The Blog

Mayday Bank Holiday, comrades! As we fortunate inhabitants of the E17 wetlands watch not-so-rough winds shake the darling buds of our abundant blossoms, down by the Thames in SE1 blood and gore abound, and according to the Press audience-members are being carried from the theatre, swooning at the gruesome brutality onstage.

At the Shakespeare’s Globe’s “Titus Andronicus”, as little as five pounds for a standing ticket buys you a tingle of anticipation of falling in a dead faint, unless of course you slip some smelling salts into your pocket before you set off.

“Brutality of the Highest Order” is the publicity tag-line, and yes we witness evidence of rape and mutilation, severed heads dripping with Kensington gore, and a nursemaid slaughtered by penetration from the rear with a sword wielded by Aaron, the Bard’s most gleeful villain. There’s some spirited acting on show – not least by the always exciting Indira Varma as Tamora, tucking with gusto into a pie containing the remains of her two sons.  While at RADA Indira played a gutsy Mrs Peachum in my production of “The Beggar’s Opera” alongside Matthew MacFadyen’s Macheath, and she’s had a terrific television career playing strong, sexy women, often in togas – and occasionally minus a toga – from “Rome” to “Game of Thrones”.

The groundlings – at least from my seat at the back of the first gallery – seemed to me to be far more at risk of being run over than of passing out. The director has deployed two tall steel towers on wheels into the standing area of the auditorium, from the top of which actors harangue the audience as though they were the Roman mob.  A supporting crew push and steer these towers while clattering them with iron bars and bellowing football-yob chants, and the fiver-a-head punters just have to get out of the way. It’s good old-fashioned theatre economics – if you can’t afford extras, charge members of the public for the privilege!

It’s been a blood-stained week. I mean you wait for ever for a production of Shakespeare’s most gory family entertainment to come along and suddenly you see two different productions in as many days…Regular readers will know I run a “Theatre in London” course for students from New York University, and most of the students on it also take part in a semester at RADA of “Acting in Shakespeare”, a course I designed during my time as the Academy’s Vice Principal. The culmination of this term – to use the quaint British term for “term”- is an edited studio production of a play by the Bard, under professional direction. So on Tuesday I watched Melonie Jessop’s succinct 90-minute version of “Titus” at the GBS Theatre in Gower St, and on Wednesday went with its cast to witness the carnage on the South Bank – a brace of “Titae Andronicae” in forty-eight hours…

I have to say, at the risk of being branded a heretic, Will’s story-lines often benefit from, and come sharply into focus through, being shrewdly edited. I’ve directed lots of productions with graduate actors for the RADA classical theatre programme on the Cunard liners, and audiences always seem very happy to sit through tales of star-crossed lovers, warlike English kings, tragic Danes and Moors, etc concentrated into an hour or so of well-paced action, and applaud enthusiastically at the end. The demands of a cruise agenda will never allow for an entertainment item to be any longer than an hour. On a Queen Victoria world cruise we despatched the central storyline of Macbeth in 48 minutes, in a four-actor version called “The Weird Sisters”. This 90 minute RADA studio “Andronicus” covered most points of the mayhem, and most of the good speeches, and my attention was held throughout. At the Globe, pace some expert performances from a highly-professional cast, there were areas of the script – notably the bits where Titus is either going barmy or pretending to go barmy – when my attention wandered to the visiting pigeons swooping amongst the galleries.

It’s also been a very sad week. We lost Bob Hoskins, one of London’s finest. His was a strong talent devoid of any pretension, with an open, honest and kind personality. I worked with him just once, in a television adaptation of a Somerset Maugham story in the 80s, and whenever we met in the years since he was always cheery, warm and welcoming, with no hint of the huge international status he had earned in his movie career . 

We also – in the last few days – have lost an actor I worked with closely back in the golden days of repertory, Chris Harris. Those of you who live in the West Country will know Chris as the perennial star of Bristol pantomimes, and many more across the world will have seen his amazing one-man show celebrating Shakespeare’s famous clown, “Kemp’s Jig”. 

Here are two pictures, one of Chris in panto mode, the other a contrasting still of him in the title role of “Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs”, venting his fury against the irritating Dennis Charles Nipple (played by me) in Chris Denys’s production at Worthing Connaught Theatre back in the late 60s.
Chris was an authority on the fast-disappearing world of real, old-fashioned English pantomime, the tradition of Jo Grimaldi and Dan Leno, an authority rendered all the more genuine through his glorious gift for performance. He was magnetic, funny and a sheer delight. Kids loved him.  

 A SURE SIGN that spring has arrived is when the first hot-air balloon of the year drifts down the Lea Valley – and when I opened my curtains at seven, there it was, sailing high above the sumac tree. Is anyone else old enough to remember Nimble bread TV  adverts… or Fifth Dimension’s Up up and Away…?

It’s a vigorous weekend. I love Marathon Sunday here in London – we have sunshine again, and the central heating has been ceremoniously switched off as of this morning. Well, ok, just switched off. Will Mo Farah triumph? The speed at which those elite runners punish the tarmac makes you wilt just to watch, but I feel most for those noble souls who raise money for charity pounding the streets dressed up as honey monsters or polar bears or the like – after the first few miles all that nylon fur must really start to pong…Talking of people in daft costumes, here’s one to look out for at 4pm today:

Yes folks, Hull City are at Wembley, taking on Sheffield United in the F.A. Cup semi-final, and the winner will come back there for the Final to meet Arsenal. I so want to see and compare the touch-line styles of the two coaches, ebullient Tyneside dancer meets tortured gallic philosopher. But let’s not give hostages to fortune, City have first to triumph today. I shall be glued to the television this afternoon, listening out for Humberside roars on the breeze from the big stadium a few miles round the north-circular road, thankful that the team doesn’t have to be saddled with the American-style handle of “Hull Tigers”, thanks to a decision taken at the F.A. this week. It’s an English football club, for God’s sake, and the sub-title of “tigers” is a handy nick-name,often laden with irony, given the team’s wildly erratic results. The word might look OK printed on a yellow and black home-strip shirt, but the away strip is currently blue, and when did you last see a blue tiger….? 

Now,this blog always seeks to support theatre folk in their struggles to earn a crust, or make a difference to the world, or whatever, but this week I left a theatre feeling really, really cross!  I just want to note that the people who put together the piece which turned up at the Arcola Theatre last week called “Banksy- the Room at the Elephant” really should take a breath, think hard about their motivation, and then STOP IT. 

Seriously, this effort – still I believe on tour, having started life at Bristol’s Tobacco Factory – is an embarrassing  disgrace. The first half of the evening is a one-act play reflecting the real-life world of a sad man made homeless after an old agricultural water-tank he’d been living in in Los Angeles had a slogan painted on its outside by the artist Banksy. After the interval a documentary film is shown, telling the background story, including an episode when the presumably well-meaning playwright and documentary-makers arrange for the play’s subject to be taken to Edinburgh Festival to watch the play, and then be given the chance to stand up and “perform” at a fringe theatre. The guy is clearly drunk, is dressed in a kilt, and is surrounded by arty Brits almost swooning with excitement about how “authentic” he is. 

Yes, an authentic drunk, swaying and talking slurred nonsense while clutching a beer-can, from whom they would all retreat hastily in any other context. I understand he’s now back in LA, living in a tent. Well, I suppose he gave a lot of self-satisfied pleasure to middle-class creatives in Bristol and Edinburgh. When I was a kid in the 50s a regular feature at Hull Fair was the freak-show tent, with a Genuine Bearded Lady, and the Fattest Man in the World – perhaps the Tobacco Factory is seeking to re-introduce this intriguing lost art-form?

Cheerier news to report is that “Handbagged” has triumphantly survived its transfer from the Tricycle to the Vaudeville, with Marion Bailey and our brilliant Fenella Woolgar still in terrific form as HM the older Queen and the younger Right Honourable Maggie Thatcher respectively. Highly recommended, whatever your political views. 

The Tricycle Theatre at Kilburn is on a spectacular curve under Indhu Rubasingham’s direction – “Red Velvet” has been ecstatically reviewed in New York, and looks set to carry on the striking British tradition of plays starting at undeniably left-wing venues going on to generate huge commercial income – “Blood Brothers” (Liverpool Everyman) “The Pitman Painters”(Newcastle Live Theatre) and “Billy Elliot” (Royal Court), etc, etc  


In a similar vein, a treat in store for Gemma Arterton fans is that she will soon be re-creating the part played first by fellow RADAgrad Sally Hawkins in the movie “Made in Dagenham” in a new musical – and apparently in the same dress!

And on the smaller screen, it’s a great pleasure on Sunday evenings to see another ex-student, Oona Chaplin, in “The Crimson Field” on BBC 1, evoking echoes of her grandfather, who at the time of the story was already a silent cinema hero, bringing fun and comfort to millions in a war-torn world.

Now, since my last rather gloomy post, things have looked up somewhat. Having recently collided with a London Transport bus and walked away leaving it with a shattered windscreen, I reflected on the ambulance-driver’s comment about my perhaps being made of kryptonite, and was thus intrigued to learn that the original Kryptonite Being was about to appear in Walthamstow.

I hastened to Ye Olde Rose and Crown at Hoe St, to take a look at a revival of a 1960s American musical ITS’ A BIRD, IT’S A PLANE…IT’S SUPERMAN! Now to be absolutely frank, the bar for musical theatre in London these days is set pretty high by the West End, and especially the West End transfers from the big subsidised companies like the RSC “Matilda”, and the musicals I’ve seen in pub theatres have been pretty lack-lustre, not say embarrassingly inept, so my expectations weren’t of the highest.

Well, this show is terrific! Neatly directed and tightly choreographed, this has “cult hit” written all over it, so grab a ticket while you can.The script is daft – so was the original comic-strip – but is delivered by the production and its cast with dogged seriousness, without the slightest hint of tongue in any onstage cheek. The songs are delivered with huge, infectious enthusiasm and considerable skill. Both of the leads – Craig Berry as Clark Kent/Superman with Michelle LaFortune as Lois Lane – are strong professional singers, while Craig Berry has a nice line in wry, self-deprecating comedy, and Ms LaFortune’s way with a sexy solo is dynamite. Or do I mean kryptonite?  Don’t delay, it’s only on for a couple more weeks, and the theatre is easily reached from Walthamstow Central on the Victoria Line, or Overground from Liverpool St.

Here’s a link to buying tickets online: http://allstarproductions.ticketsource.co.uk

And so spring comes to London – at least for the time being. Waterside is be-set with daffodils and geese. So far this year I’ve cut the grass twice, which for early March is well, weird. All this unseasonal sunshine is very very welcome, but of course it brings an underlying unease. The floods in the west linger still. Those of us who grew up with John Wyndham’s novels – in particular “The Kraken Wakes”- aren’t surprised by the news that the Thames barrier is having to be checked for wear and tear after its unprecedented degree of recent use. The polar ice-caps really are melting. The day after tomorrow could be morphing into just tomorrow…

But before I set about building an ark in the garage, some more uplifting news. Make a note of this website: www.ceoemail.com Regular readers will know that colour was added to my recent journey to the antipodes by an unscheduled 19-hour stopover in Kiev. What added an unnecessary layer of frustration and annoyance was the attitude of the B.A. ground-staff when eventually I arrived in Singapore. I’d been assured in a phone-call to BA Customer services from Kiev that the fact that the – perfectly understandable and unavoidable – delay meant I had missed an overnight stay at a pre-booked Singapore hotel, plus an important meeting plus the ongoing flight to Wellington via Sydney  – all of this would be fully known by their team at Singapore, who would happily make alternative arrangements.

What actually happened was that the sole BA rep at Singapore appointed to deal with the hundred or so passengers with on-going journey problems, having kept me waiting for well over an hour,  told me that since my tickets were booked through Trailfinders I would have to telephone them in London to sort my on-going flights, that in fact there were no flights on to Sydney or Wellington that night (it was 11.30 p.m. local time) and I would have to go away and find myself a hotel. I shared with her my view that this was far from acceptable – in fact I shared it quite firmly, with a fair amount of breath-support – and that section of the airport went suddenly quiet. With very bad grace she bit her lip, sat down at her computer, and within 20 minutes I was on a plane to Sydney.

When eventually back in London, I was advised by Trailfinders to make a formal written complaint to BA. This I did, but it received no reply, not even an acknowledgement. After 3 weeks someone told me about the above web-site, where I found the contact details for the CEO of British Airways, and e-mailed him a copy of the so-far-ignored letter to his customer services department. There was an immediate response in the form of an assurance that the incident would be investigated. This was on Friday afternoon. First thing Monday morning came an e-mail from the customer services department containing a fulsome apology and a voucher for £200. Which movie was it when the cry was “I just won’t take it anymore!”?  My voucher, however, of course can only be spent on a BA flight….

Anyway, onwards into the springtime. Yesterday was the annual trade fair “Perform!” at Olympia. Despite the glorious weather there was a fair turn-out of young hopefuls investigating options for training, and I was on a panel organised by Matt Barber on the whys and wherefores of applying to UK drama schools, dealing with the perennial question “What exactly do audition panels look for…?” The answer of course being they don’t look for anything, but they tend to know the right mix of talent and character when they see it, so the advice is always “Just be yourself”. The tricky bit of course, is finding out who you are…

The week ahead holds for me events featuring Tom Hiddleston and George Orwell. Here’s your starter for ten. I give my classes for American students at the University of London Senate House beside Russell Square. What link does that building have with Orwell’s “1984”? Or for that matter with the poet John Betjeman and his famous lust for Miss Joan Hunter-Dunn?

I feel I’ve been living in the Book of Job. Since my return from foreign parts I have been thrice struck down with unkind afflictions. Firstly, the evening of the February London Hurricane I returned home at 10.30 to find that while Walthamstow clattered and rattled, and the reservoirs churned and frothed under 80 mile-an-hour gusts, the house had been broken into and ransacked. Secondly, for the first time in years the world of television drama seemed to have rediscovered the once noted Jones flair for comedy with an obviously tailor-made part, which looked oh so promising and then evaporated…and thirdly I got knocked down by a bus! What next, boils?

In fact the benighted house-robbers made off with only a few items, but they did include my best camera and most annoyingly a box-set of audio recordings of Charles Dickens’s “Dombey and Son” read by my chum David Timson. Vile felons they may be, but at least they showed some taste…

My survival from colliding with a double-decker was something of a miracle. My abject apologies to those whose journey home last Tuesday was stymied as the New Oxford St rush-hour traffic ground to a halt in a flurry of flashing blue-lights. No excuse, all my fault – I’d forgotten that what was once an eastbound one-way street now has a single westbound lane just for buses, and was simply looking the wrong way as I set off to cross the road. My profound thanks to the bus-driver who instantly called the ambulance from behind his shattered windscreen, to the kindly passer-by who picked me up and sat me on a nearby bench, and to the cheerful ambulance crew who pronounced that almost all such cases result in fatality, and that since all I seemed to have was a badly bruised shoulder they would ask the UCH accident and emergency nurses to check if I was made of kryptonite… And lastly regrets to my pals from the RADA Enterprises team, with whom I had so looked forward to spending the evening reuniting over a glass or two at Truckles Wine Bar.

But hey, I’m on the mend, and it’s St David’s Day…here’s my window-sill this misty morning, complete with obligatory daffodils, and an apologetic salute to Transport for London via my red bus money-box:

Meanwhile, the new season of theatre-going with bright young Americans from New York University is well under way. We’ve been to Turgenev”s “Fortune’s Fool” at the Old Vic, to Dawn King’s “Ciphers” at the Bush, to Samuel Beckett’s “Happy Days” at the Young Vic, and to Nick Payne’s “Blurred Lines” at the National Theatre’s stand-in space for the Cottesloe Theatre, the Shed. To use an American phrase, the “stand-out” shows so far have been the Beckett and “Blurred Lines”.

Beckett is very much a Marmite writer – I’m a huge fan, though tend either to leave the theatre feeling sad and anxious for the human race, or filled with a sense of cautious hope, and marvelling at the compelling language and imagery. Juliet Stevenson’s Winnie (admirably supported by David Beams, and skilfully directed by Natalie Abrahami) is gloriously perky, spirited and brave as she deals with her predicament, up to her waist – and then up to her neck – in gritty sand.

We don’t get to see Juliet Stevenson in the theatre too often, so here’s a chance to witness a seriously fine artist at the height of her powers. The night we were there the place was full of young people, who were all clearly riveted, and all my New Yorkers were entranced. It’s the kind of writing that only works if it’s brilliantly acted – the Late Dame Peggy Ashcroft declared Winnie a challenge for a female actor on a par with “Hamlet” for a male. 

Which leads neatly to more Radagrad news – if you live in the north, book now for “Hamlet” at the Manchester Royal Exchange, where the noble Dane is about to be given a fresh work-over by the dazzlingly talented Maxine Peake. When Maxine first joined us at Gower St, the South Bank Show did a piece on this young Lancashire lass coping with getting into RADA, and intended to follow up 3 years later with a film on her struggles finding an agent and getting a career under way at the end of the course. However, before she’d even finished training Maxine had been spotted by Victoria Wood, and was already well on her way to being a star…

Another always watchable graduate from my time is Sinead Matthews, who was one of a team of high-octane women performing at The Shed in an angry response  to the notorious “Blurred Lines” pop-music video, scripted by Nick Payne and directed by Carrie Cracknell. The cast were all quite stunning – they included Marion Bailey, Ruth Sheen and Claire Skinner – and the stage crackled with brilliant creativity. It’s finished now, but it was a great example of, well, almost what we used to call agit-prop theatre, a polemic show that knows its cause is just and true, and doesn’t take any prisoners. At all. It was a short run, and it’s over – but hurray,  we can catch Sinead again very soon, in a new two-hander by Vivienne Franzmann, “Pests” at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs from March 27th. Anyone who saw her haunting work in the Complicite version of “The Master and Margarita” will know that a spring-time trip to Sloane Square has to go into the diary.

My 2014 diary is beginning to bulge. I’ve just found out that two more of my favourite grads, Ed Bennett and Michelle Terry Brown are going to team up for “Love’s Labours Lost” and “Much Ado” for the RSC at Stratford this summer.  When last in Warwickshire Ed scored a huge success taking over from David Tennant as “Hamlet”, and Michelle was a gloriously sexy Titania in “The Dream” last season at Shakespeare’s Globe. 

While both are outstanding performers, both Ed and Miche are wonderfully eloquent. (Ed is sometimes available as a tutor via ellisjonescoach.co.uk, and Michelle co-wrote and starred in the lovely Sky sitcom, “The Cafe“.) You can watch them each being interviewed about acting in Shakespeare if you click on their names in the paragraph above.

So, back to the Avon in the summer time. I can’t wait – maybe I’ll go by boat…

Before I sign off, a mention of the Bath half-marathon, which takes place tomorrow March 2nd, and my daughter Cressida is running on behalf of Alzheimer’s Research. If anyone would like to sponsor her for this sadly all too prominent and worthy cause, the link is: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserProfilePage.action?userUrl=CressidaJones