Albion at Almeida Theatre ran out of steam

There is something of a Mike Bartlett meme going on at the moment and while not a devout fan of his I will always be interested in seeing his work because of Charles III. Almeida is not my favourite theatre either but it is good enough and has a habit of putting interesting plays on. What hooked me this time was the simple statement, "Following a sell-out run in 2017, The Telegraph’s "Play of the Year" returns to the Almeida".

As is usual when visiting Almeida (and elsewhere, to be honest) I went for the cheap seats and booked Circle Row A Seat 40 for £20. This was at the far end of one side in a section that is often not open as it is hard to see the back of the stage from there but with the stage flung out into the middle of the auditorium the location was fine.

Also fine was the cafe beforehand. Circumstances meant that it was easier to eat at the theatre than elsewhere and the tomato and dahl was delicious and superb value at £9. The bottle of Pride beer was  fine as a drink but the £5.2 was on the steep side.

Albion, as the name makes clear, is a play about England today as we go through the tumult of Brexit. Here a successful business woman, Audrey Walter, was leaving London (EU) to rebuild her own Little England in the rural countryside.

We had village traditions, Polish workers, a reluctance in some quarters to leave London, and uncertain business conditions. It was Brexit laid bare.

For the first half of the play (one and a half hours) these themes were examined and explored with great effect with a range of characters adding different perspectives as Audrey Walters drove into her project with relentless zeal.

Then the interval; came and, as always, I took the opportunity to have an ice cream.

In most plays if I have been suffering from a little lack of attention in the first half the ice cream stirs me and it gets my full attention in the second. This time, and for the only time that I recall, the opposite happened and I found myself losing attention in the second half. The story progressed little (until the final moments) and I did not see the point of it.

It was still funny at times and still interesting but there was too little progression, too little change, to justify anther hour of much the same. Perhaps I missed something but the second half simply did not work for me. I could gladly have gone home at the interval and been satisfied but having stayed to the end I felt disappointed.

Kew Orchids (24 Feb 20)

The annual orchids festival at Kew Gardens is very popular and for several good reasons, orchids being the main one. This popularity has led to very long queues in recent years and to a timed ticket system this year.

I was able to avoid both by taking advantage of one of the early openings fo members which meant getting there by 9am, a time when I am normally thinking about having a second cup of tea in bed. The early start was something of a challenge but it did mean being in the conservatory when it was only busy rather than too busy.

The display seemed slightly muted this year, especially away from the central display and it only took me an hour (!) to see everything.

With fewer extravagant displays to grab my attention I was able to concentrate on the individual flowers; more of an opportunity than a problem. I picked this one photograph as an example of the delights on show.

Kew Orchids 2020 was certainly worth getting up early for.

Willoughby Pub Quiz (23 February 2020)

My turn as quiz master at the weekly Willoughby Arms Pub Quiz seems to come around very quickly and so it is vital that I have a process for producing the quiz.

That does change slightly and in recent months I have been using a theme for the whole quiz on the grounds that should make choosing the subjects of individual rounds easier. I am not wholly convinced that it does but I will stick with the approach until it breaks or I think of something better.

This week it was Cats and Dogs.

I changed the order of the rounds slightly (I should have done that ages ago) so that the potentially easier rounds on popular culture where alternated with the harder rounds. The rounds were music, facts about cats and dogs, films, famous cats and dogs (mostly dogs!), people associated with cats or dogs, and this week's news.

I think it worked OK though it was something of a struggle to find ten people associated with cats or dogs which I think made that the hardest round.

maliphantworks3 at The Coronet Theatre

Getting to see dance in South West London remains a challenge so the opportunity to see maliphantworks3 at The Coronet Theatre was a no-brainer, especially so as I had enjoyed maliphantworks2 there almost two years previously.

This time we went with friends. It was too difficult to meet up beforehand with us coming from three different directions after doing three different things but somehow we all found ourselves in the Old Swan at the same time. It was a pub I knew reasonably well from my many visits to the Czech and Slovak Embassies nearby and while the pub did nothing special the beer and vegetarian fish and chips were perfectly acceptable. They both did the job.

It was a short walk from there to The Coronet Theatre and we made sure that we arrived in good time to enjoy another drink in what must be the most eclectic theatre bar in London.

The performance opened with the main (i.e. longest) piece of the evening, The Space Between, developed with a video artist. Here light and sound were as important as the dancers who were often lost in the darkness only to slide back into view again. Possibly not for dance purists but I loved it.

After a short break we had two short films that had even less dance in them and just about took me to my limit of being able to accept this as dance. Perhaps that was the point. They were still attention grabbing but in a different way.

The evening closed with Duet which I had seen and loved before, and loved again. It was similar to the first piece with the lighting playing a lesser role, that did not make it better but it did make it different.

The dancing throughout was gentle and fluid, no leaps or rolls here, and the focus was very much on the upper body. The deliberate gloom and the clothing his the details and what we saw was shapes rather than gestures. It was a mood to sweep you along rather than something to focus intently on.

If there is ever a maliphantworks4 I will be going to see that too.

Weekly Walk: Richmond to Harrow on the Hill

As with last week's walk, this route was directed mostly by curiosity and the transport network.

On previous walks we had gone through various parts of West London mostly travelling east to west so we wanted to go south to north to see different aspects of these suburbs.

The Overground was the most obvious route home so we set off at 8:30am heading for Harrow and Wealdstone. We had no firm route in mind but we did have a destination.

Initially we followed the river to Kew Bridge, a path well-travelled but it was better than going by bus or train. Once across Kew Bridge we were in new territory where we remained for (almost) the rest of the journey.

Between the M4 and several railway lines was a massive development of flats and the new home for Brentford FC. We were the only people there ot wearing hard hats and we had to wait for overhead operations to stop at one point.

Crossing under the M4 we came into Gunnesbury Park. We started by a pond and left by another. In the middle were a few playing fields and not a lot else.

From there we walked north to Ealing along minor roads that ran in parallel with the familiar 65 bus route. It was quiet on the streets and many of the houses were attractive Victorian brick-built. It was a pleasant enough walk though, being suburbia, there was little of substantial interest.

One of the features of the walk was finding ways to cross major transport routes that crossed ours. The first was the main line into Paddington and to cross this it was easiest to go through the centre of Ealing and to use the bridge by the railway station.

Immediately passed that we reentered side-roads. Here the housing went up a notch ot two.

It was not long before we hit the next obstacle, the A40. My phone kept advising me to turn right and to follow the North Circular but I was never going to do that so once we had got past Hanger Hill Park we turned left and were soon rewarded with a subway under the many lanes of thundering traffic.

That only delayed the problem and we were forced to follow the A4005 for a while, at least that was not as busy as the North Circular which turned towards the west at that point as we carried on going north.

At the first opportunity we came off the main road and headed east for a while into South Perivale before resuming our journey north.

We hit Perivale at a good time for coffee and headed to The Lunch Box where we had been a few months before when forced off the nearby canal due to resurfacing work. I think we both had the same as we had last time which for me was Set Vegetarian Breakfast No. 1 with brown bread and a latte. Good food and great value. Places like that are a highlight of our walks.

It seemed easiest to follow the A4005 after that as it was going our way and was not that busy. We veered off when we saw a sign for Harrow on the Hill and we started dreaming of expensive beers in ancient pubs. It was quite a long detour and as hilly as we remembered from the last time we were there.

Unfortunately we had forgotten, ot not realised, that there are no pubs along High Street in Harrow on the Hill. There may have been some on one of the side roads but they all fell away steeply from the High Street we were not tempted down in fear of having to come all the way back up again having failed to find a pub. At least Harrow on the Hill had given us several nice buildings to look at which was a pleasant change.

So we headed for Kenton.

Kenton is as nondescript suburbia as everywhere around it but at least it had a pub. Sort of. Next to the railway station was The Beefeater, as bland a pub as you could find and with no draft bitters available. I had to have a Staropramen which was OK but a long way off a first choice.

From there the Overground took us back to Richmond in about half an hour. Getting there had taken us a fraction under four hours of walking in which time we had covered almost 23km.