched columns seem endless, stretching off in mirror-like perspective, but the huge gothic Catholic cathedral inserted into the centre of the older mosque is truly bizarre - a surreal juxtaposition. We visited some beautiful art galleries in Seville and attended a concert by the young Spanish saxophone quartet Synthèse Quartet. But above all it was just lovely to be somewhere different after so long and to remember how good it feels to be on holiday.

'Our Friends in the North' by Peter Flannery

24 March 2022

The 1996 BBC TV adaptation of Peter Flannery’s ‘Our Friends in the North’ would be one of my ‘Desert Island TV serials’ (see my review here in April 2006 for the others). It is an epic tale of the lives of four friends from the 1960s to the 1990s (and through them the recent political history of the country). Now Peter Flannery has adapted the story for BBC Radio 4 as a series of 45-minute radio plays, with the promise of a new final episode set in the year 2020, 25 years after the original series finale. I’ve only listened to the first episode (1964) so far but already I’m hooked. The structure, with most episodes set in the year of a UK general election and all featuring substantial doses of pop music from the year in question, nicely balances the personal journeys of the four lead characters from youth to middle age with the macro political context. ‘Our Friends of the North’ takes on the high-rise planning scandal in the North East, corruption in the Metropolitan Police, the miners’ strike and much more. But ultimately it’s a moving study of four friends, their ambitions and failures. I’m really looking forward to revisiting their stories over the coming weeks. You can listen to ‘Our Friends in the North’ at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0015b7p

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

15 March 2022

Saturday’s Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert was both a glorious celebration of being back together in person for live music-making on a grand scale, and a reflection of our lockdown experience. In 2020, unable to meet as normal, the NSO experimented with online rehearsals using Jamulus (open source low latency software). Each week a small group of us played through orchestral repertoire together online. There were plenty of frustrating technical issues and the sound quality was not wonderful but, in the height of lockdown, it was a really enjoyable and rewarding experience (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK4JrGDc7AA). As it was impossible to assemble a full symphony orchestra on Jamulus we were limited to playing orchestral pieces for which our Music Director, John Gibbons, had a piano transcription so he could fill in the missing parts. One of the works I most enjoyed playing on Jamulus was ‘Symphony No. 2’ by Sergei Rachmaninoff - a huge romantic masterpiece. It was a particularly emotional experience to be sitting in my dining room, with headphones on, playing the achingly beautiful slow movement with friends across the Internet, during such a strange and unsettling period in all our lives. 

When we were finally able to return to face-to-face orchestra rehearsals in 2021, albeit with social distancing and other safety measures, we started by playing through a series of shorter pieces each week. One of the works John Gibbons selected for these first tentative steps to bring the orchestra back together was Carl Nielsen's ‘Helios Overture’ - a lovely evocation of a day - from sunrise to sunset - on a Greek island. 

Last Saturday, in the third concert of our 2021-22 season, the NSO played both the ‘Helios Overture’ and Rachmaninoff’s ‘Symphony No 2’ at St Matthew’s Church in Northampton, together with the ‘Piano Concerto No 2’ by Dimitri Shostakovich. I was really looking forward to the concert but wary that this was going to be an ambitious and exhausting programme. To make sure we would be able to cope with the sheer stamina needed to get through the hour-long symphony, and being particularly nervous that it was still all too possible that we might lose some players at the last minute with positive tests for Covid-19, I assembled seven horn players rather than the usual four, enabling us to share the pieces between us. Fortunately all seven horn players were able to take part in the concert, though we did lose several other members of the orchestra because of Covid and had to find some late replacements who did a fantastic job. This meant we were able to play the ‘Helios Overture’ with seven horns doubling up the four parts, which I thought sounded wonderful (though I may be a little biassed!). 

I didn’t play in the Shostakovich concerto but I really enjoyed listening to a stunning performance by the pianist Maria Marchant. Shostakovich wrote the concerto for his teenage son Maxim to play and it’s a very playful, personal piece with a particularly gorgeous romantic second movement. It was an emotional concert in many ways, starting with the Ukrainian national anthem and with Maria Marchant playing a Ukrainian folk song as her encore. 

Rachmaninoff’s ‘Symphony No 2’ provided a rousing romantic finale, featuring a beautiful clarinet solo by Naomi Muller. It was great fun to perform the symphony as part of a large orchestra in front of a packed audience, in contrast to the experience of playing it in a small group, each isolated in our own homes. 

Our next NSO concert, on 21 May, features the ‘Symphony in D minor’ by Cesar Franck - another of the pieces we played on Jamulus. I’m really looking forward to it.

Buckingham Palace Garden

10 March 2022

On Sunday we were in London for a guided tour of the Buckingham Palace Garden. While large crowds gathered in front of the Palace for the Changing of the Guard It was fascinating to be part of a small group taken around the 39 acre garden behind the Palace. This large green space in the centre of the city was much more like one of the London Royal Parks than the formal gardens I had been expecting. Our guide told us about the work of the Palace gardeners and recent changes to the garden to improve biodiversity. It was also interesting to see the Royal Mews and the back of Buckingham Palace at close quarters - a rare glimpse into a hidden world.

'The Book of Dust - La Belle Sauvage' by Philip Pullman, adapted by Bryony Lavery

4 March 2022

Nicholas Wright’s two-part stage adaptation of Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ novels, premiered in Nicholas Hytner’s production at the National Theatre in London in 2004, felt like a landmark theatrical moment. The use of puppets, operated on stage by black-clad puppeteers, as the animal daemons - the physical manifestation of the human soul - was beautifully done, preceding the National Theatre production of Michael Morpurgo’s ‘War Horse’ by three years. The cast, led by Anna Maxwell Martin as Lyra, included three young actors who would star in Nicholas Hytner’s National Theatre production of ‘The History Boys’ by Alan Bennett later in 2004 and have since become very familiar names - Samuel Barnett, Dominic Cooper and Russell Tovey. ‘His Dark Materials’ was also the professional stage debut for Ben Wishaw, who was about to be thrust into the limelight as the lead in Trevor Nunn's 2004 production of Hamlet at the Old Vic. I have fond memories of our trips to the National Theatre in 2004 to see both parts of ‘His Dark Materials’, so when I learned that Nicholas Hytner was to direct an adaptation, by Bryony Lavery, of Philip Pullman’s prequel ‘La Belle Sauvage’ (reviewed here in November 2017) I quickly bought tickets as a Christmas present for Jeannie - only to discover that she had bought tickets to the same show as my Christmas present! Having returned one set of tickets, last Saturday we made our first visit to the Bridge Theatre - Nick Starr and Nicholas Hytner’s new commercial theatre on the south bank of the Thames next to Tower Bridge. ‘La Belle Sauvage’ is the first of Pullman’s new trilogy of novels ‘The Book of Dust’. It tells the story of Lyra as a baby, through the eyes of twelve-year-old Malcolm Polstead. Malcolm lives with his parents at the Trout Inn outside Oxford, across the river Thames from Godstow Priory where Lyra has been given sanctuary to hide her from the Magisterium. The whole story takes place on or around the River Thames, with a biblical flood taking Malcolm and Lyra as far as our actual location next to London’s Tower Bridge. Whereas the 2004 production of ‘His Dark Materials’ featured a spectacular revolving set on the huge stage of the Olivier Theatre, ‘La Belle Sauvage’ makes brilliant use of the amazing recent technological advances in video projection, turning a bare black stage into the flowing river and much more. The interplay of the actors, Malcolm’s canoe and the swirling projections is visually stunning. And Nicholas Hytner has once again turned to a group of young actors whose progress it will now be fascinating to watch. Samuel Creasey - who plays Macolm Polstead very much in the style of that other History Boy, James Corden - is making his first professional stage appearance, as is Heather Forster - who plays his daemon, Asta. They are joined by Ella Dacres as Alice Parslow - who is a comparable veteran, having previously appeared in one professional production at the National Theatre. They are all excellent, giving a real emotional heart to the story. The puppet daemons seem less surprising than they did 18 years ago but they are still very effective, their glowing eyes dragging our attention around the darkened stage. Above all it was wonderful to be back in a theatre for the first time in ages. ‘La Belle Sauvage’ was gripping, beautiful, funny and incredibly emotional - a perfect Christmas present.