That’s disturbing

Let’s talk about bladders and other disturbing stuff! Are you sitting comfortably? Might be best to visit the toilet now, before we begin.

I was struck by the discussion about Bianca Jagger and whether or not she used flash to take photos at the opera. It doesn’t matter whether she’s famous. It’s neither more or less right for the famous to behave badly. And the way people use phone cameras or other digital cameras it’s often hard to tell if the bright light you see is flash, or simply the camera going about its business.

At the recent Joan Baez concert I went to, it said flash photography was not permitted, which I took to mean that photos without were fine, so I got my camera out. But after a while I felt the light visible when I used it was not acceptable to people sitting opposite me, so I put it away, and only got it out again at the end when absolutely everyone was taking pictures, with flash and everything.

Daughter has been known to agonise over the legality of taking pictures at concerts. It often says you mustn’t. But people still do. I don’t feel there should be any ‘rights’ to images of someone singing on a stage. (Different for theatre productions.) What I do feel is that people shouldn’t disturb others.

The Guardian’s theatre critic Lyn Gardner reckons ‘people’s bladders have quite clearly got weaker over the last 20 years,’ and I know what she means, but suspect the answer is that they haven’t. What has changed is people’s habit of drinking indiscriminately at all times, regardless of what they are about to do, like go to the theatre. And also that they have got neither the instinct to try and ‘hold it in’ nor the inclination not to keep leaving their seats from – usually – the middle of the row.

If I have to ‘go out’ mid performance I tend to wait for a suitable moment both for leaving and for returning. I was a bit disconcerted at the National Theatre to find that the usher hovered anxiously outside the Ladies until I emerged again, and checked I was all right. Very caring and sensible, but I’m glad I didn’t know until then.

Went to the MEN arena for an S Club concert many years ago. Was startled by how the audience kept popping out for food and drink in the middle of the show. I suppose it’s the sports arena mentality, coupled with the sheer noise level at these events.

The understanding of what disturbs others varies from country to country. During Roger Whittaker’s concert in Cologne I waited for a song to finish before returning to my seat, only to have the usher urging me to just go in. She clearly thought I was stark raving mad for thinking of others.

And speaking of Roger; I once sat next to a woman, who was happily singing along to every single song. Having exchanged pleasantries on arrival, I felt it would be rude to complain, even though she was ruining ‘my’ concert. I thought if I asked her to shut up, I would ruin her evening instead. I gritted my teeth, almost cheered when Roger got to a song she didn’t know, and after the interval I asked the Resident IT Consultant to swap seats with me.

It is not always the audience who has mishaps, either. I recall the tiny St Paul’s chorister who was sick on stage and had to be bundled out by an older ‘boy.’

To get back to the bladders, it all depends on how long you have to sit through something. Films are frequently dreadfully long these days, with the added pain of too many commercials and too many trailers. With no interval necessary as cinema equipment improves, we simply have to pop out mid-film. And seeing as they want us to buy buckets of fizzy drinks, how can they possibly mind the running in and out? Nor is popcorn terribly silent to eat, and not odour free, either.

At least films don’t talk back to the audience when they rustle their sweet wrappers a little too loudly. Perhaps they should.

That was no French dream, however

Before the lovely Wonderful Town we were allowing ourselves a family treat by having dinner in Salford Quays. At least, that was the idea. With Daughter feeling uncharacteristically adventurous we went to Café Rouge, rather than for the usual pizza or to Lime, where we went last time.

An hour after arriving I had to ask if the main course was likely to come any time soon, because we actually had to be at the theatre (2 minutes across the square) fairly promptly. Waitress looked blank and said it would be ‘maximum ten minutes.’ I didn’t dare ask what kind of ten minutes. Was it from the time of ordering, or after the starter or from when she said it?

It had taken an age to even order in the first place. The starters weren’t impossibly late, but only one of them was right. The other had to be returned and exchanged, which took longer than the original wait. It was pieces of bread, with butter. The white bread was fine. The sourdough seemed recently, and hurriedly, defrosted. The rye was stale. Generous portion, but if I want stale bread I’ll age it myself at home. Far cheaper.

Two of the three mains (day specials, which I optimistically had imagined to be quicker than average) arrived ten minutes after the waitress’s statement. Daughter’s came without its mayonnaise, but I thought I could ask for it when my meal arrived. I did, except it took longer than even I expected, meaning two out of three of us still couldn’t begin eating.

With barely fifteen minutes left, my soufflé turned up and I proceeded to eat as fast as I could. To be fair, there was sufficiently little on my plate to delay me much. I gobbled, and dashed. (The theatre’s press tickets had to be picked up by me. I left our purchased – student’s – ticket with the Resident IT Consultant who had to remain at Café Rogue in order to pay.) Daughter followed me within minutes, too distressed to be able to finish her meal.

It seems that with only one guest remaining, the waitress realised we weren’t totally satisfied. The restaurant is an obvious place to go before a show. We can’t have been the only guests there hoping to make it to the Lowry by half past seven.

Without the bread, I’d have been hungry the whole evening. The day specials are minute, considering the price. And I ended up leaving most of my drink, feeling too rushed to finish it.

No real harm was done, obviously. Apart from the large bill for what was a poor meal.  Needless to say, we won’t be returning to Café Rogue. The thing is, we might not return to eat out anywhere else much, either. Money is tight for many, and infrequent meals out need to be at least a little successful. Being able to hold a conversation would have been a bonus. The music was well past any acceptable volume, as witnessed by the couple who exited along with me. The man exclaimed with pure happiness at having escaped the noise.

We should have gone to Pizza Express. It’s not exciting (nor was this…) but you know what you get.

The American Dream

Isn’t it lucky that Sir Mark Elder went to New York? If he hadn’t, we might not have had Leonard Bernstein’s Wonderful Town to enjoy, here at the Lowry in another wonderful town.

I could see his left ear, but for the most part I forgot all about Sir Mark, except when I noticed a pair of arms flapping somewhere in front of me, and wondered about it before remembering this was actually a musical with the whole of the Hallé hiding down in the orchestra pit. (Although Daughter sneaked a look down and said it couldn’t be all of them and she didn’t see Roberto Carrillo-García anywhere.) I love it when the serious players play lighter stuff. They do it so well.

That’s why it was easy to forget they were there. Perfection is unobtrusive. And this was perfection. Speedy Valenti had a nerve instructing Sir Mark and his band from up there on the stage…

What happened on stage was also perfect, but because it happened right in front of me I didn’t miss it. And who would want to miss this? Simon Higlett’s set and costume design must count as one of the most pleasing I have ever seen. Possibly the best ever. New York never looked more New Yorkish, including a natty little elevated train.

And those clothes! The clothes were to die for, and that goes for everyone from leading lady Connie Fisher’s to every last one of the dancers’. It was an interesting – and oh so American – blend of 1930s to 1950s style. The kind we privately aspire to and usually fail to achieve. It was a clever move to have the dancers help Connie and her stage sister Lucy van Gasse dress on stage.

Those dancers are every bit as marvellous as director Braham Murray said they were. Choreographer Andrew Wright even had his dancers conga-ing down the aisles at the Lowry, and as for the Riverdance sequence in jail, well…

Jailors and sailors all fell for Lucy’s beautiful Eileen. Every single male (and I don’t necessarily mean ‘single’) in New York followed Eileen around and having witnessed Michael Xavier try to walk into the ladies toilet at the launch, I know only too well what hit her admirers.

Michael as Bob Baker was a singing Dan Stevens-lookalike. Somewhat dim when it came to what he really, really thought of Connie’s Ruth, but eventually the penny dropped. There isn’t a tremendous amount of plot here. Two sisters arrive in New York, looking for jobs and maybe fame and fortune. They meet people. At least, Eileen meets people. Men. They make friends. Ruth gets her Bob – and a press card – and Eileen gets a job with Valenti.

The finale with the sisters wearing the most gorgeous glittery dresses and happy endings for both major and minor characters is perfect.

We need a CD. Possibly even a DVD. (Are you listening at the Lowry, the Royal Exchange Theatre and the Hallé?)

Wonderful Mancunians who haven’t yet booked need to do so urgently. People in other wonderful towns must see to their ticket needs for the wonderful tour of Wonderful Town. Who knows when we get to see anything like it again?

I want to go again tomorrow, and maybe next week, too. And if all else fails, I will really need that CD.

It’s 45 candles on the cake for John Barrowman

Happy 45th birthday to John Barrowman!

Hardly surprising John is like he is with such crazily fantastic parents. Good thing they gave up on the idea of throwing him out for being a noisy baby. (Although he is still pretty noisy at 45.)

(Photo Helen Giles)

30 seconds of fame

15 minutes is really hoping for too much. In fact, I wouldn’t want that 15 minutes of fame. My seconds were more than enough.

I was reminded of this embarrassing event when author Lucy Coats told ‘all’ about her recent interview on Blue Peter. In a way it was a relief to hear how much time was spent on what turned out to be so brief. And it’s a lesson that you don’t need to go to too much effort. Just be yourself.

And whatever you do, don’t bother cleaning the house.

For me it was walking home from school with Offspring. Just an ordinary afternoon, with Daughter in the pushchair and Son walking next to me. We saw these weird types outside the local theatre, and I realised I was about to be used for something.

The short one told me they were from the BBC and the news was that the theatre was due for demolition and what did I think of that? I told him. (I was quite fluent and sensible, on the whole.)

Then he said, would I mind repeating that on camera, and I couldn’t very well refuse. Except I was barely able to recall what I said the first time, so sounded pretty incoherent. I went home and put the video recorder on for the local news. I had dinner to make and people to feed.

It was embarrassingly bad. I had no idea I sound like that. I wondered how anyone could possibly put up with me. Two more people were interviewed. My neighbour across the road, and another school-run mother.

Afterwards the local children stared at me, and my friend’s husband told her to ask for my autograph. Luckily for her she didn’t.

The theatre went some months after. In its place is the ‘magnificent’ entrance to the new car park for the public school which owned the building and had been waiting to get rid of it. At least the parents collecting their children by car have somewhere to park.

We no longer have the Roger Whittaker concerts or the pantos or any of the other entertainment in this former 1930s cinema.

Tom, George and Ian

Who’d have thought it? The younger witch was occasionally starstruck, but never thought anything would come of it. But times change, witches grow up and move abroad, and even take up blogging. With no more ulterior motive than getting to say what she thinks about almost everything.

I did get to se Roger Moore live, in Cheltenham a few years ago. I suppose that would have been an almost impossible dream back when he Sainted his way into our living room. After all, he was an older man. But he does still look very good. And he has a Swedish wife, so I dare say the connection is there, however vague. But I didn’t meet him, and this isn’t about old Ivanhoe.

His successor comes into this, however. I thought Ian Ogilvy was really handsome when he took over the Saintly business. Again, fairly old (sorry!), and pretty much out of reach. But then there is that facebook thing, and I must have been very bored one day, but I found we had friends in common. Also found he had taken up writing children’s books, so I ended up reading and reviewing one, and exchanging the odd message on fb.

Someone I really fancied back in the olden days was George Layton. Fast forward about thirty years, and the temporary residence at Bookwitch Towers of The New Librarian. She did unpaid work in a local bookshop, and one day she came home and told me there had been this old actor doing a school event, and I almost fainted when I heard it was George Layton. (Pearls before swine, that was.) He was here and I had not met him!

But, George now writes children’s books, too, so within months he was back and came to Offspring’s school and I met him and we talked about Ikea’s pickled herring, and I told him that no, I didn’t personally know all those Swedish actors he mentioned. Nice of him to assume, though.

And he came back some more and I saw him several times and felt very nearly blasé about it.

Later still, and same bookshop still, and I came face to face with Tom Conti. He’s another of those ‘old’ actors I used to drool over on television. I thought it was pretty good when I saw him live in a theatre in London (Whose Life Is It, Anyway), but being three feet away from him sort of beats even that.

He too has written a book. (What is it with actors and all this writing?) Not a children’s one, but I read it anyway. He was here to talk about it, and luckily this time it was the actor’s mobile phone which went off, not one of ours.

So, it’s funny how books and time caused these unreachable stars to come within reach of an ordinary witch. And the thing is, once you have met someone like that, the excitement goes away. You’ve seen that they are normal people. Just more famous, maybe a little wealthier, and still good looking.

A Wonderful Launch

I couldn’t have planned it if I’d tried. There was a certain magic in finding myself in the Ladies at the Lowry yesterday, having Connie Fisher and Lucy van Gasse singing over the washbasins. Wonderful Town co-star Michael Xavier very nearly followed me and Lucy in there, in which case I could easily have been serenaded by three top singers. Let’s just say I took longer over my business than I usually would have.

As it turned out I needn’t have concerned myself over missing the first launch last February, because Connie had been told to keep quiet for a month (she said that was very hard for her), so didn’t sing. So, there we were, for the second launch of Wonderful Town, the joint venture from the Lowry, the Hallé orchestra with Sir Mark Elder and the Royal Exchange Theatre. This event is now happily much closer, opening on 31st March.

The Leonard Bernstein musical was a lucky find of Mark Elder’s, who suggested it to the other participants after seeing it in New York. That was five years ago, and they have worked towards this moment ever since. Simply a minor thing like booking the Hallé involves waiting two years. For director Braham Murray it was ‘hell on earth’ since putting up a musical is like giving birth. He had to whittle 400 wonderful dancers down to 60 in three days. And by some miracle the main attractions all said yes when asked.

That would be Connie Fisher, Lucy van Gasse and Michael Xavier, who were in Salford to sing to the collected press and prospective major ticket buyers. With the help of pianist James Burton they sang four songs from Wonderful Town, starting with Ohio, and then A Little Bit of Love, 100 Ways (to lose a man) and It’s Love. Apparently it all ends happily, and the beautiful girl does not get her man. The other one does.

As well as these fantastic singers, for the first two weeks the lucky audience at the Lowry will get the full Hallé in the orchestra pit. All 65 of them, and Mark Elder conducting. For the 11 week tour round the country – and the third, recently added, week at the Lowry – there will be an orchestra of 17 with James Burton. (I had been worrying considerably about how the Hallé could possibly take several months to tour, and now I know they can’t. So, for the full works, the Lowry it will have to be.)

After more information on producing Wonderful Town, there was a Q&A session with the three stars. The press was a disgrace, not coming up with any questions at all, whereas the normal audience did just fine. There might be a CD. (Let’s hope there is.) The rehearsals take six weeks, in three different rooms; one for the dancing, one for the acting and one for the singing. For Thursday’s performance the singers had a total of one day to learn songs and lines.

As a reward for their wonderful questions the audience were served afternoon tea, although I gather they were to be held to ransom until they booked tickets from the mobile box office at the back. The press went along to another room for interviews and afternoon tea. The Lowry put on a great spread for us, and once I’d sorted my Earl Grey with coffee (easy mistake to make…) to be Earl Grey without coffee, all was fine. The coffee cake was wonderful, and I chatted up a former almost-neighbour, who was the lucky man getting Connie’s attention in 100 Ways.

The handsome Michael Xavier might be from Knutsford, and he might be your typical romantic lead, but the two ladies were by far the most beautifully dressed. In fact, I did wonder if they talked colour coordination before getting ready that morning? I suppose it’s the sort of thing I should have asked while we were all in the Ladies…

We Are Three Sisters

The winds on Haworth Moor are fierce. They carried all the way to the Quays theatre last night for the new play about the Brontë sisters, by Blake Morrison. Or possibly about Chekhov’s fictional sisters.

Blake has blended the two sister groups so that you can’t tell where one ends or the other begins. You don’t need to know anything about either the Brontës or Chekhov’s play, but if you do, you’ll notice all the details he has stuck in places throughout.

There was a little publicised post show talk in the Quay stalls, where actor and director Barrie Rutter told us about some of the background, before he was joined by all three sisters plus brother Branwell, their father and the curate for some personal thoughts on the Brontës and Haworth and the play.

Last night was their first time on a traditional stage. Previously they have performed the play in a different shape, and in two weeks’ time they will switch to yet another. It takes them at least one night to get used to a new way of doing it.

Blake’s long-standing fascination with the sisters shows, although he has also used artistic license and it’s not all true. The curate for instance, is an invention, and the doctor and the teacher are straight out of Chekhov.

We met the sisters at home in the parsonage. It was Anne’s birthday, and their home was invaded by both the doctor, who was in love with her, and the teacher, who was busy handing out copies of a little book he had written. The new curate arrived and started sweet-talking the ladies. And there really was a Mrs Robinson. She was Branwell’s love interest, and she wore green, and she behaved rather shockingly for Haworth, which turned out not to be like Harrogate in the end.

The servant Tabby wavered from the role of almost mother to the children, to that of someone who was afraid she wouldn’t be allowed to stay. I was struck by the mention of the black spots on the potatoes, which is something I’ve always remembered from Mrs Gaskell’s biography of Charlotte.

Emily, Charlotte and Anne talked endlessly about their dreams for themselves and their writing. Charlotte and Anne went off to London, while Emily stayed at home, angry about all the attention. She didn’t want to write another book and she didn’t want to be discovered.

But for all their differences, they were together at the end, only days before Branwell’s death, which was so soon followed by the others’. But they said, ‘there’ll be our books, and in the end we will be remembered.’

Yes, ladies, you are. And according to Barrie Rutter your lives were not as ‘bloody gloomy’ as Mrs Gaskell made out.

(On at the Lowry for the rest of the week. And I would have loved to have given an unwanted Victorian ornament for them to break. Just didn’t have one spare. They emailed round to ask for ornaments to break, needing one per performance.)

Goodnight Mister Tom

It’s funny how much you can cry at the theatre, even when you know the story well and thus could be better prepared for the sad parts. And it’s not funny at all, when you think of how sad it is and that people have died. In the end it wasn’t the dead people who did for me. It was the word Dad at the very end. So, a hankie would not have been a bad thing to have come equipped with. I didn’t.

This production only had time to fit in the bare bones of Michelle Magorian’s novel. But that’s fine. It was all there in spirit, including the best puppet dog I’ve ever seen. Sammy must count as a first cousin to Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse horse puppets, and he truly helped with William’s transition into Tom Oakley’s home.

‘The Sad Man’ – which is how I always think of Oliver Ford Davies – came into his own as Mister Tom. So much more right for the part than John Thaw was in the film. He had an impressively worthy William in Toby Prynne, who was both small and powerful at the same time.

The villagers milled about as villagers do, but in such a way that you could believe in the friendship with the small and frightened evacuee. Clever use of one actress both as the kind teacher and as William’s mother, bringing their differences into the open. The simple set worked well, adding enough period feel without going over the top.

WWII is popular. The audience at the Lowry on Tuesday evening was mainly ‘old’, although not necessarily old enough to have lived through the war, and with plenty of junior school pupils, presumably doing WWII in history. I bet Michelle Magorian never expected to have her children’s novel put to use as a school book.

Goodnight Mister Tom is a lovely, heartwarming dramatisation of a wonderful book. It might not be the greatest play in the world, but it’s very enjoyable – apart from the sad bits – and I would guess we all went home happy, albeit in tears.

The Guardian’s Lyn Gardner found it too risk free last week. Whatever that means. But it’s a novel first and foremost, and it can’t work in the same way that a play written exclusively for the stage would. There’s a difference.

This was good.

(The William in the photo is not my William.)

In the lap of luxury

There wasn’t much money to go round in my childhood, but Mother-of-witch made sure we got out and did things occasionally. One way of stretching the budget was for me to sit on her lap when we bought tickets for a show. I hated it, but not as much as I’d have hated not going. And these days I don’t think most places allow children to share a seat.

But boyfriends of the besotted type are good. My best friend’s single mother had one in particular, who has stayed in my mind. I never knew his name and I can’t say I recall his face. But he knew how to win over a woman, so when he bought tickets to see a show, he bought one for the daughter to come along, and another for the daughter’s friend, i.e. me.

So there we were, in Folkets Park in Halmstad in the early 1960s. It was Gunnar Wiklund ‘on the menu’, along with one or two others who have since paled into insignificance in my memory. Gunnar Wiklund was the easy listening singing star of the day, with a voice like Jim Reeves, only better. Handsome. Wonderful. I was going to marry him.

Yes.

Anyway, there we were. We must have arrived fairly early and sat in the front row on four seats. Four seats! Then comes what I can only describe as a typical Halmstad old biddy, addressing the boyfriend, exclaiming indignantly that ‘these two little girls shouldn’t take up seats before their elders and betters’. ‘Yes, they should. Actually.’ Said the boyfriend firmly. Biddy sloped off. Indignantly.

Now, I had never come across anyone who not only paid for a seat for me, but stood up for me in public like that. I think he was the same one who gave my friend five times as much pocket money as her mother could afford to give her. And I don’t think it got him anywhere, but it got me to the front row at Folkets Park.