If you thought Pride was just a long, sweaty, happy march through town think again as there’s culture in them thar pink hills too, courtesy of PINK FRINGE which this year presents a trio of performance events to compliment the hedonism of the rest of the fest.
Dickie Beau
First up at the DOME Studio Theatre on August 2 is I wanna be loved by you where a stellar line-up of queer artists will interrogate the cult of celebrity.
A rarely-seen face on the Brighton circuit, performance artist David Hoyle, will be questioning accepted truths and exploring the ideas and conceits that surround fame. He’ll be joined by Brighton’s very own Boogaloo Stu who’ll be bringing his ebullient pop songs and massive quiff along to the proceedings.
Also along for the ride are Stacy Makiski, drag fabulist Dickie Beau, and the Gary Clarke Dance Company.
Next up is an event on Pride Day itself (August 3, as if you minxes didn’t know), so if you want a bit of peace and quiet and a few giggles in the evening take yourself off to the Marlborough Theatre at 9pm to catch drag superstars The Lip Sinkers who’ll be teaming up with eccentric queen of song Lorraine Bowen to perform a special PRIDE version of their show.
Event: The LipSInkers
Where: Marlborough Theatre, Princes Street Brighton
Last up in a relaxing picnic the day after Pride, so you can sit in the sun and wind down. Happening in Jubilee Square and being helped out by nearby arts venue The Basement, the Pink Fringe Picnic is free for all. The gorgeous Victorian bathing huts created for the Nightingale’s Dip Your Toe project will be rolled out of their hiding place and each will be housing a micro-performance to surprise and delight.
Suitable for all the family, the picnic will run from 1-6pm, and there’ll be music, life-drawing, craft activities and bearded drag queens. Such is a normal day in lovely BRIGHTON!
Richard Greenberg’s wryly comic 1960s-set drama about a rich German-Jewish émigré family’s summer in the American Catskills makes its transfer from Bath to the St James Theatre in London this month for a short run, and I’d advise you to get booking soon as this is going to be a hot ticket.
Diana Quick plays Eva, the snobby, bossy, controlling mother of Lili (a delectable Emily Taaffe), a fragile only child just out of her teens. With no father in sight (Lili jokes that her mother killed him), there’s just Eva, Lili and their self-possessed black maid Olivia (Dona Croll) who’s more an equal part of the family than an employee.
Staying in their holiday home on the lake, they keep apart from the ‘lower life forms’ and ‘this country’s most comical misfits’ (as Eva calls them) who are holidaying on the other side of the water on the so-called American Plan (a bit like a Butlins for New York’s Jews).
That is, until a handsome young chap called Nick (Luke Allen-Gale) swims over and meets Lili. The two spark, emotionally and intellectually, and love blooms, helped forward by the not backward Lili. The next step is for Nick to meet mum Eva, a prospect that fills Lili’s heart with dread as she knows Eva’s interfering ways of old.
But they too seem to get along, even when Eva shows Nick up to not be quite all he’s promised, and she gives her blessing for the union to go ahead – until another stranger appears from the other side of the lake and things begin to get complicated.
Played out on a simple but shimmering stage dressed only with a bleached jetty and tables and chairs, The American Plan looks perfect. The backdrop is a simple ruched curtain printed with a Fall scene, and the mirrored floor of the stage reflects the light as if we were lakeside on a sunny day.
Taaffe is astonishing as the vulnerable but intelligent Lili. She bounds around with a girlish buoyancy, and every word is crisply enounced and perfectly delivered. Quick is just as good, her vowels low and elongated as she keeps her German accent just this side of comedy.
Allen-Gale’s Nick is wholesome and, as Lili herself says, a sort of tabula rasa on which she writes the future she wants. As an actor, he lets her character, and us, do this perfectly.
Greenberg’s script is nicely rhythmical and has some killer irony-laden lines and some effective pauses. The comedy, very New York Jewish, is never heavy-handed, and the emotional temperature is nicely set. Lili asks, “How old are you when you’re too old to start being happy?” A beat. “35,” deadpans Olivia.
Running at 2 hours 10 minutes, The American Plan feels neither rushed nor stinting on letting us get to know the characters well. The postscript is sad and satisfying as we see how easy it is to turn into the things we resent the most when young, and how lying, to others and to ourselves, very rarely gets us what we want.
What:The American Plan by Richard Greenberg
Where: St James Theatre, Palace Street, Victoria, London
Based on the much loved picture book written by Michael Rosen and illustrated by Helen Oxenbury,We’re Going On A Bear Hunt settles into the daytime slots at the Lyric in Shaftesbury Avenue this month, while Thriller continues its night moonwalk.
Padding out the five minute read-out-loud story to a 55 minute stage piece nicely, director Sally Cookson has created a lovely little show that can be enjoyed by adults just as well as kiddies. Using panto devices, everyday props, and a make do and mend music vibe (courtesy of BenjiBower), Bear Hunt is sweet, touching, silly, full of vim and very British in its eccentricity.
There’s Dad (played by Duncan Foster who created the role and, according to the press release ‘is aiming to surpass Yule Bryner’s 4,600 performances in The King and I), his two young kids (played by adults Gareth Warren and Rowena Lennon), and Buddy the dog (BenHarrison). There’s also a very convincing cloth puppet baby who appears at the beginning and end of the show, but who spends the strenuous middle having a big baby nap in a cardboard box.
Their adventure takes them through (never under, never over, oh no!) a forest, a river, mud, and snow and on the way they, and we, get a little wet thanks to water pistols and an absolutely magical snowstorm which fills the theatre with little faces lighting up, and an awful smell of washing-up liquid!
Buddy the dog bounds around in dungarees, a flying ace’s hat forming his floppy ears, and with a pair of bottle glasses bouncing up and down on his face like a pair of wobbly tits. Sometimes he’s part of the adventure – rolling around in poo, which the youngsters adored – and sometimes he bounds off to the side of the stage to his one-man-band music kit where he plays the kazoo and bashes on the basic percussion instruments.
Do we get to see the bear? We sure do, and he’s as far away from grrrrrrr as you can imagine, running onto the stage to Keystone Cops-style piano tinkling, while the kids in the audience shout wild and heartfelt warnings to the characters they know and love.
The music is catchy, the simple visuals work well, the characters are loveable and the special effects work. There’s not much else you could ask for in a kids’ show than that. Highly recommended for both little’uns and big’uns.
There’s no doubting Big Brotherhunk Benedict Garrett is a dreamboy. No, really, he IS actually a Dreamboy, with a capital D, although stripping and contorting for a group of drunken hens is only one of his many jobs, most of which involve sex in one way or another.
He’s a porn star, an escort, a dancer, a TV rent-a-gob, an actor, a one-time Guardian columnist, an actor, and a sexual activist. A sexual activist? What’s that when it’s at home? Well, more of that later…
When he walks into the large Islington pub we’ve arranged to meet in, no one bats an eye despite his high-profile Big Brother appearance last year, but that may be because we’re right next to Arsenal footie ground and it’s full of Germans here for a match. And despite having his finger in many an entertainment pie, I don’t think Benedict is internationally famous just yet. Give him time, though. The guy’s definitely got the drive and ambition.
We’re here to talk about Benedict’s upcoming project that’s heading to the Marlborough Theatre next month. Up4aMeet?, billed as ‘the naked gay comedy,’ stars Benedict as well as fellow Big Bro housemate Nikki Grahame (‘Who IS she?’ – that one) and X-Factor welsh hottie Lloyd Daniels.
Written by Jeff Moody and Simon Peek, Up4aMeet? is about the trials and joys of internet dating. It had a successful short run in London last year and is now going on tour around the country, stopping off at Brighton on the way.
Two men with very different outlooks on dating and the London gay scene, try to find love and/or a good shag through an app called The Cock Shop. They’re joined by their older gay next-door-neighbour who thinks he’s too past it to find the love he’s looking for, and their fag-hag friend who lives upstairs. Soon, everyone is messaging everyone else under pseudonyms, and confusion and hilarity ensue.
“There’s an awful lot of nudity in it,” says Benedict, cheerfully. “I’m actually naked in every scene but one. My character Costas loves to walk around the house naked. He’s very open about sex, like me.” Which is where the self-styled ‘sexual activist’ title comes in. So what’s that all about, Benedict?
“When I went into Big Brother it was for two reasons. Firstly, and selfishly, I wanted to raise my own profile, and secondly I wanted to raise important issues,” he tells me. “I really feel we should be more frank and open about sex in this country. I used to be a teacher and feel we need to talk about sex a lot more to our young people.” Tonight, after doing a stripagram and a Dreamboys gig, busy Ben is off up to Manchester for tomorrow’s BBC show The Big Question where he’ll be advocating that a discussion on porn should be a formal part of the school curriculum. He’s nothing if not passionate about his chosen cause.
But back to Up4aMeet. Benedict was the only one of the three celebs staring in the tour to have been in the original London run. I ask if he’s met the other two. “No, but I’ve had some interesting chats on Twitter with Nikki. And Lloyd’s that cute X-Factor guy isn’t he? He didn’t win it though?” No, I say, he came 5th in what I fondly call ‘The Jedward Year’.
“I’m really looking forward to meeting Lloyd. Is he gay or straight?” he asks Assistant Producer Luke who’s sitting next to him on the sofa. Luke, throughout the interview, has been a model of diplomacy. “He doesn’t like to say,” he mutters, although I point out he does play G.A.Y. an awful lot. “And he does a lot of naked shoots for gay mags,” mumbles Luke. We all get the picture, all fall silent.
Benedict is, of course, not quite so coy. “I’m predominantly straight, but I’ve tried other things,” he says. “I’ve only done straight porn but that’s only because I feel more comfortable with it. The things I’ve tried with men, well, I wouldn’t feel confident doing it in front of a camera and asking people to pay for it.” A ‘not very confident’ Benedict doesn’t fit in with what I’ve seen of him so far.
“I like to cuddle and kiss a man but to actually get sexual, I’m not that comfy, so to portray that on film, well, I wouldn’t feel comfortable because I don’t want to offer a shoddy service.” This is the odd thing about Benedict and where, I think, his ‘sexual activism’ comes in. Yes, he may be a stripper, yes, he may be a porn star, but he takes sex in all it’s manifestations very seriously. He’s got scruples, morals, standards, call it what you will, but he’s not blindly working his way through a career in sex. He is the very definition of the Thinking Man’s/Woman’s Crumpet if the thinking involves the philosophy of sex itself.
Has he spent any quality time in Brighton, I ask him. “Only days working,” he says. “I like Brighton. Who doesn’t? If I could pick a place to live in the UK it’d be Brighton. It’s the most liberal and open-minded place in the country, although most of my memories of the place are of a race to find parking before a Dreamboys show while being chased by screaming fans. And of the parking being ridiculously, horrendously expensive.”
So is he now settled down with someone? It says on his website that he’s a single dad, but is there a someone special in his life? “Only myself,” he laughs. “Nah, actually I’m quite content. I’ve got my nineteen year old foster son still living with me, and my two dogs. I’ve got my little family.”
Finally, we return to Big Brother and the hot topic of wanking. I didn’t watch Benedict’s turn on last year’s show, but he assures me that he got into some very hot water because of the subject. “When I went in, the producers said ‘would you have sex in the house?’ and I said, ‘for god’s sake, I’ve done porn before, what do you think!?’ I told then that if I felt like it of course I was going to have a wank. We were in there a bloody long time! But I assured them that I wouldn’t do it, as it were, in anyone’s face, but I might do it in places that I thought were appropriate and then I’d clean up after myself.”
His mistake, however, was not just having a Sherman, but talking openly about it to his other housemates. “There was an uptight girl, boarding school and all, who was appalled. Not that I’ve got anything against boarding school girls,” he quickly adds, and this, I think, sums him up. He’s a lovely boy really. One that you could easily take home to your mother. He’s polite, he’s considerate, he’s thoughtful. But the stuff he’s polite, considerate and thoughtful about is sex – and we’re British. I don’t envy this ‘sexual activist’ his fight one bit….
Event:Up4aMeet Where: Marlborough Theatre, 4 Princes Street, Brighton BN2 1RD When: July 16 – 20 Times: 8pm Tues-Thurs, 7pm & 9pm Fri & Sat
Tickets: £16 from www.brownpapertickets.com/event/381144
It was a chilly July evening when I ventured over to Worthing seafront with my 14 year old son Sid. Unlike most of our other outings I didn’t have to bribe him into this one. The magic words ‘pudding night’ were enough to get him out of the house. And to be frank they were enough for this fatty too.
A bracing walk on the pier was called for to rustle up an appetite, after which we entered the spacious Denton Lounge which serves as a restaurant and cafe for the Pavilion Theatre next door as well as being a venue in its own right.
As we sat waiting for the evening to begin (I’m chronically early to everything), Sid and I fantasised about living in such a lovely space: we’d put the open-plan kitchen over there, my bedroom’d be this side, his that side. I used to do this at the defunct Co-op cafe in London Road and I think it’s the eternal dream of the council house tenant to actually have some space to stretch out into. With it’s close-up view of the pier and spacious outlook, the Denton Lounge makes a splendid venue and would make a super-exclusive pad.
Awaiting a night of Independence Day splendour (it was July 4 after all), we also mused on what we expected of the evening. What the hell is a Pudding Night when it’s at its gran’s? Would there be big puddings? Small puddings? Some as big as your head? Hopefully the latter, said Sid. And what sort of entertainment? Vague mention had been made on the phone of Dolly Parton and showtunes.
Tables dotted the room and the small stage had a large Mississippi river backdrop (presumably left over from a production of Showboat from the theatre next door), while the piano was draped with the Stars and Stripes.
The place was soon full (I counted 50 people) of mostly older couples, but also some younger girls on the quest for a sugar-filled, civilised night out, and the entertainment began.
An evening of songs from the American War of Independence doesn’t sound like a riveting prospect on paper but at the Denton Lounge a small band of singers and musicians – two youngsters and an older pianist doing the singing, plus a guitarist – brought the era to life. In between the folksy numbers we even got a history lesson with an explanation of the story behind the songs. This novel approach worked and made the evening feel a bit worthy (in a good way) and not just an excuse to stuff yourself with carbs.
First course was a savoury one, just so’s you could say you had a proper dinner if your mum asked. Us veggies had American-themed breaded mozzarella cheese sticks, corn on the cob and salad, while the carnivores had BBQ buffalo wings. Basic but tasty, we then had a break for more music and a bit of a chat. I gazed out the window at the tide coming in and wondered why Worthing smells of the sea while Brighton doesn’t.
The first tranche of puddings then arrived. Sid could hardly contain himself as the (plentiful) waiters stormed out of the kitchen holding silver platters full of goodness.
Worthing’s Pudding Nights are a monthly affair and the menu changes according to the theme (the next one will balance the Yank bias with an all British offering on August 8), as does the entertainment.
On offer tonight was a berry trifle, Mississippi Mud Pie, and a very light cheesecake. Heavy on the berry count, but nice nonetheless, it didn’t take long for it all to disappear. I’m no great savourer of food I must admit, but the tastes did come through nicely and nothing was too heavy which was what was needed seeing as we still had three more to come.
More music was punctuated by a berry sorbet ‘to cleanse the palate’ Sid informed me. Christ knows where he got that from! I thought his idea of gourmet food was Tesco Basic Macaroni Cheese. He must have been secretly watching Masterchef behind my back, the tyke.
Ding ding! Round two of puds. More berries, but this time in the form of a gorgeous blackberry cobbler which was beautifully tart and full of cinnamon. “It tastes like Christmas,”Sid piped up, making me realise that his last Masterchef remark had been some sort of aberration.
Also on offer was a delicious Key Lime Pie covered in coconut sprinkles which really brought it to life, and a very dense chocolate fudge cake served unusually in a stem glass. Really more of a mousse, it didn’t get to touch the sides.
The evening was nicely rounded off with some more American tunes – Red River Valley, This Land is Your Land, and You Are My Sunshine – all with unusual but effective arrangements, and a cup of coffee and a cookie. Yes, a cookie. As if we hadn’t had enough sweetness to last us till next month’s Pudding Night!
What: Monthly Pudding Night
Where: Denton Lounge, Worthing Seafront (by pier)
When: next one is August 8
Tickets: £19.50 each, which includes food and entertainment plus coffee (but no bar drinks)
Hello again m’dears. So my much-vaunted weekly column of ‘stuff I’ve been up to’ came to a grinding halt over a fortnight ago as I got a touch of the Stephen Frys.
One day I was maniacally off on my merry little way – watching this, writing that – and the next I was stuck in bed, immobilised by fear. Luckily it doesn’t happen very often but that makes it even more of a bloody surprise when it does descend, like a glum-faced angel settling on my shoulder for the duration.
After the initial couple of days curled up in bed not even being able to open the curtains, I managed to get out and continue seeing stuff. That wasn’t the problem. I could drag myself onto a train or into the car and sit in a darkened theatre. I could even just about write some guff about it the next day. The real problem was that I couldn’t open my emails. They piled up. Like some alligator watching me from a river, I could see ‘Inbox – Windows Liv….’ in the bottom left hand corner of my eye every minute I sat writing my reviews. In the end that got too much, and I stopped opening the computer altogether. When your lappy turns accusatory you know you’re in big doo-dah.
Just before I took to my bed, and at my most manic, I also had a bit of a flunk with our dear editor. Luckily for me this magazine takes mental health issues seriously, but even so I felt a right nork trying to explain myself once I’d emerged from my own personal Fry-up.
In my heart I know it’s not my fault. I know that it’s a chemical imbalance and all that, and I know that most people in the arts are pretty understanding but, also in my heart, I know that it sounds like I’m weak, unreliable, a loose canon and what employer wants to give that sort of person the time of day?
Anyway, I’m OK now (till next time) and here’s a rather long account of whats been going daaaaaaaahnnnnn in my life, Fry-time taken as a given and not included. I shall dispense with the days of the week as I’ve simply forgotten what I did when. And what I did. And what it was like. And who I am. This is gonna be good…
THEATRE AND MORE THEATRE:
CHILDREN OF THE SUN at the NATIONAL THEATRE wasn’t a barrel of laughs. I dragged Sid up to London after school for it, but it was wordy, worthy and very Russian. We slipped out at the interval (which isn’t something I do often) only to hear that it peps up greatly in the second half and culminates in an explosive bang that shakes the National to its foundations. But I’d not recommend it unless you’re a mad Gorky fan. Are there any mad Gorky fans? I suppose there are mad fans for everything.
THE AMEN CORNER, again at the NATIONAL, was an altogether different experience. Queer black writer James Baldwin only wrote a couple of plays with this being the best known, and while Children is busy blowing the roof off the Lyttleton with chemical flare-ups, Amen is raising the roof of the Olivier with some sublime praise-the-lord antics courtesy of the London Community Gospel Choir. And the play itself is well thought out, well put together and, well, good! The best news is that there are 500 tickets at each performance for only £12 as part of the National’s superb Travelex scheme. I do so love public theatre when it’s cheap (I’m looking evils at you Royal Opera House). CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW:
HAMMERSMITH IS ALIVE
Off to the RIVERSIDE STUDIOS in Hammersmith for my first time ever and what a lovely bar! No bloody comfy seats though which is really what I judge bars and foyers by these days, not the price of the coffees I don’t drink. Rushing around London like a person possessed it’s handy to know where you can sprawl out and have a quick kip between shows. Writing that made me feel like a tramp….
PAYBACK was a zippy little musical based in the near-future when the government has decided to privatise paternity claims and farm them out to a Jeremy Kyle-style show. Me and Sid sat in the very front row and as the stage was wide and the playing space very narrow the actors were on top of us and one looked like David Tennant so I was happy. Sid said he couldn’t stop looking at the lead’s forehead as it was so massive. He’s a 14 year old boy and THAT was all he could look at? Not the girlies looming over him (he’s assured me he’s straight btw)?
SO BITE ME
At the newly done out ROYAL COURT I got bitten by a table. Twice. And a woman got swallowed by a chair. The furniture is revolting. New artistic director VICKYFEATHERSTONE has made some pretty big changes at the place, including putting on some really rather crap plays. The trend in London seems to be to put on ‘mystery works’ so you’ve no idea what you’re going to see before you see it. The Royal Court’s doing it, the Lyric Hammersmith’s doing it, while the St James’ Theatre is touting a new musical which only has a code name – UGC. Under Ground Cock? Unnamed Grotty Crap? Make up your own.
We were at the Royal Court to see a part of the OPEN COURT where they take a troupe of actors and give them a play to learn in a week, which they then have to perform for the next week whilst learning another play. In essence, it’s the old repertory theatre coming back to haunt. We saw THE PRESIDENT HAS COME TO SEE YOU by Georgian Lasha Bugadze, possibly the most dull play ever written. I mean, it had nothing going for it. Nothing. Words came out of people’s mouths. I heard the words. The words meant nothing. For the second time in a week we walked out at the interval, only to get bitten by the table.
Now I’ve built it up, you’re going to be sooo disappointed by this table-biting thing (that’ll teach me). Fundamentally (which means ‘basically’ but I’m giving that word up for Lent), Vicky in her wisdom has kitted out the large cafe with ‘shabby chic’ furniture which, as we all know, is an ‘I saw you coming’ way of saying ‘second-hand’. Not one chair finds its twin across the table, and the sofas have holes in their leather the size of dinner plates, showing off their springs like the sex vixens they so blatantly are. This, of course, means that all the tables are the wrong height for the tatty chairs. So, there was I, sat in a chair, pulling myself up to the table. Ouch. The underside of the table bit me. I had a splinter the size of a baby’s finger sticking out at an angle at the top of my knee. Having gone through childbirth this didn’t phase me and I plucked it out like Russell Crowe plucking a camera from a pap’s hand.
At that very moment I heard a huge crash. The Revenge of the Crappy Furniture continued its carnage. A middle-aged woman – not a hefty woman like me, but one who’s probably conscious that the scales look askance at her when she heads their way – had plonked herself on a chair, thinking “I’m in a well-respected Arts Council-funded theatre here. This chair will definitely hold me up.” Our brain must make these tiny calculations all the time – is that safe? is this going to kill me? – and we don’t even notice. Well, this old chair and it’s unhappy nails decided their time had come and crash, she was on the floor.
“That’s indignity for you, sprawled out on the floor of a cafe, with London’s literary types looming over you, asking if you’re OK”
That’s indignity for you, sprawled out on the floor of a cafe, with London’s literary types looming over you, asking if you’re OK. She was by the way, and so was I. No festering wound or pus-filled knee resulted. In a way I feel I got off lightly with just a bite.
Soon we flew off to FLOWN, yet another circus act at the upside down purple cow on the SOUTH BANK which turned out to be very different in style and mood from Limbo which we’d seen the previous week in next door’s Spiegeltent. Moody, artfully shambolic, and very European in outlook as opposed to Limbo’s brash Yankness, Flown was a lovely way to pass an hour. We had put in a request to see one of Sid’s faves afterwards, Tommy-Two-Ways himself, Gyles Brandreth, but his PR people declined, probably because they don’t want any spoilers getting out before he heads up to Edinburgh with a new show. It was nice to have an early night. To read review, CLICK HERE:
PUT THE BUNTING UP
On the Sunday I went to a benefit concert at THE DOME for Brighton’s own dear ADRIAN BUNTING. The showman, playwright and buildings project manager died very suddenly a couple of months ago from cancer and his friends had put this show together as a memorial and as a fundraiser for Adrian’s BOAT project. BOAT stands for Brighton Open Air Theatre and it was the last of many projects that Adrian had worked on.
It was emotional (I only knew Adrian a teeny bit from years ago but I’d always rated him as one of the good guys), especially when his best mate brought on THE WORLD’S SMALLEST THEATRE – basically (has Lent come and gone?) a box that went over Adrian’s head and where the audience, a maximum of three people, stared in at the performance from the sides. Tatty and so obviously lovingly hand-made, it sort of summed the bloke up – fantastic enthusiasm, mostly on a shoestring.
He also recounted the time when Adrian was supervising the refurbishment of the Dome and he’d invited his mate to jump up and down on the wire mesh in the centre of the roof with him, looking down at the auditorium below. We all looked up at the ceiling mesh and could see, in our mind’s eye, the two of them gleefully frolicking up there like it was a bloody bouncy castle.
The concert itself was fun. Hove’s own Moleman SIMON EVANS (how does he see with those eyes?) warmed us up, and when TIM VINE ended his act with PEN BEHIND THE EAR (look it up on YouTube) I was crumpled up in a tearful ball. Is it wrong to quite fancy Tim Vine? Oh OK, it appears it is…
“STEWART LEE is ill,” said compere SUSAN MURRAY, “but instead we have his very good friend BACONFACE!” So on came Stewart Lee in a bacon Lucha Libre mask. I mean, you can’t disguise that mouth of his (plus I’d read that this was his new comedy alter ego). Loving Stewart Lee as Stewart Lee I was expecting a lot. What we got was a sub-Rich Hall comedy routine not one iota of which even brushed against funny. Looking around, half the room were laughing, the other half had their eyes screwed up as much as Simon Evan’s naturally are and their mouths downturned in a moue of disgust. How had such a comedy genius misjudged things so badly? Was the fact that it was so bad the joke itself? It was bewildering and faintly disrespectful that he’d chosen a night to remember a dead bloke to give us this experimental bollocks. And then I thought back to what I knew of Adrian, and I glanced up at the roof of the Dome once again. There was Adrian, fingers clutching the mesh, looking down and giggling at the fact that Lee was doing something new and experimental and half the audience hated it. It was definitely what Adrian would have wanted….
“There was Adrian, fingers clutching the mesh, looking down and giggling at the fact that Lee was doing something new and experimental and half the audience hated it”
STATHAM AND CARRY ON
My mate James is an autograph hunter. He’s only 21, is autistic, and his greatest love is standing outside Broadcasting House waiting for slebs to pass by. Click – he has a photo. Scratch – he has an autograph. So his collection grows.
Jason Statham
This week he was kind enough to invite me to a film premiere to which he’d won some tickets. All I knew was that it was a JASON STATHAM film. Old baldy hard guy, going out with that model (I gave up reading Heat Magazine some decades ago as you can see). But I hadn’t seen James for ages, so I took up his kind offer and met him in Leicester Square where we bumped into our other friends, Elizabeth and her bro. Elizabeth’s in a wheelchair and is of indeterminate age. I have asked her how old she is but she’s been so cagey that I’ve given up. She could be 14: she could be 40. Honestly.
Coffee and chat done with, Eliz and bro went off to what we fondly call The Crip Pit – the bit roped off at a premiere for disabled people – and me and James prepared to strut our stuff down the red carpet. A tip here, if you ever get the chance to do this. Wait at the red carpet entrance until the star gets out of the car and then rush up the carpet with them. It’s fun, and you’ll probably end up on the front page of the paper the next day.
Front row seats again, this time by sheer fluke, and old baldy guy comes on stage to say hi and to introduce the movie. It’s strange how normal most male film stars look and how totally abnormal female ones do. Male ones look like average-sized people you’d bump into in the street: female stars look like concentration camp victims. I once met JAMES CAMERONS’s wife and if you’d taken her to a doctor in this country they’d have sectioned her for being so dangerously anorexic.
“I once met JAMES CAMERONS’s wife and if you’d taken her to a doctor in this country they’d have sectioned her for being so dangerously anorexic”
It’s not until you see these people in real life that you realise that they are literally skin and bones. L’Wren whatshername, MICK JAGGER’s missus, is the same. Wearing a skin-tight white jumpsuit, I wondered where the shit comes out of her body as she doesn’t appear to have a bum at all.
The film, HUMMINGBIRD, was surprisingly good. I can’t for the life of me remember the plot, but Statham was a hard man with a heart of gold and it was filmed all around Covent Garden and Soho so at the dullish bits I could try to figure out which street they were walking down. And the revelation of the night was that Statham can actually act! And I mean proper act, tears’n’all! It’s definitely worth a look if you a) have a thing about Statham’s muscles (not me) or b) have a thing about the streets of London (me). I’ve just realised how odd that sounds.
A BRITTEN DIVIDED
This being the centenary of BENJAMIN BRITTEN’s birth, I thought I’d better bring myself up to speed. I couldn’t get to Aldenburgh Festival to see the staging of PeterGrimes on the beach (or rather, I couldn’t blag any tickets), so I made do with a front row seat at the COLISEUM to see the ENO’s DEATH IN VENICE (which I paid for and a fortune it was too). When I arrived I found a cameraman plonked in my very expensive seat. “Excuse me, young man,” I poshed it up. “Are you going to be here throughout, as your lap looks mighty uncomfortable?” Turned out they were filming the thing for Sky Arts and my seat was on the camera’s dolly run.
I perked up. A box! I could upgrade to a box! And sure enough the darlings gave me the best box in the house to myself. I stretched out, I put my bare feet on the other seat, I ate Revels throughout the whole performance without worrying that my chomping was disturbing a neighbour. Bliss! And the opera? Bliss too. A wonderful staging that didn’t put a foot wrong.
Later in the week, it was off to DUKES @ KOMEDIA for a live screening from the ROYAL OPERA HOUSE of GLORIANA, Britten’s opera written for the Coronation. This was a different beast altogether and just not my cup of tea. The idea of staging it as a 1953 village hall pageant was a good one in theory, but it meant they were stuck with what 1953 had imagined the Elizabethan Age to look like, and it wasn’t pretty. Horrible block colour costumes and backdrops that looked like an indoor scene from Dad’s Army made me turn off immediately, and I wasn’t keen on the music either. The seats were damned comfy though, so I did my usual trick and fell asleep.
Oh, nearly forgot. I bumped into the press night of THE CRIPPLE OF INISHMAAN on my way to the COLISEUM. I’d requested review tickets but sometimes our humble little magazine is just too tiny and NOT IN LONDON to warrant review tickets to the big buggery press nights. Humf. I hung around to see what was going on, as you do, and spotted James in the distance, autograph book in hand, so I said hi just as a Hummer appeared and parked right in the middle of the road, blocking the whole of St Martin’s Lane (which was already pretty blocked with people trying to get a glimpse of someone famous). Out stepped Sting’s missus, TRUDIE STYLER, with her driver abandoning the car to escort her inside. I’ve just Wikied her to see what she’s famous for apart from being Sting’s missus to find that she’s an ambassador for UNICEF – presumably because she’s Sting’s missus. And a producer – presumably because she’s Sting’s missus. When she became pregnant she fired her private chef for no good reason and got sued – presumably because she’s a bit of a pain – and Sting’s missus.
I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER
Did I mention in the last missive that we’ve got a new kitten? I’m frankly surprised this got written at all as he so loves skidding across the keyboard. Must be the warmth I’m sending out from my kind words.
He’s Siamese and a tiny tornado of trouble. When I say he loves the keyboard, he doesn’t just occasionally stroll across the bloody thing, he writes letters on it. “Pleese mum can i hav sum fud and i thik iv got worms” (if that’s bordering on LOLcats then sue me – I’m a middle-aged woman and that means I’m contractually obliged to LOLcat to my heart’s content. And yes, I do smell of cat wee).
Trying to keep him in the house is a nightmare as every time someone so much as thinks of the front door he’s there. Sometimes he nearly gets cut in half, so great is his need to shoot outside. The other cats have differing attitudes to him: the moggy ignores him while the other Siamese licks his bum like it’s the tastiest thing on earth. I haven’t ‘bonded’ with him yet, mainly because I spend most of my time chucking him (gently) off my laptop and to the other side of the sofa. He sleeps on my head (hence why I smell of cat wee).
DEAD
Eastbourne is a place I love. I love any seaside town apart from Brighton and Rhyl: Brighton because I spent too much time living there to love it, and Rhyl because it’s Rhyl (have you been to the place? It’s the dirtiest seaside town – no, just town – I’ve ever had the misfortune to visit).
I spread my Sussex wings left and right last week, to Eastbourne and Worthing. Eastbourne to see psychological thriller DEAD CERTAIN at the DEVONSHIRE PARK THEATRE, and Worthing for one of their new comedy nights at THE RITZ, next door to the CONNAUGHT.
Dead Certain was a bit bog-standard, but that’s half the joy of going to these places. You sort of know that you’re not going to see anything very demanding, and certainly not anything that’s destined for next year’s OLIVIER AWARDS. It was, of itself, entertaining, and a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.
This was my first visit to the Ritz, an upstairs room that doubles as a cinema and small theatre. All dark green swags and deep red velvet curtains, it’s a dramatic space. I was here on my tod to see THE COMEDY NETWORK, this week featuring MARK SMITH (‘The most astonishing name in comedy!’), KIERAN BOYD (WitTank), and Carl Donnelly who I’m pretty sure I’ve seen on MOCK THE WEEK.
The surprisingly large Ritz was only about half full so we were all asked to scoot up the front and I ended up on the second row. It was only when the first act came on that I realised this may have been a bad move but luckily – phew – I got away with it and wasn’t used as comedy fodder (holding a notebook in one hand and a crutch in the other is usually enough bad ju-ju to deflect anyone on stage’s interest).
Mark Smith began the evening quietly and safely (which is of course code for ‘he didn’t get any laughs cos he didn’t have many jokes’), but he was pleasant enough (read: bit boring).
KEIRAN BOYD proclaimed that a critic had once said he looked like Benedict Cumberbatch’s lesbian sister and I could see where that critic was coming from. After dividing the room into two and asking us to give ourselves a name each (‘horses’ and ‘Worthing’), he shook his head sadly realising just what he’d let himself in for in this seaside town. His main shtick was about googling himself and finding out that the only other two ‘famous’ people who shared his name were a rapper and a paedophile – and the paedophile came from the same town up North as him. Not quite belly-laugh-ful, but funny enough.
Carl Donelly
Headline act CARL DONNELLY was going oh so well. Oh. So. Well. Until he picked on the section of the audience that the other two comedians had already picked on. We’d grown to like these idiots in the front row, airport baggage-handlers all. Carl decided to not like them quite as much. I’ve seen this so many times at comedy gigs and I must say here and now to all the comedians out there: watch the other acts on before you to see who they pick on and what they say! Then you won’t make the classic faux pas of picking on the same people who we now feel we know like brothers and sisters and slagging them off.
Carl did recover and is a pretty funny gagster, although his choice of clothes left a lot to be desired (he did rib himself mercilessly about this to be honest). You see, he’s gone a bit Noel Fielding in the old dress department and has ended up looking like Rolf Harris in drag. And, as he said himself, that’s not a good look to have in the present climate.
I loved his complete surety that ducks have meetings and that spider monkeys love to play pranks on him (which, written down, sounds a bit left-Fielding too, although it didn’t live). Quite how he got to talking about snorting peas off boobs I’m not sure, but I liked the journey.
It was, in all, a lovely little night out. Again, I was surprised at the lack of booze and boozed up people. When I last went to a night like this (après Sid), everyone seemed to be off their tits and heckling like mad people. Or was that just me? Yes, come to think of it it was probably just me *hangshead*
And that, kind sirs and madams, is where I shall leave it for this dollop of Kat. I hear the government want to make me illegal. I feel just like Jimmy Carr.
In the Devonshire Theatre and Talking Scarlet’s latest offering, a 1960’s Marc Camoletti farce called Boeing Boeing, we get to live the impossible dream: well, someone’s impossible dream anyway, but probably not yours or mine.
Bernard (Ben Roddy) is a successful architect living in a nice apartment in Paris. He’s the sort of man who wants it all, and it seems he’s getting his wish. Using his ‘bible’, the international flight timetable, he manages to fit three women in his life, all air hostesses, and all believing that they’re engaged to him.
There’s Gretchen, the aggressive German one; Gloria, the confident American one; and Gabrielle, the sexy French one. With help from his sanguine housekeeper/maid, Bertha (Anita Graham is the spit of Janet Street-Porter with a grey pigtailed wig, lurid mustard tights and a very advanced case of pigeon toe), he juggles the women, using a carefully worked out system of jotting down times and dates in a notepad (we are back in the 60s, remember).
Into this mix is thrown two things: Robert (Philip Stewart), an old school chum of Bernard’s who appears out of the blue, and a new flight timetable. Boeing jets are being upgraded and are much faster than they were, leaving his note-taking scheme all awry. What’s a playboy to do? Keep calm and carry on, so Bernard thinks, though Robert and Bertha have their doubts as to his scheme’s continuing feasibility.
The fact that there are five doors off the minimalist living room set would have given you a clue that this was a farce even if you hadn’t glanced at the programme, and very soon people are jumping into or being pushed through said doors at an alarming rate, as one girl after another appears before her ‘allotted time’.
Much is made of the girls skimpy attire (all three are – barely – dressed in the primary colours of their respective airlines), although this isn’t an in your face issue. This is the new ‘toned down farce’. I can imagine what an original production of this play would have been like and I shudder but here we have a few leers at boobs and bums, a couple of chaste kisses, and the hint of a hard-on. The action is concentrated less on what the girls look like and a lot more on the men making arses of themselves. Robert, especially, goes to great lengths to hide his pal’s secret polygamy from the girls and you wonder why after all this time he’s suddenly turned up and become such a loyal friend. Could it have anything to do with Robert being jealous of Bernard’s lifestyle? You bet it could.
Belligerent Bertha (“I’m a cheerful soul at heart. I like a bit of fun”) mopes around in the first act like a sardonic wet weekend, while Robert uses a red C-shaped foam chair to comedic purpose. He jumps on it, flips it over, curls up on it, uses it as a trampoline and ends up sprawling. It is, in fact, a great prop, and Stewart is fantastic at this type of comedy. He’s the one your eye is drawn to, not the dolly birds in bum-skimming skirts.
It’s not devoid of emotion either, although these affairs of the heart are a bit on the shabby side. Gradually, as the second half develops, we can see how it’s going to end not quite on a happy note, but in a loose ends nicely tied up sort of conclusion. It’s a little cheap, but this is isn’t Chekhov.
The piece isn’t played at lightening speed, but the pace is just fast enough, and director Patric Kearns holds the cast back nicely. These sorts of affairs can go over the top so very easily, but he reigns it all back and keeps it (excuse the airline pun) grounded.
I can guarantee this most sophisticated thing you’ll see all year – unless your only other theatre outing is a panto – but for what it is, a silly but clever farce for an undemanding audience who have forgone the evening Eastbourne sunshine, it works perfectly. It’s theatrical chewing gum: it tastes nice for the duration, but you’re quite glad to spit it out when it’s job is done. Oh, and Bernard lets a soda syphon off and you can’t get more classic farce than that!
What:Boeing Boeing by Talking Scarlet
Where: Devonshire Park Theatre, Compton Street, Eastbourne
When: Until 13 July at 7.45pm with Wednesdays and Saturday matinees at 2.30pm
To be frank, the set looked tatty. Bare plywood covered with strips of black material, and an equally cobbled-together-looking raised stage platform with rough, canvas edging didn’t bode well. But Neil Irish’s design for Opera Holland Park’s latest open air outing, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, had a surprise up its sleeve, for once the chorus had pulled down the drapes we were left with a wooden screen running the whole length of the stage with a beautiful striation painted across the middle. We were in Japan and we were on a fault line: a colonial one.
Butterfly is, in the great tradition of opera, a simple story of woe, thwarted hope, and death. Pinkerton (Joseph Wolverton), an American naval officer in late 19th Century Nagasaki, wants a wife. Marriage broker Goro (Robert Burt) suggests a 15 year old geisha called Cho-Cho San, the Butterfly of the title (Anne Sophie Duprels), whom he promptly pays for and weds. Butterfly is happy with her middle-aged American hubby and takes her vows seriously, even when Pinkerton forbids her from seeing her family, while he confesses to American consul Sharpless (David Stephenson) that he plans one day to take a ‘proper’ American wife and regards his marriage to Butterfly as one of convenience while he’s in Japan. Yes, he’s the archetypal girl-in-every-port sort of tar.
When Pinkerton sails off into the distance, promising Butterfly he’ll be back soon, she waits and pines. Cut to two years later in Act II and a child has appeared. Butterfly still waits, brushing off suggestions from Sharpless that Pinkerton has done the dirty on her, and he can’t quite bring himself to tell her that Pinkerton now has that ‘proper’ American wife.
But wait! There’s a ship in the harbour! And it’s Pinkerton’s ship! He’s back! But unfortunately for Butterfly, with his brand spanking new American wife. The cad.
Director Paul Higgins has pared down the set and props (a flag and a chair) for this sparse production. The costumes are authentic, and I particularly loved Goro’s frock coat and skirts which I’d wear at the drop of a hat. Butterfly is in a startlingly white obi for the first half, symbolically changing to western gear after her marriage, but Pinkerton’s naval garb looked shabby to my eyes, as did the mishmash of get-ups that the chorus donned, including some truly horrible wigs.
Namiko Gahier-Ogawa has coached the cast in traditional Japanese movements, used mostly by Duprels in the first act, but the effect is static, all stiff-handed chops and mystical offstage looks. It’s a useful, if rather obvious, pointer in the latter half, when she has adopted Pinkerton’s western lifestyle to tell when she’s really stressed as she goes all ‘choppy’ again. It comes over as slightly patronising to the audience, as if we couldn’t guess her emotions from her voice and words alone.
Duprels’ voice is wonderfully rich, although I’m no fan of her acting. She acts, stops acting, thinks about singing, sings, stops singing, thinks about acting, ad infinitum. It’s bitty, with no flow, although her stillness in the crucial ‘vigil’ scene is admirable.
A warm, buttery light falls over the stage for most of the performance, which compensates a little for the bareness of the set and warms the production up, as does Pinkerton’s stout, fatherly figure and rounded voice, but the overall effect is still a little cold, as is the chemistry between the spouses.
Despite its faults Madama Butterfly at Holland Park is still a good catch. Soaring music that everyone will recognise plus a wonderful posh London park setting is a combination that can’t really be beaten. And you know you’re in Poshland when the only sounds you can hear are opera and peacocks. Beats London Road Poundland any day!
“Is it like Jersey Boys?” I asked the usherette. “Does it have a story?”
“Not really,” was the dispiriting reply. “It’s just the greatest hits and a bit of gab between songs.”
And so it was. No gritty ‘how the band got together’ tale in this tourist-trap of a Beatles show now playing in the incongruous Art Deco surrounds of the Savoy Theatre. No torrid tales of love between John and Cynthia, or band members clashing over artistic differences. Instead, there’s this strange concert, running the gamut of emotions from Ringo to Ringo. So none at all really. And that’s my main quibble. I’ve seen a couple of shows before where bootleg Beatles (it may actually have been THE Bootleg Beatles, I just can’t remember) have run through either the greatest hits or a specific album. No chat, no story, just music, and I’ve been won over by their charm and enthusiasm, but not so with this cavernous, heartless show. It did nearly get there a couple of times, but pulled back from the emotional brink just too quickly.
It begins with the programme, a huge, hernia-inducing, glossy souvenir thing with very little substance, that won’t fit in anyone’s bag on their way home. On the cover is an all-encompassing Union Jack, just so the tourists have no doubt where they are: BeatleLand, or more specifically, Swinging Britain in the 60s. No, not now. Now is drab and dull and grey, but the 60s….well, that was were it was at….man.
Entering the Savoy, you’re confronted by giant set-ups of old wirelesses and Rediffusion TVs in place of a curtain. Projected onto the TVs are 1960s clips, some of which are pretty fun. There’s Alf Garnett flogging Findus Fish Fingers, and a wedding where everyone lights up a Capstan after they say ‘I do’. The point made that this was a different era with different sensibilities, my hopes rose that the show might be a little tongue in cheek, a little subversive in its outlook, but this didn’t last long: five minutes later we were in the smoky Cavern, all brickwork arches and dim lighting. Yes, they do look passably like the Moptops, and yes, they do sound like them too. Two boxes ticked. Ringo drummed through the early numbers with a fag hanging from his mouth. Yes, a different era indeed.
My earplugs came out at this point. It’s not that I dislike Beatles tunes – I can sing along to most – but I am getting on a bit and the speakers were groaning under the volume. Strangely, the vocals came through clear as a bell, but the instruments made a right old not-nice racket. Even my teenage son commented on the din.
Middle aged women began to clap out of time as only middle aged women can. The Brazilian quartet seated below us began to rave, mistaking a theatre show for a gig. They continued in this vein throughout, talking as loudly as they could, downing pint after pint, struggling out of their row to the loo, and that most unforgivable sin of all – standing up and dancing. The bastards. They were duly told off by the usherettes but continued on their merry little Brazilian way, despite the British tuts engulfing them.
The Beatles were a pretty static band on stage with no great dancers, no guitar-smashing antics, just standing and singing, and so it’s difficult to criticize this show for not being a roller-coaster of frenetic movement. Realising this, director and musical supervisor JohnMaher has tried to bring the whole thing to life with a series of animations projected onto the backdrop, and also visible on large monitors to the sides of the stage. Unfortunately they were the worst animations I’d seen in a long time, using Beatles’ imagery but not keeping strictly enough to period fonts and photos, and they ended up being as uninteresting as seeing fake Paul, John, George and Ringos on stage.
Chronologically true, we go from the Cavern to the conquest of America to Shea Stadium to the Sergeant Pepper era to 70s psychedelia to Vietnam protests to…well, you get the picture. It’s basically a run-through, with some of the most minimal staging I’ve ever seen in the West End (I’m looking at you, A Chorus Line). The backgrounds change, the hair and moustaches gets longer, the clothes get more colourful, but that’s it. The projections on the large TVs are fuzzy and unreadable while the ones at the sides of the stage, giving us close-ups of singing faces, are 2 seconds out of synch. It all looks terribly cheap.
The modern voiceover which makes very little attempt to even pretend to be ‘of the age’ adds to this shoddiness, as do the stagehands who whip on between songs. Neutral black clothes just don’t cut the mustard in a piece like this.
And this is the fundamental problem with this show. It’s neither one thing nor another. It races through periods but doesn’t keep up the pretence with the peripherals, so you can’t become absorbed in any of the music without some jarring experience waking you from your reverie (and I include a tourist audience in the list of ‘jarring experiences’). And did George sing quite so many lead vocals? And did John clone himself for Lucy in the Sky as I’m pretty sure there were two on stage at the same time (or perhaps it was the hallucinogenic effects of the song)? Odd, very odd.
I did become a little more engaged once they all sat on stools and ran through Blackbird, which was ironic in one way as the staging became even more static, but the intimacy of the songs began to work their magic as the crap gimmicks disappeared for a little while.
It didn’t last. I found myself looking at the audience rather than the stage, trying to get a grip on who this show appealed to. Tourists, mostly, as you’d imagine, but there was quite a swathe of grey as couples in their 60’s relived their youth. Families with teenage children also made up quite a proportion. Half were clapping, singing, swaying their arms: half were sitting with a look of utter blankness as if totally bemused by the whole spectacle. When ‘John’ enjoined the crowd to get on their feet, half did so with gusto while the other half sighed at the prospect of spending the next five minutes staring at someone else’s swaying bum.
By the time the encore was in full swing with, of course, Let It Be, and that obligatory dirge Hey Jude, the audience was on its feet and swaying unrhymically. Arthritic arms were in the air, cameraphones were blinking, confetti was pouring from the Savoy ceiling, and I gently took my earplugs out and dreampt longingly of my bed. I mean, listening to The Beatles back catalogue is never a wholly unpleasant experience by its very nature, but I did expect more of a show than I got with Let It Be. Given the choice of Jersey Boys and this lazy excuse for a show, I know which one I’d plump for every time.
Event:Let It Be
Where: The Savoy Theatre, The Strand, London
When: booking till next year
Cost: Tickets: £15-£90
For more information, CLICK HERE: www.letitbelondon.com
Let it be has now transfered to the Garrick Theatre.
Love him or loathe him, a new musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber is big news. And today, therefore, is a big news day
John Ward
Stephen Ward (yes, that’s it’s rather mundane name) will premiere at the Aldwych Theatre on December 3 this year, and tickets go on sale as of today.
With music by Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton, who both worked on Sunset Boulevard with the good Lord, Stephen Ward tells the story of ‘the real victim of the Profumo Affair’, the society osteopath who introduced Profumo to Christine Keeler, was subsequently prosecuted for living off immoral earnings, and who killed himself with a drugs overdose on the last day of his trial.
To be directed by Richard Eyre, Stephen Ward is yet to be cast.
There’s no doubting Big Brother hunk Benedict Garrett is a dreamboy. No, really, he IS actually a Dreamboy, with a capital D, although stripping and contorting for a group of drunken hens is only one of his many jobs, most of which involve sex in one way or another.
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