There’s a moment in almost every play I’ve been in, when you’re hidden behind the curtains, or the in the blanket of darkness, listening to the open house. It’s the gentle babble of a brook, soft to your ears until some signal - the lights, a sound cue - that quietens the audience in such a way, that the wave of silence seems louder than anything they have yet produced.
And you’re still waiting in the dark.
And your heart is in your mouth.
You’re not in their world any more. But the curtain hasn’t risen on yours. You just are. Behind that curtain. In the dark. Not you.
It’s the best spot in the world to me; so much so that every time I go to see a play (and almost regardless of what follows) goosebumps will tingle along my arms as the house lights dim. Such a superfluous but telling reaction.
So, what I mean to get to is this: this weekend was brilliant. Scoring preview tickets to the wonderfully farcical thriller Deathtrap (Simon Russell Beale, Jonathan Groff - West End and Broadway royalty respectively), the Schwester visiting from the North (and sweeping us off to cupcake bakeries around London), and Scott Pilgrim (again) and new boots (thanks Sarah!) and theatre theatre theatre. I’ve thought of little else since.
I miss it too much. I’ll be making more of an effort to get there. Starting with SHOW OFF! PIANO BAR (can you sing? Do you like musicals? Bring your sheet music, I’ll see you there) this Friday! Looking forward to seeing some of my favourite #twespians there too.
PS: For the Deathtrap review I didn’t write here, see the wonderfully caustic (but not actually this time) West End Whingers, and lovely Ian of Ought To Be Clowns. If there’s any that I missed, leave them in the comments and I’ll add them
Ahhh. Parii. What a wonderful weekend. I return home a baguette. A romantically-infused baguette, but a baguette nonetheless, slathered in Camembert and topped with the occasional cherry tomato (to ward off scurvy and the like).
The boy and I had a brilliant time wandering around this pretty (and pretty dirty) city last week, lucking out amazingly with our timing, when we flipped through the guidebook during the Chunnel ride and discovered a fair few of the major tourist attractions are free to the masses on the 1st Sunday of every month. I think you’ll agree, major #win-age.
Because freebies included the Louvre, the Musee D’Orsay, the Musee Rodin…
Thus, Tip To Take Away: Always go to Paris over the first Sunday of the month. And if you do decide to go to the Louvre, here’s a further genius tip - first, take a wander around the Pyramid, take a few photos, pretend you’re in the Da Vinci Code, ape The Thinker and then consider actually moving the photoshoot into the museum itself.
At this point, look up. Unless you made it to the museum before 9am (which we did not), note the queue that is now snaking around the first courtyard, through an archway and into a second. For a little Tourist Sport, stand under said arch and take photos of the dropping jaws when tourists realise they are about to get in the queue from hell. Then wave jauntily and head to the Porte des Lions entrance where there will be approximately 3 people and a baggage check before you wander off to join the crush in front of the Mona Lisa. (Thank you Lonely Planet - this tip alone made you worth the £6.99).
Also, if you have the time, and you’re a fellow history geek, you might want to take a trip to Normandy…because there you might meet a man named RC from Texas, who, standing there in his pristine cream cowboy hat, will tell you that this is his second visit to this place. The first being around 66 years ago, when he turned 18 on a beach with shells and mortar and men dropping all around him. You probably won’t be able to stop thinking of this man for a long time. Or how he was part of the US Army branch which liberated Dachau. Or how he went on, after living through so inhuman a time, to have kids and grandkids, of whom he seemed wonderfully proud.
But you will, indeed, catch the train back on into Paris, eat some more cheese, audibly coo along with everyone else sat in front of the la Tour Eiffel at dusk, flounce through the Jardin de Tuleries a la the Cherry Blossom Girl and eventually arrive back at the Gare du Nord happy and gently snoozing into your freshly bought macarons. And that will tide you through another few weeks. Bliss.
pps: All above photography my own. Please ask permission before using, otherwise I will set a team of the world’s smallest monkeys on you, and nobody really wants that.
“What’s the world’s greatest lie?… It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate.”
At approximately 6.27pm this evening, I was staring blankly at my laptop screen certain in the knowledge that my brain had actually melted and was ever-so-slowly dripping into my spinal column. I’d heard nothing but my inner voice replaying the Glee rendition of Don’t Rain on My Parade for the past 30 minutes, and the Fail Whale greeted me maniacally with every page refresh.
A day ending like this leads to a familiar scenario.
It leads to you getting on the tube and reading (another writer’s) words of genius. You then dutifully get off said tube and lethargically try to close down the little whispering work voice, but It’s a bit of a nag, so you slap on (somebody else’s) music of joy for the walk. You get home. You cook something passing for nutrition (”is butter a carb?”), think fleetingly of nice things like, you know, exercise and the cards you’ve been meaning to send for half a year now, before collapsing on the sofa to enjoy (that other dude’s) work of telly art.
Day endings like this do not lead to you working to further your goals. In fact, days like this beget more days like this, until that thing you started, way back when, has its own place in Natural History museum next to exhibit a: your creativity and exhibit b: your personal fulfillment.
Perseverance, as you can see, isn’t here. Perseverance is actually off having a game of Nighttime-Daytime.
Thankfully - I know! - at 6.28pm I got a call that made me stop and squeal. Very loudly. Very publicly, in fact, as my two colleagues can attest. A good friend of mine had just achieved a personal goal…an unbelievable personal goal, and one that had involved literally years of hard work and sticking to guns she probably didn’t even know she had. I’m massively proud…but more than that, also just want to say thank you. Because I needed a jolt like this. I needed a reminder that those manuscripts won’t crawl out of my USB stick and edit themselves. And no matter what my bug bear that prevented my persevering - whether it was a lack of confidence in my own skills, or a lack of ideas or a lack, indeed, of preciousprecious time, there’s always someone there to show you that it is in fact the opposite which is true (thanks Linda, thanks Diana!).
It goes for everything you’re invested in - the career you want to carve for yourself, the house task you always wanted to get around to, the skill you always wanted to perfect, the language you always wanted to speak. Crossing a goal off your personal Life List takes effort. It takes sticking power. And it takes a giant dose of self-belief.
So congrats, Sam, on getting into RADA - I’m unbelievably proud of you right now. And thanks for the kick my arse needed so badly. I’m about to go dust off my scripts and my ideas, in the hope that one day, the words you’ll be speaking on stage will actually be mine.
Happy Sunday everyone. How’s the weather where you are? It’s fairly grim and gloomy in my part of London, meaning I have the perfect reason to hibernate this weekend like I wanted to.
For it has indeed been another of those weeks. You know, where you’re talking and then you stop talking and start listening to the person you’re supposedly having a conversation with…and realise they’re so far away from having understood your point as to be in another county. Country. Planet.
Which is a shame, because the week followed a superb weekend. A weekend so good, I wanted it to continue for another, oo, six days at least. Being muchly northern, there are many southern places I haven’t been to (or not that I can remember - sorry mum), so the boy and I packed up for Brighton on the Saturday, to visit the plage of pebbles, and as my one of my favourite Aussies pointed out, to wave hello to Lydia, and any other Austen characters we may have encountered along the way.
The day went a little something like this:
* Wander down from train station to the Lanes
* Discover delicious cupcakes
* Sit on beach
* Sun, sun, fish and chips, pier, sun, helter skelter, sun
* tea, train, home
And looked a little something like this:
It was, indeed, a gorgeous day. And I can still smell the Piz Buin lotion when I look at the photos. Mmm.
On Welcome to Thebes - a little brutal, a little brilliant
Thanks to another favourite Aussie of mine, I bagged a ticket to the National’s Welcome To Thebes in its preview week last week…and if you get the chance, promise me you’ll go. Okay? Okay.
It’s spellbinding. Moira Buffini has crafted an epic play that, despite its subject matter, isn’t entirely without lighthearted moments. I’m going to sound a little late-night-literary-panel-show here and say, it worked on many levels…the Greek mythology, the modern-day African/multinational war-zone, the more theological and philosophical undercurrents. I’m literally in awe of the construction of the writing. Saying that, there were moments pre-interval and pre-end which I felt the act should have ended on…there was a little too much closure in the final stages.
Of course, being main stage at the National meant an intensely gorgeous set - the brooding sky…amazing. But the women…the women! Don’t get me wrong, David Harewood was immense, Chuk Iwuji absolutely terrifying, but for me, it was all about the female dynamic. Nikki Amuka-Bird as Eurydice, Rakie Ayola as Pargeia, Madeline Appiah as Magaera, Jacqueline Defferary as Talthybia…absolutely blew me away.
I had a longer, descriptive, far more thoughtful review in my Moleskine, but the American is in the kitchen attempting to make pohtayto chips, so I’m on high-alert should the washing basket suddenly catch fire and I have to bail.
2:15…time some Tea, methinks, and a little planning and a little plotting. Enjoy the rest of your Sundays…and happy Father’s Day!
It’s well-known among close acquaintance that I can’t stand contemporary dance. Or contemporary ‘art’, but that’s indeed a diatribe for another day. I’ve always put this down to some latent negative memory of an ill-advised dance class around the age of five (”good toes, naughty toes, good toes, naughty toes…”) but actually, tonight I revised that opinion.
It’s not some pathologically embarrassing memory rearing its Charcotian head in some somatic symptom of hysteria and inability to dance or calmly watch. Nah. It simply bores me.
So had I known that the (free) ticket Luke was so generously proffering me was actually to Michael Clark’s Come, Been and Gone, I might have sputtered a little into my tea, vigorously refused, and headed home to my Studio 60 box set.
When I actually did find out, I should have turned tail and grumbled all the way back to the tube. Instead I manned up, grabbed a tub of Wasabi peas and decided to open my mind a little. Stop being ornery. And what did I see in return for my attempt at over-turning my dislike?
Flicky-leg, flicky-leg, chickenwingchickenwing, awkward-uncle-pelvic-roll…and e-n-t-e-r disco ball…
Pah. Don’t get me wrong, the physicality is a wonderment. Beauteous. I could sit and watch them passe all day. Or I could if that wasn’t an out and out fib.
See, partner dances? Love. Even ballet I sort of understand. It at least has a narrative that doesn’t take a PhD in bull to follow: Princess, princess, unfortunate swan bit, Prince, oo-I-like-you-plie, kiss kiss kick kick done.
Contemporary dance not so much. For a start the soundtrack is always distractingly bad. Not mediocrity that fades into a pleasing background muzak hum while he drags her round a bit, ho no. Because (and my god, this is the clever bit!) it’s making a STATEMENT. Everything is a STATEMENT. Which accounts for the dancer bobbing around in a flesh-coloured onesie with what looks like several plungers attached to her boobs. I was later reliably informed that they were actually syringes. Because (didn’t I know?!) the choreographer had once had a drug problem.
Hol.ee.crap. It’s like Irvine Welsh is dancing in front of my eyes! MY MIND IS BLOWN.
Dear reader, it is not. If it was blown by anything, it was simply following my left cochlea when it gave up the ghost after the tenth consecutive minute of horrific feedback filtering out of the speakers.
So there you have it. Sorry Mr Clark, but I left during the second interval. And yet I leave this blog on a hopeful note: Ornette Coleman’s spare brand of jazz once mystified me. I couldn’t sit through Lonely Woman for more than 30 seconds, that is, until I wrote a review for an American history class, delving into the period of jazz I had neglected in favour of early-incarnation Miles and a lot of Louis Armstrong. The explanation helped though; it lifted away the fug of misunderstanding. The music I hear now is so different to what hit my ears then.
So I challenge contemporary dance lovers to educate me; show me the detail I miss while I’m busy thinking about my dinner and the dancers are curled up in balls on the floor, pulsating to some atonal chords. See if you can change my mind a little.
Such a beautiful, beautiful day! Being pasty pale and prone to burning/itching/hayfever/general sun allergies, I’m much more of a winter kind of girl. That is, until it starts getting light at 6am and dusky around 10…my favourite part of summer is definitely the random camping trips, or beer gardens, or anywhere you’re sitting in shorts and t-shirt with a cold bottle and a good group of friends, chatting away into the deepening night.
But perhaps even more than that, I love the smell of Piz Buin lotion. It always, always carries me back to South Africa; sitting on my wall outside the house, overlooking the lake and Table Mountain. Around 5pm every night, three or four pelicans would glide over the roof and settle on the water, while the golfers teed off the 14th hole. And in the middle of that I would sit, hair whipping around my shoulders, the only place outside the house there was ever relief from the beating sun, watching the Heron and the tiny neon birds flitting and floating. Bliss.
So this evening, you’ll probably find me mainly dreaming of that. And the costumes in the Globe’s sumptuous production of Henry VIII. The moment Anne proceeded out of the coronation…spellbound. Three hours on our feet as groundlings, leaning on the stage - barely felt it. That’s how good it is.
Dubai in…7 days! This week is going to be a manicpanic of the highest order.
So the first time Sean and I had tickets to see White Rabbits I…had never heard of them.
And thanks to a combination of a clashing social occasion, drinks, my bladder and this particular part of Washington DC having a severe lack of bathrooms, I wasn’t going to hear them for some time later.
A good…two years, actually.
So we’ve jumped two years on - ’scuse me a second while I hyperventilate (TWO*gasp*YEARS?*honk*) - and over the atlantic ocean and whaddyaknow, they’re playing again. London this time, supporting Spoon, of all bands.
We never made that gig either.
I think we eschewed it in favour of staying in, fighting flu bugs and doing fascinatingly important things like sleeping and downing OJ like it was an actual job.
Not to worry though, for it was third time lucky and though I’m certain the rhythm drummer pierced my retinas with the sound, never mind my ear drums, it was ALLSOTOTALLYWORTHIT.
Honestly, if you ever get the chance to see this band, don’t even think. DO IT. Especially in any small venue. They’re intense, and amazing, and the kind of band that leaves the stage having turned their shirts an entirely different colour with sweat. They’re a fluid - in many ways. Hur. - and talented bunch, swapping instruments and giving you the feeling that you’re actually in a garage with six best friends just jamming out together and dreaming of grime pits like The Relentless Garage**.
‘Scuse the 1001 Sorkin references…I just finished the West Wing in its entirety and am having massive withdrawals. And even though I watched In The Loop last night and think it far superior to The Thick of It, I’m nowhere near hopping aboard the Armando Iannucci fantrain just yet. It was probably Tom Hollander’s presence that swayed me. He’s a dude.
It’s 6:11 already. It’s Sunday. It’s raining. I’ve been procrastinating, shopping online for beach clothes and espadrilles for the family trip to Dubai. (Desert horse riding with the Schwester…I’m excited).
Yesterday was…what’s the word I’m looking for…delicious. The lovely Megan came round in the afternoon, following a morning of scrubbing and hoovering and generally whipping the place into shape. And followed wine. And followed homemade curry. And followed conversation, and laughter, and general catching up with this lovely person. She has crazy hair. She has a laugh that will reach you five counties away. She’s inquisitive and positive and just fun to be around. She’s not remotely pretentious. I love it.
Well, it’s getting on a little…and I self-promised to be good and do some pilates today. Nothing like a dvd of an ever-smiling ever-toned Texan woman telling you “and PUSH and push and 50lbs of MUD, 50LBS OF MUD” to make you wish you were a guy and not bothered about this elusive ‘beach body’ mystery-thing.
I might warm up with a slice of lemon drizzle cake and a cup of tea. Hmm.
The past few weeks have flown by in such a whirl and flurry of activity, I’ve barely had a minute to rest both feet firmly on the floor. It began with eating healthily, drinking little-to-no coffee, early mornings and faintly early nights. Of course it was closely followed by not eating as healthily in the interest of swapping said masticating time for a little more sleep, trains, campaigns, and a stable blood sugar level for buckets of iced lattes. On the plus side, I’m now certain that toast is a food group. This is true.
The lists were written, the tube was ridden, and the head was down and the work cap on.
The work cap is still firmly on.
But now, happily, comes the cyclical renewal I’ve been waiting for; now comes the time to push ideas and thoughts into movement and actions. I’ve been waiting for that internal impetus. It took its own sweet time. To be fair, if it’s anything like my internal Sense of Direction, it’s probably still consulting Google Maps, so I should be glad it founds its way to the party at all.
So. This weekend shall contain as follows:
- Plain white paper, felt-tip pens, charts, ideas, words, wishes
- A de-cluttering. Of all rooms, literal and otherwise.
- Freshly baked cake (lemon, like Mama Tosney makes) and time with good friends who I don’t see nearly as much as I know we both would like.
- A little party planning. The first peanut of the group is on its way (not, I hasten to add, mine, but one of my best girl friends) and this shall be the baby shower to set the standard by.
- Inspiration boards, podcasts by Stephen Dubner, catching up on the cabinet appointments.
- A fresh, medium Moleskine sketchbook (heaven)
- Dunkin’ French Vanilla coffee. Because it’s the weekend. And I can.
Contented productivity is the name of the game. Hope you all have lovely, stress-free days…Monday may come a little too quickly, but I can at least say I’ll be ready for it.
