Good at Curzon Richmond

I have been lucky enough to see David Tennant on stage a few times so when he returned to do Good with much publicity I was happy to avoid the west end prices and give it a miss. When it came out on NT Live a few months later that was a very different matter and it went from missable to mandatory.

The NT Live website was not as helpful as it could be in showing me possible dates for local cinemas as it was missing the dates for Curzon Richmond that were on their site. To be sure it was on I took the unusual step of booking in person. The confusion helped me because while other cinemas I had checked had all but sold out this one had sold very few seats and I was able to go for on in the primary position, F11 for £19.5.

I have mixed feelings about seeing films of staged plays as the two media are significantly different but in this case I was glad I had gone for the screen rather than the stage as the play was mostly three talking heads and so the ability to zoom in on the speakers was very useful.

Those three heads were David Tennant as John Halder, a German professor, Elliot Levey as his Jewish friend and Sharon Small as several women in his life including his senile mother.

The story, a fairly simple one, showed how John Halder, a good man, gradually got dragged into Naziism and how he rationalised his decisions along the way, including the abandonment of his friend.

Of course there was a lot more to it than that and the story two engrossing hours to tell.

Obviously the key message was to show how easy it was for a good man to become engulfed in evil but the darker message was to compare the first steps with what is happening in Britain today. When Gary Linekar, and many other, point out the similarity between us and 1930's Germany they are exactly right. 

All three actors were very good and Sharon Small impressed most because of the different rolls she played.

I am still not convinced on films of staged plays but I will keep giving them ago when it lets me see shows like this at a reasonable price.

Trumpets and Raspberries at Barons Court Theatre

A couple of weeks ago I had not heard of playwright Dario Fo (despite his Nobel Prize in Literature) then I saw Accidental Death of an Anarchist at Lyric Hammersmith and was keen to see more of his work. The opportunity to do so came quickly and not very far away.

Barons Court Theatre was doing a production of Trumpets and Raspberries which it described as "a madcap political satire and farce about corruption and hypocrisy in high places and the plight of the common man versus the rich elites and the too-powerful corporations". There were plenty of good words in that and so I eagerly paid my £15 for a seat.

My pre-theatre dining place for this theatre is, unsurprisingly, The Curtains Up pub above the theatre and, as on my previous visit there, I was disappointed in the main meal options but going for two starters (and a pint of Young's Ordinary) worked well.

I then made my way downstairs to claim a seat in the front row.

Trumpets and Raspberries was a madcap farce from the start with a ludicrous situation and slapstick elements. At the heart of the story was two very different characters who looked the same and the confusions arising from that. I am not sure that the slapstick helped the story but it was funny so that was good.

There were also the serious political points about power and corruption which lifted the play from something just silly to something serious too. 

There was a little weakness here in that the play references the politically turbulent 1980s Italy in general and the assassination of Aldo Moro in particular, none of which meant much to me. The Accidental Deat of an Anarchist worked better because while it was about a death in Italian police custody we have those in the UK too. That said, the general class politics points were easy to understand.

The production did all sorts of bonkers things in a small place with a large cast that was exhilarating and exhausting to watch. A mention must go to Alexander HJ Smith who played the two almost identical looking characters with much aplomb. 

Trumpets and Raspberries may have been a little confusing at times and may have been a little too long but there was plenty in there to enjoy and to laugh at.

The Good Person of Szechwan at Lyric Hammersmith

I do not need much of an excuse to see something at Lyric Hammersmith and a play original written by Bertolt Brecht and brought up to date in an exciting way was more than good enough.

I was a little bit cautious with the booking and went for one of the cheaper seats Circle A1 for  £32. When two of you are going to the theatre two or three times a week then the costs can mount up and the state pension is not a great deal of help.

We had seen Al Murray in the afternoon in Chiswick and walked across to Hammersmith and had enough time to grab something to eat at La Petite Bretagne before running across the square to the theatre.

From the start it was obvious that this was a brash production thanks to a bright pink stage that sloped at the far end. On the stage was a paddling pool.

The brashness continued with flamboyant costumes, more weird props and actors sliding on to stage via the slope. In its mood, 

It reminded me a little of A Midsummer Night's Dream which I had also seen at Lyric Hammersmith (twice). A good sign.

Still obvious amongst the delightful chaos was the original Brecht story about goodness and the role of money in society. The serious story meshed well with the frivolous production to produce a show that was both highly entertaining and also intellectually stimulating.

Al Murray: Gig For Victory (Tour Warm Up) at Theatre At The Tabard

I do not do comedy gigs very often but this one had a lot going for it.

Firstly it was at Theatre At The Tabard which is a favourite place, easy to get to and above a pub.

Secondly, while Al Murray is not someone I have watched a lot he is old school and does not do observational comedy which is definitely not my thing.

I also had fond memories of a few other warm-up gigs with the likes of Armstrong and Miller, Phill Jupitus and Marcus Brigstocke.

So I forked out £20 for a seat in the front row. I was aware of the risks in doing that but so was everyone else and that is where the last seats were.

The warning was necessary as a few people in the front got beer on them almost immediately and I escaped with just a wet shoe.

Most of the hour was a dialogue with members of the audience and everyone in the first few rows got involved in some way, I got off lightly though he did suggest that Julie could have become a consultant if she had worked harder. Hardest hit was the young man sent to the bar to get drinks, twice.

There was some scripted content but as this was a warm-up gig I'll not say anything about that other than it was built on a subject that he is known to be interested in.

I like like my theatre in small venues where you can feel part of the action and I like my comedy the same way. This was a fun experience.

A Wandle walk

This month, the South West London Humanists walk took us about 8km up the Wandle from near its mouth by Wandsworth Town station to Morden Hall Park in, er. Morden.

I saw an opportunity to turn this in to a bigger walk by walking to Wandsworth and back from Morden. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The quickest route to Wandsworth is to leave Richmond Park at Robin Hood Gate but that then means walking along A3 so I took the usual Roehampton Gate instead, which explains the rather indirect route.

The planning worked quite well and I arrived at Wandsworth Town (last one there) just after the scheduled 10:30 start. They kindly let me get a coffee before we set off.

I had done the Wandle a couple of times and wanted to do it again because of the variety along the way. 

The river gets lost a couple of times in Wandsworth and Earlsfield, goes through a large park and forms a green corridor through some heavy industry with pylons before emerging into the delights of Morden Hall Park.

We finished with lunch in an Irish pub in Morden. I did not fancy the carvery so I just had a Guinness while I watched Newcastle score 5 goals before saying goodbye to my SWLH colleagues and starting the walk home. I was quickly on known territory so it was an easy walk and a chance to listen to some podcasts.

Having skipped the carvery I needed to eat so I went back to Babylon in Raynes Park (I had had a coffee there a few days previously) and indulge in the veggie breakfast. It was a bit modern for my taste, plenty of avocado but no baked beans, but I was hungry and it did the job.

I took the opportunity to go back through Richmond Park and managed to find a slightly different path to the one I had used earlier in the day.

It was a great day out and the three walks worked well together. In total I did 34km in about 8 hours 

Aladdin Sane Live at Royal Festival Hall

I have been a big fan of David Bowie ever since THAT appearance on Top of The Pops in 1972 and I was lucky enough tp see him live a little later on the Ziggy Stardust tour.

Even so, I was not immediately interested in seeing Aladdin Sane Live. Part of the reason ws that this was billed as an "reimagining" and the other part was that Aladdin Sane was never one of my favourite Bowie albums as I felt is was a collection of songs that lacked a coherent theme or style.

But I still had plenty of credit left on Southbank Centre account and so I took the plunge and paid £50 for seat N9 in the stalls. I would not have paid that much if it was my own money.

Unsurprisingly most of the audience looked as though they were there in 1973 when Aladdin Sane came out. I remember it cost me £2.38 and it was the most expensive album at that time, the excuse being the gatefold sleeve.

The format of the show was quite simple and effective. All the songs on Aladdin Sane were played, but not in the album order, with a series of guest singers performing a couple of songs each. I had heard of none of them but I believe they were Anna Calvi, Jake Shears, Roxanne Tataei, Lynks and Tawiah.

The three women were much better than the two men who seemed to be going for style over substance and the undoubted star of the evening was Roxanne Tataei.

The Nu Civilisation Orchestra was funky, which was fine. It sounded a bit like David Live which may be why they called it Aladdin Sane Live. Having a consistent style across the songs helped to bring some of the coherence missing from the original album.

The song order was much as expected and worked well live. Of course they finished with Jean Genie and they led up to that with Drive in Saturday and Time. 

They also threw in 1984, from Diamond Dogs, at the start of the second half and that was probably to showcase the orchestra and the backing singers as this was performed without a soloist. The encore was another Diamond Dogs song, Rebel Rebel, and that was obviously well received.

Perhaps because they were mostly old, like me, the audience was pretty well behaved throughout. There was no singing (expect when ordered to), no standing up and only a few annoying phones recording snippets. When I saw Bowie live we all stood on the backs of our seats as soon as he came on stage.

The reviews I have read of the concert are a little lukewarm, and I can understand that, but these were good Bowie songs done pretty well and I had a great evening.

Lord of The Flies at Rose Theatre

I never read Lord of The Flies at school, unlike many people, and had only seen a version of it at the theatre once, so the story was largely unfamiliar to me and I was very happy to go and see a new production at Rose Theatre.

I cannot remember what happened with the booking but something took me away from Row J in the Stalls, where I had sat ever since the theatre first opened when it was Row A, and I made the bold move of going up a level to the front row of the Circle where seat A36 was a good deal at £25.

I was no further from the stage that I would have been in Row J downstairs and the Circle is now going to be my seating of choice, assuming the pricing is reasonable.

The Lord of The Flies is set on a small uninhabited tropical island and the set conjured that brilliantly. I also liked the way that the stage thrust forward, as it was always meant to do.

Without knowing the original story that well it was had to tell what updating had happened but one thing was immediately obvious, one of the main characters, Ralph, had changed from a school boy to school girl.

There was excellent diversity in the cast in their genders, colours and language. This diversity made absolutely no difference to the story, which was originally about white school boys, but it made  big positive difference in reflecting the people there to watch the play. The Rose has been exceptionally good in this regard recently and as an old white middle class man I heartily approve.

The story was engaging with lots of strong characters and plenty of blood as the group of children formed two tribes with one going to war with the other in a hunt for a monster. The point of the story is how the situation changed the children and this production did that very well.

Lord of The Flies was another reaffirmation that the Rose Theatre is doing the right things in the right way after several years trying to find its feet.

Wish You Were Dead at Richmond Theatre

Crime dramas are not really my thing though I am happy to make an exception when it is on at Richmond Theatre and it is based on a book my best selling author Peter James who really likes to put the word "dead" into his titles.

The usual procedure was followed and I secured my usual seat Dress Circle A25 for a very fair £27.75.

The pre-theatre routine was usual too, and very dull. Being a local theatre I was able to eat at home and catch a 65 bus all but door-to-door. I had a bottle of Budvar on arrival, just in case I developed a cough, you understand.

I liked the set from the start. It looked like a run down stately home (though it turned out to do French, not that that mattered) and you could see both a reception room and a bedroom at the same time. 

The set stayed the same for the duration but some special lighting later on revealed some secrets.

I think I was expecting a whodunnit but this was not that. There was a twist when we found out who the baddies were but that was in the middle of the play and the rest of the story was about the goodies trying to overcome the baddies and not about trying to solve any mysteries.

I was quite happy with that and it probably made even more sense to people who had read some Peter James books and had come across the main character, DS Roy Grace, before.

Wish You Were Dead did nothing spectacular, and that was very the expectation. What it did do was deliver a perfectly entertaining evening in some style.

After the show, I stopped at the Angel and Crown on the way to the bus station for  couple of pints, just in case my cough came back.

A tale of two rivers

This was one of those occasions when not having a planned route for a long walk with a friend worked out well.

One of our regular starting points is Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park because that is the same distance from home for both of us. My rough plan was to walk from there through Richmond Park and Wimbledon Common, as we had several times before, and then to curve round clockwise in a loop back towards Kingston, something we had not done before.

In Wimbledon Common we followed Beverley Brook south before going in to Raynes Park for a coffee where the very popular Babylon cafe did an excellent job.

I checked the map then and took us through uncharted territory (for us) towards a large patch of green, name unknown. Confusingly, this took us through an area called West Barnes which is someway south of the Barnes we knew.

We also rediscovered Beverley Brook, which I was not expecting. We then followed the brook, not intentionally, we were just both going in the same direction, to Worcester Park, home to a ridiculous New England style development unembarrassed to call itself The Hamptons.

From there I was looking for a green route to Kingston and found one created by our second river, The Hogsmill. The route was well signposted, not least because it is part of London Loop (why is that not further west?!). It was also pretty muddy but at least one of us had appropriate footwear; Colin will know better next time.

The Hogsmill is not particularly attractive but did have the advantage of having a plaque showing where  Millais painted the background for Ophelia (she was painted in a bath) and of some bold street art near Berrylands station. It also had the must less interesting smell from the Thames Water's Hogsmill Sewage Treatment Works.

By the time we got to Kingston we had had enough and it was time for lunch so we took the lazy way out and the 65 bus home.

The route worked out at 22km and took us about four and a half hours including the coffee break and lots of mud.

Early music at Normansfield Theatre

Normansfield Theatre, part of the the Langdon

Down Centre, is both a worthy cause and a pleasant shortish walk away so I try to see as many musical events there as I can.

I needed no additional encouragement to go and see the baroque double-bill of John Blow's Venus and Adonis and Henry Purcell's Ode on St Cecilia's Day performed by Richmond Opera for a very reasonable £20.

I did not know either piece but am familiar enough with baroque music to know what to expect.

Venus and Adonis has been called the first-ever opera in English and it told the story of Cupid's magical dart causing Venus, the goddess of love, to fall for Adonis, a young mortal, and the amusing consequences. It was light and fluffy and quite entertaining.

The interval was something of a disappointment as the downstairs bar was not open.

Purcell's Ode on St Cecilia's Day was a recital and while there was no story to follow, or action on the stage to look at, it was a charming piece of music in the same musical vein.

Richmond Opera is a community group so I did not expect the quality of the singing to be anything like that at Glyndebourne and I was pleased to hear a few very good voices among the decent ones.

The walk home was enhanced by a quick stop at Tide End Cottage, a perfect end to a fine afternoon.

Quality Street at Richmond Theatre

Quality Street just had so much going for it; it was written by JM Barrie, it was produced by Northern Broadsides, it was on at Richmond Theatre and it had a box of chocolates named after it.

To elaborate a little. JM Barrie is most famous for Peter Pan but he also wrote the plays Mary Rose and Dear Brutus which I had seen and loved. I had also seen some other Northern Broadsides productions and had loved those too.

All that meant that it was an easy decision to book my usual seat, Dress Circle A25, for a fair £31.

At its heart, Quality Street, is a will-they, won't they love story set in Napoleon England. And as with all such stories, it is the missed opportunities and misunderstandings blocking the apparent path of true love that create the drama.

There was a particularly unusual aspect to one of these misunderstandings that gave the story a nice twist.

Another nice part of the story was the use of a current day Quality Street chocolates production team to frame the story. It also helped to explain the connection between the chocolates and the play which might otherwise have been an unsatisfactory confusion.

There was plenty of humour in the story too including nosey neighbours and love struck young soldiers.

The cast of nine, some playing multiple parts, was superb at both the high drama and the humour.

Everything about Quality Street was what I hoped for and it was a thoroughly entertaining afternoon.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane at New Wimbledon Theatre

I saw The Ocean at the End of the Lane when it first appeared on stage at Dorfman Theatre in 2020 and it was an easy decision to go and see it again when the touring version came to New Wimbledon Theatre.

I treated myself to a seat in the front row of Dress Circle (A19) which cost a very reasonable £41.

I had not been to New Wimbledon Theatre since the very excellent Benidorm in 2019 so I was not confident that I had a plan for eating beforehand so I was very pleased to see that Mai Thai was still there. I had a really excellent red curry, with lots of flavours and textures, washed down with a pint of Singha. It was the perfect start to the eveving.

The Dress Circle did the job and I had a great view.

I remembered that I enjoyed it the first time but had forgotten the story so it was good to be able to see it as if it was a new show.

The story, like Stardust, mixed the real world with a world of magic and had an important boundary between the two. It was also a fairly simple story of a normal boy being drawn into a world of magic and having to fight daemons with the help of a young girl and her family.

The magic of the story came more from the production, e.g. the sets, costumes and lighting, than the story and it was strong magic too, creating an exceedingly rich show.

Only a little thing, but I liked the way that the cast had some regional accents and somehow Geordie felt right for a grounded man and West Country right for a magical girl.

As you would expect for a major production, all of the cast were very good and Millie Hikasa as the magical girl Lettie Hempstock impressed me the most.

Probably because it was aimed at a (much) younger audience, The Ocean at the End of the Lane never got scary despite the impressive monsters which limited its appeal to me (Coraline is much scarier) but it was all nicely done and it was thoroughly entertaining.

An east London loop

I have got in to the good habit of going for longish walks with my two sons every couple of months. These are opportunities for long chats, normally about how the world is going to hell in a handcart, and for exploring new places.

We generally agreed to head east from Tower Hill, where they both live, and Howard put the main effort into planning the detail.

Understandably the route started with a pretty route past lots of street art to Victoria Park and having emerged from there we stopped for a coffee in a mega-trendy bakery in Hampton Wick.

The next stage was The Greenway, a 7km walk on the embankment containing the Joseph Bazalgette Northern Outfall Sewer. That meant that it had no cafes or pubs along the route, hence the coffee in Hampton Wick.

I had walked that section a few times before, not leat because it is part of Capital Ring.

Coincidentally, I had just had a Twitter conversation with some fellow walkers about fingerposts and next to the Olympic Stadium (now home to West Ham FC) we saw several examples of ones I had been complaining about; this one tells you that you are heading for Stratford but does not tell you how far away it is.

The closest we got a seeing a walking distance was later on when some signs had cycling times on them. We simple assumed that the walking time was about 3 times the cycling time.

I was very glad of the company as this is not the sort of terrain that I prefer to walk in, give me interesting buildings every time.

Eventually we got to Becton and we found Galyons Bar and Restaurant just a few minutes before the kitchen closed. They did a vegetarian breakfast so that was a quick and easy choice!

That was the far point of our journey and we headed west back towards Tower Hill, taking a fairly direct route due west rather than following the winding river.

London City Airport was something of a surprise. It is fairly long, as runways tend to be, but it could only have taken us around twenty minutes to walk past it and in that time four jets took off and two landed.

Beyond the airport it was interesting to note that there were several gaps in the development on the north side of the old dock and the office blocks that had been built looked as though they had low value client.

We decided that the next section was too familiar and lacked much of interest so having done 21 km we took the DLR a few stops from Royal Albert to Poplar.

The last leg of 6km was very familiar and there was little point in trying to find alternative routes, particularly as the A1203 and the river make two formidable barriers to the north and south.

With nothing very interesting to look at we found other things to talk about.

It was just after 3:30pm when I got to Tower Hill tube station by which time I had walked 27km. That is what I call a good walk and a good day out with my sons.

18km around the houses

An improvement in the weather and in my wellbeing enticed me outside to get a few km done. 

Early afternoon I saw Julia off at Richmond Station and started my journey to Osterley via Isleworth. As usual the route was designed to include some target Pokemon Go gyms (mostly in Isleworth) and also to explore some less well-known areas (e.g. Osterley).

Along the way I went through an area called Spring Grove and, as is often the case, I wondered about the provenance and legitimacy of the name but I did not wonder enough to actually do any research later. The hierarchy and history of London place names is a casual hobby only.

Having got to Osterley I was still feeling well so I went on the more familiar areas of Boston Manor and South Ealing. One of the highlights here was Blondin Park, pleasingly named after the famous tightrope walker Charles Blondin, who lived nearby.

It was late afternoon by then and the two trendy coffee shops that I had in mind for a break were both shut and so I was forced to go to Costa by South Ealing station. Costa is perfectly fine for a chain but the cake choice was limited.

After that I had just enough energy and time left to take a detour through Gunnesbury Park and Carville Hall Park South before catching a 65 bus home.

Unusually, I decided to take a few photographs along the way just to give a flavour of what the walk was like, information that a simple map cannot give.

Early on I saw this ridiculously tame heron. I do not particularly look out for wildlife, or other natural things, when walking but it was impossible to avoid this bird when walking 1m away from it.

Architecture is much more my thing and this is the Gillette Building on Gillette Corner, which is where Syon Lane hits the monstrous A4.

My abiding memory of this building is my dad stopping his car on the mini roundabout at the entrance, blocking the road, so that he could take a photograph of it. Later that day he scrambled across three lanes of speeding traffic on the A4 to take a photo on the Hoover Building.

Not far away and from the same era is the delighful Carillion Building, of which I know nothing other than its name.

Home, I'm Darling at Richmond Theatre

I did not see Home, I'm Darling at National Theatre because it did not seem to be quite my thing, a little too light for me, but when it came closer to home and at a lower price I was happy to give it a go.

Booking was simple and I got the seat that really should have my name on it by now, Dress Circle A25, for a very reasonable £29.

Being a local theatre meant not worrying about finding a restaurant to eat at beforehand and leaving home just after 6:30pm still gave me plenty of time to stretch my legs a little on Richmond Green before going to the theatre bar and investing £7.5 in a large bottle of Budvar, not at all bad compared to other theatres where I have paid about the same for a small can of something not as good.

I assumed that this was a period piece set in the 1950s because I had been fooled by the advertising, as I was meant to be, and the play did nothing to dispel that until, at the end of the first scene, the wife briefly used a laptop (an Apple MacBook Air I am pleased to say).

The situation was then resolved, a married couple now in their late thirties had decided to adopt a 50s lifestyle the main element of which was that the wife stayed at home doing all of the housework and caring for her man, slippers ready for when he came home sort of thing.

They were blissfully happy and told us so in no uncertain terms.

The scene set, we were then treated to what felt like an extended episode of a sitcom, Terry and June possibly. Funny things happened, awkward things happened and unpleasant things happened but nothing of any depth or meaning. And, like a sitcom, it had a happy and fairly predictable ending.

There is a darker view which says that the wife was betrayed and had to give up many of the things she believed in to save the marriage, but I would be surprised if that is the message we were meant to take from the play.

As a sitcom it was perfectly fine, it was often funny and had nice contrasting moments of drama. It was entertaining, definitely worth going to see, but liked the bite to also make it rewarding.