Don Giovanni at Glyndebourne Festival 2023

In many ways my second visit to Glyndebourne in 2023 was more successful than the first.

Travelling on a weekday avoided engineering works and getting there and back was easy, despite the much later finish. We were going with regular friends so arrangements regarding food and drink were easier. And, having found the new Veg Patch Stretch Tent, we knew where we wanted to sit.

Making a day of it, we arrived in Lewes about two hours before the coach to Glyndebourne. We headed to The Depot as usual and as it was a little early for lunch we had some hot drinks and a cake before heading in to town.

We did not have to go very far to find The Rights of Man pub where we went for a drink and were tempted to stay for lunch.

We ended our sojourn in Lewes with a walk through Southover Grange Gardens simply because it is pretty.

At Glyndebourne, the pre-opera session followed the usual pattern of some drinks and a walk around the lake. It is remarkable how quickly those two hours can go when in good company.

At 5pm we went into the opera house and took our seats in Upper Circle Row D (£165). Good central seats with fine views despite being almost at the back of the auditorium.

Don Giovanni was an opera of two halves.

In some ways it is the definitive opera, like Swan Lake is the definitive ballet, with excellent music and a strong story. These were reinforced with faultless playing and singing. Musically it was a triumph.

However, the set just did not work for me. The basic construct looked like a southern states brothel and remained like that throughout pretending to be, amongst other things, a public square, a garden and a graveyard. If I had not known the story beforehand I would have had no idea what was going on.

My probably simplistic view of Glyndebourne is that when I first went the sets did very little and they let the music do all the work whereas now the sets are competing for attention and sometimes, like here, they get in the way.

It was a real shame as the performance was superb and I loved the music but my lasting memory will be of the set.

L’elisir d’amore at Glyndebourne Festival 2023

Organising a Glyndebourne Festival each year takes a lot of effort to sort out who to take to which operas on which dates, and that is after taking a more brutal approach in recent years in giving guests much less choice. 

So it is always great when first the booking confirmations comes though and we know which dates we have got tickets for and then when we actually get to go.

Of course there is still all the food, drink and picnic location to sort out but these are easier choices to make, particularly as it is easy to buy drinks and snacks there. This time we travelled light with just two bags (plus a bottle) with a quiche and obvious accompaniments for main course and fruit and cream for dessert.

Travel should be an easy thing to sort out too but we slightly screwed up. We left it too late to book the coach from Lewes Station so decided to sort something out once we got there. And we got there an hour later than planned due to engineering works on the Waterloo/Woking line which made our train to Clapham Junction late and so we missed the connection to Lewes. 

We tried Plan B, a train to Brighton then a train back to Lewes but the Brighton trained arrived already packed with people standing. So we played safe and went back to Victoria and caught the next direct train to Lewes. Even that was not simple as it was almost as busy as the Brighton train but we got on it early enough to find a seat. By the time we left all seats were taken.

We arrived at Lewes too late to safely have lunch before fighting to get a taxi to Glyndebourne so we were adventurous and took a local bus to Ringmer and walked the last mile along the country road to Glyndebourne. This obviously surprised many people and about a dozen stopped to offer us a lift, which we always politely declined saying that we were enjoying the walk.

Thanks to this excellent planning we arrived at Glyndebourne just as the gardens opened, though they were already pretty busy by then.

Our search for a suitable picnic spot took us first to the boathouse, a pretty location but lacking in shade, and then in to the new Veg Patch Stretch Tent which met all our needs perfectly. This immediately became our preferred spot.

Our guests arrived soon after and the afternoon was underway. This included an early walk around the lake and some Pimms. Nothing new there.

We did well in the ballot this year and for this performance we were in Row B of the central section of Upper Circle, the area we always sit in.

As you can see, the view from there is very good. You may also be able to see that the surtitles say "Photography is strictly forbidden...".

The uncomplicated set, showing a village square, was used like this throughout with only a few props, like a table and some chairs, coming and going to change the scene. It did the job perfectly.

L’elisir d’amore is a simple and silly love story and this production upped the humour with some nice touches that added to the entertainment without distracting from the main theme of boy wants to marry girl but bigger boy also wants to marry here and is easily winning the battle until a miracle happens. Again, all very standard stuff but there's nothing wrong with that.

As always with opera, it is the music that really mattered and this was exemplary. There was a little choral singing but this was mostly one of two people singing at a time either to each other with love or rejection or to us with sadness or triumph. All of the soloists were superb and the opera's stand out aria Una furtiva lagrima (A furtive tear) sung by the distraught lover stood out a lot, almost enough to make me join in with the clapping but there are rules about this sort of thing. Indeed, the clapping and bravoing almost became annoying as it frequently intruded upon and interrupted the flow of the music. Luckily the show was good enough to brush off these blemishes.

After the show we took our time to leave having a coffee and more cake before doing so. The journey was again disrupted by the engineering works but we got home around midnight, which was fine.

L’elisir d’amore was a fine start to Glyndebourne Festival 2023. More like that please!

Two left feet

I have been wearing ecco shoes for several years and always have about five different pairs on the go at the same time, ranging from smart to outdoor trekkers. One of my casual walking pairs is nearing end of life so I went online to buy a new pair.

Taking advantage of a sale I went for a pair of ECCO MX M, a style I had worn and liked before.

This time I was a little bit adventurous and went for grey rather than black.

Ecco went even more adventurous and sent me two left shoes.

They're about to go back and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they have a proper pair left. 

The Return of Benjamin Lay at Finborough Theatre

The Return of Benjamin Lay got a lot of good publicity, not least a mention in The Guardian, so it was an easy decision to go and see it, especially at a modest £18 for being old.

I really miss the Finborough Tavern downstairs not being open, and no signs of it being so any time soon, but the amended routine of catching a tube to a nearby station, but not the closest, walking the area as a minor exploration before a light meal at Cafe du Coin worked as well as it always does.

Later, inside the theatre I saw some people with beers which I think they bought in a shop around the corner. I will have to investigate that for next time, especially if it is anything like as hot again.

On the way into the theatre we were briefly interrupted by a small group with cameras and recording devices who were asking everyone why they were going to the show and what, if anything, they knew about Benjamin Lay. I was happy to confirm that I was as ignorant of the content of the play as I usually am.

I have seen Finborough Theatre in several configurations but never like this, I did not even know that those windows were there! 

I have watched enough episodes of Antiques Roadshow to know old chairs when I see them so clearly this was a period piece. This, we learned, was a A Quaker meeting house in the 18th century where Benjamin Lay appealed to us to readmit him into our group after being expelled following an outburst.

During his appeal, Benjamin Lay told us a lot about his life and how that had led to his beliefs. In particular that meant the equal regard he had for slaves and animals.

It was quite a story, it started in London, included a lot of time at sea (the ladder was used to represent the rigging), a period in Barbados where he encountered slaves and then a move to America and the then British colonies. Along the way he got married and led a reasonably normal life, for that time and place.

The story was made all the more remarkable by Benjamin being barely over four feet tall and a hunchback.

Of course a good story is not enough to make good theatre but this was good theatre thanks to some good storytelling, notably from Mark Povinelli, who also has dwarfism. Benjamin/Mark spoke to us directly thought and engaged some of us with questions while making full use of the stage.

As a life story it worked very well and that would have been enough. Making it even better were the beliefs that Benjamin espoused, the abolition of slavery was the most prominent of these but he was also a vegetarian for similar reasons, "why would you kill and eat your neighbour?". He was an early abolitionist, hence his historical importance, and that is a cause that has largely been won.

Outside I was again approached by the camera crew and we had a longer conversation about the play and what it meant. I am a reflective thinker (I forget which self assessment tool told me this) and I prefer to let ideas stew and ideas to form slowly, which is one reason I write up things in my blog a few days after they have happened (the other is just being disorganised), so I hope that my half-formed immediate reactions were of some use or interest to them. One point I made is that despite being in a Quaker community, Benjamin did not use scripture to justify his views and, to me, he sounded like a Humanist.

The Return of Benjamin Lay was an interesting story with a moral heart, ideal for Woke Humanists like me!

In The Forest of Starlight and Shrapnel at The Yard Theatre

Few things, if any, get me more excited than a new Philip Ridley play at a new theatre in a not so well known corner of London, and this ticked all three boxes.

This was the first production of In The Forest of Starlight and Shrapnel so it was new to everyone, not just me.

The Yard Theatre is in trendy Hackney Wick close to River Lea and Hertford Union Canal. I had been to that area a few times on long cross-London walks, and had set a world record for paying for a coffee nearby, but had not had the excuse to linger there before.

Thanks to London Overground, Hackney Wick is very easy for me to get to and we set off just after lunch. We again met fellow Ridley fan Julie there and did some mooching around the heavily graffitied industrial buildings before pausing for hot drinks (more affordable this time) just the other side of the river.

The Yard Theatre was, unsurprisingly, in an industrial yard that it shared with other hospitality spaces. We went in with enough time to have a late afternoon beer before the performance. Philip Ridley was also in the bar, the fourth or fifth time I had seen him at a theatre. I avoided playing fan-boy and left him to get on with whatever he was doing though I was pleased when he recognised me and said hello as we queued to go in.

I loved the set and it told me I was going to love the play.

Philip Ridley plays come in various forms and this one was fairly traditional with a chronological story told by several characters through a series of scenes. But, being Ridley, the story and characters were nicely strange.

The story was a familiar one too, peasants rebelling against a brutal totalitarian state, and contained some familiar tropes, like people with supernatural abilities and with titles like Healer, but these were just comprehensible objects for Ridley to hang his wild ideas on.

And there were a lot of wild ideas thrown into the long mix. I was conscious that I was enjoying the ride but was travelling so fast that I was missing many things. The mix was incredibly satisfying and the many diverse elements worked well together, this was a proper feast not a work's do buffet.

The sheer weight of ideas needed a large cast to carry it and there were around a dozen actors buzzing around the stage as the story evolved and the scenes changed. The most extreme character was the brutal soldier leader for the state who was also the ruler's brother, he was both camp and sadistic. Exchanging a few quick words afterwards in the bar the actor, still in stage make-up, said what a delight it was to play that character. 

I cannot begin to understand why Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama commissioned this work heavily placed in East London, as Ridley plays often are (but I missed any mention of Victoria Park), nor why there were so few performances. I can only hope that having started its life so brilliantly that In The Forest of Starlight and Shrapnel gets another run somewhere soon so I can see it again to enjoy it again and to fill in some of the ideas that I missed on my first passing.

It is hard to categorise or compare Ridley plays but none of them have hit me as hard as In The Forest of Starlight and Shrapnel did since Ghost From A Perfect Place nine years ago. I would love to see that play again too.

We had not yet finished with Hackney Wick. It was early evening and we wanted food. At the other end of the yard, beside the river, we found CRATE Brewery and Pizzeria which was full of lively twenty somethings (on a Tuesday night) so us there sixty somethings joined them. The location, food, drink and atmosphere were just what we needed.

Rainbow in Rock at The Cavern (10 Jun 23)

They played Stargazer. 

That was all they had to do but they played many more excellent songs too. Another great night out with the best band in the local pub rock scene.

The Cavern pub did its bit supplying a few pints of Gold to encourage a little movement (it would be bit of an exaggeration to call it dancing).

Until the next time!

The Circle at Orange Tree Theatre

Orange Tree Theatre is an easy 45 minute walk away so it is one of the theatres that I manage to see almost all of their productions. I skip a few for various reasons but I was not going to miss something by Somerset Maugham.

Their pricing system has changed a little and, for reasons that escape me, the seats in the corners are a little cheaper than the rest even though I would argue that the view is better there (the stage looks narrower) so I went for seat A19for £26.

The Circle is a will-she, won't-she story about a young woman considering leaving her aristocratic and parliamentary husband thirty years after his mother had left his father. The mother and hew new love had moved to Italy and had not been since.

Unexpected circumstances have thrown all six players together in the young MP's country home. This allows Maugham to play with different combinations of the six very different characters as they, and we, explored the current situation and learned more about what had gone before.

Lightening the mood a little were a few comedy vignettes (they were not big enough to be called gags) such as the authenticity of an antique chair and a game of bridge. Small though they were they did change the mood and the pace of the play which is a good thing, if done correctly.

The casting was a little strange. The play was very clear about people's ages so it was a little odd to have three people well into their 70s playing people under 60. It just about worked because the older generation were all around the same age and also because the tree actors, Jane Asher, Clive Francis and Nicholas Le Prevost, were all very convincing in their roles.

I said that this was a will-she, won't she story and the she was perfectly played by Olivia Vinall.

The Circle never tried to do very much other than be light entertainment and it was very entertaining so that is a good result.