Long Day’s Journey Into Night at Wyndham’s Theatre

Eugene O'Neil plays have been absent from London theatres for a few years and, remarkably, it had been twelve years since I last saw Long Day's Journey into Night. I was keen to see is again.

It helped that this production stared Brian Cox, best known to me for his role as a KGB agent in the two RED films.

All that meant that I was happy to pay £15 for seat A13 in the Grand Circle, which is the third level up.

The play follows the Tyrone family through one summer's day in their seaside home. The father is a touring actor so this is their summer home only. The action, such as it, takes place in one room with the four family members and a maid coming and going throughout the day. It is a play of dialogue and through that dialogue we discover more about the family, particularly their weaknesses.

It is hard to say more without dropping spoilers but it is perhaps not a surprise that heavy drinking and womanising feature.

I loved the set (but forgot to take a photograph) as it was very sparse, little more than a table and a few chairs. That gave more space to the dialogue and also may have been a hint towards the father's miserliness (a trait he explained during the day).

At one level, nothing really happens and the day ends as it began and all that has changed is that we know a lot more about that family. What does happen is all in the words and these are Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning words. The play gripped with ferocity and held me tightly for three hours.

This sort of play is certainly not everyone's cup of tea, and I do not think that the school party behind me were that impressed, but it most assuredly is mine. I loved it and everyone in it.

Arthur Brown at Eel Pie Club

All Arthur Brown concerts that it is possible for me to get to I go to and that imperative was even stronger than usual having seen him at Lewes in November for what was probably my favourite concert of his ever. By then I had already booked to see him at The Eel Pie Club in Twickenham and the next step was the logistics.

The Eel Pie is an unusual, and unhelpful, shape and so I wanted to get in early to bag one of the few decent seats. Doors were 7:45pm and I was in the queue around 7pm. Luckily the queue was only a couple of people at that stage (though they were later joined by friends) so I was reasonably confident.

Julia and Peter joined me before the doors opened and we were amongst the first to be let in byJason on security who had amused us with his conspiracy theories (15 Minute Cites are a form of lockdown, etc.) while we waited.

My initial plan was to sit on the lower lever next to the stage but all the gubbins, artistic and technical, meant that the view from there was very obstructed so we went for seats in the prime position on the upper level. The view from there is the best but the seats are just Ottomans (no backs) so are lest comfortable. The view won.

I really really love this incarnation of Crazy World of Arthur Brown musically and theatrically. Other people obviously like it too and the gig was sold out.

The set was, I think, the same as at Lewes with several newish songs and a few classics (e.g. Fire and Time Captives) delivered with a keyboards-heavy late 60's vibe, think Doors' Light My Fire, that had extended instrumental sections to give Arthur time to do his many costume changes. There was even some audience participation as we joined in on the chants of "Burn!" and on the "La da da" ending to Time Captives.

It was yet another brilliant evening with Arthur Brown and his band. I plan to see them again in November!

I have walked every street in London Borough of Richmond

I have always walked for fun as well as for transport and I like to explore new places. Using MapMyWalk allows me to record each walk and CityStrides then pulls all these together to produce a cumulative map and to produce statistics for each city/region.

What finally pushed me to walking every road in Richmond was paying for the CityStrides premium service which highlights all the unwalked places with red dots. I was then able to visit specific areas, e.g. Barnes, Fulwell and Hampton, and clear all the red dots there. It took several visits, e..g I went to Barnes four or five times, and a lot of time walking down dead-ends.

CityStrides tells me; There are 1,458 streets in London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, totalling 403 kilometres. My first activity to complete a street was on 6 June 2011 and It took a total of 404 activities to finish, totalling 4,707 kilometres.

My next most walked areas are Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames and City of London and I am just over 50% on both. I do not expect to fully walk either area because I do not go to the southern part of Kingston very often and the GPS in the City is so wild it is hard to hit the red dots.

Player Kings at New Wimbledon Theatre

The opportunity to see Ian McKellen in a Shakespeare play close to home was too good to miss. It was expectedly pricey so I went for the Upper Circle where my ATG membership card got me seat A11 for a measly £25.

It was billed as a version of the two plays Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 but, other than the early start time of 6:30pm, there was no clue of the runtime and it was only when a friend got to the theatre just ahead of me and discovered that it was almost four hours! Luckily I am used to long plays and had been well stocked at the usual venue, Mai Thai, beforehand.

First the bad news. Henry IV 1 & 2 are not Shakespeare's best work with the two unrelated themes, the pure history of Henry IV and the tomfoolery of the Falstaff. There were some first-night issues too where the main problem was the safety curtain that was lowered at times for dramatic effect and when it did it hid half the stage, or more, for those of us in the cheap seats.

The good news was the smooth staging (too low curtains apart) which used curtains pulled from the sides to make the scenes changes seamless allowing the stories to move smoothly.

The best news was the performances. Of course Ian McKellen was good but he was in a supporting roll and praise must also go to Richard Coyle as Henry iV. The last time I saw him on stage was in To Kill a Mockingbird. It was also good to see a cameo role by Robin Soans.

The performances, and the staging, were more than enough to make the four hours fly past entertainingly. ot a great night, Henry IV was never going to be that, but it was certainly good.

Macbeth at Dock X

I have seen Macbeth numerous times and there has to be a pretty good reason to drag me out to see another version, and this production did that. Clearly Ralph Fiennes is a big attraction and I was also very tempted by the prospect of a staging in a performance space rather than a traditional theatre.

This was Julia's birthday treat so we pushed the boat out, quite a long way, and paid £85 each for our seats.

Dock X is in Canada Water which was convenient enough to get to (via dinner at Culture Grub by Waterloo) and a little difficult to find, we had to ask.

The venue was basic with bare concrete floors and simple seating in the auditorium. The stage was simple and raised and I had an excellent view of the whole stage ftom a corner position. I may have read my own biases into this but it looked more like an event audience than a theatre audience to me, e.g. it was much younger than I am used to for Shakespeare.

I was expecting the staging to do more than it did as the uniqueness of the production was billed as a key feature whereas I found it all very obvious. Indeed, productions like the one at National Theatre with Rory Kinnear in 2018 were much more experimental.

Essentially this was a standard production of Macbeth disguised as something more interesting.

Enough with the bad news, the production was probably the best Macbeth I have ever seen thanks to the production letting the words of Shakespeare do all the heavy lifting and to stellar performances by the two leads who gave those words the time and the space to flourish.

Israel is a terror state

Depressingly it is still necessary to show public support for Palestine despite the recent ICJ ruling against Israel as our government is still backing the wrong side and doing so with direct support, including weapons that are being used to kill civilians.

We started at Portland Place, home to the BBC but not our target, and took a simple route past Oxford Circus, Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square before passing along Whitehall to Parliament Square.

Unlike all the previous marches there was an incident this time.

I was marching with the Socialist Workers Party group (I am not a member but am broadly supportive) and soon after we entered Haymarket a small Police snatch squad swooped in and took someone they had clearly targeted plus one other who got involved. The two were dragged into Panton Street where a line of police officers stopped us following. There were quite a few of us and the police called in several groups of reinforcement, though there was no physical contact.

For bout twenty minutes we chanted at them, things like "Let Her Go!", while they took lots of photographs of us. We were soon joined by some Legal Observers and also by several people giving out leaflets on what to do if arrested. It was good to see an organised response but worrying that police action made it necessary.

The stalemate was ended when the two were taken away in a van and we rejoined the march that had been carrying on behind us for all that time, despite us starting towards the back. There were a lot of people there.

Kew Orchids (2 Feb 24)

Kew Orchids 2024 officially opened on 3 Feb but members were given an early preview and I was happy to take up the offer. This year's festival followed the trend of recent years with fewer large displays and a strict one-way system which takes about half an hour, depending how often you stop to take photos.

This year's theme is Madagscar and while there are a few orchids from the island on display this mostly means that the animal sculptures are of the island, which works very well because of the unique environment there.

Having fewer orchids arranged less densly than previously meant that the flowers made more of an impact individually and it was easier to appreciate their unique characteristics. Orchids have been around for approximately 80 million years and over that time they have evolved into over 800 genera; that is a lot of variety.

 

One advatnage of the members' day was that it was quieter thnan usual and another is that coming at the very start of the month-long festoval it means that it will be worth going back again in a couple of weeks or so when different orchids will be in flower.

Drop The Dead Donkey: The Reawakening! at Richmond Theatre

So often when I book a theatre show it is a no-brainer but very few are such obvious choices as an update to Drop The Dead Donkey written by the original team, Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin, and staring many of the original cast.

Quickness got me my preferred seat, Dress Circle A24, for £37.5 on the very first night of the long tour. Quickness was necessary as the week was completely sold out, though it has already been booked to come back again in June.

The premise was simple, the original Globelink News team had been recruited to start a new algorithm-led TV news channel on the lines of Talk TV or GB News.

The cast came on stage one at a time to loud cheers from the audience and a chorus of "Oh Fucks! from those already there.

After that it was pretty much Drop The Dead Donkey as we lovingly remembered and loved it with the same characters behaving in the same way and saying the same sort of things. 

The dialogue was constantly funny and the one-liners came thick and fast. There were topical jokes too, such as a reference to Marcus Rashford who had been in the news just a couple of days previously.

There was some good physical jokes too, like George's run-ins with a voice-activated coffee machine, and with a light switch.

Drop The Dead Donkey: The Reawakening! was everything that I hoped it would be, and more. It was genuinely funny in its own right and being an update on an old favourite was a nice bonus.

The Hills of California at Harold Pinter Theatre

A few things had to fail and to work for this evening to happen.

It was my birthday so I was looking for a special show to see and my default option, a Matthew Bourne ballet at Sadler's Wells, was thwarted by the show finishing earlier in the month. I was rescued by a new Jez Butterworth play opening on my birthday and ATG offering club members decent prices.

I was quick to book and secured three seats in the centre of the front row of the Royal Circle for £55 each. Clearly a good deal.

Of course I had to find a suitable venue to eat beforehand and with my sister joining us the usual vegetarian Indian across the road from the theatre was not an option. A quick search came up with the swanky and moderately priced Masala Zone on Piccadilly Circus. It proved to be an excellent choice, the food was superb and different, the service was exemplary and the ambience was perfect. I will be going back!

The view from my seat was very good and I settled down for a show that was expected to run to a little over three hours, with breaks; hence the 7pm start time.

The scene was the private quarters of the Sea View Guest House in the wrong part of Blackpool (it does not have any sea views) where four sisters are gathered on the imminent death of their mother. As they reminisce they talk about when they were girls and their mother was building them into a singing troupe modelled on the (three) Andrews Sisters.

After a while the stage rotated and took us back in time to the same room when they were girls.

And that is about it.

As with the other Jez Butterworth plays I had seen (Jerusalem and Ferryman) there was a lot of talking, some of it funny some of it dark, but little in the way of action. That may sound like a thin meal but then nothing happens in Waiting for Godot either. The Hills of California relies on its dialogue and with Butterworth the dialogue is more than enough. The two and a half hours or so are thoroughly engaging, helped by excellent performance all round from the women and the girls.

I wanted something special for my birthday treat and The Hills of California was just that.

Memento at Hounslow Sports and Social Club (6 Jan 24)

I was aware that Hounslow Sports and Social Club was on the local covers band circuit and I had walked past the place a few times on my walks but I had never been there before. What took me there this time was Memento, feedback from other people who had been there and confirmation that some mates were also going. 

 I have targets to reach so I walked there, the route I chose was 9.5km, took 1 hour 45 and added a few more roads to my CityStrides Lifemap. My timing was good too and I arrived at 9pm just as the band started playing.

The venue had a lot going for it. While it cost £3 to enter (it is a members club) that was quickly made up with the cheap beer, at £3.4 for a pint of Pravha it was almost a steal. And being a social club, it was well set up for concerts with a stage, dance area then tables then a long bar. It was busy too which always helps.

The stage was well and truly set for Memento and they used it very well. They are excellent musicians and play some great songs, e.g. Stairway to Heaven, and a few not so great songs that are still good to hear, e.g. Final Countdown.

With a short break, they played until well gone 11pm, stretching the value of the £3 investment even further. It was a superb evening and I strongly suspect that I will be back to Hounslow before too long.

I'll see Memento again even sooner. Friday.

I averaged 27,080 steps a day in 2023

I averaged 27,919 steps a day in 2020, 26,128 in 2021, 29,142 in 2022 and now 27,080 in 2023. While this is a fairly massive 2,000 steps a day down on last year it is broadly inline with the previous two years so I am happy with that.