Number Seventy News

Kneehigh Theatre at Leeds – a 1970s Don Giovanni.  Just a little too much style and not enough substance.  I suppose it’s easy for a theatre company (or singer) to give a play or a song their standard treatment – and sometimes the treatment gets to be more important than the play, rather than shedding new light upon it.  I think that happened here, intriguingly bizarre though it all was.  It’s a sort of inverted tragedy – the hero deserves his comeuppance and descent to hell, but the tragedy rests in all the lives he has ruined before.

Kendell’s Bistro round the corner does an excellent pre-theatre dinner – though if you are going to put up the menu in French it would be as well to have staff who can understand at least the menu items in that language.  The quality of the food makes up for any defects in service.

A weekend trip, and then a day on business. A selection of pleasures (apart from those already mentioned):

• Seeing old friends
• Sitting on the terrace of Somerset House in the sunshine
• Cocktails in some basement nr Covent Garden (I could find it again !)
• A Sunday morning stroll from Russell Square to the Wallace collection via the back streets
• Top deck of a no. 10 bus from Hammersmith to King’s Cross – especially Hammersmith to Kensington High Street, which I had never done before.
• Sunset over Hyde Park

ECM is the Munich-based record label which puts out many of the jazz artists I like best – Gabarek for a start, and Trygve Seim and Arild Anderson.  Serious Music had arranged a little festival at Kings Place to celebrate the 40th birthday of the label.  A concert featuring Trygve Seim (sax), Frode Haltli (accordeon), Garth Knox (Viola d’amore) and Agnes Vestermann(cello) was a delight – nice improvisations seeming to start from a selection of disparate notes and phrases and building to a tune.  As a duo, I prefer the 2 Norwegians, but as a quartet they were wonderful. A privilege to catch a one-off like this.  Garth Knox is an engaging gangly Irishman.

The second concert, the Julia Hulsmann Trio’s debut in the UK, was a bit disappointing.  There wasn’t really anything which made them stand out from the general run of piano drums bass trios – and I had hope for something a bit more inspiring.  Though her CD of pieces around poems by Emily Dickinson is really nice.

Both concerts in Hall 2 at Kings Place – excellent acoustic.

I can’t remember ever having been in the Wallace Collection before – and it’s actually quite offputting – so much STUFF !  Brings out my minimalist tendencies in a quite overpowering way – it’s just as well they have turned the courtyard into a really nice cafe.

We had actually gone for an exhibition of two treasure hoards from Germany, buried by Jews fleeing pogroms during the Black Death – masses of gold coins and trinkets, some of them absolutely exquisite – buttons and clothes ornaments, what would have to have been sewn on successive garments they were so valuable.  And Jewish wedding rings – with tiny gold buildings on. A coin from the Schwabisch Hall mint in one hoard.

The day before, to Constable’s Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery – pastoral portraits, in that many of them are country people, in their best togs, but nonetheless from their ruddy complexions and narrowed eyes, people used to the outdoors and weather.  There’s a picture of his father, one of the few where the sitter is looking directly at the artist, which is very powerful. There’s a new identification of an earlier picture as his father, but the sitter looks much older so I’m not convinced.  To my mind, these show a painter as accomplished as the one who produces the great popular landscapes – it rounds out his portrait, if you like.

If there is one feature of the post-privatisation railway that I love least, it may well be the “Rail Replacement Bus Service”.  Just about bearable on a rural line, where the bus sometimes winds through leafy lanes and picturesque villages, but intolerable on a main line carrying thousands of passengers, to be shovelled like cattle into ancient road coaches after queuing in a station car park, having one’s legitimate luggage tut-tutted over and slung underneath, and then ground down some dull A road to the next open station.

So, having booked for two concerts in London on a Saturday night (qv) it was with horror that I found that the East Coast Main Line was closed between Huntingdon and Hertford all weekend, with an hour long bus-journey to bridge the gap. Alternatively one could change half a dozen times and go via Cambridge.

Fortunately, if one books to “London Stations” instead of Kings X, the ticked comes marked as valid on “Any Permitted” route.  I reckoned if we could do that with no more than one change, it would be worth the extra time (though still much shorter than the options offered on the ECML by National Express).

So, York to Sheffield by Cross Country – OK and on time thanks to the ludicrously long station times enjoyed at Doncaster and after arrival at Sheffield. Sheffield to London St Pancras by East Midland trains.  This is another piddly short replacement for a 125 and so by Leicester was full and standing all down the centre aisles of every carriage.  But at least it was on time.

On Sunday, for the return, Network Rail advised that St Pancras to Sheffield was going to take forever, for some reason, and that we should travel Euston to Manchester Piccadilly and then Trans Pennine to York. The Pendolino was fast, not too full, and comfortable, though why anyone thought horizontal arrow slits for windows was a good idea I’m not sure (perhaps they keep them small in Italy cos its sunnier).  We were doing well until overrunning engineering works sent us round via Northampton. The ten minute late arrival at Manchester meant we missed our connection. We saw it leave looking like something out of Mumbai in the rush-hour, though without the passengers hanging on the outside.  Our Liverpool-Scarborough Trans Pennine was fine.  

Extended journey times, but OK – and no hot overcrowded smelly buses.

This time, by bus, with the Portland Street Pedestrians, on the closing tour of the winter season.  First pub was the Black Bull, crowded but only John Smiths cask and a mediocre Bass in the drinkable category. Digitised Juke Box had a vast selection but only gave part of the title and the singer’s name, which led to some oddities.  Better entertainment would have been had at the Arts Centre nearby, where Martin Simpson was appearing.

The Feathers Hotel was much more like it – a wide selection of beers, Caledonian Over the Bar was excellent.  At the next, almost deserted pub, just round the corner, they had Copper Dragon, from Skipton, and then at the last, which seemed a bit like someone’s rather untidy house, some Courage Directors went down very well.

We had our bus back to York to ourselves – it runs to bring revellers back to Pock after a night out, rather than the reverse, but it gave us time to contemplate the summer season of pedal-powered excursions – of which more, no doubt, anon.

I thought Lenny Henry’s Othello in the Northern Broadsides production at Leeds was pretty good.  He’s quite a big man, so managed in his military get-up (belted jacket, tall boots) to remind me of Idi Amin. His rages were quite convincing – the soldier frustrated – though sometimes it’s hard to believe how credulous he is.  Except that Iago (Conrad Nelson) is so convincing – and Othello believes him -wants to believe him – “honest”.   Good performance of Amelia too.  Barrie Rutter’s Brabantio was a bit too like all the other thwarted fathers that Rutter plays – I could almost predict his next gesture.

Dear Sir,

On Friday afternoon the guard on a Cross Country train leaving Bristol explained that the reason for the overcrowding was students travelling home for the weekend. So – overcrowding is the passengers’ fault, rather than the decades of underinvestment, the Virgin policy of replacing 8-coach trains with 4 or 5 coaches in a period of passenger number growth, and the lack of spare coaches because of the cost of leasing them from, among others, an RBS subsidiary. This is why we pay over the odds(Leader, Fares Fair 20 February): a privatised mess which New Labour has ignored, being content to let the anti-rail mandarins at the DfT to simply ratchet up the billions paid to the Exchequer by the franchisees and thus to ratchet up the fares. Maybe the Chancellor could find a few bob to re-nationalise the railways too.

Yours sincerely,

John Gilham.

Not everything that Yoko does grabs me – but I like some of her participatory ideas – the peace trees, mending cups to mend the world, a meditation on Mums.  Less effective when she’s just telling you. Some of her ideas for things to do prefigure Goldsworthy – do something and let nature work on it.  I’m glad she does her stuff – but I’m sure I’d find her irritating if I ever met her.

By which I mean that the Director of Slumdog Millionaire comes from Bury.  And it’s 99% a first rate, non-Bollywood film spanning the horrendous divide between rich and poor in India.  The flash-back device to show how the hero comes to know the answers in the TV quiz show, in which he is suspected of cheating, is very effective. Also sometimes the difference between dream and reality which isn’t immediately apparent.  Really liked it.    

And the 1% – the closing credits had a song-and dance routine by the cast – almost wrecked it.