The Blog

FEBRUARY, MARCH and SAINTS BEFORE THE SPRING…..

Good morrow friends. Saint Valentine is past
Begin these lovebirds but to couple now?

Thus Theseus, early one morning in a wood near Athens, on finding two embarrassed teenage couples who’d clearly spent the night  together under the trees…

And indeed the February day has passed for that Italian patron of lovers, Saint Valentine….It seems there were several St Valentines, here is one favoured by the Catholic church – who lived in the third century CE  at place called Terna. He championed romantic love in defiance of the Roman Emperor Claudius who’d  banned young men of military call-up age from marrying.

And now in 2026 March has opened with the day for Saint David pictured here, who came from Pembrokeshire, lived in the sixth century and founded an order of Welsh monks with demanding house rules. ‘Their food was only bread and vegetables, with a little salt, and they never drank anything better than a little milk mingled with water.’ These of course were days before the Six Nations and Brain’s Cardiff ales…..

(Picture sources:  Wikipedia, The Open  University)                                       

These last weeks I’ve witnessed several plays addressing romantic issues – one close by Piccadilly Circus telling of infatuation between an Irish writer and an English actress, a second in Richmond with a tale of Norse angst in a 25-year marriage, another deep under ground, beneath Upper Street in Islington.

If you’re in London,  haste you to the Jermyn St Theatre  where you will catch a cracking revival of a crisp, neat drama teased from exchanges between Ireland’s remarkable playwright and polemicist George Bernard Shaw and one of the star actresses of his day Beatrice Tanner – who worked under the name of Mrs Patrick Campbell.  Shaw persuaded her to play the star part of Eliza in his comedy ‘Pygmalion’- which of course became one of the world’s greatest-ever hit musicals ‘My Fair Lady’.  In Jermyn St’s ‘Dear Liar’ Beatrice’s dazzling but ultimately tragic life is portrayed superbly by Rachel Pickup, alongside a finely studied Shaw by Alan Turkington, all brilliant wit and thinly masked restless insecurity. The play is expertly directed by Stella Powell-Jones.

Both Rachel and Alan learned their acting craft at RADA during my Gower St days, and two more of our brilliant grads – Lisa Dillon and Geoffrey Streatfeild – are plying their trade along with Will Keen beyond the West End – at Richmond, where you would do well to seek out Richard Eyre’s re-working of a Strindberg classic, ‘Dance of Death’. All three actors are on top form, script and production under the direction of the hugely respected former Director of the UK’s National Theatre.

The Orange Tree Theatre is a jewel of London’s fringe, soon to be re-furbished and closed for a while.  However the shows will go on in nearby locations – so keep checking their website!

This week found me back in north London, at one of the original venues which in the 70s transmitted the term ‘fringe’ from the Edinburgh Festival into London – the King’s Head pub. Two years ago the ‘theatre’ part of the building was declared unusable – and now there’s an outstanding  220-seat theatre four stories below ground, air-conditioned, well equipped and right now hosting the play ‘Blink’ – romance again, love seen through an unexpected lens, garnering 4 star-plus reviews.

And in the West End, another packed-but-limited run ends this weekend at the Savoy – Alan Ayckbourn’s 1985 dark-edged masterwork, ‘Woman in Mind’ starring Sheridan Smith, noted by ‘The Guardian’ as well worth reviving “for its originality and boldness”.  In a comment about the struggle to keep regional theatres alive, Alan Ayckbourn once observed that local authorities often play a game called ‘Hide the Theatre’.  Bang in the middle of London, there’s a place that sets the bar for hiding a theatre, not only with a tricky address but also with a forbidding approach……

And on March 1st from the riverside – Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus!

DEAR LIAR:   https://www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk/show/dear-liar/

DANCE OF DEATH: https://orangetreetheatre.co.uk/whats-on/dance-of-death/

BLINK: https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/blink-df19

NETWORK THEATRE: https://www.networktheatre.org

ACTING GYMNASIUM: https://www.actinggymnasium.co.u

TABARD THEATRE: https://tabard.org.uk

DEATH ON THE NILE: https://deathonthenileplay.com

THE TUDOR THEATRE*: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tudor-Theatre-1576-1642-Nicholas-Fogg/dp/1036130681/ref=asc_df_1036130681?mcid=1e5616db9a4936e6b9bd705cea9120c0&th=1&psc=1&tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=754220088690&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=11696967876309457658&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9045907&hvtargid=pla-2428749181105&psc=1&hvocijid=11696967876309457658-1036130681-&hvexpln=0&gad_source=1

*….OR ANY GOOD BOOKSHOP!

A season of spirits, mists, bonfires and fireworks, with a ghost of a new Christmas shimmering on the horizon. As part of the Bloomsbury Festival this week I gave a reading from Charles Dickens’s  ‘A Christmas Carol’ at the Conway Hall – here’s me in a top hat, trying out the acoustic.

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Photo: Patricia Hammond

Christmas 2025 made its presence felt early. Back in August I was invited to run a ‘panto’ workshop in France – for the estimable amdram troupe The Tarn Players who are planning an English-language production of ‘Robin Hood’ in December at Le Theâtre Colombier, Cordes. We had a lot of fun – I reckon the show will be well worth the price of a ticket come Yuletide, should you happen to be in south-west France…..

Here the Tarn Players flex panto muscles in the late summer,  as evening light faded over fields beside the rather fabulous Bonbousquet Yoga Studio. (Links below)                        Photos: Jennifer Cundy

September saw the second coming of the King!

No doubt by now all of you will have clocked the 1100th anniversary of the union of (almost) all England. It was then called Albion, and the first ruler to be installed with a crown instead of a victor’s helmet was called Athelstan. Whose coronation happened just along the road from where I live, and in July was boldly and imaginatively re-created by an impressive team of  ‘Enactors ” called  Regia Anglorum.

This is an earlier image of the event, featuring Archbishop Anthelm – depicted above by Regia Anglorum’s Classical Officer, Wilfred Somogyi –  exhorting the king to be “an hindrance to his enemies”and to bring amongst other benefits “reproof to the exalted, comfort to the needy” and “teaching to the rich…”  These latter two might be employed today as the current monarch tackles his feckless brother….

Picture source: tamworthcastle.co.uk

September brought the return of King Athelstan this time by water, with a  flotilla of some seventy boats celebrating Kingston’s River Cultures Festival, aboard the” Sae Wylfing”, a half-length reproduction of a famous boat found at the Sutton Hoo Saxon burial site in Suffolk.

                                                Photo: Woodbridge Riverside Trust

As part of a ‘Thames Alive’ event (link below) I was hired by the Borough of Kingston to provide live commentary for this impressive water-borne event, attended by no fewer than TWO royals! The flotilla’s arrival was witnessed by the current Duke of Edinburgh – whose presence was, well, rather low key –  while King Athelstan on his Saxon boat raised a mighty cheer! There were terrific craft in the flotilla, many crewed by bands and dancers supporting excellent charities, plus two surviving from the Second World War – one which had ferried allied agents at night-time into France, another a support vessel from the D-Day invasion.

Others reflected our real or imagined past – marauding Vikings, also an ‘invaders’ landing craft’ built at Richmond as a ‘prop’ for the Russell Crowe movie about Robin Hood – a hero celebrated  this year by the waters of the Thames and of the Tarn in southwest France!

Come October the time-line focus moved along the tow-path to Hampton and to Black History Month. At the tiny Garrick’s Shakespeare Temple museum the excellent Bloomsbury Baroque music ensemble – with whom last year I worked on musical settings for letters by the 18th century writer/composer Ignatius Sancho – on  the 11th played music linked to works by the extraordinary Aphra Benn, arguably Britain’s first professional female writer. There were two stories – ‘Oroonoko’, about a south American slave colony, and one with echoes of ‘Othello’ called ‘Abdelazer – the Moor’s Revenge’.

Back in the 18th century David Garrick staged ‘Oroonoko’ twice , and in each production would have ‘blacked up’ to perform African characters. This time two young British actors read – with arresting verve, honesty and clarity – scenes from  both plays. They are Aminata Kanneh-Mason and O’Shea Lamar.

Their work was complemented with elegant dances performed by Helen Davidge

Pictures: Sara Butterfield

Dance was a core element in Georgian theatre – David Garrick’s wife Eva Maria Weigel was a celebrated solo dancer. Here Helen danced choreography devised for the original staging of ‘Oroonoko’.  She herself has a remarkable range of talents – outside the theatre and her dance troupe The Georgettes of Oxford she exists in quite another universe – as Dr Helen Davidge, researcher in astronomy. A star on two planes…

Dance was at the core of the event at the Conway Hall last weekend. This elegant building – the home of the Ethical Society – is close by Red Lion Square in Holborn where as part of the Festival it hosted a ‘Dickensian Song and Dance Club’. This offered music by the Capability Consort, Dickens’s words from me, rousing songs by the distinguished mezzo-soprano Patricia Hammond – and a chance for the audience to take part in a range of Victorian party dances – quadrilles, polkas and such. This under guidance by my remarkable former RADA colleague, Dance Master Darren Royston.

This was a great and improbable treat, since much of Darren’s time these days is taken up with events nearer his home in Thailand, where he is engaged in, amongst many other projects researching a PhD!

Picture: Darren at work  with his friend Mrs Fezziwig  (a.k.a link below)

As the year turns and leaves fall these weeks have been enriched by creativity amongst friends and colleagues – old pal Terence Wilton on tour as an elderly classical thespian in Agatha Christie’s ‘Death on the Nile’ (dates and venues below); a delightful gathering of RADA grads at Shakespeare’s Globe led by Lily Bevan to honour a Special Birthday for former Principal Nicholas Barter;

plus excursions into the musical universe of the Kanneh-Masons. To the Barbican, for the launch of the family album (with Michael Mopurgo) of  The Carnival of the Animals; to the Peckham ‘Bold Tendencies’ venue to hear pianist Jeneba, whose new Jane Austen-inspired album is due out shortly; and this weekend to hear violinist Braimah and a lark  ascending above the pews at St John’s Smith Square.

A bonus joy for me in these autumnal times is spotting former students from Gower St days turning in superb work – currently in all kinds of settings, from Stephen Mangan as both actor and stylishly witty host on arts shows, Indira Varma and Andrew Lincoln in ‘Coldwater’ under the direction of proud Welsh Radagrad Lee Haven Jones, and also Mr Lincoln in Ibsen at the Bridge Theatre – to the present BBC Monday night ‘must-watch’ drama ‘Blue Lights’.

We’re so proud to claim Siân Brooke as a graduate – an artist whose work is truly thought full (two words) and full of listening. In ‘Blue Lights’ Siân plays an English policewoman working in Northern Ireland, last week on a case involving teenage ‘drug mules’. When coaching I bang on about playing emotional scenes – i.e. just speak the facts. Don’t start with the emotions, start with the facts that the words are reporting. I was very pleased this morning to see that the BBC has issued this scene as a ‘trailer’. If you didn’t see  it, and have a spare five minutes, take a look to see what I’m trying to say, and how it should be done….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIry7Avv5NI

(For those in the UK, all episodes are currently on the BBC iPlayer)

Look out for:

Autumn dusk at Garrick’s Temple to Shakespeare

Death on the Nile tour dates: https://deathonthenileplay.com

Bridge Theatre: https://bridgetheatre.co.uk/whats-on/the-lady-from-the-sea/

Mrs Fezziwig’s alter ego: Rosie at http://history-living.co.uk

OTHER LINKS:

Medieval special events:         https://www.regia.org/about.php

Special musical events:  https://www.continuoconnect.com/artists/bloomsbury-baroque

Other river events: http://thamesalive.org.uk/photos.asp

Yoga courses and classes in France: https://www.bonbousquet.com

And if you’re taking a Christmas break down that way, be sure not to miss:

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