Semele at Glyndebourne Festival 2023

Semele was another new production for Glyndebourne this year and another opera that I did not know so the decision to see it was made on it being by Handel and having friends who were keen to see it.

The ballot gods had been good to me this year and I sot seat Upper Circle D23 for a respectable £146.

Unfortunately the keen friends had to drop out at the last moment and I had to frantically try and find someone else to take. I was half successful and got one substitute for the two spare seats.

Panic over, the plan resumed its normal course and we caught the train down to Lewes giving us a couple of hours there for lunch and walking prior to the coach to Glyndebourne.

We had lunch in The Depot, close to Lewes Station, before going for a little walk. On previous trips to Lewes we had been up to the historic town and the castle and to the delightful Southover Grange Gardens so this time we headed in a different direction and were more surprised than we should have been to discover Lewes Railway Land Wildlife Trust Nature Reserve just west of where we had lunch so many times. 

The Nature Reserve was in the middle of some improvements and the gravel paths were much welcomed and group of weed smoking yoof were a little thrown by two ridiculously dressed people walking through the woods carrying a picnic basket.

The pre-booked coach got us to Glyndebourne a little later than hoped and with poor weather forecast for later we were delighted that our late substitute guest had managed to grab one of the very few unbooked benches on the upper deck of the opera house complex. A great result.

The rain was not due for a couple of hours so we had plenty of time for coffee and cake, a walk around the gardens and some bubbly.

We were pretty well dead centre of the auditorium and the view was excellent.

The staging was simple, which I like, with something odd in the middle which was more confusing than helpful.

Handel music was lovely and superbly played by Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment played on period instruments, an approach I loved from my first encounter with it some thirty plus years ago.

The story, apparently based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, was a simple story of jealously and revenge. Being simple meant it was easy to follow and the jealousy and revenge gave Handel rich emotions to work with. I think we made one mistake though and I would have left out the final scene and ended with the Chorus of Priests singing Oh, terror and astonishment! which ends with the line "And all our boasted fire is lost in smoke.". But that might just be because I like dark endings,

The singing rather let the show down. The choir was good but for reasons that I know too little about music to explain none of the soloists sparkled and the singing failed to live up to the music.

Semele has sold very well and an additional performance has been squeezed into the schedule which suggests that it might be revived in two or three years. If it is then I will probably only be tempted back if someone is keen to be taken or I want to take a risk on cheap seats,

Dialogues des Carmélites at Glyndebourne Festival 2023

My interest in seeing Dialogues des Carmélites at Glyndebourne was almost entirely due to having seen in a few years ago when on holiday in Košice, Slovakia when it made little sense to me as it was sung in French with Slovak sur-titles. 

As the image for the production shows, it is not a happy story either so I was a little surprised when some friends suggested that they would like to go too.

Dates were arranged and we got our seats in Red Upper Circle Row C for £146. Glyndebourne does do cheaper seats, and much more expensive ones, but I think that the Upper Circle offers best value.

Our friends offered to drive us down which was the only time that we planned to travel by car this year, for the other five visits the train was taking the strain. The journey went ok, and we arrived almost spot on 3pm (by which time the gardens were just opening and the car park was already half full), but it was more stressful and cramped than the train would have been.

The pre-opera session went much as usual with some cake, hot drinks from a hut in the hamlet, the first bottle of bubbly and a walk around the gardens. The flower beds all looked glorious and it was a very pleasant walk even having done it so many times before.

The opera itself got off to a good start with a very simple set, two marble effect walls converging at the back of the stage. 

This staging was used throughout with some furniture coming and going as the scenes changed, and there were a lot of scenes. It was very effective and again proved my point that simple staging works best.

The other feature of the production that struck me early on was the way that the characters often learnt against or stood next to the side walls when there was no dramatic reason for doing so. I had noticed the same thing in another production a few years ago and I hope that there was a connection. I found this effective also as it draw attention to the characters in a way that standing in the middle would not have done.

I only half-knew the story from my previous experience of the opera and the blurp provided by Glyndebourne to entice me to buy tickets and filling in the gaps as the evening progressed helped to join the dots but also revealed the weaknesses in the story, despite it being based on a real incident during the French Reign of Terror. 

But this is opera and the point of the story is to provide the framework for the music and it did that admirably. Given the dramatic ending of the story (again I refer to the artwork above) it is no surprise that the music ended dramatically too and the final scene was a triumph.

If left the singing to last simply because there is nothing very much to say about that, I expect great singing at Glyndebourne and, once again, I got it.

Dialogues des Carmélites was a very worth addition to the Glyndebourne Festival and reminded me, if I needed it, why I keep going there.

Ham Lands Butterflies Guided Walk

One of the organisations that I am most pleased to be associated with is Friends of Ham Lands and one of the reasons for that is the guided walks on Ham Lands that explain what can be found there.

My role in this is modest, I do the computer stuff (Eventrbite, website, Facebook, Mailchimp, Twitter,/X, ...) and the naturalists do all the hard work.

These walks are mostly about the plants, which makes sense given their obvious beauty, but this month Paul Cook was our guide and the subject was butterflies.

I have bit of a history with butterflies. I collected them as a boy and I also collected the butterfly cards given out with packets of tea in 1963. I still have the book. 

And several years ago I did a picture round on butterflies which I still get mocked for because the highest score was something like 2 out of 20.

Undaunted by that minor setback I went on the walk with eagerness.

Paul Cook was a fantastic guide, not only knowledgeable but also very good at explaining things, like the subtle differences between the various whites.

He was also very well prepared and he caught several butterflies gently in a soft net and passed them around in a display jar before releasing them unharmed.

I learned a lot about butterflies and in particular what to find in which parts of Ham Lands and why.

I also learned that my iPhone can recognise butterflies and it told me that this is a Comma, which Paul had already confirmed.

Paul counts butterflies on Ham Lands every week, and has done so for years, and he was able to explain how the numbers of each species had varied over those years. 2013 hd been a good year for butterflies but their numbers changed a lot from year to year, according to the weather, and so there was no cause to be complacent.

It was an excellent walk and we are already looking to repeat it next year, possibly in a different month to see different species.

Social Housing of Ham - past, present and future

Presented with an offer like "This year's annual Ham United Group architectural tour will follow a walking route with Richard Woolf, architect and building historian, as your guide." I was always going to say yes. 

Architecture is a keen interest of mine, Ham is another and Richard is a superb guide; I think I have been on all of his previous walking tours.

In my frequent walks to find pictures to feed my Ham Photos blog I have walked through all the areas of social housing many times and I was interested to learn more about the history of their development.

Richard was well prepared, as always, and in addition to the leaflet he gave us all he had several large pictures to show us with photos of old street scenes and floor plans of houses.

He also had an assistant, David Williams, who as both the former leader of Richmond Council and a local historian was able to add stories about how the various local councils in the area were involved.

The pamphlet marked out our route which started with the alms houses in Ham Street, not social housing in the modern sense but a precursor. Along the way we saw housing from various periods and, because of that, of various designs.

Our final stop was at Ham Close, where I took the picture above which is both the most recent social housing development in Ham and also the site for a new development over the next decade or so.

Throughout the tour Richard explained the national politics and social history that drove the development of social housing in various waves, perhaps most famously in the "homes for heroes" policy after WWI.

There were recurring themes of housing the poor and of making profit, and clearly these themes were often at odds with each other. Thatcher got a few mentions, and rightly so.

The variety of housing, including a few recent infills, was particularly interesting to me and Richard was able to explain the thinking behind the designs, such as the medieval inspired terraces of four houses where the two end houses were side-on to form a [ shape. I also liked the story of a row of houses commissioned by the long gone Ham Council which were designed with vegetable gardens in front of the houses.

Over two hours we walked a little and learned a great deal. It was exactly my sort of thing.

Memento at The Cavern (14 Jul 23)

Memento, and their twin band Rainbow and Rock, have the happy habit of playing The Cavern in Raynes Park and I have developed the equally habit of going to see them simply because they are exactly what a great pub rock band should be.

To set the evening up nicely I walked to Raynes Park from home via Kingston Hill and Wimbledon Common.

The Memento half of the twin has a broader set list and, perhaps perversely, that means that I like Rainbow in Rock more but it is a close run thing. A big plus for the broader set list is the inclusion of Faith Healer and I had worn one of my several Sensational Alex Harvey Band t-shirts in anticipation.

Memento, like Rainbow in Rock, end the two halves of their set with long classics that everyone knows and loves; this night it was Stairway to Heaven and Freebird.

The pub played its part in another great evening by providing several excellent pints of Wimbledon Common and a great atmosphere. Include in that were several friends, acquaintances and familiar faces.

It was another superb evening in every respect.

The Swell at Orange Tree Theatre

There has to be a very good reason for me to miss an Orange Tree production and no such reason existed for The Swell, indeed the opposite was true as this was a new play (I like new plays) which promised "a gripping story spanning decades of love, sacrifice and betrayal.".

That was more than enough to tempt me to fork out £26 for a seat in the front row.

Entering the auditorium the raised stage made a striking impact. During the play some holes were opened, and closed, in the stage to suggest different settings to allow the players to sit.

I like the way that worked but it was a shame that the stage was raised in the first place as that made viewing from the front row a little awkward at times, as the photo hints.

The Swell was a love triangle set then and now with three actors playing the young women and anther three the older ones. There was no attempt to physically match the young and older actresses but that did not disturb the play in any way.

The story starts with two young women very much together then a very bouncy friend returns from distant lands and inadvertently throws a few spanners in the works, Decades later we see how things turns out. There is a massive twist there which I certainly did not see coming and that was the point of the play.

Or rather, the twist lets the play tackle an unexpected situation and ask some not very simple questions about trust and loving.

Most of the dialogue skimmed over me, that is I cannot remember any of it now, which may look as though the play lacked something but it did plenty to keep me engaged for ninety minutes.

The Swell was a perfectly fine play delivered in a compelling way. A good enough result for any night at the theatre.

Agatha at Theatre503

With most plays at Theatre503 the only questions are when to go and how to plan the day around that.

For Agatha the answers were a Tuesday and so spend the afternoon in Battersea Park.

Tickets had been selling well and I was forced into seat A1 (i.e. at the end of the row rather than the centre) for a very affordable £14.

The afternoon started with a little setback when Sloane Square failed to provide a cafe so I headed straight down to Battersea Park and Pear Tree Cafe on the pond there.

Cake and coffee consumed I walked around the park for the best part of an hour. As usual the highlights were the Festival of Britain complex and the adjacent Old English Garden.

Arriving at The Latchmere, the pub below the theatre, a little earlier than I originally expected so I took a risk and ordered some bar snacks. The risk almost failed as they arrived about ten minutes before the show but that was just enough time as they were not that large and I had already checked in to the theatre.

The stage looked like an abstract with some basic shapes and ink blots. This, it transpired, was the main room in a flat and it worked extraordinarily and unexpectedly well.

The Agatha in question was a young woman in the early stages of a relationship that looked as though it was established. Then the previously unasked question of children was asked and put that relationship at risk.

Possibly influencing Agatha was her own experience where her mother had left the family soon after Agatha's birth.

For an hour or so we were voyeurs into the life of two people who clearly loved each other deeply but who suddenly had to face an unexpected problem between them. It was tense, funny and all sorts of other emotions that life is full of.

An ending came with a surprising element or two which ended the tension in the audience if not in the relationship.

Agatha was a simple setting and a simple plot but that is to deliberately undersell a play that was rich in character and emotion.

As I have a good habit of saying, Agatha was exactly the sort of play that I keep going to Theatre503 to see and that makes it my favourite theatre.

Are we not drawn onward to new erA at South Bank Centre

I took advantage of by substantial credit at Southbank Centre to go and see Are we not drawn onward to new erA by Belgian ensemble Ontroerend Goed because it sounded a little weird and I like weird. And £24 is a small price to pay for weirdness.

Southbank Centre is ridiculously easy to get to and with a 5pm start I arrived earlier to allow time to enjoy the south bank and to savour an ice cream.

The show quickly jumped into weirdness with an Adam and Eve with strange movement. It got weirder when a man with a ballon crawled out from under the rear curtain and the explored the curtain as if trying to return. Other charters emerged, often walking backwards, and interacted with each other continuing to make strange gestures as they did so.

They spoke with what sounded like an invented language but I soon realised that they were talking backwards.

The performance continued through three scenes, the destruction of the apple tree, the covering of the stage with plastic bags and the erection of a large statue of a man. Finally the stage was obscured with smoke. All pretty strange and a clear ending to what had been an interesting but not necessarily entertaining performance.

But that was not the end, only the half-way point.

The second half was blindingly brilliant and I loved every second of it. As with other reviews, I will not give the trick away but it was a clever trick expertly executed. I should have seen the trick coming, clues are in the name of the performance and in some of the things that I have said about the first half.

Missing from the reviews I have read is information about the music used in the second half and I hope my DuckDuckGoing has correctly identified William Basinski as the composer. The music was a key part of the show's success for me and I did not want that to go unrecognised.

After the show I went down to the stage to take this picture.

I went to Are we not drawn onward to new erA for weirdness and what I got was that and a show that was unique, spellbinding and magical. It is experimental art like this that gives experimental art a good name.

RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show 2023

I had been to the more famous Chelsea Flower Show a few times but had only been to Hampton Court Palace Flower Show once before, and then only for an afternoon.

I was tempted back this year by my sister who was going with a friend of hers who is a member of RHS and so could take us all on a members' day.

My all-day pass cost me £38.85 each.

The three ladies went there by bus while I took the opportunity to both get a few steps under my belt while also checking out the best way to get in; the RHS instructions were good at showing the ways into the show grounds but less good at showing the ways into Hampton Court which you have to pass through first. 

In the end it was probably the wrong decision to go in via the main gate, the river gate would have been a shorter walk.

Hampton Court is different in style to Chelsea with less emphasis on show gardens and more on selling stuff. That meant that there were fewer things of obvious interest to me and I made getting ideas for ponds in my garden my priority.

There were several ponds though most of them were either too large, too formal or lacked the planting I want in my wildlife-friendly pond. 

That said, there were some nice things that I could copy, such as the way that the water flows down the big rock in the centre of this picture.

I found enough ponds that between them had the elements that I was looking for to convince me that the idea will work and to suggest how it could be implemented.

A short sharp shower forced me in to the Country Living marquee where I was swamped by all sorts of clothes, decorative items, foodstuffs and art that I would never dream of buying.

The show gardens were pretty, as you would expect, though they were relentlessly traditional with loads of wild flowers and I saw nothing strikingly modern that Chelsea is famous for.

Two things made getting around a little difficult, the layout and other people. 

There were site maps in several places but the site was quite fragmented and there was not an obvious route to take that included everything once and only once.

Despite being a members' only day the place was unbelievably packed and many of them where pulling small carts so moving around was like trying to cross Waterloo Station in rush hour.

It rained again too, only for a short while but enough to disrupt things. I was sitting down eating a vegan burger at the time! The burger was fine if a little pricey at £16.

After lunch we did the Floral Marquee and the stalls on the other side of The Long Water. Again Chelsea does this better, I liked the flowers on display but Hampton Court is a shop whereas Chelsea is a showroom.

Tired and having seen all that we wanted to see we left around 4pm reasoning it would be quicker, cheaper and nicer to have tea and cake at home.

With the pond project firmly in mind RHS Hampton Court was useful and with the show gardens it was also pretty but it felt like a lot of hard work and I suspect that it will be another few years before I am tempted back again.

Lady Inger at The Space

I am not a great Ibsen fan but I keep going to see his plays! That is because they are good enough, in their way, and I still feel that it is an important body of work to consume for anyone who takes the theatre at all seriously.

I am, however, something of a fan of the production company ottisdotter and of small quirky theatres in out of the way places, theatres like The Space on the Isle of Dogs. My only other visit to The Space was back in 2016 (!) to see another ottisdotter production, Emilla Galotti.

All that was more than enough to get me to invest £12.5 in a ticket.

I took the opportunity of being on the far side of London to make something of a day of it and having first seen Vincent River at Greenwich Theatre I walked through the Greenwich foot tunnel and through Mudchute Park and Farm to get to The Space.

My timing was good and I was able to enjoy a decent pint of beer and a good cheese sandwich in the nicely quirky bar upstairs before the show. It's things like that which make theatre going even more than a treat than it normally is.

The theatre space is a hall and this was set up with two banks of seats, in something like a diamond pattern, around the performance area where the only props on view were a table and two chairs. 

I sat in the middle and took this photo from the entrance during the interval.

The play started off as a geopolitical drama. Lady Inger is partly based on a true story in 1500s Norway where she is a widow living in an isolated castle off the coast of Trondheim and is the last remaining vestige of Norway’s national identity. She has to contend with occupying Swedes and untrustworthy Danes.

Some visitors come to her castle proposing alliances, making threats and suggesting husbands for her daughter. It was good ebb and flow stuff and despite knowing nothing of the history I was hooked.

I got another beer in the interval.

In the second half the political intrigue and tensions got closer to home and both Lady Inger's daughter and a son became heavily involved in other people's plans.

The play ended with Lady Inger screaming on the floor.

Kristin Duffy as Lady Inger was a powerful presence throughout. Ivan Comisso also impressed as Nils Lykke a Danish nobleman. The other cast members were not eclipsed and it was a skilful performance. 

Lady Inger was set in a time and place I did not know but the themes were familiar enough and the story  was gripping. Not an easy watch but a rewarding one.

Vincent River at Greenwich Theatre

This was my third Philip Ridley plays in a few weeks and while it was the third time I had seen Vincent River it was the first time that I had been to Greenwich Theatre.

Ridley regular Julie was joining us and we arranged to meet in Greenwich at 12:30. Arriving first we chose the artCafe just inside the bustling Greenwich Market.

Coffee consumed, we went for an explore of the old town while looking for somewhere to eat. After walking in pretty circles we ended up at Ruby's of London, almost next door to the first cafe, because they do vegan and plant-based food. The burger was good.

Getting to the theatre I was surprised to see that it had a cafe and bar as there was no mention of this on their website. They need to change that. At least I had time to buy a pint of beer to take in with me.

The auditorium had new seats and plenty of them. On the advice of the box office I had gone for a seat by a side aisle to try and ensure a clear view whoever sat in front of me and I was happy with the result. Seat E9 was a very modest £10.

The set, as expected, was a simple living room with a few unpacked boxes. About the only props used were some cups and a couple of bottles pretending to be gin and tonic.

I knew the story quite well but Ridley fills his script with rich language and I was quickly immersed in the imagery. The setting was a sitting room but the dialogue was of disused railways, hospitals and the signature East London landmarks Victoria Park and the canal.

The play is a gradual unravelling of three lives gently fuelled by intoxicants. The unravelling goes to some dark and violent places lightened with some touching family moments. The mood swings and the revelations keep the play engaging and interesting for 90 rewarding and entertaining minutes.

Vincent River is a two-handed play and Kerrie Taylor as the mother who lost a son to violence and Brandon Kimaryo as the young man who discovered the body were both excellent. Their movement was good too so James Haddrell deserves a mention for his direction.

Vincent River is one of my favourite Ridley plays and this was the best version of it that I have seen.