Opening Night

We love a wacky musical and they don’t come much wackier than Opening Night, a brand new West End show from the pen of singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright. Based on a 1977 film of the same name, the musical stars Sheridan Smith as an ageing has-been who’s lost her mojo and hit the bottle. It’s a familiar, well-trodden Judy and Norma theme. Despite a dedicated fanbase, Rufus Wainwright has been little troubled by commercial success. And I can see why. The score is dissonant, dense and tuneless – a torch song tale without the torch songs.

The production itself is a pretentious mess – shouty, angry and hard to follow, with bizarre staging involving TVs dotted about the auditorium and a large screen above the stage which, from where we were sitting, was largely obscured. We weren’t sure when and where to look – stage or screen – so by the second half we didn’t bother to look at all. The cast made the best of a bad lot and, come curtain call, the audience applauded politely, mostly out of pity, I thought.

Afterwards, as we piled onto the street in need of a stiff drink, Liam said, ‘Well, that was a pile of old shit’. The woman in front of us turned round and said, ‘I’m so glad you said that. It really was shit.’

We drowned our sorrows in Soho.

Now That’s What I Call Acting, Dear Boy

Dustin Hoffman is a famous devotee of the ‘The Method’, where an actor tries to get right under the skin of a character to deliver the most authentic performance. The story goes that, on the set of Marathon Man, he stayed up for two nights to shoot the scenes where his character hadn’t slept for 72 hours. When his co-star, Laurence Olivier, saw the state Hoffman was in, he allegedly quipped, “My dear boy, why don’t you just try acting? It’s so much easier.” The tale is the stuff of legends – and probably not entirely true.

However an actor arrives at a performance, some at the top of their game can just turn it on. Take Emma Thompson’s crying scene in Love Actually when the penny drops about the cheating husband.

And then there’s the ghostly father and son scene in my favourite film of the decade, All of Us Strangers. Here’s a link to the scene on Facebook. Best grab the Kleenex first.

All of Us Strangers

Now That’s What I Call Acting, Dear Boy.

All Good Things…

In late 2008 we jumped the good ship Blighty and washed up on a Turkish beach. For our first year, we dropped anchor in Yalikavak, now a flashy resort with a fancy marina for the filthy rich and high prices to match. But back then it was a sleepy hamlet with a laid-back, bohemian vibe. On our very first evening, we wandered through the empty streets looking for somewhere to eat. It was season’s end and most restaurants were closed and shuttered up for the winter. There was a distinct autumnal chill in the air. We hurried towards the harbour, where we spotted the flickering lights of Le Café, looking cosy and inviting, and when we gingerly pushed open the door, we were greeted by the jovial owner, Davendra. We couldn’t have met a more welcoming host – chatty, helpful and engaging. Le Café became a regular haunt.

Here we are in Le Café in warmer days, chewing the cud as the sun set over the bay. What a setting. We couldn’t believe our luck.

We’d planned to stay in paradise for the duration, but just four years in, we had to cut short our great adventure. Now I hear that after 19 years, Le Café has shut up shop too. All good things must come to an end, as they say, just as they did for us. Thank you, Davendra, for the great food, lifts up the hill and crates of wine at wholesale prices. Wishing you and your wonderful family many good days to come.

From Social Outcasts to National Treasures

London is a gloriously haphazard, jumbled up kind of place where the rich and the ragged sometimes co-exist cheek by jowl. The Boltons in West London is an address for the seriously loaded, thought to be the second most expensive street* in the land – you won’t get much change out of £23 million. Famous former residents include Douglas Fairbanks Jnr, Jenny Lind and Madonna – the queen of pop that is, not of Heaven. And yet, close by is an entirely different Boltons, an imposing late-Victorian pub. It’s a building with a chequered, ever so slightly sleazy history. From the mid-fifties until the early nineties it was a gay bar. But then time was called on the boozy cruising and it was flogged off to be reborn as a faux Oirish theme pub as part of the O’Neill’s chain. Finally, it morphed into a trendy, overpriced gastropub called The Bolton. That didn’t last either. Nowadays, the boozer is down on its uppers – boarded up, forlorn and flaking; the only punters at the bar are squatters.

Back in the late seventies when I was a fresh-faced young gay-about-London Town, I sometimes drank in Boltons. It was a smoke-filled and deliciously seedy den of vice frequented by assorted ne’er-do-wells – rent boys, drunks, druggies, pimps, peddlers and petty thieves – a place to keep a tight hold of your wallet, if not your virtue. Not that I ever rented out, peddled or picked pockets, of course. It was just fun to watch the action, like feeding time at the zoo.

Now I hear that the worthy burghers of Kensington and Chelsea – the local council and my former bosses – have granted the building protected status because as Councillor Cem Kemahli said…

“The recognition of this historic pub as a listed site stands not just as a tribute to its architectural importance but also celebrates its role as a cherished hub within the LGBTQ+ community. The preservation of buildings like this one echoes our history and diverse communities in the borough.”

Blimey. It’s not that long ago when the worthy burghers were trying to get all the local gay venues closed down. From social outcasts to national treasures in just 40 years.

*the UK’s most expensive street is Kensington Palace Gardens in the same London borough, not far away from the Boltons.

An Ordinary Hero

Sometimes real heroes are just ordinary people who do extra-ordinary things. One such ordinary hero was Nicholas Winton who, following the 1938 German annexation of the Sudetenland in what was Czechoslovakia, travelled to Prague to help deal with the ensuing refugee crisis that was overwhelming the city. Aided by a small and very brave band of fellow heroes, together they saved 669 – mostly Jewish – children from the Nazis. It was part of the much broader ‘Kindertransport’ programme across Western Europe which, in Britain alone, saved around 10,000 children – once again, mostly Jewish. But it couldn’t last. The rescue missions hit the buffers once war was declared in 1939. Tragically, many of the children who arrived on Britain’s shores were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust.

A quiet and humble soul, Nicholas Winton’s story remained untold for 50 years until in 1988 it was finally picked up by a national newspaper and the That’s Life TV show on the Beeb. And now the heroic tale is the subject of a remarkable film One Life, with Anthony Hopkins brilliantly playing Winton in his dotage and Helena Bonham Carter as his formidable mother in earlier years, who ran the show at the London end.

Along with others, we sat through the film in stunned silence and didn’t rise from our seats until after the final credits had rolled. Winton was later knighted for services to humanity and died in 2015 at the grand old age of 106.

Here’s the trailer followed by original 1988 footage from That’s Life.

For the recreation of the That’s Life scene, the audience in the film was made up of the descendants of ‘Nicky’s children’.

“Save a life, save the World,” Winton says in the film. As we left the cinema, I couldn’t help thinking that despite his amazing story of hope, history just carries on repeating itself over and over again.

Beauty and the Beast

Drama and performance can really help young minds build important life skills like confidence, comradeship, communication, cooperation and commitment – and loads of other vital ‘c’s too. But it takes guts and gumption to strut your stuff on the stage in front of a bunch of strangers. Back in my old school days, our annual theatrical offering usually consisted of a few spotty boys in need of deodorant mumbling a few lines from the Bard they didn’t really understand. Thankfully, things have come a long way since then.

Unlike the could-do-better days of my youth, this year’s Hobart High School’s production of Beauty and the Beast attained A+ in the talent and fun department. So much so, the show received an emotional standing ovation at the end, which I’m sure will linger long after the lights and makeup have faded. We know several members of the young cast – Benny, Eva, Jas and Rory. They were all amazing. And as for our very own budding starlet, Alice, in her directorial debut, is there anything this brilliant young lady can’t do?

Prevention is the Best Medicine

As we strolled into the village for a few Sunday sherries, we happened upon this poster on the high street. It took us by surprise – but in a really good way.

Last week was HIV Testing Week, backed by a national campaign called It Starts With Me and offering free home testing kits for all. We’ve come a long way since testing involved a heart-stopping clinic visit and a nail-biting two-week wait for the result. While AIDS may not be the kiss of death it once was – unless you live in Sub-Sahel Africa, that is – the disease still stalks the bars and bedrooms. We have the real opportunity to rid ourselves of its toxic embrace once and for all. Because, after all, prevention is the best medicine.

All of Us Strangers – Simply Mesmerising

We’d heard amazing things about All of Us Strangers. It’s caused quite a stir among the critics and film award aficionados, so we decided to see what all the fuss was about with a trip to Norwich’s Cinema City. Originally a wealthy merchant’s gaff, it now houses three screens, a bar and a restaurant under a vaulted stone ceiling. Membership gives us free tickets and discounted drinks so, as is our habit, we had a few sherries in the medieval great hall beforehand.

As for the film, well, it’s the most extraordinary piece of cinema I’ve seen in years. Based on the 1987 novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada, it’s a masterpiece and has been lavished with praise and awards since its release. More gongs to come, I’m sure.

So what’s it about? A passionate romance between two loners set to a glorious eighties soundtrack of the Pet Shop Boys, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Alison Moyet? Yes, but it’s so much more than that, so much deeper. The film begins with writer Adam sitting at his desk in his fancy high-rise staring out at the night-time London skyline. What follows is an examination of profound grief where the past is knitted with the present in a hopeful attempt to find forgiveness and resolution. But is this an autobiographical screenplay Adam is struggling to write? Or a series of fantastical dream sequences? Or perhaps it’s a classic ghost story? Go see it and decide for yourself. All I can say is there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. 

Andrew Scott as Adam is mesmerising. And the exquisite Paul Mescal as his sexy squeeze, Harry, hits the bullseye too. Here’s the trailer…

As an aside, Harry reminded me of a sexy squeeze of my own back in the day who introduced me to Kraftwerk’s amazing 1978 album The Man-Machine as we rolled around the floor of a South Kensington mews house. But that’s another story.

Betty Blue Eyes Brings Home the Bacon

For rural shires on the eastern edge of this green and pleasant land, East Anglia is rather blessed when it comes to live theatre. It seems everyone’s at it, from the have-a-go luvvies in drafty old village halls to well-seasoned thesps treading the boards at the rather magnificent Theatre Royal, Norwich. Unsurprisingly, it’s a mixed bag of riches – some good, some less so but all worth a few shillings. Always worth a punt are the song and dance showstoppers from the Norwich and Norfolk Operatic Society. And their latest, Betty Blue Eyes, was no exception.

Adapted from the 1984 film A Private Function, from the genius pen of Alan Bennett, Betty Blue Eyes is set in a small Yorkshire town just after the War, with food rationing still on the menu, resulting in unpalatable Soviet-style food queues and meagre plates. But to celebrate the 1947 royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth to Prince Phillip, the local bigwigs decide to throw a banquet fit for a queen with a main course of illegally reared, unlicensed pork. They call the pig ‘Betty’ in honour of the soon-to-be-wed princess. Of course, the feast is strictly for the top drawer with their overbearing sense of entitlement. The hoi polloi have to make do with Spam.

Quirky, eccentric, heart-warming and thoroughly British, the show was a funny, foot-tapping tale of small town, small minds and smug middle-class snobbery; the kind of ‘one rule for us, another rule for them’ mentality exposed by the recent Partygate scandal.

Richard Jarmy Photography – @richardjarmy
Richard Jarmy Photography – @richardjarmy
Richard Jarmy Photography – @richardjarmy
AJ Feather Photography
Richard Jarmy Photography – @richardjarmy

The cast was excellent, particularly those from our own small community hereabouts – you know who you are. For me, the stand out performances came from Will Mugford, the hen-pecked anti-hero Gilbert who saves the day, Joseph Betts as Henry, who develops a rather unconventional relationship with Betty (or perhaps not so unconventional given we’re in Norfolk) and Alex Green, the light-footed, campish Food Inspector in Gestapo leathers trying to catch out the rule-breakers.

No actual pigs were harmed in the performance.

Here they are in rehearsals…

Footnote:

According to Wikipedia , during the filming of A Private Function, Maggie Smith was hemmed in by an angry pig and had to vault over the back of it to escape. Dame Maggie then went on to win a Best Actress BAFTA for her trouble. She’s a real trouper.

The Good Old Days

We’ve all heard the tedious line about how the good old days were so much better. It’s said by those who yearn for a bygone era of stiff upper lips, Sunday church and honour on the cricket field, a time when the buttoned-up knew their place and respected their betters. Of course, the reality for many was very different – backstreet abortions, cold water slums, consumption and rickets. And let’s not forget; the love that dares not speak its name could get you banged up. Oh, the smug joy of seeing the past through rose-tinted glasses. Sounds like a nasty dose of false memory syndrome to me.

But then I saw this on Faceache and started to wonder if maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.

If this is genuine, it must be from an American rag. New-fangled miracle machines like dishwashers were but a pipe dream in post-war, bombed-out Britain. But I am drawn to the notion of a doting homemaker who never complains and whose only function in life is to service my every need. If only I could get Liam to ‘fix his makeup’ and ‘put a ribbon in his hair’ just before I get home after a hard day at the office. And ‘be a little gay’ to give me a well-earned lift.

Fat chance. I should have slipped ‘obey’ into our marriage vows. He calls me his ‘little gay’.