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How did it all start?

For as long as I can remember I have silently, and fairly compulsively, articulated thoughts, ideas and stories in my head. Words would come and go as I chose the ones I wanted and shaped them mentally.

I suppose I’ve always been a writer. That’s certainly what my Dad said when, aged 11,  I won a children’s TV writing competition (Associated Rediffusion – Peter Ling and Hazel Adair who went on to write Coronation Street etc). It was what my tutor at Teacher Training College said too.

In the event it was decades before I took myself seriously although, as a teacher, I always wrote reports, policy documents and letters to parents which colleagues seemed to admire. Then came Open University essays which I really liked doing and seemed to be pretty good at.

In the end I bowed to the inevitable and started sending articles off to newspapers. A year or two later I became a professional writer and went part-time as a teacher. I finally became a full-time pro and stopped teaching altogether in 2004. In the last 30 years I have – and it amazes me too – published more than 5,000 articles and over 50 books.

I play with sentences and ideas when I’m walking, gardening, cooking or pretending to watch television. Many’s the time I’ve been fidgety and restless in the night and my husband Nick has said “Why don’t you go and type up whatever it is you’re ‘writing’ and then perhaps you might be able to get to sleep?”

So when my poor Nick, who had been displaying some rather worrying symptoms, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in April 2016,   the words started to tumble about in my anxious head. I think it’s my strategy for facing up to the truth. For me, writing is the antithesis of denial. It’s a way ordering my thoughts.

I was initially so pole-axed by the word “Alzheimer’s” at that consultation that I was literally almost unable to stand upright when we staggered out of the building. It was Nick who had to support and steer me into the coffee shop over the road. I think I comprehended the appalling implications faster then he did. All he could think about, at that moment, was having been ordered to surrender his driving licence.

But within a day or two it was all shaping itself into a piece of writing in my mind. So I asked him if I could write about his illness fully expecting a horrified no because he was a quiet, private sort of man. To my amazement his eyes lit up and he said: “Yes. Go on. Why not? You’ll do it well and perhaps going public will help others.”

So I did. In the first instance I wrote a one-off piece for The Daily Telegraph although it was a while before it was published: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/relationships/husbands-alzheimers-diagnosis-has-agony-wont-let-become-dirty/  Then I wrote an angry, personal piece about how it feels when your marriage is invaded by a hideous befanged monster whom I named “Ms Alzheimer’s”. I published the latter on my website – the first of a series of weekly blogs which I wrote for the next 28 months until after Nick’s funeral in September 2019.

And that’s how my forthcoming book: The Alzheimer’s Diaries: a love story was born. It’s an edited compilation of those blogs. Unbound Publishing snapped it up as a project and we’re now crowd-funding the publishing costs. Here are the details: https://unbound.com/books/alzheimers-diaries/

 

And the story of how and why this project has evolved and developed  will be continued in future blogs.

 

 

Twelfth Night, available to stream via Zoom until 14 June 2020.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

Adam Nichols’ bijou take on Shakespeare’s most silvery, summery, musical play is quirky and fun. We’re on a cruise liner, the SS Illyria, captained by Orsino. At the beginning it picks up the survivors of SS Elysium on which Sebastian and Viola are employed as vaudeville dancers.

And this is very firmly the hedonistic 1920s with lots of jazzy music (MD: Tom Cagnoni) played and sung by a talented actor-muso cast.

Given that there’s a 10 minute, jokily inclusive modern English introduction and occasional explanatory comments plus music we don’t get more than about 45 minutes of Shakespeare’s text so this could be a good starting point for children.

Anna Franklin gives us a deliciously blousy, all drinking all laughing Lady Toby Belch with scarlet lipstick and an abundance of curly hair. It’s a refreshing take on a familiar character.

Faith Turner’s Malvolia is slimy and sneering. Her vowel sounds are immaculately twisted and her consonants clipped to absurdity. Her yellow stockings scene (not cross gartered) is a delight and she’s an expressive singer.

It’s a nice touch to have Orsino (Will Forrester) playing his own “food of love” music on piano in his cabin and he develops the new passion for Viola (Flora Squires) effectively.

Squires is unusually convincing as Viola, with her little stick-on moustache and asides to camera. She too sings with passion and charisma.

So how does it all work live on Zoom? Well it’s quite an undertaking because this is also an interactive show with the audience asked to bring something to bang (for the drinking scene), to have something yellow to brandish in when Malvolia is misguidedly strutting her stuff and various other participation moments.

It means that Will Pattle, as Fabian and a quasi narrator, has to do technology trouble shooting as he goes along to keep everyone on board. Once the play moves into Shakespeare’s text it flows pretty smoothly with characters mostly in separate frames. The gulling scene works particularly well with the onlookers peering through portholes each in a separate frame.

The upbeat music between scenes is fun, effective and remarkably well synched. And it involves almost everyone. Hannah Francis-Baker as Feste is a talented singer and saxophonist and David Widdowson (Antonio) leads most numbers from piano, for example.

OVO theatre company’s show is an original concept and an entertaining 70 minutes but I would have preferred to see it live in a theatre – of course.

(First published by Musical Theatre Review)

An evening of performance: Both Feet LIVE
Theatre meets ZOOM: Live performances by the Both Feet community
society/company: Both Feet – Actor Training 
performance date: 28 Jun 2020
venue: Online – via Zoom
 

Both Feet is a training organisation which works with seasoned professionals wanting CPD and actors at the beginning of their careers so there’s a range of ages. The emphasis is on the work of Sanford Meisner, Recently, of course, their teaching has had to be online rather than face to face and this show was effectively a showcase on Zoom.

With Stephanie Morgan, co-founder of Both Feet, at the helm the event allowed 108 people to watch nine play extracts and two linking songs. It worked pretty well although, as always, the setting up of the tech at the beginning – ensuring everyone has the right settings and viewing mode – was tedious. Welcome to 2020. As Morgan commented cheerfully: “As actors we’ve learned to adapt, Our world is never going to be the same again. Some elements of ‘this’ will be with us for ever so we have to learn how to work with it and love it rather than fearing it.” And, as she quipped during the ten-minute break, interval drinks are a lot cheaper on Zoom than in the theatre.

I have seen hundreds of drama school showcases and what struck me forcibly about this one was the freshness of the choices of extracts. Sometimes you hear the same weary old bit three times in a week if you’re on the showcase circuit. Here we got much less hackneyed work such as duologues from Yerma, Fatal Light by Chloe Moss and Doris Day by EV Crowe. In each pairing the actors are all in different places – their own homes, mostly. Sometimes one was convinced that that they really were talking to each other across a space but at others it seemed disjointed. Cleverly in two cases the characters were actually speaking to each other via Zoom within the context of their play – I suppose we shall see more of that in plays in the future just as we now see emails in novels.

The highspot of the evening was Paul and Julia (we weren’t given their surnames) in The Caretaker. Choosing Pinter is brave and ambitious (and almost unheard of in a showcase) but it was in fine hands here. Her distressed truculence, subject shifting and random mania was very convincing. He (actor in his own garage?) had a stillness and a nicely nuanced way with monosyllabic questions. His pauses were beautifully paced too and the two actors sparked remarkably well off each other. As we watched them in “gallery view” it was easy to forget that they weren’t actually in the same space.

I once attended and observed a Both Feet class. It is interesting to see what the actors they work with can be helped to achieve.

(First published by Sardines)

The Making of Handel’s Messiah: Andrew Gant

Posted on 

The English oratorio was, it seems, born almost by accident. Handel’s Esther, the first known example of the genre, began life as a masque in a Middlesex mansion in around 1718. It reappeared in London in 1731. These were private performances, staged and in costume. Then, in 1732 – partly because Princess Anne wanted to hear it – a revised and expanded version was presented in concert form with singers drawn from opera but without scenery or action at The King’s Theatre, Haymarket. Oratorio had arrived.

Andrew Gant stresses what he calls “the iterative nature of Handel’s compositional method”. Almost everything including Saul (1738) and, eventually Messiah (1741) was extensively reworked and developed.

Using texts and manuscripts from the Bodleian Library this is a book about context and genesis. Oratorio came into its own because the Protestant establishment forbad opera during Lent but oratorio was acceptable to most although, inevitably, there were those who said that Mr Handel was, effectively, blaspheming sacred narratives by dramatising them profanely in music and song.

Gant is good on Charles Jennens, Handel’s librettist and collaborator. He was an English patron of the arts, philanthropist, wealthy Leicestershire landowner, and passionate high church Anglican. He suffered from what we would now call depression and was a non-juror: someone who refused to swear allegiance to the Hanoverian dynasty because he did not recognise the legitimacy of the execution of Charles I or the overthrow of James II. He was therefore marginalised in public life. Gant observes that Jennens could be catty and finds some entertaining exchanges in the letters between him and Handel. Jennens also sometimes commented on word setting, or even the order of the numbers in the score, and his handwriting is visible in some of Handel’s manuscripts.

Surprisingly, given the range of Messiah examples he cites, Gant doesn’t mention the awkward wording and setting of “All we like sheep”. For years as a child I took “like” as a verb and couldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t.

That’s a tiny gripe though (along with misspelling of “benefited” on page 13). This is an informative, engaging book which never patronises. It’s fascinating and detailed  on Handel’s “borrowings” (from his own work and others) and the ways in which Messiah has been presented and received for over 250 years from 2,765 performers at Crystal Palace in 1859  to spare, authentic performances which gained popularity from mid-twentieth century.

Susan Elkin

Bodleian Library, 2020
ISBN 978-1-85124-506-2
RRP £15.00 $25.00
www.bodleianshop.co.uk

First published by Lark Reviews

I was thirteen when I finally persuaded my mother that I was old enough to have a pair of grown up stockings for the weekends rather than the childish socks I had to wear to school.

So she took me to her mother’s ladies’ wear shop to get kitted out. Now: my maternal grandmother, whom we all called Gladys, was a qualified “corsetiere” (yes, really – it meant she went to people’s houses to measure rotund ladies for made-to-measure bras and corsets) as well as running her little shop. On this occasion the stockings were the easy bit. “30 denier would be best. Here they are. Wash them through before you wear them.” They had seams, would you believe?

The difficult part was how was I going to hold them up? Mother: “Well, she needs something to hold that paunch in”. Gladys: “Oh yes, it will have to be a roll-on.” Gosh this was a long time ago. For younger readers, a roll-on was a tight fitting elastic tube with suspenders attached to the bottom. You rolled it up your legs and over your abdomen and then put knickers over the top. It was meant to make you look slimmer.

I thought little of it at the time. If that’s what they thought I needed then fine. All I was interested in was having nice smooth, stockinged legs as I’d seen in Woman magazine which my Mother had delivered every week.

I vaguely knew that other girls had flimsy things called “suspender belts” but I have never owned one – then or since –  because of my “paunch”. In time I graduated to panty-girdles – heavy duty knicker substitutes which clung tightly round the tum and had suspenders at the lower edge. As time went on and women turned to tights,  panty-girdles started to come with detachable suspenders. Eventually the suspenders disappeared.

By then I was grown up and buying my own underwear. Totally conditioned to the idea that, come what may, I had to have “control” knickers for fat people I went on buying them. Even when I was pregnant in the 1970s, I found some maternity ones in Mothercare.

Today there is a lot of “shapewear” on sale but my knickers were more old fashioned and less glamorous than that. You can still find them tucked away in a corner of M&S in the far reaches of the lingerie department usually on the first floor. They now cost around £18.00 per pair and the quality is not what it used to be. The 21st century ones wear out quite quickly. And I’ve worn them for my entire adult life, so trust me. I know.

But now something has changed. I have a very minor health issue – more of an irritant, really. Could this, I’ve recently wondered, just possibly be something to do with tightly encasing what Mother would have called my “nether regions” in constricting nylon for 60 years?

So, feeling ludicrously daring, a week or two ago I took courage in both hands and bought some plain cotton briefs, a famous brand whose quality is OK.  I understand this is the sort of thing normal people wear.

I am so ridiculously excited that I’m hard put to resist whipping them out and showing them to people. My lovely new knickers are liberatingly comfortable and wash nicely. I don’t think they’ll go wearily grey after a few washes as the others do either. And does my “paunch” protrude any more than in the tight ones? No. It doesn’t.  Sorry, Gladys (died 1977). Sorry, Mother (died 2001). It was all a myth. Ordinary knickers look absolutely fine under my trousers and skirts. Moreover they cost less than £5.00 a pair. I wonder how many hundreds of pounds I’ve spent on pricey constrictors in the last six decades? It just never occurred to me to do otherwise.

And the moral of this story? Be careful what you say to thirteen year olds. The effects of getting it wrong can be a bit pants.

 

 

Philharmonia Orchestra

Posted on 
Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury
Sunday 8 March 2020

Young British conductor, Alpesh Chauhan, was new to me but I’m sure I shall see a lot more of him before long. He has the Philharmonia totally under his baton with which – against the current fashion –  he beats time clearly. He also has a very expressive left hand, each finger on which seems to communicate its own message. And I expect, in time, he’ll learn to smile. He certainly had plenty to feel proud of in this all Russian concert.

We began with Tchaikovsky’s The Tempest – an early piece which doesn’t get performed as often as it deserves to. There are some terrific brass passages and lots of intense hard work for strings and piccolo. It sounded pretty good in this performance with a strong sense of story telling.

Shostakovich’s second piano concerto is much more familiar and  Valentina Lisitsa made it sound fresh and exciting especially in the frenetic first movement in which she delivered almost every one of her thousands of high speed fortissimo notes. I enjoyed her quiet smile at the recapitulation too. She’s an unshowy performer, and here she was accompanied by some fine, incisive orchestral playing complete with crisp col legno bowing, vibrant pizzicato and snare drum. The contrast as we moved into the warmth of the lyrical andante was delightful.

Pictures at an Exhibition is always a showstopper. The sheer colour and verve of Ravel’s orchestration sells itself. This was a  pleasingly energetic but well controlled performance, particularly in the arresting glissandi moments, perfectly punctuated by the percussion section’s whip. There was also some lovely solo work from wind and brass. When we finally reached the Great Gate of Kiev the tubular bell moved me, as it always does. And if the intonation was fractionally wonky in places and the timing was awry once or twice then it simply didn’t matter. The grandiloquence of the piece carried the day and ensured the audience left feeling uplifted.

One gripe though: Why doesn’t the Philharmonia list the names of its players in the programme – perhaps on a slip for each concert? I would like to cite some of the players for especially strong solo work but I can’t because I don’t know who is who.

First published by Lark Reviews: http://larkreviews.co.uk/?p=5948

Waiting for the Ship to Sail
An artistic response to the urgent and pressing questions of global migration, and investigates the concepts of national and personal identity.
 
performance date: 16 Mar 2020
venue: Chickenshed Theatre, Chase Side, Southgate, London N14 4PE
 

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The poignant, powerful ensemble piece looks at immigration from the point of view of the migrants themselves. It features 200 Chickenshed members, students, staff and alumni most of whom are on stage most of the time – telling stories through words, dance, song and theatricality.

We start with a long pre-show prologue as we find our seats during which we hear a register of immigrants who have died – drowned, lost, suicide, police brutality and more. We listen in silent horror while cast members act out some of the tensions in slow motion.

Thereafter we’re led to consider what we mean by home, the importance of family, the horror of the overcrowded boats, the ruthlessness of the people smugglers and the treatment of immigrants on arrival. There is a marvellous moment when MD Dave Carey, who composed the music for this show, is wheeled centre stage, still playing the white piano on a mobile platform which then becomes a refugee boat. And a word of praise for Andrew Caddies’s lighting because it’s warmly atmospheric against the backdrop of Sebastian Gonzalez’s set which includes scaffold, stairs and three levels for cast to stand on against the back wall.

Inclusivity is central to everything Chickenshed does and stands for and the whole concept of this show is to draw attention to the plight of migrants. It contends that they should be inclusively welcomed because we all descend from migrants which has what has made Britain what it is today – the piece ends movingly with various cast members speaking of fathers, grandfathers and great grandfathers who came from overseas and who became integrated, working in a wide variety of fields.

There is also agonising sadness – the young man who lost his younger brother’s hand as he climbed into a boat and the mother whose child was no longer in her arms when she woke up, for example.

The vibrant dancing – there are some talented dancers in the company – underpins the message. And I liked the imaginative choreography such as one character climbling up a lifted table held at 45 degrees and then over a block of bent backs to represent obstacles. Also striking is the contribution of Edith WeUtonga who plays various African percussion alongside Carey and sings hauntingly.

It’s a compelling, thought-provoking show and yet another credit to Chickenshed which does an impressively wide range of work these days. Congratulations to director, Lou Stein and the many people who work with him.

Unfortunately this looks likely to be my last review for the forseeable future. Just before I arrived at Chickenshed the news came through that the Government is advising people not to go to theatres because of Covid-19. That means most will close for the duration of the current crisis. I hope to be back when it’s over.
 First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Chickenshed-Waiting%20for%20the%20Ship%20to%20Sail&reviewsID=3900

 

The Tempest
William Shakespeare
 
performance date: 13 Mar 2020
venue: Jermyn Street Theatre, 16b Jermyn Street, London SW1Y 6ST
 

Whitney Kehinde (Ariel), Richard Derrington (Antonio), Peter Bramhill (Sebastian), Lynn Farleigh (Gonzalo) and Jim Findley (Alonso). Photo: Robert Workman

⭐⭐⭐⭐

“My old brain is troubled” says Michael Pennington as Prospero – a loaded line which I don’t think I’ve noticed before. And it’s typical of Pennington to make sure I hear it now: one of our finest ‘Shakespearean’ actors, he paces the verse with smooth, elegant clarity, while, at the same time, making it sound as fresh and conversational as if it were written yesterday. It’s like listening to a virtuoso at the very top of his/her game playing a concerto with enormous expertise and feeling. And of course he sets the tone for everyone else in the company.

It’s a key line too. When we first see Prospero he is angry, cunning and vengeful, conjuring the titular tempest by blowing on a toy boat. A man – shoulders hunched, head bent and given to mood swings – in the early stages of dementia? Kirsty Bushell’s loving, caring, concerned Miranda clearly thinks so. Then of course, her father gets a last burst of lucid, manipulative wisdom before commenting presciently that once he gets home to Milan “Every third thought shall be my grave”. This intelligent take on The Tempest, directed by Tom Littler, is among other things study of old age and peaceful resolution of life’s issues – a very different slant from King Lear.

Bushell has an evocatively expressive face – dirty because she lives on an isolated island and knows nothing of ladylike conventions (nice touch). Her tenderness towards her father and the warmth of her attraction to Ferdinand (Tam Williams) are very touching.

Although this production provides some of the funniest Trinculo (Peter Bramhill) and Stephano (Richard Derrington) scenes I’ve ever seen, Littler and his cast also bring out the ugliness of the ‘colonial’ attitude toward Caliban (Tam Williams, doubling as several cast members do). Almost naked in just a tattered loin cloth and a whole head mask made of dirty, mummy-like bandages this Caliban is covered in weals from abuse. He cowers, weeps and is pitifully undignified. 21st Century audience sympathy is definitely with the ‘monster’ as, appalled, we condemn the actions of Trinculo and Stephano even as we laugh at them. Bramhill, in a flat cap, with northern accent and a delightfully insouciant manner including asides not written by Shakespeare, is particularly entertaining.

Whitney Kehinde is a terrific Ariel dancing around the stage, eyes flashing. Her songs are graced with atonal settings (Max Pappenheim) supported by strange, ethereal echoes beneath them – they sound like the sort of thing Radio 3 broadcasts after 11pm but they work effectively in this context. She is also delightful when she lurks ‘unseen’ among other characters and very human when she pleads for her freedom from Prospero.

I liked Pappenheim’s realistic marine sound track and his storms. And it all sits well on the set by Neil Irish and Anett Black which gives us curved shelves on the back wall, a gauzy stage right curtain and a shallow centre stage hatch. It’s yet another example of what can be achieved in a bijou playing space.

This is a succinct (2 hours 20 minutes with interval) The Tempest which, mercifully, cuts very short the often tedious masque scene in Act 4. The cutting helps to make sure that the story telling is powerful and compelling. It would make a fine introduction to Shakespeare for a first-timer of any age as well as being a thoughtful contribution to the interpretation debate for those of us who’ve been seeing/reading/studying the play for years.

Kirsty Bushell (Miranda) and Tam Williams (Ferdinand). Photo: Robert Workman

First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-West%20End%20&%20Fringe-The%20Tempest&reviewsID=3898