'Hair' at the Gieldgud Theatre.

‘I can’t understand the words’, said my companion, halfway through a frenetic matinee at The Gielgud Theatre last week. The programme described the show as 'an ecstatic rock musical'. We were enjoying an interval respite from the noise and eating frozen yogurt in Berwick Street.

‘It’s not Andrew Lloyd Webber. The words don’t matter.’

Well, the words didn’t matter to whoever rehearsed the show's chorus – or ‘Tribe’, as they are called in the programme. The solos, mostly shrieked, weren’t much better. Of the 40 songs only two are still recognised - ‘Aquarius’, which never made much sense and ‘I got my Life’, ruined by association with TV Yogurt ads. The best song, and the only one where you can make out the lyrics, was written by Shakespeare, as a speech called ‘What a piece of work is man.’, here converted into a decent anti-war ballad.

This was almost the only genuinely moving part of the show, in contrast with the ear-splitting delivery of the rest. The young cast are unmistakably enthusiastic. There was a quite a bit of invasion of the audience, of the kind that makes you glad you didn’t sit too near the front. People around me were good-natured but nervous.

Unlike my companion I was happy enough to identify a parade of sixties themes: free love, pot smoking, racial prejudice, male display, anticommunism, street protests, the atom bomb, Eastern religions and the rejection of education and domesticity. A story of sorts emerged: a young man, his best pal and their girl friends drop out of middle class suburban lifestyles to live with a group similarly rebellious young people. Then one of them is drafted and sent to Vietnam, which brings everything to an end.

‘Hair’ seemed irrelevant here even when it first arrived from Broadway, in 1968. The pill had popularised unmarried sex in the early sixties in England. Although we might deplore the war in Vietnam: ' white people sending black people to fight yellow people for those who stole it from the red people’, as one of the characters puts it, nobody mentioned a ‘special relationship’ back then. The show’s big draw was nudity onstage, recently allowed by the abolition of the Lord Chamerlain's role in censoring theatre.

Rado and Ragni's show was a hit in London then; 'Time Out' named it last week as London's top musical. I didn't see it first time round, so it was a good opportunity, being tied up at the time with amateur drama and motherhood in Penge, so this seemed a good opportunity to see what I'd been missing.

The programme says that this version, which is not the first revival, has been updated, but unless you remember the original it’s not always clear where. There’s an 'ad-lib' stand-up comedy at the beginning performed by one of the characters, and ‘contemporary’ references, such as Roman Polanski’s name called out at random moments. Comedy scenes, like the one with the hero’s stereotyped suburban parents and another with a conventional middle aged couple apparently plucked from the audience were so inept as to be embarrassing. They were not so annoying, however, as the audience ‘plants’ who made their raucous presence felt in the second half and who led the orchestrated ‘standing ovation’.

The single funny line is made by the hero’s father. When his son expresses the wish for a change of nationality, in a song called ‘Manchester, England’, he says, ‘Face it, you’re Polish!’.

For all the supposed boldness of songs like ‘Sodomy’ which nowadays sounds just like a childish list of rude words, nudity is underplayed, making a brief appearance just before the interval. The cast move towards the back of the stage, the lights are lowered and they drift off to reappear and stand without clothes. It’s like an old-fashioned Music Hall tableau, all done in the best possible taste.

‘Hair’ reminds me of all those ‘I love you, Dad’ scenes in American movies. As we sneaked out of the theatre, not tempted to join the cast onstage, I was feeling not so much ecstatic as old. In fact, I felt something like the Duchess of Malfi when the madmen ceased their torments. And I had to agree after all that we should at least have been able to understood the words.


'Hair' at The Gielgud Theatre: www.gielgud-theatre.com

The Duchess of Malfi at the New Players Theatre





Circus as metaphor for John Webster's anarchic world has a lot going for it. Intrigue and deceit generate mental acrobatics on all sides. With five corpses piled onstage at the end and a lot of gruesome surprises on the way, the overheated tragedy is replete with spectacle. The Italian setting invites comparisons with Comedia del'Arte and designer J William Davis' set and costumes were convincing. Sadly, they detracted from the overall impact of the play.

I was lucky enough to see Judi Dench and Helen Mirren give powerful performances onstage in London.Both brought out the resonance of 'I am entering a wilderness' , as the heroine decides to defy her brother , and the dignity of 'I am the Duchess of Malfi still' when calumny follows.

I 'd been curious for a while about visiting this theatre under the arches near Charing Cross that's better known for late night risqué cabarets than classical plays.

In seventeenth century Milan the widowed Duchess of Malfi is forbidden to marry by her excitable brother Ferdinand. He engages the cynical Bosola, ‘the only court gall’ to keep an eye on her while he’s away. The Duchess is in love with one of the few good men around, Antonio. His status as a groom makes him a bad match, but they go through a form of secret marriage and have three children before Ferdinand finds out.

Webster’s image-filled language was as superb and arresting as ever, the lines echoing recent usages, such as ‘Cover her face, mine eyes dazzle. She died too young’. or ‘Pleasure of Life, what is it? Merely the good days of an ague’. Webster’s themes - high-level corruption and male oppression – also account for its continuing popularity. It was good to be reminded at the present time that: '‘A politician is the devil’s quilted anvil’.

At first, the spare big-top set, with hurdy gurdy music, actrobatic scurrying up ropes and twirling hoola hoops was a pleasing novelty. The play opened with a wrestling match and ribbon-like ropes were used by extras to scatter paper snowflakes on th e exiled lovers. As the programme made clear, the company, appropriately named Vaulting Ambtion', was well- trained in circus arts.

There were too many occasions, though, when the production was over-strained Although the circus performers were mainly distanced from the action, except for the successful 'mad torment' scene, the concept jarred, despite Dan Horrigan's brisk direction. Dressing Tilly Middleton, the Duchess, for instance, in a sequinned mini-dress and a pony-tail hair-style topped with a pink scrunchy made it hard to preserve any sense of dignity. Her performance came across as dispirited when it should have been tragic.

The acting, it must be said, was generally lack-lustre, but as there were only seventeen of us for the matinee in the tiny theatre, it was perhaps unsurprising. What should have been shocking parts of the play - the severed hand and the poisoned book, the murders and even the waxen show were all understated and lost impact

In the stock seventeeth century role of ‘malcontent’, James Sobol Kelly 's Bosola was good , as the servant whose unrewarded merit has made him turn to evil, akin to Shakespeare's Iago. Here he's working, at least initially, under orders from above.

One of the most puzzling moments is when the Duchess’s maid, Cariola, delivers a jazz chorus from half-way up a ladder. Stephanie Brittain's cabaret delivery was pleasant, but the choice of ‘Honeysuckle Rose’ pointless. It wasn’t as if it was designed to drown out the occasional sound of trains passing overhead. Another bizarre touch was the use of coathangers with small suits attached to represent the Duchess's doomed children. In another context it would have seemed inventive.Here it just added to the general clutter of a somewhat confusing the production.

In Retro-respect: Alan Ayckbourn's Bedroom Farce at The Duke of York's



It's the 70s; Nick and Kate are throw a house-warming party. Nick's DIY ineptitude means shelves fall down and the walls are half-papered but nothing bothers this loved-up pair who run round hiding shoes for a laugh. Nick's slightly cross that Kate has invited Susannah and Trevor, whose marital spats are routinely played out in public. It's a shame that Jan, Trevor's ex, will be there too, on her own because husband Malcolm is in bed with a bad back. Meantime Trevor's elderly parents go out to celebrate their anniversary then settle down for a bedtime snack. Mayhem ensues and nobody gets much sleep.


I wonder what it must be like for people who didn't know the 70s to watch this play. True, people still struggle with flat-pack furniture, one target of Ayckbourn's soft-centred satire, and the English middle-class fear of rows is just as strong, but those coats-piled-on-bed parties are a distant memory. These days guests don't bother with coats, or leave them in the car.

As with most of Ayckbourn, the joy is in the play's inventive use of the stage and witty dialogue as well as the dovetailing of the three-stranded plot. When I first saw this in the 70s it seemed daring to set the action entirely in three contrasting bedrooms. Even now I seem to remember a revolving stage for the first London production. At the Duke of York's it's all done with lights.

With Peter Hall directing, this entertaining tranfer from Kingston Rose Theatre was slick but not quite settled in on the night I attended. The younger couples seem a tad dated, the silly newly-weds like the Catherine Tate couple who laugh like drains when they get out of the lift at the wrong floor. Kate (Finty Williams) is bouncy and Nick (Tony Gardener) not quite hapless enough.Slipped-disc Malcolm (Daniel Betts) does a great slow-motion fall out of bed when he drops his book, and Jan (Sara Crowe) deftly portrays the wife whose patience is wearing thin.

My favourites, then as now, are parents Delia (Jenny Seagrove) and Ernest (David Horovitch) the actors as comfortable on stage as they are with their stereotype middle class marriage, mildly amused that eating pilchards in bed makes it 'smell like a fishing boat.'

It's not one of Ayckbourn's funniest plays, having the hall-mark surface frivolity without the dark undertones of later works, such as 'Woman in Mind' seen in the West End last year. It still slips down like a smooth Amontillado. I imagine it would chime more with a posh suburban audience than the West End one, but there's still a lot to like. Especially if you remember the 70s.

Churchill’s studio at Chartwell.






‘And the moon shines bright on Charlie Chaplin
His boots are cracking for t' want of blacking
And his old fusty coat is wanting mending
Until they send him to the Dardanelles’

In 1915, when this sang mildly satirical ditty was first heard, Sir Winston Churchill took up painting.

His wife, Clementine, did all she could to encourage Winston’s new hobby. He’d suffered from depression for years and the failure of the Dardanelles campaign, for which he was blamed, was a time of national mourning. She even called on artist and family friend Sir John Lavery to help the great man. Given his well-known irascibility, that must have taken courage. Churchill apparently ignored advice to tone down his hues.

After a false start with water colours, he completed over 500 oil paintings over his lifetime. About 350 are still at his country house, Chartwell, now owned by the National Trust, some in the house itself but most in the studio he had built in the grounds.




Last Sunday’s Spring-like weather made the prospect of hour’s drive from South London through Kent very tempting. It would have been an hour, if we hadn’t been diverted round Sundridge.

Mothers’ Day coincided with Chartwell’s opening for the Trust’s 2010 season, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that parked cars spread into a reserve field and the restaurant had run out of chicken cobbler. It, crowded, noisy, messy and overrun with children. We wished we’d stopped at one of the pubs in Brasted instead.

I’d enjoyed previous visits to the house, full of Churchill memorabilia and an exhibition about his military achievements. Today I wanted to see the paintings and we were just in time to catch a three o’clock introductory talk.




Churchill made no claims for the quality of what he called his ‘daubs’ and it’s just as well. Possibly the best ones are in private collections elsewhere, and a couple in the National Gallery were mentioned. The paintings are mainly landscapes – scenes from the Kentish Weald farm where Churchill lived before moving to Chartwell and the grounds near the house itself. The majority showed French, Italian and Moroccan locations he visited on holidays and campaigns.



Interesting as the domestic interiors and the paintings are, the real star of the show is the Kentish landscape surrounding the house, situated on a small promontory overlooking a valley. Ponds, for swimming and fishing, border the sloping lawns, beyond which fields merge with wooded hillsides, resembling pastel sketches in subtle greys, reddish browns and soft purple. The spears of daffodils, bright green among the bracken and rocks near the house, contrasted with the dead ribs of giant ochre leaves in a huge patch of rhubarb-like plants near the house.




‘A day away from Chartwell is a day wasted’, Churchill said. The peace and stillness here must have helped him forget the turmoil of war that haunted him. It’s certainly a place to inspire a budding artist as well lift the spirits of visitors.

About the National Trust: www.nationaltrust.org.uk

Heldenplatz by Thomas Bernhard


In no-choice economy class at the Arcola an empty adjacent seat is almost a necessity, so being told to close gaps for a full house wasn’t good news. It’s a tribute to Thomas Bernhard’s prose that the first half, despite its 85 minute length, keeps the audience spellbound.

Set during a right-wing resurgence in 1988 Vienna, the play’s contemporary relevance is very evident under Annie Castledine and Annabel Arden’s crisp direction
The linear lay-out loses some of the studio’s intimacy but it’s integral to the design of the scenes: servants’ quarters in a bleak apartment, a graveside disquisition and family gathering for a last supper. Rectangles are the play’s central motif, from the refugee suitcases in the ghostly prologue to the formal dining table at the end, when the final word is left to the Heldenplatz itself.

Major themes emerge in three scenes. The first is haunted by the presence of the recently deceased Professor Schuster, who has committed suicide by throwing himself from the window of the flat into the square. He is present both in his housekeeper’s eerie near-monologue, adoringly recalling his cold persona – a striking performance by the suitably bony Barbara Marten - and in the heap of identical black brogues that Hannah Boyde, as a fearful maid, is cleaning. His spirit seems to inhabit the wintry rays that pierce the fateful window.

As the Professor’s daughter, a strident Jane Maud, and his mordantly witty brother Joseph, played by Clive Mendus, talk at the graveside, the focus shifts. ‘My brother committed suicide; I went to Neuehaus’, says the arthritic Joseph. The merits of survival tactics adopted by remaining family members are considered – a vital issue for Jews in a society where anti-Semitism is rife. Bernhard’s portrayal of Austria damaged his reputation as a dramatist.

In the final scene family members wait for the wife whose sanity is on a knife edge, apparently only maintained in an absence from Vienna. Has the housekeeper, her implied though never recognised rival, orchestrated the situation? The gaunt Petra Markham makes a suitably tragic partner for the Professor whose ghost haunts the play and her final collapse to the resounding 'Sieg Heils' from the square makes real the suffering that motivated the Professor’s suicide.

http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search?ei=utf-8&fr=slv8-frz6&p=Heldenplatz

How Would a Robot Read a Novel?



Even if the prospect of a free Literary Festival in London, followed by a drinks reception at the inaugural talk, hadn’t been enough, how could I resist the title? Might it signal the end of reading, like an expansion ad infinitum of The Readers’ Digest?

LSE Alumni clearly don’t swell the noble (i.e. poorly paying) professions. The New Academic Building in Kingsway is a palace of blond-wood, steel and plate glass. Surely the Champagne quality would match it.

‘Don’t leave any gaps! We’re expecting a full house!’ Marshalled by redshirts with military haircuts into the Sheikh Zayed Theatre, the docile booklovers fill up rows from the front, like Saturday morning picturegoers.

LSE was founded, apparently by George Bernard Shaw. This second annual festival, said stand-in chairman Tom Chapman was, ‘a return to the LSE’s roots’ and great results were expected. After the 2009 event then-Chairman David Hare went out and wrote ‘The Power of Yes’, now showing at the National Theatre (The Time Out critic says it sounds like a two-hour lecture, perhaps not so surprising)



The talk title should have read ‘What Happens When a Computer Programme Reads a Novel?’ or ‘What Do Social Scientists Look for in Novels?’

First, a social psychologist, a literary theorist and a novelist take turns to present a huge screen of colour-coded pie-charts (although novelist Robert Hudson refuses.) A text-analysing programme called Alceste had been fed novels like Moby Dick and The Da Vinci Code.

Alceste can’t read the text, only recognise ‘co-occurrences’ and tabulate frequencies of appearance, hence the pie charts. These show the percentage of religion-related topics in Dan Brown’s best seller or ditto whaling in Melville’s epic. I was waiting for the interesting part, but it didn’t happen, except when audience questions strayed into literary territory.

Novelist Robert Hudson approved the findings for his own novel. ‘The Kilburn Social Club’ was 50% about relationships, Alceste said, which might be expected from the title, although he feared it might come up with ‘football’. Considering the book cover shows a of a football pitch (it was on sale in the foyer) and blurb mentions a young woman who inherits a football club it just goes to show that Alceste could be a handy corrective tool for readers. Even so, the ‘co-occurrences’ needed interpretation, which was subjective.

To me Alceste’s major,even fatal, short-coming was that it couldn’t say whether a book was any good. There’s only one way to do that:just carry on reading for oneself. Phew! And the Champagne was excellent.

A Bibulous Tour of Belgravia



Declared fit after being confined to barracks for three weeks by a troublesome cough, I was more than ready to join friend and Westminster guide Joanna on what she called a 'bibulous tour', in other words a pub walk, in Belgravia. I thought it might be useful to know about some backstreet inns for the times when I'm stuck in the West End wondering where to get a drink and a sit-down.

It wasn't all pubs, though. Joanna stopped from time to time and supplied her group of eight walkers with interesting historical asides (and current house prices) relevant to the mews, churches and sidestreets around Eaton Square.

We learned, for instance, about the fortuitous marriage of Sir Robert Grosvenor, Marquess of Westminster. His twelve-year-old bride was heiress to an area known as 'Five Fields' which included most of Mayfair. His statue has him with a foot placed on a milestone as reminder that his family seat was 197 miles away in Cheshire. Talbot dogs that flank the great man appear on his family escutcheon and were familiar from the pottery versions I'd seen on sideboards. They remain as sad reminders of a breed now extinct.



There were more than pubs on the walk, and Joanna stopped in front of the house where Ian Fleming once lived, as a blue plaque denotes. On the way to the first pub I talked to a lively young woman who runs a business based on food-and-wine-tasting events.



The Star Tavern was the first pub, its interior both spacious and welcoming with a real coal fire blazing away in the grate. The only disappointment was the lack of hot drinks. 'We have no facilities'. Just in time, I stopped the barman from adding ice to my tomato juice. I noted the pub does Sunday roasts at a reasonable £7.95, so I think it'll be suitable for celebrating R's birthday next month.



The Nag's Head was tiny, with a two-foot high bar in the front parlour and a tiny space with barrels for tables at the back. Here the bartender was heard to remark to someone asking for tea 'We're running a pub, not a cafe', which saved me the bother of a query. I didn't have a drink at all there, but chatted to a woman who was trying to persuade Joanna to do a city walk for her customers interested in Maritime trade.



The best was saved 'til last - a pub that looked straight out of toytown, with a bright blue facade and a red senty box outside. Not only did this delightful pub serve hot drinks but the coffee came in a cafetiere with instructions to wait three minutes for it to brew. Now how could pouring boiling water on coffee grounds be too much trouble at the other places?



Here I talked to Tony, like myself a keen supporter of 'Liars League', a bi-monthly pub meeting where actors read out short stories, the best of entries submitted under a different theme each week. There was plenty of reading matter scattered about, including a magazine called The Belgravia, and an intriguing back room with pictures and banknotes pinned to the ceiling.

So now I'm all set to impress family and friends with my knowledge of Belgravia pubs. Thanks, Joanna.


The Star Tavern:

www.fancyapint.com/pubs/pub933.php

The Nag's Head:
http://www.fancyapint.com/pubs/pub385.php

The Grenadier:
http://www.fancyapint.com/pubs/pub384.php

Food and Drink Experiences:
http://www.tastour.co.uk

Joanna's Westminster Walks:
http://westminsterwalking.blogspot.com/

Liar's League:

liarsleague.typepad.com

For A' That an A' That...


I wasn't well enough to go out on Burns Night, and it occurred to me too late I could cook my own 'neeps and tatties' and buy in a haggis from Tesco- not that it would be the same, and the friend with whom I usually celebrate was also suffering from a cold. Now she's 80 years old, it's the sort of thing that keeps her indoors on a January night.

For my own celebration I re-read some of Robert Burns's poems in a handy booklet given away free by the Guardian, part of their series of 'Romantic Poets'.

It was an extra bonus when C sent me a set of commemorative stamps. Her local Post Office still had some left over from the 250th anniversary

There's a special meaning for my friend and ex-colleague, married to a Scotsman until she was widowed ten years ago. He proposed at Loch Lomond when she was a student teacher from France. Like her a lifelong left-winger, he was a great admirer of Burns's humanitarian sentiments.

The poem I read out at his funeral was not included in the Guardian selection, probably because it was political rather than romantic, although for him the two often went together. It's an expression of his belief that wealth, fine clothes and position are not what make a person human acccording to his definition. The last verse of 'For a' that an' a' that' is curiously optimistic about the ability of men to recognise their common humanity and seems very apt for modern times. One can't help hoping it's prophetic:


Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that,)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.

'Six Degrees of Separation' at the Old Vic



‘It all depends on the production’, said the programme seller when I expressed my dismay. Gone was the lovely theatre-in-the-round space created for the performances of Alan Aykbourne’s Norman Conquest trilogy, still in place for ‘Complicit’, starring Richard Dreyfuss. In its place was an awkward three-tiered horseshoe.

A recent TV advert for American Airlines shows the theatre’s artistic director Kevin Spacey in what I assumed was a pre-conversion Old Vic. Cooing about how he appreciated good service his onscreen persona transferred from the dress circle to his seat in AA business class (Currently to be see in the new George Clooney ‘comedy’ ‘Up in the Air, in case you didn’t catch Spacey) I wish I could say the same about my own experience at last Thursday’s matinee for ‘Six Degrees of Separation’.

Instead, my seat on the right hand leg gave me an excellent view of the audience on the opposite side. To see the stage I had to turn through ninety degrees. I wasn’t too far from a kind of a red-coloured bowl sliced down the middle, which was to be the acting space. Maybe the symbolism was apt to suggest the cosseted world of the Manhattan art-dealing protagonists in their apartment high above Central Park. It did nothing at all for the sound, which seemed to be absorbed by the walls, but then I was hardly giving it both ears, skewed round as I was.

I’d seen the 1993 film of the same name, and remembered it as a chatty but intriguing piece. The ‘six degrees’ of the title, refers to the notion of the interconnection of everybody through six steps of acquaintance, like a giant facebook matrix. Based on the true story of a con man, also suggests the rich easy prey to those who’d take advantage of their gullibility.

A young man (Obi Abili) turns up at the apartment claiming to know their children at Harvard. He certainly seems familiar with the details of their lives. Further he says he’s Sydney Poitier’s son so can get them into the movies. The Kittredge’s (Anthony Head and Lesley Manville) fall for his story and they are not the only ones.

Slick direction and acting carries John Guare’s clever critique of several targets: the commoditisation of art (there’s a huge Kandinsky on display throughout) the ingratitude of pampered offspring, contemporary celebrity-worship and how privileged guilt makes the rich vulnerable to scams.

It's enjoyable and witty enough if you haven't seen the film, which is better. Just make sure your seat points towards the stage.

http://www.oldvictheatre.com/whatson.php?id=56

Literary Listings

Faced with a nine hour wait at frozen Gatwick, I was glad of Writing Magazine in my hand luggage. Time to peruse fifteen pages about Book Festivals and Writing courses on offer in 2010.

My Fantasy Holiday Programme consists of alternating Book and Film Festivals. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to be in a city when a film festival’s on, but in fact I find the October London FF is more than enough. I always end up too traumatised to ever want to see a screen again. It once took a week to wear off.


A first glance at the magazine discounts some of the literary events straight away – too far, too posh, too expensive, and too crowded. I don’t want a gala dinner. I don’t want to hear the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire talking to David Blunkett. Too many places feature Margaret Drabble and/or Gervase Phinn. The dedicated-to-one author ones look attractive, and likely to attract enthusiasts instead of poseurs – Dickens at Broadstairs, Grahame Greene at Berkhamstead, My top favourite would be the Harrogate Crimewriting Festival, except it’s in one (at least) of the discounted categories .

The separate list of courses and workshops is even fancier. People would get on my nerves, so anything residential is out. If I want to walk between writing sessions or retreat to the Tuscan hills I can arrange it myself. I’d rather hire a caravan in Whitstable. Hot weather and scenery give me writers’ block.

So maybe it’ll be a case of one-off events at the LRB bookshop again. Hilary Mantel on the eve of winning the Booker Prize, AS Byatt being taught how to suck eggs by some whippersnapper, Ma Jian reading from Beijing Coma – all memorable in 2009.

But what’s this? An email on my return, telling me about a free Literary Festival in London, with top-flight authors and fascinating topics, ie 'How would a Robot Read a Novel?'

It's the Space For Though Literary Festival, at the LSE. Well, that’s made my mind up. And it’s even happening soon, in February.

http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/spaceForThought/

A Daughter's a Daughter, at the Trafalgar Studios



'Aarghh! Not Agatha Christie!' was R's reaction, when I told him I'd been offered tickets for a new play at the Trafalgar Studios, 'A Daughter's a Daughter'. It seemed to me a perfect Christmas Eve treat, especially since it had such good reviews.


I know what he objected to about Christie's work, because he's told me before - the upper-class milieu, cardboard characters and stilted dialogue. I couldn't drag him to 'The Mousetrap' when my sister visited from Australia.

When Sarah Prentice, Honeysuckle Weeks returns from overseas military service in November 1945 it’s just in time to scotch her mother Ann’s plans to re-marry. ‘I hate change’ she declares, moving the furniture that has been changed round in her absence. Not to give away the plot, the rest of the play revolves round the consequences of her selfishness and her mother’s wish to please.

This play was first written under Agatha Christie's pseudonym Mary Westcott, and opened for just one week at Bath Theatre Royal in July 1956.

As the premise is somewhat dated, interest centres round the recreation of a social milieu and its customs. Apart from the single set, there’s much in common with the TV ‘Poirot’ series as well as ‘Foyle’s War’, in which Honeysuckle Weeks starred as a war-time chauffeur. Her Roedean accent and manner limits her range but the part of the spoilt upper-class daughter suits her well. Jenny Seagrove is superbly moving in the more challenging role of the mother.

The single drawing-room set, with paintings reflecting changes in taste from 1945 to 1949, works very well, as do the costumes and hair styles. While the mother’s suitor is made sympathetic by Simon Dutton, the minor characters jar, including the ‘stock’ female family retailer and the straight-talking titled family friend, reminders of Christie’s penchant for caricature. The clichéd dialogue works well enough in a context where the characters' social conditioning constrains their ability to express themselves.

The talk of cocktails parties, the quaffing of gin and disdain for employment is a long way from the world of post-war rationing and making do, but reflects Christie's own social circle. Despite the lack of wit, it’s closer to the writings of Terrence Rattigan and Somerset Maugham than to the style usually associated with the ‘Queen of Crime’.

For these reasons and because the ‘arena’ style venue is particularly suited to psychological drama, the play works surprisingly well. Even R admitted he’d been wrong to dismiss out of hand a play that offered pleasant, if undemanding, Christmas entertainment.

http://londontheatredirect.com/asp/DaughtersADaughterA.htm

Recycling Christmas at Luis Casado School, Corrales del Vino

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquantance be forgot,
And days of auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, m'dears,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,

For the sake of auld lang syne.

(Robert Burns)

Happy New Year to the children and staff of Luis Casado School, all my new friends in Zamora, volunteer teachers in Castile-y-Leon, friends and family everywhere.

Workaday Carols

St Dunstan's, situated where the Strand becomes Fleet Street, survived the Great Fire of London. Forty Westminster choristers were roused to throw water on the flames when they came to within three doors of the church.

Originally built between 988 and 1070 AD, centuries of wear and tear led to extensive reparations in 1831.

You could be forgiven for walking past the narrow facade and doorway without noticing it, unless you happened to look up at the splendid tower, rebuilt after the original was damaged by German bombs in 1944.

Although outwardly Neo-Gothic, an octagonal space inside lined in dark wood, like the dining hall of an Elizabethan manor, embraces a short aisle and

seating. The traditional pews are accessed by small end-doors with brass latches. The pulpit, raised to the right of the pews, has an attractive overhead canopy.

Once again, friend and Westminster Guide J. was the source of information about a lunchtime carol service on the 22nd, although I'd also attended one of the regular midweek concerts, timed to fit the lunch hours of local office workers.

The service was much more traditional than the one at St Pauls of the week before. No poems, but readings from an older version of the gospels had the virtue of decorous language that was also clearly understood. A contemporary note was struck when Rev William Gulliford drew parallels between the Christmas story and the plot of a film currently showing in London: 'Where the Wild Things Are'. Both, he said, involved' a malevolent Empire, cynical Kings and dark things lurking'.

Hymns were traditional, and included my favourite', We Three Kings of Orient Are', as well as a sonorous arrangement of the medieval 'Adam lay ybounden'. From this, and the vibrancy of the descants in the other hymns, I suspected that they were professionals. Sure enough, J. enquired and confirmed, they were a group called Chantage.

Here were no stewards in official coats, but clergy and lay helpers to point the way to 'seasonal' refreshments', laid out on tables in an area to the side. . Of course, it's easier to offer hospitality of this kind in a church with a small congregation, and most of these were hurrying back to work.

The fact that St Dunstan's is a 'Guild Church' intrigued me, as a native of Preston, which celebrates a 'Guild Merchant' or trades festival once every 22 years. It reflects the church's particular ministry to the daytime working population around Fleet Street, hence the lunchtime concerts lasting 45 minutes, when workers are welcome to eat their sandwiches. On this occasion J had time to sample Christmas cake and wine before returning to her office in nearby Fetter Lane.

J's blog about Westminster and her walks:http://westminsterwalking.blogspot.com/

A Curate's Egg

' The readings seem shorter than usual', said J. We were at at the annual Carol Service at St Pauls on Tuesday. Except it wasn't a Carol Service, it was 'A Celebration of Christmas', and some of the reading were poems.

J had tipped us off about the event, but been detained at work. I had to talk my way past the stewards to retrieve her from the throng of 2,000 or so who were turned away. 'It wasn't like this last year', she commented.

The programme was odd mix. Instead of familiar biblical extracts recounting the annunciation, the rejection at the inn, the wrapping in swathing bands, visitations by angels, shepherds and wise men, we had Laurie Lee and Betjeman. Sadly, the modernised bible readings that were retained sounded like clumsy literal translations - the poetic -sounding swathing bands became mere 'strips of cloth'. Some bits struck a discordantly merry note: 'The Night Before Christmas' , an extract from 'Shirley Valentine' and the choir finale,' We Wish You a Merry Christmas'.

There was a good line-up of professionals for the readings: Sinead Cusack, Penelope Wilton and Toby Stephens. Sitting towards the back, I couldn't see them. There were whole sections at the front reserved for the special people, should they are to attend. Not a good idea to declare no room for those waiting in the cold when some couldn't be bothered to arrive on time.

The amplification was excellent. The choirmaster stuck out for more traditional carols, inserting the odd medieval madrigal - 'Lullay my Liking'- and even Latinate hymns scattered among classics like 'Hark the Herald'. No wonder the four little boys in front of me, like four miniature Boris Johnsons, wriggled and giggled.

I admired the way dimmers on the candelabrae continually varied the lighting between nave and altar area and pulpit, emphasising different performance areas. We always knew when it was our turn to sing and when the choir's. That was a good touch

Perhaps it was the lighting, continually casting different shadows and emphasizing harmony of sculpted stone, arches and cupolas under the great dome that made me realise what a wonderful building this was. It made me aware of the contrast with Spanish churches Whereas in the Spanish churches it's the artefacts - statuary and paintings and set-piece depictions, that caught the eye, with richness of texture and representaton, in St Pauls it's the architecture of the church itself that impresses.

So not one thing or the other, but very enjoyable. Next year I'll get there even earlier.

Santa's Mushroom Village

'Er, well, it's a kind of hole in a rock, perhaps all covered in snow'.

Last week I'd met with puzzled faces and blank stares from the Spanish teachers in Zamora. They'd enjoyed my Christmas Quiz, but were stumped by the question: 'Where does Santa live?'

Was it in:

a) a cabin

b) a chimney

c) a grotto

My Oxford Dictionary Thesaurus says a grotto is ' a picturesque cave' and I recall they were popular as writers' retreats in the eighteenth century. Alexander Pope had one in the garden of his house in Twickenham. The local History Museum and Art Gallery in Blackheath, a converted convent, had one too. Maybe it's iconic, associated with Lourdes and other places where the Blessed Virgin appeared. I've always hankered after a grotto, although I'd settle for a caravan at Whitstable.

So I was dismay to see that the Lewisham Santa doesn't have a grotto; he has a Mushroom Village. Why a mushroom village? It's not very Christmassy, and not even a very accurate description, as the 'mushrooms' are toadstools. Maybe it's an obscure advertising ploy thought up by the market traders.

At least the live elf was authentic- when she saw me wielding a camera she leapt down the path and said it would cost me £1 to take her photograph! I suppose it's all in a good cause if the money really does go to the hospice, but I do like a nice grotto at Christmas

Must be Santa

It´s almost the end of my stay in Zamora, and the man from the Junta was expected. Headmaster José Eladio said the Education Minister would visit village schools across the province, to see teacher volunteers. I was bracing myself; less formal than the greeting ceremony at the ‘monasterio’ in Valladolid, but I expected a speech.

In fact, José Ignacio Rodríguez Aguado (great names here), the ‘Jefe del Servicio de Innovación Educativa (great titles, too) arrived during my final session with the teachers. I’d been happy to swap a day at the school each week for a two hour oral English ´seminario´ with teachers in Zamora. I really enjoyed the sessions and it was a welcome change to teach adults with a good level of English.

Nice Victoria, the local 'Jefa´in charge of the Zamora programme, arrived too, with Jose Eladio. When the visitors came in we’d already sung a song :

‘Who’s got a beard that’s long and white?’
‘Santa’s got a beard that’s long and white.’
‘Who comes around on a special night?’
‘Santa comes around on a special night.’

Special night; beard that’s white …

Must be Santa, must be Santa,Must be Santa, Santa Claus.

José Ignacio didn’t have a beard, and it was me that made the speech, prompted by his question,’ How have you found the experience of teaching in one of Castile’s bi-lingual schools?’ To my surprise, I made some sensible comments and give a summary of the highlights. I expect keeping a blog helped - and the Cava.

Planned activities, comparing Christmas menus and playing Snakes and Ladders ‘- resources replenished courtesy of Roy – had to be shelved.

But we’d made a start on Cava and cake supplied by the teachers. The latter was a traditional Three Kings Cake with hidden treasures. If you chanced on one of two little mannequins it´s a year’s good luck, but if you get the ‘bean’ you’re supposed to pay for next year’s celebration. Poor Maria Jose was the unlucky one.

I won’t be there, but I think I’ll come back for the other ‘Santa’ time, - Semana Santa, at Easter.

Carrie's Visit to Zamora

Carrie´s Visit to Zamora







Altogether, there are sixteen of us volunteer retired teachers and we´ve been posted to ´bi-lingual´village schools all over the Northern province of Castile and Leon . The schools are near the historic cities of Spain´s largest province: Burgos: Valladolid, Avila, Soria, Segovia, Palencia, Leon, Salamanca and Zamora. I really enjoyed the weekend when Carrie stayed with me in Zamora. She´s a Canadian with a warm personality and an interesting background, staying in Salamanca, only an hour by bus from Zamora.

We were blessed with a fine Sunday morning for a walk by the River Duero. In the background, the ´romanico´Puente de la Piedra´

By yet another of the coincidences that have happened since I arrrived in Spain, Carrie´s 'host' English teacher , Belen, has a connection with me. We´d never met, but we´ve exchanged homes.

For some years Roy and I did home-swaps via an Internet company, and once went to stay in Salamanca for a week. By chance, she saw my name on an email I sent to Carrie and said ´I know that person´.

So she proposed coming to collect Carrie to drive her back on Sunday and I reserved a table for us at one of the restaurants that Olga recommended. It was ´Sancho 2´, is in a small park in Zamora. The food and company were excellent.

Concert For St Cecilia It`s too complicated for me to tell you where the conservatory is`, said music teacher Lidia. 'I will drive you there.' I was glad of this, as although I was keen to attend the students' concert, the temperature in Zamora had suddenly dropped. It was a foggy 1 degree in the morning and never rose above 5 that day.

Fortunately, Lidia´s flat is across the street from mine, which makes it convenient for her to drive me to Corrales three times a week. Her duties take her to other villages on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Lidia plays the violincello, as it´s called here. Last week she took the 'cello to the school. The children were still enthusiastic following the visit to a special concert in Vallalodid, so she wanted them to see the 'cello close up. She was feeling nervous about it, though. ´Did they damage it?´I asked her on the way home. No, she said, but she´d misjudged the width of a doorway and managed to break a string all by herself!

The music conservatory in Zamora is housed in what was once an orphanage, and I suppose the concert hall must have been the chapel. It was certainly well supplied with the gilded grotto-like structures called 'retablos'.

This concert had just the kind of informal atmosphere I enjoy, with a good turn-out of relatives, and all the pieces were short, so no strain on the attention. Naturally, guitars featured prominently, fifteen all at once for once piece. fMy favourite was the Villa Lobos solo, though, and I was moved to tears by the concentration of the fourteen year old performer.

Even though I was driven there and back I wore my red coat for the first time. It´s milder now, and I´m back to my padded vest, or flak jacket as Roy calls it. So my musical education continues.