Danny Baker

16 July 2025

On Saturday we were at the Grove Theatre in Dunstable to see Danny Baker. We are long-time fans of the music journalist/comedy writer/broadcaster, and never miss 'The Treehouse' - his twice weekly podcast with Louise Pepper. Saturday was the last night of his latest national tour of reminiscences and storytelling. We had seen him live twice before (reviewed here in May 2018 and March 2023) so we knew what to expect, and he never disappoints. Despite repeatedly reassuring the audience that this show would be a tight two hours, he maintained his continuous fast-paced monologue for more than three hours (with one interval break), in which he hardly stood still, walking rapidly backwards and forwards across the stage. His stories are well rehearsed (and we were familiar with some, though there was plenty of new material) but it is still incredible how he constructs and performs these mammoth shows, without any notes, without drinking anything and with barely a pause in his delivery. And his stories are incredible, hilarious and beautifully told. Through a 50-year career Danny Baker has met just about everyone. In this show he recalled time spent with Kenneth Williams, Lionel Blair, Robert Plant, Leonardo de Caprio, David Moyes, Frankie Howard, Barry Cryer, Hughie Green, Mel Brooks and many more. But somehow these tales never seem like boasting and are all charmingly self-deprecating. 

Wimbledon 2025

16 July 2025

On our last few visits to The Championships at Wimbledon we have been on Court 1, where we have seen some great tennis. But when you are sitting near the top of the stands you feel a long way from the action and it can be distractingly noisy. So this year we were excited to have tickets for the much smaller Court 2. We did have a much better view but last Wednesday was one of the hottest days of the year and there was nowhere to shelter on this open court. Nevertheless we enjoyed seven hours of tennis, seeing three very entertaining doubles matches. We saw the men's doubles quarter final in which the reigning champions, British player Henry Patten and his Finnish partner Harri Heliovaara, were beaten in three tight sets by the all British pair Lloyd Glasspool and Julian Cash - who went on to become the first British duo to win the Wimbledon Men's Doubles title for 89 years. We then saw a very close ladies' doubles quarter final in which Su-Wei Hsieh (Taiwan) and Jelena Ostapenko (Latvia) beat the Romanian/Russian pairing of Sorana Cirstea and Anna Kalinskaya. Finally we saw an invitation ladies' doubles between Johanna Konta/Kiki Bertens and Agnieszka Radwanska/Magdalena Rybarikova - which was very much played for laughs.  

'The List of Suspicious Things' by Jennie Godfrey

16 July 2025

Jennie Godfrey's debut novel 'The List of Suspicious Things' draws on her own childhood in West Yorkshire in the 1970s. It has a lot of similarities to ‘The Trouble with Goats and Sheep’ (reviewed here in January 2022) by Joanna Cannon (who is thanked by Godfrey in the acknowledgements). Both books are mostly narrated in the first person by a young girl who sets out, with her best friend, to solve a mystery that neither of them really understands. In 'The List of Suspicious Things' the naive protagonist, Miv, is slightly older than Grace (in ‘The Trouble with Goats and Sheep’) and the mystery she is obsessed by is the real-world horrific killings by the Yorkshire Ripper. Jennie Godfrey makes Miv a very likeable, entertaining and amusing central presence, and creates a lovely core cast of warm, sympathetic characters. The light comic tone sometimes feels awkward alongside the extremely dark happenings. And the novel suffers a little from first-book-syndrome, trying to pack in too many themes and shocking events. But it's a very engaging story which really conjures up the period and the challenges of childhood interrupted by tragedy. 

'The Constant Wife' by Laura Wade, based on the play by W Somerset Maugham

30 June 2025

Like many of the audience at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon last Saturday, we had bought tickets for the new RSC production of ‘The Constant Wife’ in order to see the Royal Shakespeare Company debut of the TV actor Rose Leslie (Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey, Vigil). So we were initially disappointed, as we entered the theatre, to see a sign saying “Due to the indisposition of Rose Leslie, the role of Constance will be played by Jessica Nesling”. But, in the tradition of many Broadway musicals, this proved to be a great opportunity for the understudy to shine. Jess Nesling seemed to fit the part of Constance like an elegant long evening glove. Laura Wade’s new version of ‘The Constant Wife’, based on the 1926 play by W Somerset Maugham, is a very clever, understated, feminist exploration of the difference economic freedom made to the lives of women in the early twentieth century. On the surface it is an old-fashioned drawing-room play, and Laura Wade preserves most of the format and plot of the original, with only a couple of subtle changes. But the themes feel much more contemporary, and a little knowing meta-textual breaking of the fourth wall keeps it from feeling like a museum-piece without damaging the integrity of the play. Tamara Harvey’s production has a great set by Anna Fleischle which manages to be both realistic and slightly exaggerated. There is original music composed for the show by Jamie Cullum and the period costumes, by Anna Fleischle and Cat Fuller, are beautiful. The cast were all strong but Jess Nesling, who was in almost every scene, fitted the calm, careful, determined ingenuity of Constance perfectly - the actor, like her character, doing things her way. 

'The Ballad of Wallis Island'

25 June 2025

On Tuesday I was at the Curzon cinema at Milton Keynes Gallery to see 'The Ballad of Wallis Island' - a beautiful melancholy comedy written by and starring Tom Basden and Tim Key, directed by James Griffiths. Tom Basden and Carey Mulligan play an estranged folk duo, persuaded to reunite for a one-off performance on a remote Welsh island by a wealthy benefactor. Tim Key's Charles uncomfortably fills every silence with inane running commentary and puns - but it is clear that every one of his awkward words has been carefully crafted by the poet Tim Key. This feels a more mature, thoughtful drama than I have seen before from either Basden or Key, though it is still very funny and has a couple of great slapstick moments. These characters get past their initial cartoonish mannerisms (irritatingly nerdy and self-importantly broody) to become properly sympathetic. The original songs (written by Tom Basden) are serious and beautiful - and excellently sung by Basden and Carey Mulligan. When the end titles started, everyone in the cinema sat in silence listening to the final song right to the end of the credits before anyone moved. And Sian Clifford almost steals the show as the cheerful, helpful but hopeless shopkeeper. It's a gentle, lovely, moving film. 

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

18 June 2025

Last Saturday's Northampton Symphony Orchestra 'Film Night' concert, conducted by John Gibbons, at the Spinney Theatre in Northampton was an incredibly enjoyable evening - a great introduction for those members of our packed audience who told us it was their first experience of going to a live orchestral concert. 

We started the concert with one of the most famous musical moments in film history, from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' - the opening fanfare of 'Also sprach Zarathustra' by Richard Strauss.  When Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws' came out in 1975 I was too young to go to see it but I distinctly remember walking to school past the Scala cinema in Withington which, instead of the useful small identikit lettering to announce the film showing that week, was displaying the word JAWS in six-foot high lettering, dripping with blood! 'Jaws', which is often credited with inventing the modern Hollywood blockbuster, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Its success owes much to John Williams and "the scariest two notes in musical history ... a theme that catches you by the ears and drags you by the ankles", according to a recent article in The Washington Post. Our performance of John Williams's 'Suite from Jaws' featured brilliant trumpet solos from Dan Newitt. Our performance was also notable for the sinister appearance of shark fins on the heads of the first violin players.

We finished the first half of the concert with the 'Symphony No 2' by Howard Hanson, which was used for the closing credits of the film 'Alien' (without the composer's permission) and was later cited by John Williams as the model for his music for 'E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial'. Hanson is not very well known these days but was an important and influential 20th century American composer. His second symphony ('The Romantic') is a gorgeous schmaltzy piece which suggests Hanson might have been the missing link between Aaron Copland and John Williams. It features some beautiful solo horn counter-melodies which I really enjoyed playing, and our trumpet section sounded magnificent.

The second half of the concert included Ennio Morricone's 'L'Ultima Diligenza di Red Rock' from Quentin Tarantino's 'The Hateful Eight' - featuring gorgeous growling contra-bassoon solos by Frank Jordan - followed by Malcolm Arnold's music for Ralph Thomas's 1961 British film 'No Love for Johnnie' (reconstructed and orchestrated by Philip Lane) - with beautiful oboe solos by Sarah Mourant. 

For many the highpoint of the concert was the music from Hayao Miyazaki's 2004 Studio Ghibli animated film 'Howl's Moving Castle' in the Symphonic Variation "Merry-go-round" by Joe Hisaishi - particularly the solo piano theme, beautifully played by Georgina Neil.

The concert concluded with three pieces from John Williams' music for the 'Star Wars' series - from three different films: 'The Asteroid Field' (from 'The Empire Strikes Back'), 'Across the Stars (from 'Attack of the Clones') and 'The Throne Room and End Title' from the original 'Star Wars'. This provided a thrilling end to a great concert with the whole brass section in excellent form, and it was fantastic to have all seven regular NSO horn players playing the famous 'Star Wars' theme.   

Adriatic Cruise

12 June 2025

I think our cruise around the Adriatic on the Cunard ship Queen Victoria was one of our best holidays. We visited ten different places and really enjoyed them all. Before joining the ship we had a couple of nights in Rome, visiting the the Colosseum and the Forum, and walking from Campo de'Fiori to the Spanish Steps by way of the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain and much more. Our first port of call on the cruise was Argostoli on Cephalonia in Greece where we saw ceratta ceratta sea turtles swimming in the lagoon, followed by a visit to Corfu. Next stop was Kotor in Montenegro, known as the southernmost fjord in Europe (though it is actually a ria - a submerged river canyon) which did look like Norway juxtaposed with a pretty medieval walled town very similar to Dubrovnik in Croatia, which was our next stop. We had previously visited Dubrovnik several times during our lovely holiday in Slano, Croatia, in 2017, so this time we headed straight to the Old Town Port to catch the ferry to Lokrum Island- a beautiful forested nature reserve, surrounded by deep blue sea. Trieste, Italy, is a pretty city which boasts the largest sea-facing square in Europe (Piazza Unità d'Italia). Zadar in Croatia is situated on a peninsula, with water on three sides, and reminded us of Cadiz and Valletta. Split in Croatia has a unique old town - a domino divided into two squares: the ruins of the the Roman retirement palace for the Emperor Diocletian (who was originally from Dalmatia) which is built on a strict grid system; and the later medieval old town which is a maze of irregular diagonal passageways. When we stopped in Valletta, Malta, (where we had been on our previous cruise in March) we took the opportunity to visit Mdina - a beautifully preserved medieval walled hill town that reminded us of the hill towns in Tuscany we visited last year. Our last port was Sorrento, Italy, built on the side of a steep gorge, high above the sea, from where we looked down on our cruise ship, and over to Mount Vesuvius. It was a lovely cruise with fascinating destinations and perfect weather.

You can see a small selection of my photos from the cruise here. 

'The Bean Trees' by Barbara Kingsolver

11 June 2025

Having enjoyed 'Demon Copperhead' (reviewed here in March 2024), I have now read Barbara Kingsolver's 1988 novel 'The Bean Trees'. While 'Demon Copperhead' is clearly a retelling of 'David Copperfield', this much earlier novel demonstrates Barbara Kingsolver has always written Dickensian stories - with an extended cast of quirky, loveable characters. Her focus is on the realities of working class America - people struggling to find somewhere to live and something to eat whilst still managing to show kindness to strangers. The background story of an underground railway supporting asylum seekers from Guatemala feels sadly contemporary. Barbara Kingsolver writes brilliantly in the voices and dialects of ordinary people, and every page seems to contain poetic, quotable phrases. 

'Commonwealth' by Ann Patchett

11 June 2025

I am continuing to work my way through the novels of Ann Patchett and really enjoyed her 2016 book 'Commonwealth'. Like 'Run' (reviewed here in June 2024), 'Tom Lake' (reviewed here in October 2024) and 'The Dutch House' (reviewed here in January 2025), 'Commonwealth' is a cleverly constructed family saga, which jumps forward and backwards in time to build the story of a blended family of six siblings and step-siblings who spend their childhood summers together in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It's a beautifully written examination of the complexities of what happens within families, and whose stories they are to tell. From the first page you feel you are in safe hands with Ann Patchett. 

'The Uninvited Guests' by Sadie Jones

11 June 2025

'The Uninvited Guests' is an enthralling and entertaining novel by Sadie Jones. Set in a formerly grand country house in 1912, it starts as a gently quirky comedy of manners as the family and their servants prepare the house for a birthday party. But the book quickly becomes more complicated and interesting with the arrival of unexpected guests. The story switches between puzzling, comic, sinister, surreal and farcical. It reminded me of elements of Edward Albee's 'A Delicate Balance', Arnold Ridley's 'The Ghost Train' and J B Priestly's 'An Inspector Calls', with a hint of P G Wodehouse. A gripping and enjoyable read. 

'Mr Wilder and Me' by Jonathan Coe

22 May 2025

Having enjoyed Jonathan Coe’s latest novel 'The Proof of My Innocence' (reviewed here in December 2024) I realised there was a gap in my Jonathan Coe collection. I had somehow missed his 2020 book ‘Mr Wilder and Me’, which I have now read as an unabridged audio book (narrated by Kristin Atherton). In a break from Coe’s novels set against the backdrop of recent British politics, this gentle elegiac story recounts a teenager in 1976 meeting the legendary veteran film director Billy Wilder. As he approaches the end of his career Wilder - famous for his classic comedies - is trying to make a more serious, personal movie that is not really working. Coe takes the opportunity not just to indulge his own cinephile enthusiasms but also to reflect on the experience of those who lived through the horrors of the Second World War and the difficult relationship Jewish filmmakers who left Europe for Hollywood then had with their home continent. But it is tempting to see Coe himself in this novel - famous for his satirical comedies and now trying to write a more serious, personal book which doesn’t entirely work. Nevertheless I love Jonathan Coe’s distinctive voice and carefully constructed narrative and it was good to fill this omission in my knowledge of his works.

'The Brightening Air' by Conor McPherson

14 May 2025

On Saturday we were at the Old Vic theatre in London to see ‘The Brightening Air’ - a new play written and directed by Conor McPherson, author of ‘The Weir’. Set in a remote farmhouse in County Sligo in 1981, ‘The Brightening Air’ is a dark comic tale of family relationships, focussing on three grown-up siblings and the inheritance of their family home. The influence of Chekov is plain from the start and the Irish setting reminded me of the production of 'Vanya', adapted by Simon Stephens starring Andrew Scott, that we saw last year (reviewed here in February 2024). ‘The Brightening Air’ - which takes its title from a poem by W.B. Yeats - also clearly belongs in the tradition of Irish drama from J.M. Synge to Martin McDonagh (with some particular similarities to Synge’s ‘The Well of The Saints’). The Old Vic production has a great cast, including Chris O’Dowd and Brian Gleeson as the warring brothers and Rosie Sheehy (who we last saw as Puck in the RSC production of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, reviewed here in March 2024) stealing the show as their autistic sister Billie. There are some wonderful comic lines and brilliant set-piece scenes. It was very enjoyable and I might have been missing something about the allusions to Irish folklore and magic but I wasn’t sure it all added up to a completely coherent plot. 

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

7 May 2025

Last Saturday's Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert featured Prokofiev's 'Symphony No 7', which I first played in 1988 as a member of the Manchester Youth Orchestra. Despite having not played the symphony in the intervening years I was amazed, when we started rehearsing it in March 2025, how well I remembered it. There was a rigour to the youth orchestra approach that means I can still remember subdividing the beats to determine the precise lengths of particular notes. Prokofiev's final symphony feels like a companion piece to his first. 'Symphony No 1 (The Classical Symphony)' was completed in 1917 in the style of Haydn and Mozart, and 'Symphony No. 7' (completed in 1952, having been commissioned by the Children’s Division of State Radio and described as a ‘Children’s Symphony’) has a similar clean simplicity. Prokofiev writes beautiful, catchy tunes and the seventh symphony has plenty, with its obvious joyfulness and passion sitting alongside darker poignant moments. He is also a clever orchestrator and, while our NSO performance included many brilliant solos from across the orchestra, this is a symphony in which the stars are the tuba (Nick Tollervey), the piano (Georgina Neil) and the harp (Chris Clarke), all of whom were outstanding. 

Shortly after I joined the NSO in 2000, at one Wednesday rehearsal I was amazed to walk into the room to see Rachel Chapman, who I had played with in the Manchester Youth Orchestra. I didn't know that she had recently moved to Milton Keynes and she didn't realise I was living in Bedfordshire. We were delighted to be reunited and have played together in NSO for nearly 25 years. Saturday was Rachel's final NSO concert as she is moving to the Lake District, and it was lovely to finish our years of playing together with a piece we had both played in the youth orchestra so many years ago. At the end of the symphony, when conductor John Gibbons, asked the trumpets to take a bow, Terry and Stephen deliberately remained seated to allow Rachel to take the applause alone. She has been a really important long serving member of the brass section and was a brilliant Chair of the orchestra. She will be much missed but we hope to see her again as an occasional guest player.

We started Saturday's concert with the'Overture' by the female Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz. Written in 1943 in German‑occupied Warsaw this is an understandably serious piece of music, with an insistent rhythmic underpinning that suggests a determined resistance, and hints of a brighter future on the horizon. It was a timely reminder of the dark days of the war, in the week when we are marking the 80th anniversary of VE Day.

The first half of our concert also featured Dvorak's 'Violin Concerto' which I didn't know before we started rehearsing it. Dvorak's 'Cello Concerto' (which we last played with NSO in November 2018) is a gorgeous piece, incredibly popular and often performed, and I was looking forward to something similar. Initially I was quite disappointed: the Violin Concerto just doesn't sound like Dvorak as we know him from his symphonies or the Cello Concerto. But when I began to see the similarities between this concerto and Beethoven or Brahms - and started to think of Dvorak building on these composers as Prokofiev did on Haydn and Mozart - the concerto really grew on me. It also helped to have an amazing soloist to show us the excitement in the piece. Sharon Zhou gave a thrilling performance which always sounded like she was playing with a smile.

At a time of so much angst, horror and uncertainty in the world, John Gibbons was determined we should end our concert on an upbeat note. 'Overture: Brighton Beach' by the contemporary British composer Paul Lewis is a ridiculously jolly seaside postcard that evokes the south coast resort in all its guises. In the middle section the wind, brass and percussion form a military band playing ‘Sussex by the Sea' on the pier. This leaves the string players unusually under occupied and it was lovely to see many of them enjoying their day on the beach with knotted hankies on heads, reading newspapers and wearing water wings. It was lots of fun and the piece was clearly a big hit with our audience in Christchurch, Northampton.

'Back to the Future: The Musical' by Bob Gale, Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard

1 May 2025

I was 17 years old when ‘Back to the Future’ came out in 1985 and it has always been one of my favourite films. Robert Zemeckis’ comic time-travel caper, starring Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd, may not be the most sophisticated piece of fim-making but the ridiculous plot is neatly crafted and the period detail and music make it great fun. On Saturday we were at the Adelphi Theatre in London’s West End to see ‘Back To The Future: The Musical’. The stage version of the movie features a book by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, adapted from their original screenplay, and new music and lyrics by Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard alongside elements of Silvestri’s film score and other songs used in the film. It’s a lovely recreation of the film, complete with the DeLorean car. Caden Brauch and Cory English are great as Marty McFly and Doc Brown, but Orlando Gibbs nearly steals the show as George McFly - a brilliant physical performance, recreating George’s shy gawkiness from the film but with more dancing. The romantic denouement at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance was genuinely moving, feeling almost Shakespearean. And the special effects at the show’s climax with the DeLorean racing towards 88 mph were stunning - a thrilling theatrical moment. I know a large proportion of my appreciation of the show was down to nostalgia but I loved it.

'Sister Midnight' by Karan Kandhari

23 April 2025

On Saturday we were at the Curzon cinema at Milton Keynes Gallery to see ‘Sister Midnight’ - the debut feature film by British-Indian film-maker Karan Kandhari. This Hindi-language film, set in India, is beautiful, intriguing, funny, gruesome, confusing and incredibly weird! I think I enjoyed it, but it’s hard to be sure: I certainly haven’t stopped thinking about it. The film shows the early stages of married life in Mumbai following an arranged marriage between a couple from a village, who had only briefly met as children. (As they struggle to get on as husband and wife, Uma complains “You used to be so sensitive!” to which Gopal replies “I was eight!”) Kandhari presents a series of short, mostly wordless, beautifully constructed tableau scenes that demonstrate Uma’s hopeless, helpless days left alone in their one-room shack on a busy road while Gopal is at work. Bollywood star Radhika Apte is brilliant as Uma, conveying a rich palate of emotions largely through her eyes. There isn’t much of a narrative arc, but part-way through the film takes an odd turn towards black-comic horror. It’s hard to know what is supposed to be real and what might be Uma’s hallucinations, and it’s hard to see where the film is going. But Radhika Apte is a captivating actor and ‘Sister Midnight’ is an oddly enjoyable but very strange experience.

'Celestial Navigation' by Anne Tyler

17 April 2025

I am continuing to explore the early works of Anne Tyler, one of the great contemporary American novelists. Having read her 1980 novel ‘Morgan’s Passing’ (reviewed here in February 2022) I have now discovered ‘Celestial Navigation’ - Anne Tyler’s 5th novel, originally published in 1974. ‘Celestial Navigation’ has a quintessential Anne Tyler setting, focussing on domestic family life in Baltimore, but like ‘Morgan’s Passing’ it feels more experimental than her later, more famous, novels. It has a likeable eccentric main character, an interesting narrative structure and spans many years. Each chapter feels like a jump-cut as we leap forward in time and switch to the perspective of a different character, leaving the reader to fill in the jigsaw puzzle of what has happened since the previous chapter. Anne Tyler creates a cast of quirky oddballs living together in a house of lodgers, all of whom are amusing, exasperating and deeply sympathetic. It’s a light comic novel with real pathos and jeopardy - ultimately quite a sad story, but beautifully written and very engaging.

'A Tidy Ending' by Joanna Cannon

11 April 2025

The novelist Joanna Cannon seems to have a particular interest in the naive narrator. In ‘The Trouble with Goats and Sheep’ (reviewed here in January 2022) many of the novel’s chapters are narrated in the first person by 10-year-old Grace, and in 'Three Things About Elsie' (reviewed here in November 2023) the first person narrator is Florence, a woman in her 80s with failing memory, living in a retirement home. Joanna Cannon’s 2022 novel ‘A Tidy Ending’ similarly keeps the reader guessing about how much its protagonist really understands what is going on around her. It’s no mean feat to write a twisty thriller about a serial killer in the same gently quirky ‘cosy crime’ style as her previous novels without making it distasteful. ‘A Tidy Ending’ is intriguing, puzzling, creepy and cleverly plotted. 

Cruise from Malta

10 April 2025

We had a very enjoyable Mediterranean cruise last week on the P&O ship Azura, visiting Valletta in Malta, Athens in Greece and Heraklion and Chania in Crete. We particularly enjoyed our first visit to Valletta - a beautiful old town set on a plateau on a narrow peninsula with water on three sides. It's very pretty with some very grand buildings, all in a distinctive sand coloured stone, built in a grid system. In Athens we visited the Temple of Olympian Zeus next to Hadrian's Gate. This temple was larger than the Parthenon but only 15 of its 100 columns are still standing. There are good views from the site across to the Acropolis. We also visited the National Archaeological Museum which has an extensive collection of artifacts from ancient Greece, many dating from 3,000 years BC. From Heraklion we went to the Palace of Knossos - a fascinating archaeological site with some of the buildings reconstructed (in cement) by Sir Arthur Evans when he excavated the site in 1900. These reconstructions are gradually being replaced but they do give an idea of the scale of some of the buildings. Chania is a pretty town with a picturesque harbour but we didn't see it at its best, having arrived during a torrential thunderstorm. We had a lovely, relaxing cruise with good food, company and dancing.

Milton Keynes Sinfonia concert

26 March 2025

In March 2020 I stepped in at the last moment to deputise for one of the horn players in Milton Keynes Sinfonia who was ill, giving me the unexpected pleasure of playing Beethoven’s ‘Symphony No 5’ at the Chrysalis Theatre in Milton Keynes in one of the last live concerts before we entered lockdown. Last Saturday I was in a similar position, as a late replacement for an ill horn player, returning to the Chrysalis Theatre to play Beethoven's ‘Symphony No. 6’ (The Pastoral) with Milton Keynes Sinfonia. I've known the clarinetist Christine Kelk for many years, and I was aware that she had been chair of the Milton Keynes Sinfonia for a long time, but I was amazed to discover that she's now celebrating 50 years with the orchestra. Saturday's concert was a tribute with a programme, chosen entirely by Christine, which featured two of her favourite pieces of all time. Alongside the Beethoven Pastoral Symphony, the concert included Mozart's ‘Clarinet Concerto’ with the brilliant young clarinet player Poppy Beddow. We started with Rossini's famous overture ‘The Thieving Magpie’, but it was the Beethoven I enjoyed the most, in a strong performance crafted by conductor David Knight, with great clarinet playing by Tim Mackley. It was clearly a very popular programme with the packed audience: a really enjoyable concert.

'Lives Less Ordinary: Working-Class Britain Re-seen' conceived and curated by Samantha Manton

20 March 2025

Two Temple Place is a beautifully eccentric neo Tudor/Gothic building on the Victoria Embankment in London. Commissioned by and built for William Waldorf Astor in the 1890s, Two Temple Place is now owned by The Bulldog Trust and hosts a year-round programme of community and cultural activity. Its wood panelled rooms and stained glass windows make it a slightly incongruous setting for the current exhibition 'Lives Less Ordinary: Working-Class Britain Re-seen'. This fascinating collection of works by artists from working-class backgrounds, conceived and curated by Samantha Manton, explores the overlooked richness and diversity of working-class life and creative expression from the 1950s to the present day. As I started to walk around the exhibition the tone of celebration of the joy, fun and passions of ordinary everyday life reminded me both of the Pitmen Painters of Ashington (celebrated in Lee Hall’s play ‘The Pitmen Painters’, reviewed here in October 2009 and November 2019) and of Hetain Patel's ‘Come As You Really Are’ exhibition in Croydon (reviewed here in September 2024). So it was wonderful then to come across pieces by some of the Pitmen Painters and by Hetain Patel, later in the exhibition. It was good to see the very recognisable paintings of Beryl Cook, but it is the many images of ordinary, often unnamed, people that dominate Lives Less Ordinary. The majority of the exhibition consists of photographs - beautiful, stark depictions of everyday life from the 1950s, 80s and 90s. Most focus on the people and their interests and enthusiasms, rather than on the difficulties of their lives. And the other recurring theme that jumped out was the places depicted - including Middlesbrough, Stoke on Trent, Liverpool, Northumberland, Glasgow, Handsworth, Rochdale, Bolton etc. I was struck by a quote from the painter George Shaw, whose practice revolves around the Tile Hill Estate in the Midlands: “If you can't find yourself in your own backyard you're not going to find yourself in the Serengeti, are you? So for me, it was taking those cliches of epiphany and the sublime and putting them in a place where great thoughts aren't rumoured to happen.” It was also great to see a display about the Desi Pubs project developed by the Creative People and Places consortium Creative Black Country which I featured in my 2016 report ‘The role of voluntary arts activity and everyday participation in Creative People and Places’. The exhibition's aim is "recognising the extraordinary in the ordinary". It's on until 20 April and is free. More details here.
 

‘What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory’ by Brian Eno and Bette A.

14 March 2025

I had seen some of the publicity about ‘What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory’, the new book by Brian Eno and Bette Adriaanse, but it was when a friend at one of our partner organisations emailed me to say “it is essentially a manifesto for everyday creativity … I am buying a dozen copies and passing them around everyone involved!” that I thought I must get around to reading it. It is a short, beautifully produced book, with witty illustrations by Bette Adriaanse, and its message is both simple and incredibly thought provoking. Much of Eno and Adriaanse’s theory seems to focus on everyday creativity (though they don’t use that term). They suggest ‘art’ means “all kinds of things where somebody does more than is absolutely necessary for the sake of the feeling they get by doing it” and that “making art seems to be a universal human activity”. I also liked their comparisons with science: they say “Science makes models of things so we can understand how they work. Art makes models of things so we can understand how we work.” and “Just as we need science to tell us how the changing world is, we need art to help find out how we feel about it.” ‘What Art Does’ is a cleverly simple answer to a seemingly impossible question.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

4 March 2025

To prepare for each of our Northampton Symphony Orchestra concerts I usually practise at home by playing along with recordings. Often, while I am trying to get grips with a piece I haven't played before, I find that the available recordings are all too fast to keep up with. Even when I have learned my part it can be difficult to match the pace of a professional orchestra. But usually NSO conductor John Gibbons finds a speed that allows us to give a good account of the composer's intentions, without pushing the orchestra beyond its limits. In our concert at the Spinney Theatre in Northampton last Saturday, however, I think our piano soloist Anthony Hewitt actually played much of Ravel's 'Piano Concerto in G major' faster than any of the recordings I had been using. It was an incredibly exciting performance which the orchestra just about managed to keep up with. The concerto is an amazing piece, which NSO last played in 2008 with Lucy Parham (reviewed here in November 2008). It’s fiendishly difficult, with complex rhythms and bluesy melodies that sound very like Gershwin. The slow movement is a beautiful gentle waltz, which opens with almost three minutes of unaccompanied solo piano and then features a gorgeous extended cor anglais solo, exquisitely played in our performance by Harriet Brown.

All three works in Saturday's concert, while very different in style, were linked by elements of dance and syncopated rhythms. 'The Chairman Dances: Foxtrot for Orchestra' by John Adams is a companion piece to his 1986 opera 'Nixon in China'. Playing John Adams' minimalist style is a very particular challenge for an orchestra, requiring incredible concentration and counting not to lose your place in the repetitive patterns of notes. It came together really well in the performance which I think was the best the orchestra had played the piece.

We concluded the concert with Rachmaninoff's brilliant late orchestral work 'Symphonic Dances'. Everyone I have spoken to who knows the 'Symphonic Dances' seems to love the piece. I hadn't played it before but it has been really enjoyable getting to know it over the past eight weeks. Rachmaninoff incorporates echoes of the music of Stravinsky, Tchaikowsky and Copland as well as referencing many of his own other works. The lush romantic harmonies I associate with the Rachmaninoff symphonies and piano concertos are present, but here marshalled into a driving rhythmic framework. And his melodies are achingly beautiful, particularly the second movement's wistful Viennese waltz and the breathtaking alto saxophone solo in the first movement, beautifully played by Graham Tear. The finale, with its jigsaw puzzle of syncopated cross-rhythms built to a stunning climax which was a fitting end to a thrilling concert.

'Killing Thatcher' by Rory Carroll

28 February 2025

Robin: I’ve just finished reading ‘Killing Thatcher’, Rory Carroll’s fascinating account of the 1984 Brighton bombing of the Conservative Party Conference. This meticulously researched book examines the paths that led to Brighton for both the IRA bomber Patrick Magee and the Prime Minister. He works hard to explain the motivations both for the bombing and for Margaret Thatcher’s approach to Northern Ireland - including a brilliant six-page summary of the origins of The Troubles. The chapter recounting in detail the early hours of 12 October 1984 at the Grand Hotel in Brighton is horrific and gripping. And the tale of the subsequent manhunt is like a thrilling police procedural novel. Rory Carroll also ponders the consequences of the sliding doors moment that came so close to killing a British Prime Minister and how this would have significantly changed history in Britain and Ireland and across the world.

Spiers & Boden

25 February 2025

When we saw the brilliant folk big band Bellowhead at the Riverside Theatre in Aylesbury last November (reviewed here in November 2024) I described it as "possibly the best gig I have ever been to". So it was great to get the chance this week to see Bellowhead founders Spiers & Boden again at The Stables in Wavendon. I last saw John Spiers (melodeon) and Jon Boden (fiddle) playing as a duo at The Stables in 2022 (reviewed here in July 2022) when they were promoting their 2021 album 'Fallow Ground'. This week's performance felt very much a reprise of that tour, still mainly featuring the songs and tunes from 'Fallow Ground'. But you can't really complain about traditional folk musicians not doing new material and it was another brilliant concert. Spiers & Boden are great ambassadors for English folk music, entertainingly explaining what an orphan Morris-dance tune is, why the same tune gains completely different titles as it is passed on from one community to another, and why a lengthy narrative ballad from the 13th century survives with only a fraction of its original verses. They are also outstanding musicians and it is always a pleasure to see them live.

'Hamlet' by William Shakespeare

25 February 2025

I still have fond memories of the period when Rupert Goold was the Artistic Director of the Royal and Derngate theatres in Northampton (now more than 20 years ago). His productions were always inventive and ambitious and it has been fascinating to watch his career since, including a spectacularly over the top staging of 'The Merchant of Venice' in the newly refurbished Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2011 (reviewed here in June 2011). Now, as he prepares to take over as Artistic Director of the Old Vic in London next year, Rupert Goold has returned to Stratford to direct a stunning new RSC production of 'Hamlet' which we saw last Saturday. He has chosen to set the play entirely on a ship, creating an even more claustrophobic feel to Elsinore with the cast trapped together by the ocean. Es Devlin's magnificent set turns the Royal Shakespeare Theatre stage into the deck of a ship, with the bow pointing directly out into the stalls, surrounded by large tanks of water, and Akhila Krishnan's video design showing the ship's wake at the rear of the set. Luke Thallon is a brilliant, restless, twitchy Hamlet, giving the famous speeches a realistic feel as he appears to be thinking out loud. He is supported by a strong cast including Jared Harris as Claudius, Nancy Carroll as Gertrude, Elliot Levey as Polonius and Anton Lesser as the Ghost and the Player King. But they all risk being upstaged by the set. As the drama becomes more intense the ship starts to move, with the whole vast stage tilting. The final scene, with the swordfight between Hamlet and Laertes taking place as the steeply angled deck starts to plunge into the waves, is genuinely thrilling - an amazing theatrical experience. 

'A Real Pain' by Jesse Eisenberg

18 February 2025

On Friday we were at the Curzon cinema at Milton Keynes Gallery to see ‘A Real Pain’. Written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg, ‘A Real Pain’ follows two Jewish cousins from New York (played by Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) on a trip to Poland to visit places associated with their late grandmother. It’s a beautiful, subtle, moving film: the cousins’ odd-couple relationship is funny but the humour is gentle. The film explores the believable complexities of grief and pain - and the impossibility of judging hierarchies of pain. The visit to a former concentration camp is incredibly powerful, more so for its use of silence. ‘A Real Pain’ is a thoughtful film that doesn’t outstay its welcome and wonderfully resists the temptation to try to solve the challenges it presents. 

'Table for Two' by Amor Towles

14 February 2025

When we watched the 2024 Hay Festival interview with the American author Amor Towles a few weeks ago (reviewed here in February 2025) he gave a fascinating analysis of the craft of writing short stories and the different approach this requires compared to writing a novel. Amor Towles is the author of two of my favourite novels of recent years - 'A Gentleman in Moscow' (reviewed here in September 2021) and 'The Lincoln Highway' (reviewed here in February 2022) but I realised I hadn’t got around to reading his 2024 collection of short stories ‘Table for Two’. So I immediately embarked on ‘Table for Two’ (as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Edoardo Ballerini and J. Smith Cameron). It’s a series of very entertaining short stories, mostly set in New York in the late 1990s, followed by a longer novella. The stories have the feel of old-fashioned fables and Towles writes with wit, precision and gentility. Having not read a collection of short stories for many years I found it interesting that, not only do they demand a different technique from the writer, short stories also require a different approach from the reader. In these carefully crafted miniature narratives every word counts and you need to pay close attention from the start. Each story closes with a revealing twist or a satisfying denouement but it’s sometimes hard to anticipate the length and scope of the tale and I found myself concentrating to avoid being taken by surprise by a sudden ending. The stories in ‘Table for Two’ are not connected but it was very enjoyable to rediscover a character from Amor Towles’ first novel ‘Rules of Civility’ whose story picks up directly from her departure from the novel.

Hay Anytime

7 February 2025

We have been regular attenders of the Edinburgh International Book Festival since 1995, usually taking in a few sessions each August while we are in Edinburgh for the Fringe. But we tend to find that the majority of the authors featured in the festival programme are unfamiliar to us. Although we've never been to the Hay Festival, we are enthusiastic users of its extensive online archive which is so big it seems to include all our favourite writers. We first discovered the Hay Player during lockdown when we watched the recording of Natalie Haynes' bravura summary of the whole of the Trojan War in just over an hour, 'Troy Story' (reviewed here in July 2020). Hay Anytime contains thousands of audio and film recordings from the past 20 years of the Hay Festival and costs £20 for an annual subscription. We've recently watched talks and interviews from the past couple of Hay Festivals about some of our favourite recent books - including Jasper Fforde talking about 'Red Side Story' (reviewed here in April 2024), Mick Herron reflecting on his 'Slough House' series of comic spy novels (reviewed here between November 2023 and June 2024) and William Dalrymple discussing 'The Anarchy' (reviewed here in June 2023). And in his May 2024 Hay Festival interview, the American author Amor Towles (author of 'A Gentleman in Moscow', reviewed here in September 2021 and 'The Lincoln Highway', reviewed here in February 2022) gives one of the clearest, most interesting explanations of the process of writing fiction that I've heard. There are so many gems in the Hay Anytime archive you are sure to find something for you. Highly recommended.

Battersea Power Station

31 January 2025

On Saturday we made a first visit to the recently restored Battersea Power Station in London. This iconic Art Deco building designed by J. Theo Halliday and Giles Gilbert Scott has been beautifully refurbished to create a complex of shops, restaurants and a cinema on the banks of the Thames. Compared to the Bankside Power Station that became the Tate Modern Gallery with its huge turbine hall, Battersea is on a different scale with its dual turbine halls and immense chimneys. It feels like a secular version of a Norman Cathedral - but bigger! We were there to see The Light Festival 2025 - a free interactive art trail of eight light installations by artists inside the Power Station and in the area outside it. We also took the journey up Lift 109, a large circular elevator that rises through one of the Power Station's giant chimneys to emerge above the top of the chimney (like 'Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator') with 360 degree views across the Thames and most of London. It was a bright sunny day and the views from 109 metres above the river were spectacular. But it's the building itself that's the star, a redbrick Art Deco behemoth dwarfing everything around it. Well worth a visit.

'Starlings' by Dekel

23 January 2025

I'm really enjoying 'Starlings' - a lovely album from the singer songwriter Dekel which spans a variety of styles including folk, swing and klezmer. The songs are light, gentle and uplifting, accompanied by acoustic instruments including guitar, accordion, 'cello and clarinet. It's a thoughtful, joyful collection which reminded me (because of its Eastern European/Balkan influences) of the albums by Beirut (reviewed here in November 2006 and October 2007) and the Warsaw Village Band (reviewed here in September 2008). You can listen to Starlings here.

'Here One Moment' by Liane Moriarty

16 January 2025

Over the last couple of years I have enjoyed discovering the novels of the Australian author, Liane Moriarty, including 'Apples May Fall' (reviewed here in September 2022), 'The Husband's Secret' (reviewed here in September 2023) and 'The Hypnotist's Love Story'. Her latest novel, 'Here One Moment', published in August of last year, is an easy and enjoyable read with interesting structure and a surprisingly life-affirming perspective on mortality. 'Here One Moment' brings together a diverse group of characters on a flight from Tasmania to Sydney. When a woman on the flight announces when and how each of the other passengers is going to die this shocking news is the catalyst for a series of short stories, each focusing on the individual reactions of the characters to their impending deaths. This feels like the start of a supernatural ghost story, but Liane Moriarty cleverly shifts the focus to the human experience, offering a charming and surprisingly optimistic take on a serious subject.

'Dr Strangelove' adapted by Armando Iannucci and Sean Foley

15 January 2025

Stanley Kubrick's classic bleak cold war satire 'Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb' came out in 1963, eighteen months after the Cuban Missile Crisis. It painted a chillingly believable scenario in which the carefully poised balance of the nuclear deterrent could be tipped into mutually assured destruction by the actions of one unhinged individual. On Saturday we were at the Noel Coward Theatre in London's West End to see the new stage adaptation of 'Dr Strangelove' by Armando Iannucci and Sean Foley. The film is famous for Peter Sellers' portrayal of multiple characters and the stage version features Steve Coogan playing four parts (the three played by Sellers but also Major Kong - memorably played by Slim Pickens in the film). It was fun to see the film recreated on stage and there were some great comic performances from the (almost  entirely male) cast, but as a two hour play it really needed a bit more plot. Steve Coogan is very funny in all four roles and it was great to see him on stage but apart from the enjoyable game of watching how he is going to manage to switch from one character to another in the same scene the show felt a bit slight. I did however enjoy the recreation of the famous scenes from the film through Hildegard Bechtler's magnificent set, particularly the US President's War Room with its 'big board'.

'The Dutch House' by Ann Patchett

8 January 2025

It's a very enjoyable feeling settling into a novel by Ann Patchett: you're never quite sure where she is going to take you,, but you know from the start that you're in safe hands. Having enjoyed four of her books over the past couple of years (including, most recently 'Tom Lake', reviewed here in October 2024) I have just finished reading her 2019 novel 'The Dutch House'. This is a clever family saga about a childhood in a beautiful but intimidating house, interrupted by the arrival of a new stepmother. It's beautifully written and carefully constructed through a first person narration that flits backwards and forwards in time to gradually fill in the family story.

'Twelfth Night' by William Shakespeare

6 January 2025

On Friday we were at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon to see 'Twelfth Night'. It was a very enjoyable show, directed by Prasanna Puwanaraja, featuring Samuel West as Malvolio. The set, by James Cotterill, included a huge pipe organ, the pipes standing in for the box tree. Gwyneth Keyworth was a determined and purposeful Viola, Freema Agyeman a strong Olivia and Demetri Goritsas as an American accented Sir Andrew Aguecheek demonstrated comically balletic movement worthy of the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. Michael Grady-Hall's Feste was a clown with the voice of an angel and his Wind and the Rain concluded the play with a delicate poignancy.

'Oedipus' by Robert Icke (after Sophocles)

6 January 2025

Last Monday we were at Wyndham's Theatre in London's West end to see the excellent new version of 'Oedipus' written and directed by Robert Icke (after Sophocles). Mark Strong and Lesley Manville were outstanding as Oedipus and Jocasta and the modern setting - the family awaiting the result of an election that would put Oedipus in power - worked very effectively. His promise to quell rumours that he hadn't been born in the country by publishing his birth certificate (echoing the Obama birther controversy) was a clever way to make this the moment that his mother had to tell him the truth about his origins.

'Death and the Penguin' by Andrey Kurkov

6 January 2025

I remember reading about the Ukrainian author Andrey Kurkov's satirical black comic novel 'Death and the Penguin' many years ago but I've only just got around to reading it. Originally published in 1996 (with the English translation appearing in 2001) it's a quirky, bleak, political satire of life in post Soviet Ukraine. The protagonist, writer Viktor Zolotaryov, feels a bit like Winston Smith in '1984', living a bland existence, not entirely sure what is going on and in constant fear of the authorities. Invited to write obituaries for a newspaper, he becomes naively embroiled in a ring of corruption and murder. But, while stuck in a strange limbo, he randomly collects an array of friends, including some genuinely charming relationships which reminded me of Amor Towles' 'A Gentleman in Moscow' (reviewed here in September 2021). 'Death and the Penguin' is an odd tale, funnier for carefully rooting its oddest aspects in a meticulously accurate reality.

'The Power Broker' by Robert Caro

18 December 2024

When we saw David Hare’s play ‘Straight Line Crazy’, about the legendary New York urban planner Robert Moses, a couple of years ago (reviewed here in April 2022) I suggested that the two main incidents dramatised in the play would have made brilliant episodes of the design podcast '99% Invisible’. So when I learned, in December 2023, that ‘99% Invisible’ was planning to spend the whole of 2024 running an extended ‘online book club’ to celebrate the 50th anniversary of ‘The Power Broker’ - Robert Caro's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Robert Moses - I was immediately on board. ‘The Power Broker’ is a monumental 1,300-page work which masterfully chronicles how Moses, never elected to public office, became one of New York's most influential figures. He transformed the state through ambitious park and highway projects, while his ruthless approaches to securing and maintaining power developed a horrific web of corruption, prejudice and racism. ‘The Power Broker’ is brilliantly written and meticulously researched: Robert Caro conducted 522 interviews with those with firsthand experience of the relevant events - including Moses himself - and took seven years to write the book. I have been reading roughly 100 pages each month, in time to listen to each of the 12 monthly podcast episodes reflecting on the relevant chapters and featuring guests including Pete Buttigieg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Incredibly Robert Caro, now aged 89, is still writing (trying to complete the fifth volume of his mammoth biography of Lyndon B Johnson) and it was fascinating to hear him interviewed on the podcast. As 2024 draws to a close, I feel a sense of accomplishment joining the select group who have read the whole of ‘The Power Broker’ and I'm struck by how its themes of power, urban planning, and social equity remain startlingly relevant today, 50 years after its publication. You can find more details about the 99% Invisible Breakdown of The Power Broker and listen to the podcasts at: https://99percentinvisible.org/club/

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

17 December 2024

For the past 25 years the Northampton Symphony Orchestra’s annual Christmas Cracker concert has, for me, marked the start of the festive season. This Sunday afternoon family-friendly event is always huge fun and this year’s concert, at the Spinney Theatre in Northampton last Sunday, attracted a large, enthusiastic audience. Alongside a few Christmas carols and Leroy Anderson’s ‘Sleigh Ride’ we always include a narrated piece. This year’s choice, Iain Farrington’s ‘The Scary Fairy Saves Christmas’ was new to most of us but incredibly enjoyable. The words, by Craig Charles, written in rhyming couplets, are dark, mischievous, witty, occasionally controversial and very funny - assembling a cast of goblins, elves, witches and dwarves to create a bleakly comic version of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’. Our performance, narrated by William Thallon, went extremely well, with conductor John Gibbons co-ordinating the complicated joins between music and narration in this long piece very effectively. The rest of the programme included ‘A Christmas Dance’ - Frank Bridge’s lovely interweaving of the folk dance ‘Sir Roger de Coverley’ (which is mentioned in Charles Dickens' ‘A Christmas Carol’) with ‘Auld Lang Syne’. And, following our recent performance of  JS Bach’s 'Toccata and Fugue' arranged by Stokowski, on Sunday we played another piece from 'Fantasia', ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ by Paul Dukas. This is a notoriously difficult piece (particularly as it is so well known) but I think our performance was very impressive, featuring brilliant performances by the bassoonists, Sian Bunker, Tim Hewitt, Heather Pretty and Frank Jordan. We always include some film music in the Christmas Cracker and this year we concluded the concert with selections from the ‘Harry Potter Children’s Suite’ by John Williams. This kept William Thallon busy as he both played the iconic celeste theme and read new verse introductions to each of the movements, written specially for the concert by Frank Jordan. The movements from the suite featured the different sections of the orchestra in turn (with excellent recorder playing by Graham Tear and Helen Taylor and dramatic violin solo by Richard Smith in ‘Diagon Alley’), before bringing us all together in ‘Harry’s Wondrous World’, introduced in Frank’s words:

So as the season casts its spell,
We wish you joy and hope as well.
May Christmas shine, bright and true,
With magic and wonder surrounding you.
Merry Magical Christmas!

The NSO Horns at Hogwarts

'The Proof of My Innocence' by Jonathan Coe

13 December 2024

Jonathan Coe is one of my favourite writers and I particularly enjoy his novels that set fictional events against the backdrop of recent British Politics - from the Thatcher Government of the 1980s (in 'What a Carve Up!') to New Labour (in 'The Closed Circle') to Cameron's Coalition Government (in 'Number 11’, reviewed here in January 2016) to Brexit (in 'Middle England', reviewed here in January 2019). His latest book, 'The Proof of My Innocence', which I have just finished reading (as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Sam Woolf, Alana Maria, Charlotte Worthing, Mark Stobbart and Roy McMillan) is set during Liz Truss's 49-day tenure as Prime Minister. While it does explore the Conservative Party's lurch to the right, 'The Proof of My Innocence' is also a murder mystery, with Coe parodying the current trend of 'cosy crime' novels (much like Kate Atkinson did in her recent Jackson Brodie novel 'Death at the Sign of the Rook', reviewed here in October 2024). But overall it's a novel about writing, where nothing is quite what it first seems (even the title has a double meaning). Much like David Lodge's 'Therapy' this is a novel where it pays to think about who is telling each section of the story. Like David Lodge, Jonathan Coe writes accessible, entertaining prose that is much cleverer than it first appears. 'The Proof of My Innocence' is not his funniest work but it is a very enjoyable and satisfying puzzle.

'Just Another Missing Person' by Gillian McAllister

13 December 2024

Gillian McAllister writes crime thrillers that are meticulously plotted and genuinely scary, with twists that repeatedly pull the ground out from underneath the reader. Having enjoyed her previous three books I have now finished her latest novel 'Just Another Missing Person'. This appears to be a fairly conventional tale of the police investigating the disappearance of a young woman, but it quickly becomes much more complicated. Each chapter is presented through the eyes of one of the main protagonists but we are never properly introduced to these narrators so we naturally make assumptions about their role in the story, misleading ourselves ahead of the inevitable plot twists. This is fiction you have to read squinting between your fingers at times but it is always gripping.

'Come From Away' by Irene Sankoff and David Hein

5 December 2024

On 11 September 2001, when US air space was closed following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre, 38 transatlantic flights that were in the air en route to America were diverted to the airport in Gander, Newfoundland. This tiny Canadian town had a usefully large airfield because it was built as a refuelling stop in the days when planes couldn't make it from Europe to the States in one hop. Suddenly, on 9/11, the 9,000 inhabitants of Gander were faced with accommodating the unexpected arrival of 7,000 tired, confused and scared passengers who had not yet been told why their flights couldn't continue to the USA. In 2013 the remarkable story of the Newfoundlanders' hospitality became a very successful stage musical, 'Come From Away' with book, music and lyrics by Irene Sankoff and David Hein, and on Saturday we were at Milton Keynes Theatre to see it. 'Come From Away' is a lovely show - moving, poignant, funny and inspirational. It uses ensemble narration, with each member of the large cast stepping up in turn to tell us the story of those few incredible days, while constantly rearranging chairs to become passengers on an airplane or customers in a bar etc. The music - provided by a lively on-stage band - draws on the folk music of the Canadian maritime provinces with its Celtic influences. The musical doesn't shy away from the painful reality of the terrorist attacks but it's ultimately a celebration of humanity and the entire sold out audience of 1,400 people rose to their feet at the end in genuine warmth. Do go to see 'Come From Away' if you get the chance.

Mozart Requiem

28 November 2024

On Saturday we made a first visit to the Bristol Beacon concert hall to see a performance of Mozart’s Requiem with Bristol Ensemble. This was the culmination of Massive Mozart - a Bristol Beacon Community Programme project. 214 local singers had spent the day working with the choral conductor Jeremy Jackman. Their performance was very impressive: it was lovely to hear such a large chorus and the orchestra and soloists (Harriet Eyley, Samantha Price, Elgan Llyr Thomas and Benson Wilson) were all excellent.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

20 November 2024

Back in the summer, when I told a group of my friends who have rarely or never been to see me play in the Northampton Symphony Orchestra, that our next concert was going to include Holst's 'The Planets', they all immediately booked tickets, months in advance. And they were not the only ones who wanted to see this particularly popular piece of classical music: our performance sold out weeks ago and we amassed a waiting list of 80 people hoping for returns. On Saturday evening our packed audience, huge orchestra and women's chorus meant there wasn't a spare seat in Christchurch, Northampton. The first half of the concert started with Leopold Stokowski's arrangement of the 'Toccata and Fugue' by JS Bach - famously conducted by Stokowski alongside Mickey Mouse in 'Fantasia'. We then played the 'Four Last Songs' by Richard Strauss - one of my favourite pieces of music - with the excellent Northampton-based Irish soprano Alison Roddy (who sang Hamilton Harty’s setting of ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ with NSO last year, reviewed here in June 2023). Alison gave a stunning performance and the orchestra’s leader Richard Smith played the achingly beautiful violin solo in ‘Beim Schlafengehen’ wonderfully. I had previously played the 'Four Last Songs' with the City of Peterborough Symphony Orchestra (twice), Milton Keynes Sinfonia and Northampton Symphony Orchestra but Saturday was the first time I have played the first horn part with its gorgeous solo in 'September'. This was a nerve-racking and emotional moment for me as it brought back memories of the last time we played the 'Four Last Songs' with NSO in 2010 (reviewed here in November 2010) when the horn solo was played beautifully by David Lack in his first appearance with the orchestra for 18 months after treatment for cancer. Dave died in 2014 and is still fondly remembered and much missed. 'The Planets' by Gustav Holst is in the top ten most popular requests from BBC Radio 4’s ‘Your Desert Island Discs’. It's a piece many of us grew up knowing: my Mum and Dad had a LP of 'The Planets' which my brother and I used to play over and over when we were little. We last performed 'The Planets' with NSO at the Derngate in Northampton in 2011 (reviewed here in June 2011). Every performance feels like a very special occasion. The piece requires a vast orchestra (including two harps, two timpanists, organ and quadruple winds) plus a women's chorus whose ethereal wordless harmonies drift us off into outer space at the end of the final movement 'Neptune'. I thought our performance on Saturday went incredibly well. Conductor John Gibbons kept us from wallowing in the weightier moments, maintaining a brisk delicacy to many of the movements that demonstrated how well written and orchestrated this popular piece is. Getting to know 'The Planets' again over the past few months I can see its influence on so much of the best film music. This was the first time I have played the first horn part in 'The Planets' and I enjoyed playing the exposed solos at the beginning of 'Venus'. There were brilliant solos from across the orchestra (too many to mention them all but I was particularly impressed by Peter May's tenor tuba solo in 'Mars'). And the women from the Northampton Bach Choir provided a chillingly beautiful delicate moment to finish an amazing concert. We livestreamed our performance of 'The Planets' to give those who hadn't managed to get tickets a chance to see it and you can watch the recording at: https://www.youtube.com/live/hfZlcSSB1AQ?si=NhFFuVbqccyOFEzU (wind forwards to 21 mins).

Bellowhead

15 November 2024

On Sunday, almost exactly nine years since we saw the great folk big band Bellowhead at the Riverside Theatre in Aylesbury on their farewell tour (reviewed here in November 2015), we were back at the Riverside to see the glorious return of Bellowhead. Initially reunited for a one-off live online performance in 2020 (reviewed here in December 2020) Bellowhead are now touring again and it was wonderful to see them live once more. The band seemed to be having a ball and you could feel the warmth from an enthusiastic sold-out audience that was revelling in an opportunity they had not expected to come around again. Bellowhead paid tribute to their former colleague Paul Sartin who died of a heart attack in 2022, at the age of 51. But this was a joyous celebration of which he would have been proud. I think I had a smile on my face through the whole performance: this is life-affirming joyous music, performed with gusto, mischief and glee. Possibly the best gig I have ever been to. This fan video from their recent appearance in Nottingham gives a flavour of the atmosphere on this reunion tour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiD6-yBYqwM

'Othello' by William Shakespeare

7 November 2024

On Saturday we were at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon to see Tim Carroll’s new RSC production of ‘Othello’. After seeing Clint Dyer’s National Theatre production of ‘Othello’ set in a 1930s fascist state (reviewed here in March 2023) and Iqbal Khan’s RSC production in a contemporary setting with scenes of water-boarding and torture (reviewed here in June 2015), this was a much more conventional version of the play. Judith Bowden’s sparse set features a bare stage without furniture and simple but effective use of gauze curtains and beautiful Elizabethan costumes. This simplicity serves to focus all our attention on the acting, which is excellent throughout. The four principals are particularly strong: The English-American actor John Douglas Thompson plays Othello with an American accent, emphasising his role as the outsider; Will Keen is a quietly hissing Iago; Juliet Rylance’s Desdemona has a confident, cheerful positivity; and Anastasia Hille as Emilia visibly wears her guilt for the support she knows she should not have given Iago. James Oxley’s unaccompanied choral music (sung by the cast) provides a beautiful but sinister backdrop to the emerging tragedy.

Tom Robinson

1 November 2024

We are long-time fans of Tom Robinson (last reviewed here in January 2024) and last Friday we made a first visit to Club 85 in Hitchin to see the latest incarnation of the Tom Robinson Band playing songs from the albums ‘Power in the Darkness’ (1978) and ‘TRB Two’ (1979). As always Tom introduced in the support slot a young musician he has been championing on his BBC 6 Music radio show. Rob Green is a 19-year-old alt-soul/pop singer songwriter from Nottingham who writes lovely thoughtful songs and gave a very cheerful, confident performance. The Tom Robinson Band were in great form. You can see their encore performance of ‘War Baby’ featuring Tom, Lee Forsyth Griffiths and Rob Green at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzyR84nrPrI

Henry Normal and Nigel Planer

23 October 2023

I've been a fan of the poet/comedian Henry Normal for 30 years: I last saw him at the Ampthill Literary Festival in 2022 (reviewed here in April 2022). One of the first times I saw him was on our first ever visit to the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 1995 when he appeared alongside the comedian and actor Nigel Planer. This was a fascinating and memorable session in which Nigel Planer, who had been writing poetry since his teens, read some of his poems in public for the first time. He was incredibly nervous and Henry Normal was very supportive. So it was fascinating this week - almost 30 years later - to get to see Henry Normal and Nigel Planer on stage together again at The Stables in Wavendon. Nigel Planer has now published several books of poetry and a novel and was much more confident, his delivery showing his skill as an actor. After performing separately the two of them came together for a Q&A session which reflected on their careers across TV, film and radio and their memories of working with Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, Linda Smith, Steve Coogan and others.

BBC Young Musician 2024

23 October 2024

I've followed the biennial BBC Young Musician competition closely since it started in 1978 and I have written here about it every two years since 2006. You can read all my previous posts about BBC Young Musician at: http://culturaldessert.blogspot.com/search/label/BBCYoungMusician. BBC Young Musician 2024, which came to its climax last weekend, saw some significant changes to the format, doing away with the instrumental categories that have defined the competition since it began. Rather than separating the contestants into strings, woodwind, brass, piano and percussion until the grand final, this year 50 young musicians were auditioned to select the 12 best players, regardless of instrument. Two quarter finals and a semi-final then reduced the field to 3 for the concerto final (broadcast on Sunday). I was surprised how well this radical change worked: it allowed the same three judges to oversee the entire competition (rather than having specialists for each of the instrument categories) and by broadcasting excerpts of all 50 auditions the television audience saw many more young musicians than in previous years and saw more of those who made it right through to the final, building our understanding of their personalities and musicality. But the lack of categories did seem to further favour string players and pianists (who were already the most common overall winners of the competition) - with no brass players or percussionists (and only two wind players) making it beyond the initial auditions. (Though I suppose you could argue that the category format may have previously prevented many more outstanding pianists or string players from getting to the concerto final.) The standard of contestants seemed even higher than in previous years, with many 'wow' moments throughout the various rounds. And I think Sunday's concerto final at Bristol Beacon was one of the best ever, in that I think all three finalists will go on to be well-known professional musicians - comparable with the 2016 final (which featured Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Ben Goldscheider and Jess Gillam - now firmly established as the perfect TV presenter for BBC Young Musician). But I did have some criticisms of the final. After the 2022 final restored the incredible spectacle of a concert consisting of five full concertos it was a great shame that we were restricted to three concertos again this year. And, by doing away with the instrumental categories, for the first time ever the final featured two musicians playing the same instrument. The fact that both pianists then chose to play the same concerto (Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto) was an amazing and fascinating twist but even further reduced the sense of the final as a concert. Comparing two very different performances of the same work was surprisingly compelling - and reminded me of the experience of playing the Rachmaninov 2nd Piano Concerto with the Northampton Symphony Orchestra in two consecutive concerts in 2019 with two different pianists who took contrasting approaches to the piece (reviewed here in October and November 2019). I was also disappointed that the concerto final was not broadcast live. Knowing that it had been recorded a few weeks ago made me paranoid about accidentally reading something online that would give away who won - making me feel like Bob and Terry in that episode of 'The Likely Lads' where they are desperately trying to avoid finding out the result of a football match so they can watch the highlights later without knowing. The insights into each movement of the concertos provided by BBC National Orchestra of Wales conductor Ben Gernon were really interesting and helpful but inserting these video clips between the movements in the broadcast ruined the atmosphere of the live performance. I was surprised by the dropping of the tradition of a performance at the end of the concerto final by the winner of the previous BBC Young Musician competition and the disappearance of the Walter Todds Bursary, previously awarded to a performer or performers who show great promise but do not reach the Final. But these are minor quibbles: the TV coverage continues to be beautifully put-together, entertaining, serious and respectful. And all three 2024 finalists - Ryan Wang, Shlomi Shahaf, and Jacky Zhang - gave thrilling performances, with Ryan Wang an outstanding winner.

'The New Real' by David Edgar

23 October 2024

On Saturday we were at The Other Place in Stratford-upon-Avon to see the Royal Shakespeare Company/Headlong production of 'The New Real' - a new play by David Edgar, directed by Holly Race Roughan. This reminded me a lot of David Edgar's 'Playing With Fire' which we saw at the National Theatre in 2005 (starring Emma Fielding and David Troughton - reviewed here in October 2005). In that play a New Labour high-flyer is sent north from London to sort out an ailing local authority with disastrous results. 'The New Real' uses a similar device, but on a global scale. The demise of communism in Eastern Europe, following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, led to many newly independent nascent democracies seeking the expertise of America and the West to develop their electoral processes. David Edgar's dark satire shows how this may have inadvertently instigated the wave of populism in Eastern Europe that then swept West to the UK and USA. In 'The New Real' two American political strategists (played by Martina Laird and Lloyd Owen), who have worked together successfully on US election campaigns, end up advising rival candidates in the presidential election in a fictional former Soviet state, resorting to increasingly underhand tactics to avoid losing their personal battle with each other. Caught in the middle of this feud is their British pollster Caro Wheeler (the excellent Jodie McNee) - who provides the moral conscience. The play is a fascinating thought-piece, though sometimes hindered as a drama by a George Bernard Shaw-like tendency to have the characters engage in long, rigorous, debates of ideas that feel like essays rather than dialogue. Nonetheless it was enjoyable, thought-provoking and very well acted.

Adderbury Ensemble concert

23 October 2024

Regular readers may have noticed that I don’t go to a lot of chamber music concerts: I’m not sure why, because those few occasions I have been persuaded to attend have always been really enjoyable. And the fact that I first wrote these exact words here in November 2009 (after attending a performance in Bedford by the Galliard Ensemble), and haven't featured much chamber music here since, rather reinforces the point. Last Friday we were at the Radcliffe Centre in Buckingham for a string quartet recital by the Adderbury Ensemble from North Oxfordshire. It was a lovely concert, featuring quartets by Haydn and Shostakovich and the original string quartet version of the 'Simple Symphony' by Benjamin Britten. The Adderbury Ensemble finished the performance with a couple of arrangements by the Danish String Quartet of traditional Scandinavian songs and dance tunes (from the excellent album 'Wood Works').

'Death at the Sign of the Rook' by Kate Atkinson

17 October 2024

It's been five years since Kate Atkinson's last Jackson Brodie novel ('Big Sky', reviewed here in July 2019) and I had forgotten how brilliantly entertaining these light-touch crime stories are. 'Death at the Sign of the Rook', the sixth novel in the Jackson Brodie series (which I've just finished reading as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Jason Isaacs) is a mischievously metatextual homage to the classic country house murder mystery. Kate Atkinson effectively inserts Jackson Brodie into an Agatha Christie plot, complete with a dowager marchioness, a local vicar and a butler. Brodie finds himself a participant in a murder mystery game being staged in the present day in a stately home - but it feels like he has stepped back in time to the age of a very different kind of detective. It's an incredibly enjoyable comic novel in which even the most clichéd characters are carefully and believably drawn. And Kate Atkinson's usual technique of alternating points of view to build a plot which none of the participants fully understand proves particularly entertaining and effective. Although there are references to the earlier books in the series 'Death at the Sign of the Rook' is a self-contained story which would be enjoyable whether or not you have read the other Jackson Brodie novels.

'Tom Lake' by Ann Patchett

17 October 2024

I’ve never seen Thornton Wilder’s play ‘Our Town’ but I was aware of its ubiquitous status among repertory and community theatre groups across the USA. Ann Patchett’s latest novel ‘Tom Lake’ focuses on a production of ‘Our Town’ in which the actors seem increasingly confused with their characters. I was looking forward to ‘Tom Lake’, having enjoyed Patchett’s earlier books 'Bel Canto' (reviewed here in December 2023), 'State of Wonder' (reviewed here in January 2024) and ‘Run’ (reviewed here in June 2024). Not content with its allusions to ‘Our Town’, ‘Tom Lake’ features three sisters marooned with their parents, during the Covid-19 pandemic, in the family cherry orchard - creating a number of Chekhovian references. Ann Patchett uses lockdown as the excuse for a clever narrative structure in which Lara is finally telling her grown-up daughters the full story of her brief acting career and her relationship with a man who would go on to become a famous movie star. All of this happened before Lara married the girls’ father but, as in any family, the children have probably been told some of the story at an age when they didn’t fully understand or remember it. Their enforced family time during lockdown finally provides the opportunity to unpick the details of their mother’s youth - or as much as she decides to reveal to them. It’s a beautifully written and meticulously constructed novel, with its revelations carefully timed.

Tuscany

17 October 2024

We had a wonderful holiday in Tuscany last week, visiting Florence, San Gimignano, Volterra, Siena and Lucca. In Florence we visited the Uffizi Gallery and the Bargello Museum, immersing ourselves in works from Giotto to the Renaissance giants Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. Bizarrely, by contrast, in Volterra we came across an excellent exhibition of works by Banksy ('Realismo Capitalista'), at the Centro Studi Espositivo, which was really interesting. We loved the Tuscan hill towns of San Gimignano and Volterra - imposing small walled cities, with high buildings lining both sides of the paved pedestrianised roads within the city walls. San Gimignano is known as the Medieval Manhattan for its amazing skyline of high towers. The main square in Siena - Piazza del Campo - is a stunning sight: the setting for the annual Palio di Siena horse race is a huge, sloping expanse of paved tiles in diagonal slices fanning out from the Palazzo Publicco (city hall) towards a crescent of high balconied buildings. And in Lucca we walked right around the city walls - really a large fortified grassy mound rather than a wall, with a broad tarmac road along the top, encased by pretty avenues of plane trees. It was a lovely sunny autumnal day with the leaves drifting down onto the walls and lots of people walking or cycling around the perimeter of the old town.

'Empire' podcast: 'America: The Empire of Liberty'

3 October 2024

After a bit of a break, I've recently returned to listening to the excellent Empire podcast hosted by Anita Anand and William Dalrymple (originally reviewed here in January 2023). In particular, I've been listening to the series about America, which started with episode 148 (May 2024). The episodes on the Founding Fathers, George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin et al. and the American Revolution were very engaging, connecting me back to the excellent 2008 TV miniseries 'John Adams' starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney.

But it's the exploration of the Native American populations that covered the continent prior to the arrival of the Europeans in the 1500s that have been truly fascinating. Before European contact, Native American cultures in North America were highly diverse. I hadn't realised their degree of urbanisation. Around the year 1000 CE, Cahokia in present-day Illinois was a central city with a population of over 10,000 people. Part of a larger civilisation that included many satellite cities, Cahokia's central plaza was the size of 30 football fields, surrounded by large flat-topped pyramids used for religious and political purposes. Similar large-scale urban centres existed throughout North America, challenging the traditional narrative of Native Americans living solely in small scattered settlements. Francis Spufford's novel ‘Cahokia Jazz’ (reviewed here in February 2024) constructs a parallel universe in which the city of Cahokia is still going strong in the 1920s, dominated by a First Nations people who are led by a hereditary monarchy and have embraced a version of European Catholicism. In reality many of these Native American cities were abandoned by the 1500s, with populations living in more spread-out communities.

Contrary to the common portrayal of Native Americans as one monolithic group, there were hundreds of distinct nations across North America, each with its own customs, languages, political structures and territories. The notion of an empty continent ripe for the taking by the Europeans is now completely refuted. And the treatment of Native Americans by the United States government was often brutal and genocidal. The Indian Removal Act of 1830, which forced the relocation of tribes along the 'Trail of Tears', dispossessed Native Americans of their lands through horrific extermination campaigns including the use of poison. Chillingly, this policy of Indian removal in the 19th century influenced ethnic cleansing in other parts of the world, from Russia to German South West Africa to Nazi Germany. Russian officers in the Caucasus region in the 1840s saw the forced expulsion of Native Americans as a model for their own treatment of the Circassian people, one governor reportedly telling an American visitor that "Circassians are just like your American Indians" shortly before Russia deported 500,000 people. Even Adolf Hitler drew upon the American example when justifying the Nazi conquest of Eastern Europe, equating indigenous inhabitants with Indians and declaring that the Volga River would be their Mississippi, echoing the displacement of Native Americans from their lands.

The podcast format is very engaging, particularly the episodes with a guest historian, an expert in the relevant topic, to be quizzed by the hosts. I especially enjoyed the episode with Kathleen Duval discussing her book ‘Native Nations, a Millennium in North America’. The Empire podcast continues to be a rich source of fascinating, vibrant and relevant history, making me want to rush off and read all the books on the topic that they mention. All episodes of ‘Empire’ are available to download at: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/empire/id1639561921

Bagedai

27 September 2024

Bagedai are a band from the Chinese province of Yunnan who blend traditional Wa music with reggae, creating accessible but intriguingly different rock music featuring five powerful female singers backed by electric guitars and drums alongside traditional Chinese instruments. Their self-titled debut album manages to sound both surprising and familiar - eerie and upbeat. Listen at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nSEgjqTSv6xIZ6KNJDhj__gojqlAeU2CE 

Charles Ives' 150th anniversary

20 September 2024

Having spent most of my working life in endless discussions about the value, relevance and definitions of ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’, I have long had a soft spot for the composer Charles Ives. Ives (1874-1954) was a symphonist, a prolific writer of songs and an innovative modernist whose departure from traditional tonal harmony echoed his contemporary Arnold Schoenberg. Ives’ works also managed to incorporate elements of American folk music, jazz, and marching band music. He is now regarded as the most important American composer of his generation - admired by Gustav Mahler and championed by Leonard Bernstein. But Charles Ives was most definitely an amateur composer, continuing his day job as an insurance broker while composing at the weekends - not for financial necessity but because he was very good at insurance brokering and chose to keep music as his hobby. As we approach Ives’ 150th anniversary (on 20 October) I have been reading a lot about him and listening again to his symphonies (I would recommend Gustavo Dudamel’s 2020 recording of the Complete Symphonies with the Los Angeles Philharmonic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbmjAg00BzE&list=PLEhQ5Ooc2lLrR9KGN26CYBwF0fz_fACld). And this episode of BBC Radio 3’s ‘The Listening Service’ from June 2023 provides a great introduction to ‘All American Ives’: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001n25z 

‘Come As You Really Are’ by Hetain Patel

13 September 2024

This week I visited ‘Come As You Really Are’, Hetain Patel's exhibition as part of the ArtAngel project ‘The Hobby Cave’, in which Creative Lives is a partner. Located in Grant's, a former department store in Croydon, this celebration of the nation's hobbies is a miraculous treasure trove of the bizarre, inspiring, heart-warming, nostalgic and peculiar. Although there's plenty of craft and art on display, the exhibition seems dominated by collections, exploring the creative act of curation, from a case containing Kit Kat branded merchandise to a full wall display of vintage plastic carrier bags to a slightly creepy small room packed with My Little Pony toys. 

 

This is a strange and wondrous array of how people choose to spend their spare time and their creative energy. The exhibition is beautifully displayed and arranged. It makes you feel like you're following a weird treasure-hunt trail through a darkened forest or exploring Willy Wonka's abandoned chocolate factory. Indeed, there's one glass case full of pebbles painted to resemble classic chocolate bars. 

It's an exhibition you could return to many times: there are so many tiny hidden delights in each corner. But it's a very idiosyncratic, slightly unnerving experience, like walking through somebody else's dream. Hetain Patel is remarkably respectful, and clearly enthralled by, the pieces contributed by people from across the UK, never ridiculing or mocking and presenting every endeavour with equal prominence. It was great to see so many people wandering around the free exhibition. Everyone we spoke to thought it was wonderful: it was all smiles and gasps of excitement. ‘Come As You Really Are’ is a unique and amazing experience, hard to do justice to in words. Bizarre, impressive, life-affirming and joyous. The exhibition is in Croydon until 20 October and you can book free tickets at: https://artangel.org.uk/project/come-as-you-really-are/

 

'Hello Dolly' by Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart

13 September 2024

Last Saturday we were at the London Palladium to see ‘Hello Dolly’ starring Imelda Staunton. Jerry Herman’s 1964 musical is one I'm not at all familiar with: I had not previously seen it, nor the 1969 film with Barbara Streisand. And I think the only song I knew was the title track. It's a really enjoyable old-fashioned screwball comedy musical, genuinely funny and a great showpiece with a brilliant headlining role for the eponymous matchmaker. Based on Thornton Wilder's 1938 farce ‘The Merchant of Yonkers’ (later revised by Wilder as ‘The Matchmaker’, it tells the story of a New York widow Dolly Levi who mischievously engineers unions between unsuspecting eligible suitors while beginning to look for a later-in-life profitable union for herself. This production, directed by Dominic Cooke, who also directed Imelda Staunton in the great National Theatre production of Follies, reviewed here in November 2017), is a joyous celebration of song and dance on the big Palladium stage. Rae Smith’s set, featuring a moving sidewalk along which the characters process, as well as full-size trolleybuses and trains, is lots of fun. There is a large cast and brilliant choreography by Bill Deamer. Andy Nyman is great as the grumpy businessman at the heart of the matchmaking intrigue, and Jenna Russell, Tyrone Huntley and Harry Hepple also impress with Emily Langham stealing most of her scenes with her comically miserable sobbing. But this is Imelda Staunton's show and she is magnificent. Her rapturous reception and genuine standing ovation showed a true warmth from the packed audience for the musical leading lady who can't put a foot wrong.

'Sunrise Orchestral Suite' by Ida Moberg

6 September 2024

This week I've been very much enjoying listening to the music of Ida Moberg, a Finnish composer (1859-1947), who was a direct contemporary of Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), but was a new discovery for me. Like many female composers of the period her music remains largely unknown and underappreciated. Moberg studied composition at the Orchestra School of the Helsinki Philharmonic Society where her teachers included Sibelius. She became particularly interested in understanding music through movement. I've been listening to her 'Sunrise Orchestral Suite', a beautiful four-movement piece which builds from the gentle strings of the sunrise, through the activity of the day, to the evening and finishing in stillness. You can listen to the lovely 'Sunrise Orchestral Suite' at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-8xrak2p_E&list=OLAK5uy_nuS5_Y-zZpC_WQmLnBO01zuhvY-hj-6k8&index=5 

Edinburgh Festivals 2024

29 August 2024

Our visit to the Edinburgh Festivals last week was the 30th anniversary of our first trip there in 1994. We haven't been every year but I think we've now done the festivals at least 20 times. As always, our 2024 visit was brilliant and exhausting: we saw 22 shows in four and a half days in a total of 17 different venues. In the Edinburgh International Festival we were at the Usher Hall to see the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra (who we last saw in Edinburgh in 2016, reviewed here in September 2016) conducted by Thierry Fischer, playing the Alpine Symphony by Richard Strauss. This was the first time I've seen a performance of the symphony since I played it with the Northampton Symphony Orchestra in 2019 (reviewed here in June 2019). We also went to the opening night of 'Assembly Hall' at the Festival Theatre - an intriguing mixture of drama and dance performed by the Kidd Pivot company, directed and choreographed by Crystal Pite and written by Jonathon Young. 'Assembly Hall' shows a group of medieval battle re-enactors gathering for their Annual General Meeting in a crumbling community hall. As the group start to argue about whether to disband or continue, the argument morphs into a vicious battle, complete with swords and armour. It's a peculiar, beautiful, funny and puzzling piece of theatre, with the dancers syncing exaggerated movement to the recorded dialogue to indicate which character is speaking. Crystal Pite uses the dancers to create some stunning tableaux and mesmerising effects but we found it difficult to completely follow what was going on. We really enjoyed another chance to see the philosopher Julian Baggini at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, this time speaking about his new book 'How the World Eats: A Global Food Philosophy'. In the Edinburgh Festival Fringe our favourite shows included 'Nation' written and performed by Sam Ward - a clever and disturbing tale about a town gripped by fear and hatred, which reminded us of the unsettling theatre made by Tim Crouch (such as 'The Author', reviewed here in September 2010). We also loved 'Same Team' by Robbie Gordon and Jack Nurse at the Traverse Theatre - a funny, moving and inspiring play about a women's football team from Scotland playing in the Homeless World Cup which was told by five actors in a style reminiscent of John Godber's plays for the Hull Truck Theatre company (such as 'Teechers', reviewed here in September 2010). And once again I am grateful to Kelly for her brilliant Fringe recommendations which included the wonderful 'Sawdust Symphony' a bizarre but strangely beautiful circus piece from Germany that was essentially live woodwork - the sort of thing you could only see at the Edinburgh Fringe. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uThKVDvZqCY

'Pericles' by William Shakespeare

15 August 2024

It is 16 years since we saw 'Pericles Redux' at the Edinburgh Fringe - an amazing production of Shakespeare's play by physical theatre ensemble Not Man Apart (reviewed here in August 2008) but I still fondly remember that performance. And until last weekend that was the only time I had seen this rarely performed play. On Saturday we were at the Swan Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon to see Tamara Harvey’s new RSC production of ‘Pericles’. ‘Pericles’ is Shakespeare doing Homer, an epic story set in ancient Greece involving numerous sea voyages and almost as many shipwrecks. It’s not a great play: much of the opening two acts feel more like a series of tableaus with a narrator. But I hadn’t realised it is widely believed that ‘Pericles’ was co-written with George Wilkins and that it seems he wrote the opening parts. The second half of the play certainly felt more Shakespearean and built towards a moving ending. The RSC production was very impressive, with Alfred Enoch as Pericles and Rachelle Doedericks as Marina standing out. And Christian Patterson was very funny as Simonides (played with more than a hint of Brian Blessed).

‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow’ by Kate Trefry

9 August 2024

When it launched in 2016 ‘Stranger Things’ - the Duffer Brothers’ homage to 1980s sci-fi/horror films - was the first big breakout hit made by the Netflix streaming platform. I loved ‘Stranger Things’ (reviewed here in August 2016 and November 2017) so I was excited to learn that the new stage version of the show was to premiere in London’s West End. Last Saturday we were at the Phoenix Theatre to see ‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow’ written by Kate Trefry from an original story by the Duffer Brothers, Jack Thorne and Kate Trefry, directed by Stephen Daldry. When it opened last year the play got a glowing 5-star review in The Guardian but only 2-stars in The Times: I felt it sat somewhere between these extremes. It is certainly a spectacular theatrical experience which starts with a stunning opening scene set on a US Navy ship in 1943, showing off the amazing set design by Miriam Buether, lighting by Jon Clark, (deafening) sound by Paul Arditti and visual effects by Jamie Harrison, Chris Fisher and 59 Productions. After this prologue the action of the play is set in 1959, acting as a prequel to the TV series and featuring some of the adult characters in the original (including Joyce and Hopper) as teenagers. Deciding to base the stage version around the preparations for a high school drama production was a nice idea but ended up feeling like a distraction from the main plot. And focusing purely on teenage characters lost some of the charm and humour of the gang of younger children who were the main protagonists of the TV series. Like the later episodes of season 4 ‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow’ was incredibly long (more than 3 hours) and very loud. The stage effects were jaw dropping but tended to squeeze out the plot and acting. This is definitely a show for existing fans: it was noticeable that the biggest cheer from the audience was for the first appearance of the ‘Stranger Things’ theme tune and credit sequence.