L’amico Fritz at Opera Holland Park

I know why I go to Glyndebourne (the whole experience) and why I do not go to Royal Opera House (too expensive for what it is) but I am not sure why I have been avoiding Opera Holland Park. 

Some of it is, I think, the lack of original programming. There is a limit to how often I want to see any opera even one as good as, say, Carmen or Madama Butterfly, and my only previous visit to Opera Holland Park was in 2015 to see the exceptional modern opera Flight that I had seen previously at Glyndebourne (twice).

Some of it is also the relatively poor visitor experience and I had bad memories of slow unmanaged queues for drinks. I know it is not trying to be Glyndebourne but I had been disappointed on my first, and only, visit.

All that said, when our eldest son offered to take us to see the unknown to us L’amico Fritz by Pietro Mascagni we quickly agreed.

Pre-opera meant a short walk up from Hammersmith, to keep the daily step count up, and a rather excellent supper at Megan's on the High Street by the entrance to Holland Park. The brief shower of rain did nothing to dampen our spirits.

We got to Opera Holland Park about half an hour before the performance, as planned, and went straight for the bubbly. Our son arrived soon after and the glasses of bubbly were followed by a bottle.

We were still under covid-19 restrictions which helped by reducing the numbers and simplifying some of the procedures, such as queuing for drinks! It was all very pleasant.

The restrictions also meant a big change in the seating, gone were the standard stadium seats and in were dining chairs arranged in small groups with gaps between them. These gaps helped to compensate for the lack of raking and I had a good view of the stage. We learned later that all the chairs has been used as props at theatres and were being given a second life here. 

L’amico Fritz is a light comedy with one of the simplest plots ever staged, a rich young man and a confirmed bachelor falls in love with the local farmer's daughter, and she with him, but it takes them about an hour to realise this, which is long after everyone else has.

The music was simple, to my untrained ear, and jolly. It skipped along evenly without any great highs or lows. Like the plot, it was pleasant and easily appreciated.

The singing was sumptuous, especially by the two leads and what could have been a light meal became a rich feast. I loved it.

That may have done enough to tempt me back to Opera Holland Park sooner rather than later, we will see.

Learning about The Buildings of Ham Common

My favourite community events, by a country mile, are the local architecture walks and talks given by local architect Richard Woolf and organised by local community group Ham United Group so I was delighted to join his tour of The Buildings of Ham Common.

Ham Common, unsurprisingly, is the heart of Ham and it is ringed by an interesting collection of buildings from old cottages to substantial modern lodges. Richard squeezed eighteen of them into a fact-filled, informative and entertaining walk.

Here we see Richard explaining the rise of Neo-Georgian (Neo-Geo) houses and how the few examples on Ham Common sit uneasily with their grander Georgian neighbours.

I know the buildings on Ham Common pretty well and have photographed them all, often many times, for my community blog HamPhotos, but I was still absorbing new insights on their design and construction at a prodigious rate of knots.

This was a fascinating talk and it ended on the best possible note, Richard promised to do another walk and talk next year.

The Game of Love and Chance at Arcola Outside was very jolly

My return to theatregoing is still tentative but Arcola Theatre is one of my favourites and I was keen to get back there. The Game of Love and Chance gave me the chance to do that with the promise of some easy laughs.

But first I had to get there.

The familiar routine of going to the Arcola was partially forgotten and things had changed too. Arcola had opened up a new performance space, Arcola Outside (where Arcola Tent once was) to give performances in a highly ventilated space with distanced seating.

The new bar did not do food but one of the staff recommended the pub across the road, The Speakeasy, and that did the job brilliantly, albeit at the price you would expect of a bar full of young Dalstonians.

The seating looked little more than wooden boxes, providing useful space underneath for bags, but it proved to be surprisingly comfortable.

The other surprising thing was the lack of mask wearing. I had mine on all the time but only a small number of other people did.

The play itself was a simply constructed farce where only two of the players and we, the audience, knew what was really going on. The trick was people swapping roles to great comic effect.

The acting was beautifully exaggerated and special praise must go to Ellie Nunn as the minor royal falling in love with a chauffeur for her expressions and looks to the audience, and to Michael Lyle for his enthusiastic son-of-a-billionaire chasing a maid.

It was all extremely jolly and I laughed a lot. It was just the sort of exuberant pick-me-up I needed after a long period without theatre or anything else very much.

Delighted by Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser at V&A

Once upon a Time the V&A was my favourite place on the planet and I went there so often it felt like a second home. Then I stopped working in Central London and then covid-19 happened and unexpectedly I had not been there for two years. 

I could have been away for even longer but for the chance to use a corporate booking to see all three of the current exhibitions. A previous medical appointment meant that I had no time for Bags: Inside Out and I chose to go to Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser first.

I arrived at South Kensington in good time and with the V&A cafe sadly still closed I had a mid-morning boost, coffee and cake, at Brown & Rosie.

I was not sure what to expect from the exhibition, I rarely do, and I was pleased to discover that it largely focussed on the iconic imagery and little was said about the text, other than putting it in the context of the time it was written.

I had a copy of the classic book as a child, and it is probably still in the library room somewhere, so I have known the original John Tenniel illustrations for over fifty years. It was interesting to read how this writer and this artist worked together, something I am familiar with from comics, and also to see other examples of Tenniel's work.

A large part of the exhibition then showed how these iconic (I know I used the word earlier and I repeat it to make the point) characters and images have been included and adapted in popular culture from then to the present day.

The story has been retold many times and in many forms. Notable film versions include Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010) with Johnny Depp and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1972) with just about everybody around at that time including Peter Sellers and Dudley Moore.

There were also posters from plays, album covers, books of foreign adaptations and quite a few other things that I paid too little attention as I rushed round in the little time that I had (about an hour).

Several images struck me hard in a good way, like the Japanese Lolita outfit in black, and the standout image for me was this from the Pirelli 2018 calendar shot by Tim Walker and styled by Edward Enninful.

And that's why I love the V&A, I never expected to be see, let alone be delighted by, a photo from a Pirelli calendar.

Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser was as excellent as I have come to expect a V&A exhibition to be and I might well go again before it finishes at the end of the year.

I had planned to also see Epic Iran and had a ticket for entry between 1;30 and 1:45. I got there at 1:35 to find the exhibition closed. There were a couple of other people there with tickets and after some discussion we were allowed in but told that we had to be out again by 2pm, which then became 1:55. That gave me 20 minutes to try and absorb what I could but this did not work as what I saw was quite wordy, unlike Alice, and there was little of the architecture and decorative tiles that I was hoping to see. It was very disappointing and I saw nothing to tempt me back for a proper look.

Things got better when I went back to Brown & Rosie for some lunch and a beer in the sunshine.

Following the Brent to Perivale

The plan was even rougher than usual and was little more than "follow the Brent".

That was the middle part of the route more or less sorted and the first part, getting to the Brent, needed no planning as it was the very familiar route to Brentford and then the not quite as familiar route along the Grand Union Canal. The final part, heading home was left deliberately vague but was always likely to include Ealing Broadway where the 65 bus could take us both home.

The weather, as it often is, was another unknown part of the plan and we largely chose to ignore the threat of heavy rainstorms. And is often the case, we were proved right.

The walk was simple enough, as we knew it would be, until we hit Hanwell and turned off the Grand Union Canal to start following the Brent. We had been that way once before when following the Capital Ring and my recollections of that included mud and getting lost. This time was much the same though as we were following a river rather than a trail it was usually obvious to choose a path.

In Perivale Park we parted way with Capital Ring and continued to follow the Brent as it turned sharply east into Pitshanger Park.

We had been walking for about three hours by then and another vague part of the plan became firmer, a return to a cafe we had discovered on our first visit to Perivale forced on us by the closure of the footpath along the Grand Union Canal. Sadly we had forgotten it's name and the technology, Google and Foursquare, was quite hopeless in helping us to find it again. The first road that I went for because it appeared to have several cafes in turned out to be a massive industrial estate but on exiting that, eventually, we found ourselves in the right road, Bilton Road, and almost facing The Lunch Box, as we then found it was called. I deserved and thoroughly enjoyed Vegetarian Breakfast 2 which came with tea and toast.

The route down to Ealing Broadway looked easy enough so we set off to walk there rather than take one of the convenient buses passing by. This meant rejoining the Brent for a short while as it passed though Brentham Meadows. We got slightly lost here too but we are used to that.

That took us into the magnificent Brentham Garden Suburb which alone justified the decision to walk, despite the hill.

Approaching from the north, the commercial centre of Ealing appeared suddenly but before we caught the bus home we paid a short visit to The Haven Arms where I had a pint of Proper Job, a fine way to end a fine walk.

The statistics of the walk were 21 km in something over 4 hours, a reasonable pace given our leisurely intent and the regular mud.