Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake at Olympic Cinema

I have seen Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake several times, usually at Sadlers Wells, and when a chance Tweet alerted me to it being shown at cinemas I rushed to find a local showing.

Screenings had already started and so my choices were very limited but there was a morning slot at Olympic Cinema in Barnes. I had walked past the building several times and had admired the 1900's architectural style of it so welcomed this chance to go inside.

In less time than it has taken to write this I had booked my ticket for £10.

Getting there was fairly straightforward, two buses, a 65 and a 33, took me more-or-less door to door and in enough time to get a coffee from the cafe in the same building.

It turned out that, somehow that completely escapes me, I had booked for a Babes In Arms screening and the only other people in the cinema where a family with a toddler and a mother with a baby. There was quite a bit of gurgling, whispering and paper rustling but I have had children and am used to ignoring their distracting behaviour.

Besides, this was Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake and it would have taken something quite gruesome to spoil that.

Of course Swan Lake starts with the advantage of Tchaikovsky's sumptuous music and I was silently humming along to all the familiar tunes.

Swan Lake made Matthew Bourne's reputation and it is easy to see why. The choreography is busy with so much going on even in the quieter scenes. I spent a lot of time admiring the details of hand and head movements. This is unapologetic contemporary dance with intricate shapes and unusual movements, so unlike the traditional ballet with its jumps and spins.

And because there is just so much details dancing going on all the time a lot of it had been forgotten and could be enjoyed again as if new.

The story is better too with the fill-in dances in the original ballet being incorporated into the story. This is particularly true with the succession of national dances in the ball scene in Act 3.

It is hard to overstate just how much I enjoyed Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake even on film in a cinema shared with children.

After the film there was only one sensible thing to do and that was to have lunch in the Olympic Restaurant. That was a little more pricey than I am used to, but their menu outside had warned me of that and it was well in the price range of a deserved treat.

I think I will be going back to Olympic Cinema and I will most definitely be seeing Swan Lake again the next time I get the opportunity to do so.

God of Carnage at Lyric Hammersmith Theatre

God of Carnage appealed to me for various reasons; it has won a few awards, it was translated by Christopher Hampton and the cast included Freema Agyeman of Doctor Who/Torchwood fame.

It was also described as "darkly funny" which is most definitely my sort of thing.

All that was enough to get me to fork out £34 for Circle A23, my usual area.

I made time for a little local walking, which included a look at The Aircraft Factory, before heading to my recently adopted pre-theatre eating place of choice La Petite Bretagne where I went for the goats cheese crepe. It is a good place and meets all my needs but it is still a shame that Lyric does not do full meals any more.

It was also a shame that this performance had no interval as that meant no ice cream. I would like to give Lyric more money but they made it hard for me to do so this evening.

The set was an immediate plus. I liked the elegance and the simplicity of it. Much later I realised that it was rotating slowly though why it was doing so remained a mystery to me.

The fairly simple premise of the play was the meeting of two couples after their sons were involved in a violent incident at school. In the attempt to resolve the situation things obviously did not go to plan.

The discussions got complicated and changed direction many times, being deflected by things like repeated phone calls, a (probably) dead hamster and a (possibly) dangerous drug.

None of these sub-plots grew into anything significant and the play remained at a fairly constant level. It was constantly humorous without developing in to, or descending in to, a farce. That humour came from the interactions between the four different people and was reinforced wonderfully by the acting which was rich with knowing gestures and looks.

Leading the pack was Freema Agyeman as the wronged mother in a rather lovely outfit by, possibly, Christian Dior (I am not an expert on fashion logos!), and she led it masterfully.

I liked God of Carnage even though it did not do very much or go anywhere surprising. For an hour and a half we watched four people struggle to cope with the situation that they found themselves in and with each other. Things were said and looks were given that many of us could relate to and which made us chuckle in shared embarrassment.

Birthright at Finborough Theatre

Birthright immediately appealed to me as the rediscovery of a successful play from ninety years ago when it played in the West End and on Broadway. I also liked that it is set in Ireland as different cultures give different perspectives and different learnings.

And it was on at Finborough which is always worth a visit so it was a ridiculously easy decision to invest £18 on the experience.

There is a routine around visits to Finborough which I was very happy to follow. The cornerstone of this was the visit to Café du Coin in Earls Court Road for the customary Egg Florentine with a Magic Pear and Mint drink to wash it down. Always a good combination.

This new routine still has to cater for the Finborough Arms, the pub below the theatre, being closed as it has been since covid closed its doors. There are signs that it is coming back and it will be good to have a comfortable drink before performances.

Birthright is, apparently, based on the biblical story of Esau and Jacob but it is almost sixty years since I had stories like that forced on me at school and so that was not much of a help. More helpful was the explanation that it concerned one family on one day where the succession of the family farm would be argued over.
 

All the action took place in the main room in the family cottage with the two parents and two sons coming and going over the day as they went about their work and activities.

The set (pictured) was superb.

The play was almost all dialogue, a lot of it heated, as the four characters made their positions clear.

I liked the way that the four people all had good arguments though they did not always present them in a good way, e.g. at one point the father said things might have been better if he had married a woman from farming stock who knew the ways of farms.

A play about four strong characters needs four good actors and Rosie Armstrong (mother), Pádraig Lynch (father), Thomas Fitzgerald (elder son) and Peter Broderick (younger son) were all excellent. The father was the most animated so Pádraig Lynch got the most attention but this was a team effort. There's also a favourable mention for the fifth character, a family friend played by Aidan McGleenan, whose visits to the house helped to frame the story.

Birthright was just over an hour of passion and argument with only a few slower moments where I could catch my breath. Watching it was an intense and enjoyable experience and it was just the right length to maintain the intensity.

With Birthright, Finborough continues its good habit of rediscovering old plays and presenting them skilfully. It is another fine example of just how good small theatre can be.

South West London Humanists: Discussion on Climate Change

Despite what the lack of postngs to this blog suggests, I have continued to be a good attender at South West London Humanists monthly discussions and it is only a lack of time that has stopped me from writing them up.

It was all a lot easier before I retired because then I could do things in the office and the activity I was displacing was work but now I have to give up something nice, like walking, to make time to do these write-ups.

It was made easier for me this month as we split into three sub-groups for the main discussion and as I was asked to feedback on one group and I had to take some sensible notes! What follows is a summary of the discussion that uses those notes and also my subsequent thoughts. It is a write up of my thoughts on the topic rather than a report on the meeting.

The question we were asked to conjure with was: How can countries do enough to tackle climate change if it makes today's citizens poorer?

Before the discussion the scene was set with a short presentation on climate change. This probably helped to level the understanding but I think that we all already believed that climate change is a significant threat and needed a significant response, one that is lacking so far.

In our group we spent sometime disputing the framing of the question, yes we need to tackle climate change but why should this make us poorer?

What needs to be done and how it is paid for are two different questions and there are plenty of ways to pay for tackling climate changes apart from raising general taxation, e.g. wealth and windfall taxes.

Also some of the measures we should take will actually make most people richer, e.g. renewable energy is cheaper that gas/oil so was can expect energy prices to fall in future. Similarly if we Reduce and Reuse what we buy then we are spending less and Right to Repair will enable us to keep devices for longer.

We also queried the meaning of "poorer". Is someone who wears a jumper rather than switching the central heating poorer? Or someone choosing to cycle to work rather than driving?

And even if we do become poorer we will still be richer than we were, say, twenty years ago (which felt pretty good at that time) and richer than most people on the planet.

We veered slightly off topic (as good conversations often do) to discuss how to make the changes. We thought that changes should be introduced to make it easier for people to move to greener lifestyles, e.g. have more public transport (free!) before banning cars. 

We also felt that any changes should not penalise people who had made what seemed like reasonable decisions at that time and the ULEZ car scrappage scheme is an example of how to do this.

It was a good discussion in which everyone in our group participated enthusiastically and which reached a broad consensus. That does not always happen!