The Blog

Shepherd’s warning – November Thames dawn last week

I can just about get away with calling this my Autumn Blog – gardens have squashed remnants of pumpkins, fragments of sky-rockets crunch underfoot in piles of amber leaves, even as calls ring out in the malls to start shopping for Christmas….

Given each day’s world news, you can however see the attraction of escape into a realm of tinsel and brandy-laced pies. Not many of you were, but I was around for the last threat of nuclear obliteration, when the Americans spotted ballistic missiles in Cuba under a hundred miles from their southern coast, about to be supplied with atomic warheads by a convey of approaching Russian ships. As President Kennedy came on the radio demanding – his hand  apparently poised over the nuclear button – that Moscow turn those ships around, I heard echoes in my head of Tom Lehrer’s jaunty, timely song “We shall all go together when we go….”

So as grief and despair swell in Ukraine and Gaza, as despots savour power while easy-answer right-wing mountebanks win votes in the US and Europe, as our own well-meaning leaders struggle with wobbly economics and scary politics – where do we turn for solace?

We who might seek London theatre tickets for respite find ourselves stalled by rampant price inflation. For instance I’d love to watch ‘Oedipus’ at Wyndham’s Theatre, given rave reviews and a cast including Lesley Manville, Mark Strong and June Watson – however once you click on “Buy Tickets”,  the phrase “Tickets from £75” becomes “From £140” or sometimes “From £200” – and thus one’s non-subsidised winter heating bills start to take priority…

So behold, a FREE theatre treat is a joyous thing to report – reader, read on!

This week on my way back from running a TYA Shakespeare workshop in Leadenhall St I called in at the Red Eight Gallery at 9 Cornhill, a few steps from Bank tube station.

There I encountered Sirs Derek Jacobi and Ian McKellen, Dame Harriet Walter, Juliet Stevenson, Frances Barber and other respected stars performing Shakespeare with all the skill, aplomb and panache you could desire, while all being framed..

Here is an exhibition of portraits of ten of our most eminent classical performers, each picture contained in a fine gold frame. But these are no ordinary pictures. Stand in front of Juliet Stevenson’s face, for example, and you will see that she is quite still, but actually breathing… and then she will stir, and with arresting clarity speak to you as Isabella from Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure”:

….but man, proud man,
Dress’d in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d—
His glassy essence—like an angry ape
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep..

And as Juliet Stevenson’s face fades, more Shakespeare lines from another character in a different play will call you to an image elsewhere in the room, to see and hear another remarkable actor. This is an occasion when New Technology takes a theatrical bow – director Ron Daniels has collaborated with Stageblock Studio and its co-founders  Arsalan Sattari-Hicks and Dr Francesco Pierangeli in creating something quite startling.. If you can get into London, escape the weather (I write as storm Bert clatters the windows) dive into the Underground and head for Bank station before December 6th – opening times and more details on the links below. The gallery kindly sent  these pictures (with permission to publish them) of the ‘opening night’ – the first time the actors had seen the final assembly.

All photographs by JULIJA JEVSIKOVA.   Source: Red 8 Gallery 

In fact, if you look beyond the West End you can still enjoy top talent at first hand and you don’t always have to pay the earth . I’m lucky to live near two fine ‘outer London’ theatres. Last month  at the Old Sorting Office at Barnes I caught Alison Skilbeck’s cracking show  ‘The Power Behind the Crone’, a marvellously witty exploration of Shakespeare’s ‘mature’ female characters.

Alison and her partner Tim Hardy have a repertoire of terrific, thought-provoking solo productions, which show up at all kinds of interesting venues, so look out for them, and check the link below.

I relish the prospect next week of a bus-ride to the Richmond Orange Tree Theatre and  to their special Christmas show, ‘Twelfth Night’,  with a cast led by Jane Asher, Clive Francis and the wondrous Oliver Ford-Davies. Price range £15 to £56.

London still has a network of gutsy local venues where ‘quality’ work will often emerge – for example the White Bear pub theatre in Kennington, just near the tube station. There you can find an intriguing new play recently imported from New York. ‘Synchronicity‘ is about an encounter between the great thinker Carl Jung and an eminent scientist, gaining lots of favourable on-line reaction – link below.

Meanwhile, back in the West End –  hot off the press this morning comes news of yet another Hollywood star bearing a classical offering: after Sigourney Weaver plays Prospero in ‘The Tempest’ at Drury Lane, at the Duke of Yorks Theatre Brie Larson will take on Sophocles, as  ‘Elektra’ – in a new version by Ann Carson.  As of this afternoon  there were tickets advertised at ‘From £25’ – all I can say is – good luck…

If your budget runs only to paying your TV licence, connoisseurs of our craft have free access to the magnificent BBC ‘Wolf Hall’ series – Series Two is currently on BBC One on Sunday evenings, and Series One is still there on the iPlayer. If you’re not in the UK and want to see truly high-grade acting, directing, design and production values, then search the Web – use a VPN, whatever it takes – in fact Series One now exists on DVD.

In an interview the director Peter Kosminsky commented that all he needed to tell this engrossing Tudor story was to film Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell listening. All young actors, take note!

And for those interested in the journey of a once-young actor of yesteryear…

The Blogoire, Part Two

Regular readers will know that my full name is Peter Ellis Jones  – when I joined our trade union Equity as a 17-year old Assistant Stage Manager the names Peter Ellis and Peter Jones were already being used – the latter of course notably finding fame in ‘The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’.

So I used my middle name, which I’d inherited from my mum’s side of the family – and here’s a picture of my grandpa George Ellis, outside his cobbler’s shop in Cardiff. George actually came from Lincolnshire, and had moved south seeking work in the depression-hit 1930s, first to Surrey where he worked ‘in service’ as a groom at a well-to-do house, and married the parlour-maid Violet Capp, my grandma. They moved to Cardiff where George found work on the docks before learning the shoe-mending trade.

(Later George’s craft became an inspiration  for working on the famous comedy ‘Hobson’s Choice’, twice as a director and once as an actor playing Will Mossop, the play’s cobbler hero – of which more later) 

The Jones bit of my name is of course, Welsh – some might have seen a previous blog when I found myself unexpectedly in the Jones ancestral town – well large village – Llanymynach, perched on the Wales-Shropshire border, beside the Montgomery Canal.

Growing up in the north Welsh borders, my paternal grandad William Jones also moved south in search of work and my dad Edwin Terry Jones was born in Cardiff. He worked in the food trade, first at a famous ‘chain’ of dairies, called The Maypole, and then for a firm of yeast importers, Thomas Whittick and Son Ltd. A religious young man, at Bible study classes Terry (he also used his middle name) met four exuberant sisters  – Ivy, Edie, Joey, and Winnie – all daughters of George the shoemender. If you look closely at his picture you’ll see that George advertised ‘Free Bible Lectures’ on his shop door.  After a lengthy courtship, Terry and Winnie got married, produced three sisters, Mavis, Olive and Ruth – and then, quite a lot later, me. In fact my mum was nearly forty at the time, and twenty or so years later told me “Your dad had always wanted a son, so we thought we’d have one last go before it was too late…”

When war came, Terry’s religious convictions were such that he applied to register as a conscientious objector, and after being interrogated by a government tribunal was sent to work on the fire-boats in Portsmouth harbour. Hence, as noted in the last blog-post, my entering the world at a grand country house/turned evacuation maternity hospital at Bramshott, Hampshire – only to be transported within months to Cardiff where I spent my first seven years.

The Jesuit contention that impressions gained in the first seven years become indelible seem to me to be quite evident – even though at seven I was whisked off to Yorkshire and have only been in Wales since as an occasional visitor I’ve always felt Welsh. I had to unlearn my quite thick Cardiff accent rapidly to gain acceptance among schoolmates in Hull, but it comes back at the drop of a Welsh-cake – sometimes quite usefully, for an actor. I played the Fool in ‘King Lear’ on TV when Kent was played by Ray Smith – a rugged, sadly now late Welsh actor and Plaid Cymru activist  – who declared “I’ve claimed you, boy – we always claim back the good ‘uns…”

Memories of life in South Wales are scattered and fragmentary, but vivid. Each St David’s Day, March 1st, in the morning at school we sang Welsh songs and acted out stories – and then went home for the afternoon off, each of us sporting a daffodil in our lapel. My first theatrical experience? Playing King Arthur at the age of six in a St David’s Day pageant at Severn Rd County Primary, leading a parade before parents seated around the hall –  Queen Guinevere, also six, stiffly clutching my arm. Suddenly my queen halted and froze. She refused to budge. She couldn’t budge – the elastic on her green school knickers had snapped –  they had descended and tangled both her ankles! Fortunately a nearby mum had sufficient presence of mind to extract the offending crumpled item, and our Progress progressed. I often wonder what impact that event may have had on the subsequent life of Queen Guinevere…As for long-term effects on her stage husband, well – who knows….??

Images, sounds and smells still linger – of rides on trams and trolley-buses, of seaside outings to Penarth and to Barry Island, of castles, of Welsh cakes, and of buying hot bread-cobs for a farthing each…

The ‘Keep’ is the medieval core of Cardiff Castle – however most of the rest of this dramatic, sprawling city-centre site is a Victorian fantasy built by the Marquess of Bute, who made billions out of his Welsh coal mines.  The stables now house part of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.

A few miles outside Cardiff lies Castell Coch, another glorious Victorian expansion of a medieval original – like Cardiff Castle a creation of the ‘Gothic Revival’ master architect, William Burgess, again using Bute billions. A natural haven for Arthurian myth!

The legendary “Figure Eight” scenic railway at Barry Island – one of the biggest in the world when built in 1939, just as war broke out. It was dismantled in 1973.

Here’s that long-gone coin – worth a quarter of an ‘old’ penny – there were  nine hundred and sixty to the pound – and in Cardiff with just one you could buy a hot bread-bun – a ‘farthing cob’.

These days the only time ‘Spotlight” casting bulletins clamour for older actors is now – the run-up to Christmas.  “Authentic-looking Santa required 50-99 years…”   I now wonder if the picture below taken at Howell’s Department Store in Cardiff at Christmas 1950 was my first encounter with an Equity member…

Next episode – leaving one war-scarred port city for another, far to the north in another country.  The biggest deep-sea fishing port in the world beckons – Kingston upon Hull …..

P.S. My proof-readers (many thanks to David and to Karen) suggest the gloom in the first part of this post could perhaps be alleviated with a dash of humour- so see the final link below. Over to you Tom!

Links :

Red 8 Gallery: https://redeightgallery.com/whats-on/

Alison Skilbeck, Tim Hardy productions: https://hint-of-lime.com/2018/08/29/our-productions/

The Orange Tree Theatre: https://orangetreetheatre.co.uk/?gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADNgZcr1k9-lmHbSI3cd1Buj5HHu8&gclid=Cj0KCQiAgJa6BhCOARIsAMiL7V-vIX06Y5irHgiAvkpxCGtpo1pp2g3K_LoM6-jdRcZklshmD3bQ9M8aAtBUEALw_wcB

The White Bear Theatre:  https://www.whitebeartheatre.co.uk/whatson/synchronicity

Photo credits:

Red8 Gallery: Julija Jevzikova – Instragram @julijajevzikova https://www.instagram.com/julijajevzikova/?hl=en

Alison Skilbeck: Kim Hardy https://kimhardyheadshots.com

Orange Tree Theatre: Ellie Kurttz https://elliekurttz.com

Wales photo sources: Cardiff Castle – https://www.britannica.com/place/Cardiff-Castle; Castell Coch https://www.reddit.com/r/castles/

Barry Island:https://www.urban75.org/blog/barry-island-photos-sea-sand-beach-huts-and-butlins/

AND TO CHEER US ALL UP and generate a festive mood – just click on this link!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIoBrob3bjI

As our country’s briefly scorching summer shows once again it has too short a date, amongst London theatres news is breaking – Will Shakespeare is returning to Drury Lane!

Here is a picture I took but a few days since, of the newly-refurbished “Temple to Shakespeare” built beside the Thames at Hampton some two hundred and seventy years ago by David Garrick, then the great Shakespearian star and actor-manager of the Drury Lane Theatre.

This week comes an announcement that at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane  – an address where over the centuries the likes of Garrick, Sarah Sissons and Edmund Kean thrilled thousands  –  the Jamie Lloyd Company will offer in 2025 a season of Shakespeare plays to feature not only Tom Hiddleston and Haley Atwell in “Much Ado about Nothing” – but also the Hollywood star Sigourney Weaver in “The Tempest”

Also next year the Bridge Theatre by Tower Bridge will stage “Richard the Second”  with “Bridgerton” actor Jonathan Bailey. Mixing star performers  and Shakespeare’s word wizardry in big, entirely “commercial” venues was once central to London’s theatre scene, a world of late so dominated by musicals.

Not that there’s anything wrong with musicals – the Bridge itself lightened the landscape recently with a sparkling “Guys and Dolls’ where it was a joy to watch our Radagrad Danny Mays strut his stuff, while upstream at Drury Lane another Gower St ex-student Craig Gallivan gathered richly comic garlands in the hit show  “Frozen”.

It’s just that it’s exciting and refreshing to see the balance shift a little. Tom Hiddleston – alongside his glittering career in TV with dramas like “The Night Manager” and in blockbuster “Marvel” movies  – has returned before to his classical roots – a Coriolanus at the Donmar, a return to RADA for Hamlet at the Vanbrugh – but Benedick on this great stage should be really special.

But oh, how much will be the tickets….???

I found myself wondering who was the last prominent actor to perform in Shakespeare at Drury Lane? There’s a nice quote on Wikipedia: reporting Victorian days  when a “period of general decline culminated with F.B Chatterton’s 1878 resignation; in his words, “Shakespeare spells ruin, and Byron bankruptcy.” During that fateful season Chatterton produced  “Macbeth”, “Othello”,  “Cymbeline”, and “Hamlet” – each with a run of just a few nights.

Last month I wandered off to visit dear friends in France, and to explore territory where some of my family have now gone to live – the heart of the Périgord, a village called  Saint Léon sur Vézère. Tom, Marie and six year old Célestine have  moved into an old, old homestead on the side of a steep limestone hillside, amongst hills riddled with caves occupied since neolithic times. At the base of their hill they have a kitchen garden, where they find stone-age flint arrow-heads, and the occasional roman coin. Exploring the nearby cave system I came across this remarkable cavern, which is known ominously as “La Grotte de Jugement”… If you look carefully at the top right of the entrance you will see a bull’s head, carved it seems in Roman times. There are various explanations as to why the cave is like it is – are those curious pigeon-holes  literally meant for carrier pigeons – or did they have other long-lost purposes….?

And while we’re on long-lost purposes, we are due another short “blogoire” episode. The last post you found me a mewling child in a push-chair by the sea at Southsea – this you will find me a scuff-kneed kid in Cardiff, the years immediately after the war. Much of that city centre featured burned-out bomb sites following prolonged Nazi air-raids on the docks, the valleys nearby dominated by blue-grey, man-made hills of coal-slurry from the mines, the notorious  “slag-heaps”, fore-shadowing later tragedies.

I remember exploring a bomb-site brightened by a great clump of dog-daisies, amongst the streets of Splott –  a part of town where a young local was beginning to be noticed for her mighty singing voice, a lass called Shirley Bassey. Years later in 2004 I watched her perform, still gorgeously glamorous, patting kindly the snowy heads of gentlemen fans, gazing adoringly from the front row during the maiden voyage of the Queen Mary Two. So what was I doing on board the QM2’s maiden voyage?

Suffice to say later issue of the blogoire will have a nautical flavour – for now let’s go back to days when people in Britain lived in real fear of  bombs, falling onto their homes out of the sky.

This has been the blog for the summer of 24, so far. Watch this space – the Summer Blogoire Supplement will be along shortly.

A DISTANT SUMMER – AND A NEW WORD

Aotearoa – The land of the Long White Cloud      

 Townsend, my oldest friend from school days and I now have a stack of years between us, so as the new year dawned I set off to share a Significant Birthdate with him and his remarkable family at home in New Zealand. I had four brilliant weeks with David T, his wondrously long-suffering wife Valérie, their dynamic quartet of next generation siblings, plus 14 year old Felix representing a crop of even more dynamic grandchildren.

Pohutukawa trees bloomed, tui and bell birds called, wild flowers swarmed, and as floods, tempests and ice smote the UK, down in the antipodes summer unfurled, for example at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Wellington where folk clapped and danced  merrily to the Beat Girls, rock and soul classics filling the air as beaming sunlight blended into balmy dusk…

Botanical rock                                                                                                     Scorching Bay, Miramar, North Island, January 10th

A  New Zealand “Christmas Tree”, a pohutukawa, by the beach.                 Takahēs at home – flightless, indigenous birds         

Wellington is the home of WETA, the film company with whom Peter Jackson made the movies drawing on J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” and “Lord of the Rings” novels. Jackson is a significant figure in New Zealand, who has put some of his millions to good use in a number of impressive community projects, not least by restoring several Art Deco cinemas, which now thrive as part of local life. Here’s the Miramar Roxy, guarded by Gandalf. Alongside this image inspired by Sir Ian McKellen (who in recent years has re-visited “younger” roles like Hamlet and  Romeo) here sits a vision of another rather senior, rather short version of Shakespeare’s greatest romanic story, adapted by Wellington-based writer/performer Pinky Agnew, who co-starred with David T in providing entertainment at the brilliant, al fresco birthday party. (I myself contributed a modest vignette as The Nurse.)

                                                                        What satisfaction can’st thou have tonight?

                                                                                                              Picture: Murray Lloyd

A joy to add to the birthday fun was a trip northwards to Whanganui – a coastal town which is also a river resort – and then further up the West Coast, to New Plymouth. At Whanganui a “retro” festival was in full swing, which suited our now unavoidably “retro” status. There were lots of amazing vintage cars, local bands, a journey on a restored river steamboat, and a ride on a trailer tugged by an ancient traction engine. There’s also an Opera House, built in 1899, still standing despite the earthquake shocks the region is prone to. There we watched exuberant opera scenes, performed by graduating students from the National Opera School.

Along the coast at New Plymouth, we splashed merrily with surfers in the foam, looked at an extraordinary art gallery made of distorting mirrors, and marvelled at the sunset views the volcanic terrain offers at the close of each day.

In New Zealand the Maori community’s heritage and status, and the current government’s attitude to  both, are prominent issues. In the town of Pātea, we came across a striking monument, built in 1933 – a lasting impression of the first human settlers to make their homes in these islands some 900 or so years ago.

                                                                                           Turi and Rongorongo monument, Pātea.

Back in October Townsend came to Europe. He wanted his visit to include Malta, where his dad had served in the Royal Navy during World War Two, and kindly invited me along. I’d never thought to go there before  – and if you haven’t either, please add it to your bucket list. It’s a fascinating island, crucially placed to accumulate lots of history, much of it linked into Britain’s colonial and military past. Consequently there’s an Anglican cathedral as well as a Catholic one, but it’s the latter religion which has dominated the culture. The Inquisition, the Vatican’s vicious thought-police, terrorised Malta’s citizens from 1561 through till the end of the 18th century, when Napoleon – who had recently occupied the country – put a stop to it.  In 1802 the Brits invaded and put a stop to Napoleon’s occupation, and stayed for the next 150 years or so. Malta provided a vital base for UK forces in WW2, and withstood a prolonged Nazi siege, which led to the entire population being awarded the George Cross in 1942.The Island finally gained independence in 1964, and remains part of the Commonwealth. Amongst a terrific range of fine architecture is one of the oldest working theatres in Europe, the glorious Teatru Manoel, where shows have been staged since 1731.

Palms and the Anglican cathedral; the Teatru Manoel; the Catholic Cathedral, with a choice of major Caravaggios

Harbour gondolas, Valetta; the Inquisition Torture Chamber; a view to the old Royal Navy base, now hosting luxury yachts.

Conversations with Townsend in these far-flung locations have minted a new word. For many of us warily approaching the days Shakespeare called “the sere and yellow” the urge to record the past, to catalogue memories and reflections – by making memoires – starts to nag. Townsend’s are under way, notes from a life seeking social repair and change – through directing care services in big London boroughs, through excursions into politics, alongside a running commentary of letters and articles in the media, all laced with sharp, salty humour. Another long-term friend Doug D’Arcy, as mentioned previously in this blog, has shared graphic insights into life in the music trade in a series of podcasts – now complemented by a crisp mix of written notes and pictures from the music scene around Manchester University in the late sixties. (Link below).

Throughout October and January, anecdotes rattled back and forth. In New Zealand daily swims in the sea at Scorching Bay sharpened the synapses – and images, songs, sounds and sensations came popping back from distant decades.

And SO, I ask you to bear with me as I start to mix memories into forthcoming episodes of this blog, so that it becomes – wait for it – a blogoire. Linguists will immediately spot this as a portmanteau word, and as such I invite you to welcome it warmly, as it emerges, blushing and flustered, from Pseuds’ Corner…..

Blogoire, Episode 1

I can claim that there are, in a sense, only three generations between me and the Battle of Waterloo. OK it’s stretching it a bit, but look: my father’s mother, Gran Jones to my sisters and me, was born in 1879. That’s a LONG time ago – Townsend points out it was the year of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, immortalised in the movie “Zulu” by Stanley Baker and Michael Caine. It means that Gran was thirty-five at the outbreak of the First World War. It also means that when she was a child anyone in their seventies or older would have remembered the aforementioned Napoleon being alive, albeit in exile – he died on St Helena in 1821.  So there we are. Gran, whom I remember very well from my childhood days in Cardiff, was born during the Zulu Wars, lived through the Boer War and the First World War, and was very much in evidence when I arrived towards the end of the Second World War. Margaret Jones, our Gran,  was quite tall and slim, with red hair, was often kind and caring – but could also be quite austere, with a very Welsh “chapel” attitude to matters of behaviour. Certain days in the calendar had to be respected and observed – for example on Good Friday, the day Jesus died, we children had to stay indoors, be quiet and not play noisy games. Transgressions were met with pained, carefully measured reproach – nobody could instil Guilt quite like Gran.

Were it not for the war, I might have arrived in Cardiff – but our dad, who was a Conscientious Objector, was sent to be part of the Civil Defence of Portsmouth and served on the fireboats protecting that hugely important military naval base. My mother  wanted to keep the family together, and moved with her three daughters to a house just near Portsmouth, in Southsea. When the time came to deliver me, she was evacuated from Southsea – Portsmouth being a prime German bombing target – to a temporary maternity ward inland, at a former manor house at Bramshott, Hampshire – so I like to think I made my first entrance in a rather grand setting. A few months after my arrival, our mum took me, with my three sisters, back to our dad’s ancestral homeland, Wales – and thus I became a little Cardiff kid. For the next seven years. Then I became a Yorkshire lad. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

My arrival (and three months later, Townsend’s) came as the fortunes of war were beginning to turn. Mussolini’s Italy had surrendered, and secret plans for what became the Allies’ “D Day” invasion of Europe were under way.  Before our return to Wales, I would be taken out in my push-chair, often along the Southsea South Parade, where in-training army and navy recruits would be seen marching up and down. Between the Parade and the sea was, and is, a sturdy wall with stern notices proclaiming it as a place of danger. My sister Olive, taking me out one day, was challenged by school-pals to a “dare” that she couldn’t walk the push-chair with me in it, along the top of the wall. We Joneses aren’t ones to step away from a challenge, so I, a gurgling infant, was duly pushed along the wall, with a sheer drop into the surging deep but inches away… Olive has felt guilty about it ever since – pangs she and I sought to assuage many years later, by visiting the Scene of the Crime.

Obviousy, I don’t remember this early adventure but such things linger in the subconscious – could this be why decades later working on Cunard ships, watching the deep green ocean sliding by I always felt quite at home? Who knows. The next journey then was into Wales. As the terrors of war receded my infant awareness grew – of Welsh-cakes and bible classes, mock-Gothic castles and trolley buses, a world where almost everything tasty, from eggs to bacon, was “on points” – that is, only available if your mum  had enough coupons in her ration-book….

Watch this space for a taste of post-war Wales in Episode 2.

Meanwhile to return to my return from the far Antipodes, last week I found myself 35 thousand feet above exotic landscapes, burned brown desert hills in Iraq, and snowy mountains in Uzbekistan, lands where Genghis Khan’s hordes once roamed. I thought you might like the images caught by my trusty Pixel phone camera from the window of our glistening Airbus 380, as we streaked through the clouds towards an all too English February….

LINKS

PINKY AGNEW – AUTHOR, CELEBRANT and SPEAKER:                             https://www.pinkyagnew.com

DOUG D’ARCY – SEVEN OFFICES  plus THE MANCHESTER YEARS:         http://www.dougdarcy.com

                                     MAY ’23 – A RESTLESS SPRING

Dear comrades, May Day is past, the Merry Month is upon us! And yet – so foul and fair a season I have not seen. Teeth-chattering, biting winds and squalls one day, fitful sunbeams gleaming through breeze-blown blossom the next. This restless Spring has found me in Amsterdam, in West Sussex, in Warwickshire, Wiltshire and Kent – never knowing how best to dress for the weather – my dear, it’s been frightful!

Actually it’s been good. My ever-alert art-loving pal Robin, despite being stuck for the winter in a beach-side apartment in Mexico – poor soul, it’s the only alternative to Birkenhead he could manage – reached across the Web to spear a pair of tickets for the now legendary Vermeer Exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. So on his return off we went, to envious mutterings from all and sundry – the hottest exhibition ticket in Europe, and boy does it merit all the fuss! Mind you, the weather there was dire – having spent much of my youth in East Yorkshire I recognised straight-off the bitter, skin-smarting north-sea rain – but you don’t go to Amsterdam for the weather. You go for canals, for happy-cake cafés, for dotty sex shops, and for terrific restaurants with weather-beating fare. Sheltering at the Stoop & Stoop café we had a fantastic pea and sausage soup!

And then there’s the ART…During a recent TYA workshop actor Will Hopkins asked me “What’s the difference between good acting and great acting?” Good question – one you can bring to any creative activity, I guess. With acting, as well as the indefinable quality of God-given charisma, there’s something to do with sheer concentration, that draws the audience in and holds the attention, that suspends disbelief utterly. And watching and listening to a great musical instrumentalist or singer, there’s an all-else excluding focus on the flow of theme and variations, taking us into the very soul of the music. Is defining great visual art more elusive? Is our reaction to pictures, sculptures and artefacts more subjective? I know, for instance, people who declare themselves left cold by Picasso’s work.

And yet I can’t imagine anyone standing in front of almost any of the Vermeer pictures on display in Amsterdam without feeling that here is something remarkable, something fundamental about life… Brighter brains than mine have produced long books on the impact of art – and clearly perceptions change with the generations. For instance, there’s no doubt that many of Vermeer’s pictures “tell a story”, yet seem to provide far more insight into humanity than those – admittedly often finely painted – Victorian dramatic tableaux like “When Did You last See Your Father?” or “The Long Engagement”. But there my ability to explain grinds to a halt, so any thoughts on this, anyone?

Everyone at the exhibition was taking ‘phone-pictures of the pictures. What makes being in their presence more impactful than looking at photos of the images they represent? Here’s two I took, each of a painting reflecting a possible “back-story”. The lady in blue looking at a letter is, I assume, pregnant. And why is the woman receiving a note while practising lute chords being observed from what may be the inside of a broom cupboard…. ?

Leaving these musings to finer minds, focus now shifts to the Sussex County Cricket Club at Hove, and thence via Zoom to a fishing village in India.

My deeply missed friend GwynethPowell was a serious and active supporter of the Venkat Trust, an educational project in India, appropriately for someone so well known for years as the fictional school headteacher in “Grange Hill”. The Trust’s founder Sylvia Holder last month hosted a lunch at the cricket ground during which Gwyneth’s husband, the actor Alan Leith cut a ribbon to open a roof-top garden the Trust’s school has created in her memory, watched from the school in Kovalam, India by a video link . The work of the Trust is amazing – the project evolved from Sylvia sponsoring a single child’s education into a Trust gathering funding for a fully-fledged local school where previously none existed, providing both primary and secondary learning – and thus vastly improved career opportunities – for hundred of young people. You can read about it on the link at the end of this post.

Sylvia with the new garden – and Alan cuts the ribbon to applause on two continents!

A milestone each April for theatre folk is of course Shakespeare’s birthday on the 23rd – and this year the estimable “Bran & Chaff” group at Stratford on Avon (previously featured in these pages) held its “alternative” celebratory lunch at the Town House, at the same time as the “official” much more expensive one in the RSC’s marquee by the river. The Town House is a fine hotel/restaurant with links to the Jubilee which kicked off the whole Shakespeare “industry”back in 1769. The recipient of this year’s Bran and Chaff Award is that fine actor and Radagrad Edward Bennett, star of a celebrated RSC “Much Ado” and “Love’s Labour’s Lost” double bill. Ed was prevented from attending the lunch in person by filming commitments, but once again technology came to the rescue and post-lunch digestifs were eased down by a showing of a happy and interesting chat Ed and I had recorded on Zoom the day before.

After making his mark in the theatre – a previous triumph was famously taking over Hamlet on press night when David Tennant was injured –  Ed now has a family to feed, and his agent is concentrating on TV and film. So look out for him in “Bridgerton” on Netflix, “Joan” on ITV and “Rogue Heroes” on the BBC.

Meanwhile, in Stratford on the 23rd as usual flowers were paraded through the town to be laid at the church, near to where Will is buried alongside his wife Anne, who died 400 years ago this April.

Stratford sixth-formers passing the school Will attended; Anne and Will  Shakespeares’ resting place – and a salute in the church to a delegation of  theatre-makers from Ukraine, visiting to join in the annual Birthday service. Thoughts are with my colleague the young theatre producer Anastasia Yevchenko as she, her family and friends brace for the next stage in Putin’s wicked war.  

And so to Kent – do try to keep up – and a recital in another ancient church, St Andrew’s at Wickhambreaux, a village once owned by  Joan Plantagenet, known in medieval days as the “Fair Maid” of that county. She was mother to one of our less happy English Kings, Richard the Second. As part of the concert I read some lines from Shakespeare’s play about him, along with other poetry, and songs were provided by the superb professional choir from St Bride’s Fleet St.  (This well-attended event was sponsored by Vyvyan Harmsworth, whose family’s charitable Trust has for decades supported students at RADA) If ever you’re in those parts, this church has stunning art nouveau stained-glass by a Danish artist with a pleasingly Shakespearian name, Arild Rosenkrantz.

The concert was prompted by the crowning in London of a more current  monarch – something you may possibly have read about elsewhere, or perhaps caught on TV?

(By the way, I’m told the show at the Abbey was in fact a trailer for a new Westminster adventure series called Penny the Swordbearer……)

And so with stirring choral harmonies by the likes of William Byrd and Edwin Hawkins ringing in the ears, away down the A4 to Wiltshire, to the ancient Borough of Marlborough. This is a town that takes its civic life seriously. Their Mayor-Making ceremony may have no fine-tuned choirs, no military bands nor sword-bearers, but it has beadles, and a Town Cryer, and a Deputy County Lieutenant – and fine red mayoral robes to adorn the stately figure of this year’s chosen civic figurehead – my old friend Nicholas Fogg, MBE.  Nicholas is, as it happens, a native of Stratford upon Avon, a stalwart Bran and Chaffer, and author of (as well many other notable publications) a fine biography of the Bard. And this is his third time as Mayor, a hat-trick well worth a toast!

Beadles stoutly guarding the Town Hall; Nicholas with the Deputy Lieutenant of Wiltshire, otherwise known as former BBC broadcaster Shirley Ludford – an expert in Community Radio…if you live in Wilts, stay tuned…

And amidst all this gadding about the Shires, what of London theatre? A production I enjoyed was at yet another church, St Martins in the Fields, of The Chevalier, a play-with-music about Joseph Bologna, the black composer at Marie Antoinette’s court, featuring brilliant violin solos by Braimah Kanneh Mason. And there were two London theatre visits to The Barbican – one to The Meaning of Zong by Giles Terera – a striking production from the Bristol Old Vic, about one of the most shameful events in British slave-trading, with TYA actor-tutor Remi King putting in sturdy work underpinning the unsettling, disturbing narrative.

The other was an “in progress” workshop introduction to an ambitious, intriguing project by The Faction, in which actors and directors in at least five countries are developing a multi-national, multi-language international tour of Shakespeare’s Pericles, Prince of Tyre. You can read more about this on Simon Tait’s excellent blog – link below.

Warmer than Amsterdam – sunshine at the Barbican, London, last week.

LINKS:

The Venkat Trust: https://venkattrust.org.uk

A Good Read for lovers of Shakespeare: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hidden-Shakespeare-Biography-Nicholas-Fogg/dp/1445607697

The Chevalier: https://theartsdesk.com/classical-music/chevalier-st-martin-fields-review-virtuoso-journey-shamefully-neglected-past

The Meaning of Zong: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/apr/08/the-meaning-of-zong-bristol-old-vic-review

SIMON TAIT  on the Pericles project:

https://www.artsindustry.co.uk/feature/3063-taitmail-when-shakespeare-isn-t-about-language-anymore-it-speaks-to-the-21st-century#:~:text=Home-,TAITMAIL%20When%20Shakespeare%20isn%27t%20about%20language%20anymore%2C%20it%20speaks,in%202the lovely sweep of the river016%20with%20Paapa%20Essiedu.

Historic footnote. This blog has previously mentioned an intriguing landmark quite near where I live, Garrick’s Temple to Shakespeare, on an attractive sweep of the Thames at Hampton. I’ve recently become a volunteer guide there during its summer Sunday afternoon opening times, so if you’re passing that way, please call in. And if by chance you live in the area, and are either interested in theatre history or know someone who is, full training (usually with cups of tea and cakes) is available for new guides, so please come and join us!  There’s more information – and a relevant contact – on this link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ycxzaefyh045gz1/GARRICK%27S%20TEMPLE%20FLYER.pdf?dl=0

                                                                WINTER – WHERE ARE THE SNOWS…?

Rough winds test the Sunday School at the sailing club, first daffodils nod by the weir – it’s high time, almost too late – for the Winter Blog. Spring already lurks by the Thames, while down in NZ autumn tornadoes trigger a State of Emergency, and in Ukraine dark rumours of a spring offensive echo 1916 as trenches are dug and weapons primed. And to the east earthquake survivors huddle in bitter, freezing lands already shattered by years of vicious warfare. The horrors spawned by even the likes of Putin and Assad pale beside the real Terrors of the Earth, once unleashed by Nature.

So here in this corner of the Home Counties, what’s to be done? If you’re like me, you send what donations you can, and try to swallow grumblings about inflation. How on earth can we feel sorry for ourselves when we see such utter, desperate misery elsewhere?

In our own country what’s left of a corrupt, incompetent governing party struggles forlornly to reclaim dignity before a weary and cynical electorate, certain only in knowing that however well-intentioned their post-election replacements may be, the rest of the 2020s are likely to be grim. So, if spring is not far behind, what hints of hope, what green shoots are to be seen?

Well actually, rather too many. Here in southern England we’ve had a season so mild you could hardly call it Winter. A few mornings of freezing fog, almost no snow, just grey drizzle and sometimes a  restless, chilly wind. Daffodils and crocuses are under foot, there are buds on the trees, and on the river swans already sway their long necks in courtly ritual. The spring of 2023 is precocious, it comes early, ahead of its allotted time…

Right now at Kingston University there’s a nostalgic gateway from present troubles to a lost, happy world, one that readers of a certain age – especially those in the theatre trade – will recall fondly.

There was a time when wherever you lived in the UK, you were likely to be in striking distance of a theatre with its own professional company, offering new productions every few weeks – sometimes even a new one every week. As a wide-eyed seventeen-year-old, I had my first paid job with the Richmond Theatre Company, whose producer Frederic Piffard presented a summer season of “weekly rep” at the New Theatre Hull. My pay was a princely one pound per week as “student assistant stage manager” – and I had a fabulous time, learning how to run a prompt corner, begging loans of furniture and props from local shops, liaising with designers and technicians, dealing with real-life professional actors -whom I even joined on stage several times in tiny supporting parts. My boss was Janet Chapman, a graduate from the stage-management course at RADA. Janet made sure that our budget always included real “prop” food so that her assistant “Taffy” had his weekly pound supplemented with a daily practical meal. (My nickname had, I guess, been triggered by my name and the lingering echoes of my childhood Cardiff accent.) I finished that first season as a proud member of both British Actors’ Equity and of NATKE, the technicians’ union – long-since absorbed by BECTU.

Three years later, after studying drama in Manchester and a season with Stephen Joseph’s company at Scarborough, I pocketed both union cards and made my way to London. Then, as now, an essential factor in trying to build a career was a subscription to “The Spotlight” Casting Directory. Your fee bought you an entry in one of their weighty volumes of actors’ pictures and credits (in my case sub-classified as “Younger Character”) and also access to their professional advice service – with an interview with their senior advisor, Cary Ellison.

Cary was a RADA graduate who became effectively Counsellor to the Profession – he was kindly, perceptive and wise. I remember his advice to me was to “join one of the big companies –  you need to learn work discipline…” He made it his professional duty every year to tour productions at the regional reps, to take notes and offer advice. His comments were lucid and succinct, often written on the theatres’ printed programmes. Over the years he build up a substantial archive – which, after Cary sadly died in 2002, his family gave to Kingston University. The collection is beautifully curated and preserved – and is now introduced by an exhibition in association with Anstee Bridge, an organisation supporting local teenagers, some of whom have responded with visual images – such as the above postcard. There is a link to further information at the end of this entry.

Cary’s programme notes on a production of “Filumena” at Cheltenham. I notice the cast included Wilfred Harrison, who went on to create the extraordinary Century Theatre – the famous “theatre on wheels”  – at which in its later, stationary years in the Lake District I directed several seasons of plays.

I’m writing this on the first anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. On Tuesday next (February 28th) in Whitechapel there is a fund-raising showing of two short features by young Ukrainian film-makers, Irina Shumaieva and Anastasiya Yevchenko. This will be at the Genesis Cinema in the Mile End Rd, and below is a link through which you can buy tickets. There is a now a pool of brilliant refugee talent in our city, so supporting their work is at least something we can do.

An interesting phenomenon in today’s digital world is the rise of “podcasts” – it seems that many of those people staring blankly into the middle-distance while sitting  opposite you on a tube or on a train have heads full of sound from their headphones – and are almost as likely nowadays to be listening to the spoken word as to music. Hence the rise in audio book-sales, and the use by “influencers” of the Podcast Medium. These are interesting linguistic arrivals. A podcast is “audio material made available for downloading from the Internet, which often may be presented in “serialised” form” – and it seems the word has its roots in soviet-era propaganda distribution in Russia. According to Wikipedia the English-language term “podcast” was first coined in an article in “The Guardian” by Ben Hammersley. This was in February 2004, so next year  will 20th anniversary celebrations generate another new word, something like “Podcastival…”?

The term “influencer” is a bit more elusive, in that people have always “influenced” other people’s actions, be they in religion, politics or commerce. But the idea of someone being an “Influencer” by trade, as it were, has come into use with the rise of “social media”, with people able to run sales and marketing campaigns using instantly available moving images, slogans and music. You don’t even have to wait till people are sitting down in front of their TV – you can get at their eyes and ears whenever and wherever they switch on their phone. I just read that this year in America something like five BILLION dollars will be spent on “influencer” campaigns.

So it’s little wonder that politics are spawning podcasts. One that I tune into while doing my ironing is Chris Wright’s “Wright on the Nail”  – a regular hour-long discussion, in which the previous week’s news is chewed over by a panel of potential “influencers” from across the spectrum, a different group every week. The producers’ “casting” of panel members really is genuinely broad-church – unlike the content in some of the new right-leaning news outlets such as GB News. It’s refreshing to hear civilised  – even polite  – exchanges of often quite extreme views from both socialist and conservative corners of the landscape, all of which Chris chairs skilfully. Being myself left-leaning, I find attending to observations from right-inclined minds quite enlightening. For instance, a couple of weeks ago on this podcast you could actually hear the words “Liz Truss” and “respect” contained within the same sentence…Remarkable. Link below.

And so  – leaving politics and going back to culture – as if….RADAgrads from my time are in the news, on the left, the right and in the middle. Maxine Peake is using her status as one of northern England’s most respected artists to rally protest against the shamefully threatened closure of Oldham Coliseum Theatre – a priceless Lancashire treasure. Interviewed in The Guardian Ben Whishaw says of the NHS “I so wish we would fund it properly, but I don’t know what we have to do to make the government wake up.” Andrea Riseborough, a terrific actress, finds herself at the centre of a major controversy in America over an Oscar nomination.  Meanwhile, at the aforementioned GB News, one of the current presenters is a certain Laurence Fox…

If you scroll back to last summer’s blog, you will see a rather jolly picture of aspiring actors in a “mask workshop” at the Kalamata Summer School in Greece. Now listen – should you feel inclined next summer to explore aspects of our craft with expert tutors in sun-swamped surroundings amongst olive-groves near the sea, and should you feel discouraged by the relentless Cost of Living – the stop-press news is that some grants are available. Link to further information below

 And finally a nudge to readers who might wish to explore acting skills in London. I am increasing my schedule of workshop sessions at the Theatre Deli Studios, close by the architectural wonders of the Gherkin and the Lloyds Building – just seven minutes’ walk from Bank tube station. If you’d like to find out more, be you an aspiring or established actor, or someone needing to boost your confidence in speaking in front of other people –  just get in touch – info@ellisjonescoach.co.uk.

One of our workshops will explore How to Speak Shakespeare – so let me leave you with another quote from Ben Whishaw in The Guardian:

What made Shakespeare revolutionary is that he allowed real rhythms of speech to come through within the iambic pentameter. Characters in Hamlet forget what they are saying, or change their minds, just like real people. It should sound as natural as someone chatting to you. It’s poetry, but natural and everyday…..

LINKS

KINGSTON UNIVERSITY CARY ELLISON COLLECTION

https://www.kingston.ac.uk/news/article/531/06-feb-2012-kingston-university-acquires-archive-of-talent-scout-cary-ellison/

TO VISIT CARY ELLISON ARCHIVE: 0208 417 7054

UKRAINE FILM SHOWING TICKETS:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/years-of-resistance-charity-screening-of-award-winning-short-films-tickets-526439493697

THE POLITICAL PODCAST:

https://www.wrightonthenail.fm

KALAMATA SUMMER SCHOOL:

https://kalamatadrama.com

KALAMATA GRANT INFORMATION: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ubl8vsm575hob1ruc82xe/KALAMATA-GRANT-INFORMATION.docx?dl=0&rlkey=s2g6jjj86fqz577yaka4nq5ms

Also:

RECOMMENDED PLAY:

TROUBLE IN BUTETOWN by Diana Nnaka Atuona at THE DONMAR WAREHOUSE THEATRE

“A gripping ensemble drama… richly involving, warmly and wittily observed, and immensely moving – and the performances are gorgeous.”
Evening Standard

RECOMMENDED NEW RADIO SERIES:

https://www.classicfm.com/music-news/kanneh-mason-family-radio-series/