Championship Play-Off Final

29 May 2009

On Monday we made our first visit to the new Wembley Stadium to watch Jeannie's team, Burnley, in the Championship Play-Off Final playing Sheffield United for a place in the Premiership. Wembley is magnificent: despite being very high up and towards the back we had a wonderful view and it was very exciting to be part of a crowd of 80,000. And even better to witness Wade Elliott's brilliant goal which took Burnley back to the top division for the first time in 33 years. Burnley is the smallest town to be represented in English football's top tier since the advent of the Premier League: there are more people inside Old Trafford for each Manchester United home game than the entire population of Burnley! It may prove to be a brief flirtation with elite status but we're looking forward to next season. 

'Just Between Ourselves' by Alan Ayckbourn

26 May 2009

The Royal Theatre, Northampton, is celebrating its 125th anniversary and the 70th birthday of Alan Ayckbourn by presenting three classic Ayckbourn plays featuring the same company of actors. On Saturday we saw 'Just Between Ourselves' - a typically bleak comedy from 1976. Ayckbourn has written 72 plays but I seem to keep choosing to watch those that I have already seen. As soon as I saw the car on stage I remembered that we had seen 'Just Between Ourselves' before - in August 2002 at the Theatre Royal in Bath. Then, the irrepressibly cheerful Dennis was played by Les Dennis while in Northampton the part was taken by Kim Wall. But I was amazed to discover that we had seen Matthew Cottle play Neil in both productions and that Dorothy Atkinson who was playing Dennis's wife Vera on Saturday had been Neil's wife Pam seven years ago in Bath. Ayckbourn cleverly manipulates your emotions with great set-piece scenes (particularly I think where he shows characters sharing a meal) that manage to be both hilarious and painfully sad. 

Mark Steel

18 May 2009

On Sunday evening we were at The Stables in Wavendon to see the comedian Mark Steel. Last time he visited The Stables he was touring his 'Vive La Revolution' show examining the comic potential of the French Revolution (reviewed here in June 2006). This time we were treated to more straightforward stand-up encompassing the 2012 Olympics, the tyranny of supermarkets and (inevitably) MP's expenses. But there's always slightly more to Mark Steel than meets the eye as, for example, a series of funny but seemingly unconnected rants about the absence of humanity in call centres and shops turned out to have been a carefully constructed illustration of Karl Marx's theory of alienation. Steel is clever, likeable and extremely funny and, unlike many other contemporary comedians, his cultural references don't pass me by (when he launched into a parody of Radio 4's 'thought for the day' I knew we were on the same wavelength!). And you always get good value for money when you see him live - a lengthy and varied set.

 

Imam Baildi

15 May 2009

Imam Baildi are two Greek brothers, Orestis and Lysandros Falireas, whose wonderful eponymous CD takes old Greek tunes from the 40's, 50's and 60's (from their father's collection of 78s) and adds modern instruments and beats to create music which is cool, mysterious and incredibly catchy. Sounding not quite like anything else I’ve heard, the music of Imam Baildi has really stuck in my head this week – particularly the track ‘O Pasatebos’ which I’ve been playing over and over. Listen to them for free on Spotify.

'Waiting for Godot' by Samuel Beckett

5 May 2009

When it comes to Samuel Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot', I've been spoiled. I first encountered the play as a teenager - when the hidden meaning in its absurdity comes most easily. And that first encounter was with the seminal 1980 Manchester Royal Exchange production starring Max Wall and Trevor Peacock. My second experience of Godot was a 1991 West End production with Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson. Mayall and Edmondson were extremely good but hampered by an audience that had come expecting a different kind of comedy. While I was working for the Royal National Institute for the Blind in the early 1990s I helped with a recording of 'Waiting for Godot' which gave me a chance to examine the text of the play in detail. And this week I've been at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, to see Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart as Estragon and Vladimir with Simon Callow and Ronald Pickup as Pozzo and Lucky. As you would expect, the acting was wonderful: I particularly enjoyed the movement - McKellen and Stewart both demonstrating a range of subtle gesture and the occasional dance step to suggest an earlier existence for their characters as a music hall double act. I enjoyed the clear positioning of Vladimir and Estragon on a path between Laurel and Hardy and 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead'. But coming to the play again a little older, and with such fond memories of previous performances, I found it less inspiring than I remembered. (It was interesting to see so many young faces in the packed, enthusiastic audience.) There were still some lovely moments and great lines and it was wonderful to see such a stellar cast in a serious play. There was a satisfying sense of completeness when I discovered from the programme that Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart also appeared together in the 1977 Royal Festival Hall premiere of Tom Stoppard's 'Every Good Boy Deserves Favour' - a play which we also recorded at RNIB and which I saw at the National Theatre only a couple of months ago (reviewed here in February 2009).

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

28 April 2009

On Saturday I was at St Matthews Church in Northampton to play with the Northampton Symphony Orchestra in a concert which included Dvorak’s gorgeous ‘Symphony No. 8’ – one of my favourite pieces of music. We started with the ‘Peacock Variations’ by Kodaly, a work I hadn’t come across before and one that took me a few weeks to get to grips with – though well worth the effort. Zoltan Kodaly wrote interesting, tuneful music which is often tricky to play but well orchestrated and very enjoyable – an often underrated composer. Our concert also included Mozart’s fourth (and most well known) Horn Concerto played by Katrina Lauder. Katrina is now a freelance professional horn player and teacher but was an amateur member of the Northampton Symphony Orchestra between 1991 and 1994 and was taught by our principal horn David Lack. She gave a great performance of the Mozart concerto, leaving us fellow horn players particularly envious of her effortless lip trills! It was a lovely concert and a good programme to work through with our new conductor Alexander Walker, after our excursion into film music in March.

‘Inspector Drake and the Black Widow’ by David Tristram

24 April 2009

On Saturday we were back at the TADS Theatre in Toddington to see ‘Inspector Drake and the Black Widow’ by David Tristram – a very clever spoof 1920s country house murder mystery. Surreal, meta-textual and extremely silly, the play works because it has, at its core, a bona-fide mystery plot with a final twist (in a similar way to Jasper Fforde’s ‘Jack Spratt’ novels such as ‘The Big Over Easy’, reviewed here in April 2007). There’s a rather high body count – though the majority are killed accidentally by the police investigation of the original murder. Great acting from Kevin Birkett as the plodding sergeant, Joe Butcher as the mercurial Inspector Drake and Janet Bray as everyone else. A good example of amateur theatre demonstrating its ability to be ‘excellent’.

Benji Kirkpatrick

17 April 2009

Last night we were at the stables to see fretboard wizard Benji Kirkpatrick. A member of the brilliant folk big band Bellowhead (reviewed here in October 2006), Benji plays guitar, bouzouki and banjo and was joined by Sam Norman on double bass and the ace percussionist Cormac Byrne. They played a very rhythmic, muscular folk/rock which sounded a lot like Seth Lakeman (reviewed here in April 2006) – with whom Benji Kirkpatrick has toured. Catchy, upbeat music including traditional English songs, Kirkpatrick’s own compositions and, slightly bizarrely, numbers by The Band and Jimi Hendrix (‘Voodoo Child’ played on the banjo!). 

‘Spyski or The Importance of Being Honest’ by Peepolykus

17 April 2009

Last Friday we were at the Royal Theatre in Northampton to see ‘Spyski or The Importance of Being Honest’ by the Peepolykus theatre company. Starting, apparently, as a production of Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, after a few minutes the actors came out of character to tell us they had stumbled upon the murder of a Russian secret agent in London. They wanted to tell us the details but were being watched by the British security services and would have to switch back to ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ if they spotted a British agent in the theatre. This premise framed a complex, incredibly silly but completely logical tale of murder, intrigue and mistaken identity – which kept occasionally lapsing back into Oscar Wilde. Coincidentally, the spy story ended up with a baby being left in a handbag at Victoria station – you get the idea! At times the actors were playing themselves on an earlier occasion playing the Wilde characters – but it all seemed to make some sort of sense. Great fun, very silly and remarkably clever.

'First Among Sequels' by Jasper Fforde

10 April 2009

Having reached the beginning of Jasper Fforde's series of Thursday Next novels I have now leaped forward to the end, reading the latest instalment 'First Among Sequels'. This book was written much later than the previous four and is set in 2002, fourteen years after its immediate predecessor 'Something Rotten' (reviewed here in August 2008). Literary detective Thursday Next is still coping with the demands of policing both in the 'real' world and within fiction but now has the added pressures of family life and pretending to her husband that she works in a carpet shop. The usual Fforde mix of parallel universes, time travel and surreal nonsense with a nonetheless logical plot are all here - and I think this is one of the better Thursday Next books. I was a little disappointed to spot a couple of plot lines that don't appear to be resolved (unless I missed something) but it's all good fun - with an menacingly dark side as Thursday gets mixed up in cheese smuggling over the Welsh border.

 

St Osyth, Essex

7 April 2009

We had a relaxing week at St Osyth, near Clacton-on-Sea in Essex. We had good weather and did some very nice walks. The seaside resorts (Clacton, Walton-on-the-Naze etc) are quaintly old-fashioned - though most have seen better days. We preferred the villages north of Colchester, towards the Suffolk border, particularly Dedham and Castle Hedingham which are extremely picturesque. And we crossed the border into Suffolk to revisit Constable's Flatford Mill - the site of 'The Hay Wain'. A quiet, restful week.

'The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House' by Kate Summerscale

6 April 2009

On 30 June 1860 a child was murdered in a country house in Road, Wiltshire. This crime was to become a national cause célèbre that would influence the fledgling art of detection, policing methods and the judicial system and would launch a new literary genre. The Road Hill House case was the original 'country house murder' - the first in a line leading through Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple to Inspector Morse. 'The Moonstone' by Wilkie Collins, generally considered to be the first real English detective novel, was published in 1868 and was modelled on the Road Hill murder - with Collins' Sergeant Cuff taking the role of the real Detective Inspector Jonathan Whicher. Echoes of the Road Hill case also occur in 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood' by Charles Dickens and Henry James' 'The Turn of the Screw'. Kate Summerscale's remarkable book 'The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House' describes the investigation of this horrendous crime in forensic detail. Although it is written in the now familiar murder mystery form, 'The Suspicions of Mr Whicher' is not fictionalised. Kate Summerscale has written a wholly factual documentary, drawing on contemporary newspaper reports, police records and other sources. Dialogue is quoted verbatim and everything is carefully referenced. The book starts on the day the murder is discovered and the chapters step chronologically forwards, revealing only what was discovered by the police at each stage. The level of detail at first appears overwhelming and I worried that I would not be able to retain enough too follow the unravelling of the story. But within a few chapters I was completely gripped and could not put down this compelling tale. Without ever dropping the thread of the murder investigation, Kate Summerscale manages to weave a social history of Victorian Britain, encompassing class, employment, politics and the influence of Darwinism. 'The Suspicions of Mr Whicher' is an amazing story, brilliantly told: I urge you to read it.

Ruth Notman

6 April 2009

'Threads', the debut CD by young Nottingham folk singer Ruth Notman, was one of my favourite discoveries of 2008. So I leapt at the chance to hear Ruth live at The Stables. The new 'Stage 2' performance space was absolutely packed: we got the last two seats on the front row and later arrivals were turned away. The music was wonderful - most of the songs from 'Threads' plus some from Ruth's second album (due to be released in July), impeccably performed. Ruth Notman has a great voice - distinctive and characterful - and plays guitar and piano impressively. Her repertoire is catchy and varied - including traditional tunes and modern songs drawing on the folk tradition. Her's is not precious or intense folk music: it's full of vitality and often rather jolly. Like that other young English folk singer (who actually sings backing vocals on 'Threads') Bella Hardy (reviewed here in March 2008), Ruth Notman benefits from a more experienced musician accompanying her and helping guide her through the challenge of developing her stage presence and between-song patter. In this case the older hand is Saul Rose on melodeon and Ruth was also joined by Hannah Edmonds on 'cello. Unfortunately, the number of times she filled the silences with "so" or "right" and the occasions when the performers ended up talking to each other and ignoring the audience were a bit distracting. I am sure her concert presentation will improve with experience. There was no sign of nerves or lack of confidence in Ruth Notman's singing, however. She did not disappoint and I'm really looking forward to her new album.

‘Cider with Roadies' by Stuart Maconie

23 March 2009

Having enjoyed ‘Pies and Prejudice’ – Stuart Maconie’s exploration of the North of England (reviewed here in June 2008) – I was keen to read his earlier book ‘Cider with Roadies’. This is Maconie’s memoire of growing up in Wigan, failing as a rock star and succeeding as a music journalist – and a chronicle of the changing face of popular music over his lifetime. Very much in the Nick Hornby mode, it’s an entertaining, self-deprecating and very funny tale. Inevitably the best bits were where Stuart Maconie’s musical experiences coincided with my own but his main childhood enthusiasms were a bit before my time and his discoveries as a music journalist came mostly after my own enthusiasm for pop music had waned. Nevertheless I found much to reminisce over and his brushes with stardom are so modestly dealt with they never feel like mere name-dropping. If you like this kind of thing I would also recommend ‘Lost in Music’ by Giles Smith.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

17 March 2009

On Saturday I played in the Northampton Symphony Orchestra 'Film Night' concert at the Derngate in Northampton. It was fitting that an event showcasing storytelling music had so many stories to tell itself. Dr Peter Robertson played viola in the NSO for more than 30 years. When he died last year he left a bequest to the orchestra which funded this ambitious concert in his memory. The occasion also marked the start of violinist Harold Colman's 50th year playing in the orchestra: Harold was presented with a framed copy of the programme from the first NSO concert in which he performed - in 1960. And Saturday's concert was the NSO debut for our new conductor, Alexander Walker. Alex is an exciting, young, professional conductor who is a regular guest conductor with the Russian State Symphony Orchestra, works regularly at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and is a regular guest conductor with the Mikkeli and Lappeenranta City Orchestras in Finland, and of the Esbjerg Ensemble and the Vestyjsk Sinfonieorkester in Denmark. This film music programme, including 'Superman', 'The Dambusters', 'Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom', 'Back to the Future' and 'The Great Escape' was a different kind of challenge for Alex. During his first rehearsal, in January, he peered at the score for 'Themes from 007' at one point and commented "it says 'medium rock tempo' - not a phrase I have encountered much in my professional career!". But Alex and the NSO rose to the challenge and it was a wonderful evening - including what I thought was a particularly impressive performance of 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice' by Paul Dukas. It was very exciting to play to an enthusiastic audience of what must have been nearly 1,000 people. A magnificent, overdue return to the Derngate.

‘Seya’ by Oumou Sangaré

11 March 2009

It’s fascinating how, despite the universality of music, some countries produce a disproportionately vibrant musical culture: it must be something to do with a happy coincidence of tradition, conditions, politics etc. With centuries of musical tradition, Mali in West Africa is today one of the most musical places on Earth. One of the stars of modern Malian music is the Wassalou singer Oumou Sangaré, whose new album ‘Seya’ I have been enjoying this week. Oumou Sangaré is an amazing person – superstar, political campaigner and entrepreneur. Her music is beautiful, joyous and extremely funky. Using a combination of traditional African and modern Western instruments, she is less experimental than fellow Wassalou diva, Rokia Traoré (reviewed here in December 2008) but manages to create a sound which is contemporary without becoming bland Western pop music. And whereas Rokia Traoré’s vocals are almost whispered, Oumou Sangaré’s voice soars over the music. ‘Seya’ is varied, catchy, moving and distinctively Malian.

Mahler's 5th Symphony in Leighton Buzzard

2 March 2009

Keith Saunders is a keen amateur violinist who plays with Milton Keynes Sinfonia. As he approached his 50^th birthday Keith wanted to do something special to mark the occasion and decided to take part in a sponsored Everest Base Camp Trek to raise funds for the British Heart Foundation. On Sunday, to give a focus to his search for sponsors and to fulfil another ambition on his birthday itself, Keith and his friends gathered together, at Vandyke Upper School in Leighton Buzzard, a massive orchestra made up of players from Milton Keynes Sinfonia, Bedfordshire Symphony Orchestra, Northampton Symphony Orchestra, Buckinghamshire Chamber Orchestra and others to play Mahler’s 5^th Symphony. Mahler 5 is a wonderful, mammoth, crazy, challenging work which would stretch the forces and ability of most amateur orchestras. At the end of a one-day workshop, conducted by David Knight, we managed to produce a very passable informal performance. It was great fun – a lovely day with excellent catering by Keith’s family and a rare chance to get to grips with an amazing piece of music. You can contribute to Keith’s British Heart Foundation appeal at www.justgiving.com/keithsaunders  

'Brief Encounter' adapted for the stage by Emma Rice from the words and music of Noel Coward

2 March 2009

Had the phrase ‘kitchen-sink drama’ not already been used to mean something else I would have been tempted to employ it in relation to the brilliant Kneehigh Theatre whose productions tend to involve everything and the kitchen sink! On Saturday we were at the Royal Theatre in Northampton to see the Kneehigh production of Noel Coward’s ‘Brief Encounter’. Very much as she did (with Tom Morris) with the National Theatre/Kneehigh production of ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ (reviewed here in May 2007), director and adapter Emma Rice has taken an iconic film and created a stage production which draws out much more than you realised was in the original. Working with Coward’s screenplay, Rice has added an onstage band and a serious of music-hall turns – all featuring Noel Coward songs. The show also features an integration of live action and film, dance, puppetry, juggling and interaction with the audience – and, while there isn’t actually a kitchen sink, there is an ever-present coal fire smouldering at the back of the stage. Some comic touches reminded me of Patrick Barlow's stage adaptation of ‘The Thirty Nine Steps’ but Laura and Alec’s heart-breaking relationship at the centre of ‘Brief Encounter’ is played straight. The familiar strains of Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto are used very sparingly – creating a very powerful effect when the achingly romantic theme is finally heard in full. Inventive, entertaining and extremely moving – a great theatrical experience.

'John Adams'

27 February 2009

I’ve been catching up with the wonderful HBO drama series ‘John Adams’. Having heard much praise for this tale of the early years of American independence I had high expectations and was a little disappointed at first to find it a fairly conventional historical drama. As the series progressed, however, I began to appreciate how well done it was. The acting was intelligent and subtle – particularly the central relationship between Paul Giamatti’s Adams and his wife Abigail, played by Laura Linney. The gradual character development over a period of more than 20 years was engaging and believable. There were key roles for a number of British actors including Tom Hollander (a brilliant cameo as King George III), Rufus Sewell, Stephen Dillane and a show-stealing turn by Tom Wilkinson as Benjamin Franklin. With hindsight it was very clever to show us some of the key events of the period through the eyes of the ever-present, but often peripheral, Adams rather than focussing more obviously on George Washington. It has certainly improved my knowledge of the history of the period – and the scenes in the pre-revolution French court were a hoot. 

'Every Good Boy Deserves Favour' by Tom Stoppard and André Previn

20 February 2009

In 1974 André Previn told Tom Stoppard that if he ever wanted to write something that needed a symphony orchestra, well he had one (the LSO). After some discussion they agreed to create a play involving an orchestra as one of the characters. ‘Every Good Boy Deserves Favour’ received its debut – a one-off performance at the Royal Festival Hall with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Previn – in July 1977. The play is set in a Russian psychiatric hospital and tells the story of two men – one a political dissident incarcerated in the hospital, the other a real psychiatric patient who believes he has his own orchestra with him in the room. This leads to the juxtaposition of a serious condemnation of the abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union with a farce of misunderstanding and talking at crossed purposes. And, of course, we the audience can see the imaginary orchestra in the room performing Previn’s score – with the deluded patient playing the triangle (which in turn allows for a very Stoppardian dissection of Euclidian geometry!). I first came across this understandably rarely performed work nearly 20 years ago when I was working for the Royal National Institute for the Blind and we were asked to record the text for a visually impaired student. So I was familiar with the brilliant dialogue (the triangle player continually asks the political prisoner what instrument he plays, assuming he must have come to join the orchestra: at one point, after a few seconds thought, he asks “if I were to strike you over the head with your instrument, would you need a welder, a carpenter or a brain surgeon?”). But I had never seen the piece performed so I leapt at the chance to see the revival directed by Felix Barrett and Tom Morris currently playing at the National Theatre. Using the massive Olivier stage, Barrett and Morris have made ‘Every Good Boy Deserves Favour’ more theatrical and less of a concert hall piece. In this production the players of the Southbank Sinfonia are integrated into the action in a range of inventive and surprising ways. Toby Jones and Joseph Millson are great as the two patients but this is an ‘ensemble’ work in every sense of the word, with a cast of around 60 people. It only lasts just over an hour, without an interval, but it was one of the most exciting, entertaining and though-provoking theatrical experiences I’ve had for a long time. My understanding and enjoyment was enhanced by attending a pre-show talk: on most occasions when you go to the pre-show talk you find yourself amongst a handful of people sitting at the front of a large auditorium but on this occasion the enormous Olivier theatre was packed, with people standing at the back, to hear Tom Stoppard himself talking about the writing of ‘Every Good Boy Deserves Favour’. Stoppard is a thoughtful, careful speaker – self deprecating without false modesty – and it was fascinating to hear his insights into the creative process.