Sumptuous evening at Tête à Tête Festival 2017

Tête à Tête took a gap year last year and there was no festival in 2016 so I was keen to get back in the groove with Tête à Tête Festival 2017.

This year the Festival was based around RADA Studios (the former Drill Hall) near Goodge Street which would have been ideal if I were still working at Kings Cross but I had changed jobs and was in distant Teddington with a train service disrupted by major works at Waterloo. All that is my thin justification for not getting to the Festival until the final week. Still, better late than never.

The first performance that I saw was Albatross.

This was a work in development that was exploring the mystery and majesty of the albatross using The Rime of the Ancient Mariner as the guide and pulling on other voices, such as Herman Melville.

This was a sparse piece with just two actors, the mariner and the albatross, one other voice off stage and an accordion providing all the music. The accordion also provided some pretty impressive wind noises in a way that I did not know that it was capable of.

One of the creatives behind the piece introduced it by saying that movement was a key part of what they wanted to achieve and this was obvious from the beginning. This worked particularly well when the two actors used two white rods each to summon images of a wild sea.

We were presented with a series of scenes, i.e. the ones they had managed to write and rehearse, that were sequenced in the way that made best sense.

It could have been clunky but was nothing of the sort. While pushing the boundaries of what opera is (one of the things Tête à Tête does) with only a couple of what could be called songs it easily managed to be poetic, musical and engaging. I enjoyed it a lot.

An excellent start to the evening.

The second performance that I saw was The Winter’s Tale, an interpretation of Shakespeare's play. The picture gives a good idea of what it looked like.

This was a fully formed piece lasting about an hour. There was a substantial cast with the musicians stepping into roles when not playing their instruments.

The music was composed by the man who also wrote Albatros and had the same short sharp sounds, more like sound effects than tunes, though that is an oversimplification. The singing was in the same mode with sounds rather than words. The story was told in spoken word.

If I had to classify it I would say that this was a play with a musical accompaniment. That music was constant and was important in describing the mood of the story. As was the movement.

It was a nice version of the story and even though I knew it I was caught in the mood of it as if hearing it for the first time.

Again I would have been pushed to call The Winter’s Tale an opera but it was a fine piece of something and I would happily see it again.

I ended the evening with ‘i’. To be honest, I was at the Festival that day anyway and it was the only thing on at that time so I booked to see it too.

I love it when accidents like that happen. "i" was my highlight of the evening.

"i" was very different again. It was much more like a traditional opera than the other two works and it was a lot weirder and a less structured story too.

It had plenty of songs which sounded like "normal" songs, with a clearly modern twist. The lyrics were heavily repetitive, for example the princess said "I" many many times before she completed the sentence "I am not happy". Musically and lyrically it was an excellent opera.

Making the good something special were the costumes and the touches of humour. The costumes were extraordinary and then some. The story teller who opened the opera by singing on her back is only a clue as to what they wore. Note the makeup too.

"i" was delightful in every way and for every minute and it was all the more pleasing because it was such a surprise.

Adding to the pleasure of the evening were the opportunities to mix with some of the Tête à Tête crew and friends in the breaks. That's why they call it a festival.

It's later than you think

"It's later than you think" is a new radio programme hosted by Marcus Brigstocke where he gets celebrity guests to try things that they have never done before.

In the recording I watched, Marcus introduced journalist Eve Pollard to D.I.Y., science fiction, poker and beer.

Due to impeccable planning, and putting one pushy guy firmly in his place, we got the four seats in the middle of the front row.

This gave Marcus the opportunity to comment on Howard's Iron Maiden t-shirt and his long hair; suggesting that combing may be something that Howard had never tried.

The show was planned but unscripted and, as a conversation between two people, it was humorous rather than funny, but overall it was an entertaining hour. How putting up shelves and playing poker will come across on radio will be interesting to hear!

The Now Show

The Now Show has been a stalwart of BBC Radio 4 comedy for several years for the simple reason that it is funny. I caught a few shows over the years but was not normally at home at a consistent time so was not a regular listener. That changed in early 2006 when The Now Show became part of the BBC's experiment with podcasts which means that I can now download each episode and listen to it when commuting. The rest of the family joins in, particularly Richard who has listened to some of the episodes over 50 times!

We went to the recording of their Christmas show as a family treat, and it really was a treat! I'd been to several TV recordings over the years (Killroy, Question Time, Dimbleby, Master Mind, Two Pints ..., etc.) but this was my first radio show and I found the differences quite interesting. The Now Show is recorded almost without interruption whereas all the TV recordings have been stop/start (particularly with the giggling in Two Pints ...!). There were a few retakes to do but they were all done at the end. The show was also a lot longer than the broadcast version. They recorded almost an hour for the half hour show and then cut it down to size afterwards.

As it was the Christmas show, there was mulled wine and mince pies for the audience so we stayed there for a little while. This gave us the opportunity to speak to Mitch Benn, John Holmes and Steve Punt, and to get their autographs. All of them were very approachable and were happy to speak for quite a while. A superb night out for the family and one we'll repeat when the new series starts in March.