Blood Brothers are Richmond Theatre was predictably entertaining

There are lots of gaps in my Cultural Capital and Blood Brothers was one of them. I think that it had been avoiding me more than I had been avoiding it but, whatever the reason, our paths had not crossed until a new touring version arrived at Richmond Theatre and I duly paid £37.5 for my usual seat Dress Circle A25.

The first good sign was that the music was live though as this was coming from a couple of keyboards and a PC I guessed that it would be amplified. I quickly learned that the singers were too. I never like that because of the quality of sound that it produces and the way that the sound comes from the wrong places but I understand why it is done; basically properly trained good singers are too expensive for shows like this. Luckily they can still be found at places like Glyndebourne!

I knew nothing of the story, other than the brief marketing blurb, so I was disappointed when the play started at the end before proceeding to show us how that end was reached. That story was simple, verging on simplistic, with absolutely no surprises but it did enough to engage throughout, usually by exaggerating children's behaviours.

The music was OK without doing anything very much. There was one thing that I did like a lot though and that was the recurring "Marilyn Monroe" refrain.

Blood Brothers was more craft than art so was not really my sort of thing but the crafting was good and I was properly entertained if not moved.

My Cousin Rachel at Richmond Theatre

Daphne du Maurier did not feature in my young reading years but has featured frequently in my old radio drama listening years and good listening it has been too. So when My Cousin Rachel was announced at Richmond Theatre, way back in August, I was quick in to get my usual seat, Dress Circle A25 and was very happy to pay an opening night discount of £22 with my ATG Theatre Card.

I rarely book that far ahead and it was nice getting this sorted.

All went well until I got to the theatre on the Monday evening. The show had been cancelled just as I arrived due to technical details with the stage. It was a busy week, including two other theatre dates, and so I was resigned to missing it. A few days later it transpired that I could make a Saturday evening performance and so I called ATG to see if I could rebook or have to settle for my money back. I was very lucky as I could get seats in my preferred area (A23) and at the original discounted price. Result!

The set was suitable dark and Gothic as I settled down to enjoy the show.

The basic story was about the mysterious Cousin Rachel, a former Italian Contessa, coming to Cornwall to visit the ward of her recently deceased husband. Throughout the play there were questions about her motives and her past.

These questions added more and more to the drama and kept the excitement high.

Other themes added colour to the story; these included Cornish language and legends, society's conventions on class and the sexes, and the power of the sea. Lines like "I am a woman so I shall always be a servant" peppered the play providing many moments of thoughtfulness and humour. It was a rich and rewarding experience.

Any story dominated by one character needs that actor to be believable and Helen George was every inch the femme fatale. She was gorgeous, mysterious, playful, wicked, scheming, kind and everything else that Cousin Rachel had to be. The rest of the show was well cast too and all of the characters were utterly believable.

I liked the staging too. Essentially it was the main room in the manor house with a large staircase curving out of it and when the stage rotated that staircase became the cliffs above the sea and all that we needed for the transformation was a change in lighting and some sound effects. Simple but effective.

My Cousin Rachel was exciting, entertaining, engaging and everything else that a good story well told should be.

Endgame at The Old Vic was typical Beckett

For reasons that escape me there is a flood of Beckett performances this year and hot on my visit to Jermyn Street Theatre for a Triple Bill of his works there I found myself at The Old Vic for two more.

As is customary at The Old Vic I went for a seat in the gods, Lilian Baylis Circle where seat A-16 cost me a reasonable £30. There is a safety rail directly across the view but, depending on the staging, I can either sit forward and look over it or slink down and look over it. This time I did a little of both.

Looking around it did not seem to be much of a Beckett audience and I suspect a lot of people were pulled in by Alan Cumming and/or Danial Radcliffe. My suspicions were reinforced when after the short opening play, Rough for Theatre II, the young woman behind me asked the person next to her to explain what was going on in the play as if expecting clarity and simplicity from Beckett.

Rough for Theatre II was an exploration of office work with documents explored and sections read out. Of course the situation was more complex than that and this was done while a man was poised to throw himself out of a window. The pointlessness and the pernicketyness of the situation made this a light funny piece, a reasonable appetiser for the main course.

Endgame felt something like Happy Days with the main character, played by Alan Cumming this time, unable, or unwilling, to move but the differences were significant; here there was much more dialogue with other characters and that dialogue was questioning.

It was still Beckett dialogue though and as with all his other plays (that I know of) it was poetic, quirky, humorous and pointless. That is what I had gone to see and Endgame delivered.

The Visit at National Theatre was captivation and surprisingly funny

It is not unusual for me to forget why I have booked to see a show but this time I even denied that I was going when asked a few days beforehand! It was only when I flipped the electronic calendar over to the new week that I was reminded of my decision to go.

That decision would have been based on the play's synopsis (Claire Zachanassian, improbably beautiful and impenetrably terrifying, returns to her hometown as the world’s richest woman. The locals hope her arrival signals a change in their fortunes, but they soon realise that prosperity will only come at a terrible price.) and the presence of Hugo Weaving from The Matrix and many other lesser films. National Theatre was another draw as they certainly know how to put on a show there and have the technology to do so.

That was enough for me to push the boat out a little and go for Olivier Circle seat A23 at £49.

Learning the The Visit was almost four hours long was a surprise too but The Lehman Brothers had been very long too and that was brilliant so I was more cautious than worried.

The play quickly set into a pleasing routine. The story was gripping, the characters interesting, the dialogue surprisingly funny and the set excellent. The story moved slowly allowing the dialogue plenty of space to play and dance and the time flew past.

Lesley Manville was extraordinary as Claire Zachanassian, the woman making the visit and the award nominations will flood in. I don't know when or why the change was made but in the poster she has brown hair which became white on stage. The white hair really worked as it made her look even more striking than her dress and demure already did.

Hugo Weaving was good too though he had less to play with and he never once said, "Mr Anderson". I would have added a new character just to get that line in.

The setting, an American town that had seen better days, was topical even though it was set around sixty years ago. The hope the townspeople had for their visiting billionaire must be like that many American's had for the man they (somehow) elected as their President.

If anything the story was the weak point of the play and the ending seemed somewhat unnatural but the ending was not the point, it was the long journey to get there that mattered and that was full of good things.

Weekly Walk: White City to Olympic Park

I tweeted last week's walk and copied it to The Ramblers. In response they asked if I had tried their app; I had not, so I did.

A quick application of filters for distance and location and I found the Olympic Walk which at around 20km suited me perfectly. It also helped that the starting point, White City, was somewhere that I could get to easily by tube allowing me to start out early using my Oystercard.

The start was not good. The 65 bus promised in 7 minutes when I left home took over 15 and I was already late. Then there were all sorts of mix-ups on the tube at Richmond and no announcements to help. Most of us ended up sitting on a train on platform 5 safe in the knowledge that, while late, at least it would be the next one to leave only to see the train we had abandoned on platform 6 depart before us. There was a minor mix-up at Hammersmith too but as we were only going a couple of stops the change in destination did not concern us.

Despite these problems we arrived at White City just after 9am.

I had some familiarity with White City from my several visits to the BBC studios there, mostly to watch recordings of Two Pints..., but I was not surprised to see a lot of new building following the BBC's departure.

The route took us South, East and North for some reason until we hit the canal at point 2. We had walked the canal for around there to Limehouse before , and I had walked the central section many times, so the next couple of hours were easy.

We stopped for a coffee (and cake!) at Kings Place by Kings Cross just because I used to work there. It also gave us the opportunity to pop into two art galleries there, though a corporate event claimed most of the lower floors.

Back on the canal it was interesting to pass through the borders in to the mass housing of the East End and then the less dense housing of the outer areas like Cambridge Heath. Living in South West London this was the Far East to me and we went through places rarely visited.

The departure from the canal and from previous journeys happened at Victoria Park and the park was my highlight of the walk. We made the decision to take other walks in the area.

From there it was a short hop to the Lea Valley which we had also walked previously, including as part of the Capital Ring. We like canals and rivers and had no objection to walking here again.

The end confused me. I just assumed that we would arrive at Stratford but, instead it was at another station, the less well known Pudding Mill Lane. It is not obvious why there is a station there as there is nothing else nearby, and certainly not a pub, so we had no choice but to catch the DLR to Stratford,

Our search for a pub there was hardly our least successful and we found a couple in the High Street. Ye Olde Bull was empty, did no food but had a decent pint. The Anchor Tap across the road was a better bet and we got something with halloumi and avocado to eat. The craft beer advertised outside was London Pride! It did the job.

From there a fast, and very busy, Jubilee Line took us to Waterloo and an even faster train completed the journey back to Richmond. I was home in plenty of time to go out again for that night's theatre.

I used the Ramblers app all the way (though I took a shortcut in Islington that it did not seem to know about) and found it helpful and easy to use. I would much rather have a route map and a dot showing where I am than a set of written instructions as a map is much easier to follow, it just needs a quick glance, and if you do wander off route it is easy to get back on. I will definitely be using it again.