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The Lottie Project
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Jacqueline Wilson
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society/company: Lindley Players Limited
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performance date: 20 Jul 2019
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venue: The Playhouse Theatre, Whitstable
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 Vicky Ireland’s adaptation of Jacqueline Wilson’s pertinently observed novel tells the story of feisty, forthright Charlie. It’s a neat paralleling of her own life – only child of a young single mother who’s just lost her job – and the experiences of Lottie, a Victorian servant girl and the subject of Charlie’s primary school project. I first saw, and admired, this show at Polka Theatre where it premiered in 1999 and it’s a treat to see a revival in competent amateur hands and featuring twelve children.
Sophia Lahouel, in her first show with the Lindley Players is excellent as Charley (and Lottie who appears, with a different, servant-esque accent on video between scenes). She takes a few minutes to warm up but then really makes the part her own – from primary school enthusiasm, feigned cynicism, spite, remorse and curiosity to fearful fury when she suspects her mother may be acquiring a boyfriend. She creates s a very rounded character and Lahouel works particularly well with Kate Gee who plays Jo, her mum and makes her very believable. Oli Conway, also making his Lindley Players debut, is suitably “nerdy, grotty and swotty” (but likeable) as Jamie, and there’s a nice performance from Emily Mumford as the younger, motherless boy Robin. The structure of the piece allows some crowd scenes – including a couple of nicely directed (David Daly) classroom sequences and those are never easy to bring off plausibly. It also provides lots of small roles for adults as Charlie’s grandparents, Jamie’s mum, Robin’s dad and more. In a cost-aware professional production many of these would be doubled and it’s quite a treat to see each one separately cast and providing opportunities for lots of actors. I especially liked Lindley Players veteran, Peter Bressington as Charlie’s rather distant, idée fixe grandfather and Theresa Rowlstone as the optimistic, professional hospital doctor. The acoustic of the Whitstable Playhouse, combined with the timbre of young voices, means that there is an occasional audibility problem. In a professional show the children would almost certainly have been mic’d up and considering they aren’t they do very well – plenty of naturalistic acting and no sense of anyone shouting. There’s a minor problem with Ken Pratt’s video production of Lahouel as Lottie too because the sound is not quite synced. Both these, though, are very minor matters in what is, a very pleasing show. I just wish more of those DFLs (as the locals call them – Down From Londons) with whom Whitstable was heaving when I arrived at the theatre, had brought their children in to see it. This show deserves a full house. |
| First published by Sardineshttp://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Lindley%20Players |
He’s coming home. Eventually.
The plan is to discharge My Loved One to me now that he’s “stable” and we have, according to the consultant, to “accept this as the new baseline”. More on NHS-speak in a minute.
He will sleep downstairs and be serviced by a pair of carers four times a day. They will attend to his “personal care” (thank goodness – less shit for me to deal with. Literally) and hoist him, using a bulky piece of kit which will live with us, into his wheelchair for part of the day. Then I/we shall be able to wheel him round the ground floor to the TV in the sitting room, the dining room to sit at table and maybe into the garden. It’s not much in terms of life quality but perhaps a little better than lying in a hospital ward. And definitely better than any care home.
The $64,000 question – and I do so hope that’s not literal too – is who is going to pay for the very high levels of home care he needs? Arguably this should come under the NHS-funded Continuing Health Care (CHC) scheme which is based on medical need. That, however, for obvious reasons. is very hard to get and something of a post code lottery. At present forms are being filled in and signed by all the professionals at the hospital ready to be sent to Lewisham Health and Social Care. LHSC will, if they are prepared to consider the case, and even that’s not certain, then set up an assessment procedure of their own before finally making a decision. Then they have to find an agency with the capacity to provide the right level of care. If we “pass” as it were, then it will be fully funded but – well, there are lots of “buts.”
And none of that is going to happen in five minutes, is it? Moreover, although no one has said so, I reckon it’s also all bound to take longer at this time of year because key people will be away and offices will be working with reduced staffing. I have no idea what happens next if the application is unsuccessful because the equivalent of eight carer visits today is going to cost a fortune if I have to pay for it, especially as, either way, I shall have to supplement it with the carer/man-sitters I had before to cover the time I’m out working.
Meanwhile MLO lies, tranquilly and reasonably comfortably, in his hospital ward where staff now greet me like an old friend. They’ve taken to reading these blogs and some of my other stuff. It begins to feel like an extension of family. I shall almost miss it, and them, when he comes home.
I continue to marvel at the professional competence and human, humane kindness of every single NHS employee I’ve met at Lewisham Hospital. I just wish Jacob Rees-Mogg could spare half a day to sort out the NHS style guide because it seems to have developed a laughably impenetrable, otiose sociolect.
MLO has to be graded in twelve “domains” in relation to the CHC application. “What?” I said, amazed, to the discharge co-ordinator and I hope it didn’t sound rude. What they mean, I eventually realised, is that they have to report on things such as mobility, cognition, speech and feeding. There are twelve of these. Now, I haven’t told anyone at the hospital that I taught English for 36 years, have written dozens of English text books and have worked with words all my life. “Domain” comes, of course, from the Latin word domus, house (hence domestic, domiciliary) These days it also means a virtual space which houses your website but how can it possibly mean a medical assessment category? Shade of Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty who opined that words mean what you want them to mean? What’s wrong with a word such as “area”, or “section”? Why not say that patients are assessed under twelve headings …?
If he gets enough marks (and yes, that’s how it works – on a numerical points system) the application might “trigger”. By then I was trying not to say “what?” too often. It means that LHSC are willing to take it to the next stage but one really shouldn’t need a translation.
I also have a problem with the ever cheerful obfuscation, upbeat language and the way NHS staff are trained/programmed never to say anything negative. Witness that carefully, well rehearsed phrase the consultant used about the “new baseline”. MLO is a very sick man. He cannot swallow. He has lost masses of weight. He’s unable to stand up or walk and he often doesn’t “speak” to me for the whole time I’m there. He’s gradually getting worse although they’ve rehydrated him and sorted his sodium levels. It is obvious to me (and presumably to them) how this is going to end. It’s just a question of how long it will take and making the path as smooth and comfortable as possible from here to there.
Yet I often arrive to find the staff hopping up and down with excitement because MLO has muttered two or three coherent words or smiled. They’re lovely people and I know they care, really care. They are trying to cheer me up although I never go in looking miserable. But they and I are not being totally honest with each other. And I sense that if I try to call a spade a spade in my usual plain, blunt way then it makes them feel uncomfortable. Interestingly, in years gone by I suspect it would have been the other way round.
Today I was told gleefully before I’d even reached the bedside: “He ate half his porridge this morning and most of a cup of tea! And of course he really loves his protein booster drinks! He had almost a whole banana one earlier.” Anyone who knows MLO and his – quite fussy – food predilections will know just how hilarious that is. “Oh good!” I said, playing it their way and trying to keep a straight face. Well done Lewisham Hospital staff, though, for trying so hard and for, unintentionally, making me smile.
Shelling peas with GD2 on a family holiday to County Durham in 2007
Why aren’t we telling young people about the writing and writing-related careers which drive our industry? Careers advisers working in secondary schools are notoriously weak and negative about performing arts careers largely because most of them can’t see beyond acting. Even the few who conscientiously try to be informative about backstage careers rarely get beyond stage management, lighting and sound.
Plays have to be written, translated, reworked in new versions, abridged and re-imagined. Song lyrics and books for musicals don’t write themselves either. Simon Stephens, whose book A Working Diary (Bloomsbury) was published in 2016 in advance of told me at the time that he tries to get into a school or college once a week to talk to young people about play writing. Stephens is evangelical about this because he grew up not understanding that you could actually make a living as a playwright. Sadly there’s only one of him and indefatigable as he is he can’t cover more than 50 or so schools a year out of the UK’s 5,000 or so secondary schools.
We should be telling these eager young people about the career opportunities of literary agents too – the people who stand quietly behind the names, ensuring that business goes smoothly and that everyone can pay his or her bills. Nearly every successful playwright has an agent who makes sure that the plays get to the right people and that contacts are mutually acceptable, among other things.
The key thing to tell youngsters is that literary agents who specialise in plays, as opposed to novels and other written forms, is that they are both passionate and knowledgeable about drama. They know a good, marketable play when they read one. Often there’s an English or drama degree in the CV along with a great deal of theatre exposure.
Big companies have literary departments too. Someone has to read plays, assess their worth and make recommendations. Sometimes there are quite junior posts in these departments – a sort of first filter because large numbers of plays are submitted all the time, often by agents although companies often discourage unsolicited scripts.
And for goodness sake let’s enthusiastically and proactively make them aware of other writing roles connected with theatre. Someone has to write and produce programmes which can effectively be informative magazines in big companies. In a small company it might be job seven on some Woman or Man Friday’s list, but in a large organisation such as Royal Opera House or The Globe a discrete department commissions freelancers to do interviews and write essays relating to the play. It’s a form of publishing.
And while on the subject of publishing there are occasional jobs to be had in the small specialist book publishers whose output is devoted to performing arts. I wonder how many stage struck school leavers have actually heard of Nick Hern Books, Oberon Books or Samuel French? It doesn’t have to be a small publisher either. Methuen Drama is an imprint of publishing giant, Bloomsbury.
Then there’s performing arts journalism. Yes, we all know the print industry has shrunk in recent year and that a number of well known critics have lost their jobs but just that doesn’t mean there are none at all. Mark Fisher’s excellent 2015 book How to Write About Theatre: A Manual for Critics, Students and Bloggers (Bloomsbury) should be in every school library, if only to draw students’ attention to the fact that writing about theatre is a valid activity and one which could, perhaps, eventually develop into a career.
So that’s the first message and I hope careers advisers are listening. You can earn money from writing – in many different ways – within the performing arts industries.
Second, it’s time we started stressing the value of portfolio careers. Few writers just write. Playwrights often direct. Actors write columns. Journalists sometimes teach. Successful people tend to be role-jugglers. Even Alan Bennett publishes memoirs as well as plays. The reality of 21st century life in general but, especially in this precarious industry, is that it is not sensible to put all your eggs in one basket.
In the bed next to My Loved One, in the peaceful Lewisham Hospital top floor ward overlooking leafy Ladywell Fields, is a man I’m pretty sure is a retired clergyman. He has a Bible and BCP on his locker, visibly prays, has a loud booming voice and a wife with vicar’s wife-type social skills. Chatting to me last week she looked at MLO who was asleep as usual and, not unreasonably, asked me what his illness was. She was surprised when I told her it’s Alzheimer’s. “I hadn’t appreciated that it affects sufferers physically as well as mentally” she said. She isn’t alone. Her husband, incidentally, aged 86, has an infection and is expected to recover. Mine, of course, will not. MLO’s brain is rapidly breaking down and that affects every part of the body. That’s what the disease does. It’s unrelenting and irreversible.
It’s very odd how few people understand the progression of Alzheimer’s. Yet it was very clear in that wonderful film Iris in which Judi Dench played the older Iris Murdoch. She became increasingly confused, rapidly more infirm, went to a care home and died after a short period of semi-consciousness in bed. I suppose memory loss is easier to comprehend and deal with. While there is no cure it’s almost taboo to dwell on the rest of it. You can almost romanticise early stage memory loss and you can certainly joke about it as I have often done in these blogs. Even now he mutters funny things sometimes. This morning he was, inconsequentially, on about rawlplugs, for example.
In contrast double incontinence, inability to swallow, feed yourself or stand up are about as unglamorous and unfunny as it comes. Someone said on the Alzheimer’s Society website recently “When I was diagnosed, it felt like a death sentence”. Well, yes, that’s exactly what it is. No wonder so many people delay seeking help and becoming a dementia statistic. The longer you put it off, the longer you can delude yourself. Not a good idea really but I can certainly understand why people think that way.
So MLO lies there in his hospital bed, quite peaceful and comfortable, with Ms Alzheimer’s snuggled tightly under the bedclothes with him. Her fangs and nails are now deeply embedded in him but the one thing she doesn’t seem to do is cause him any pain. Sometimes he’s awake and from time to time he says something or tries to. It’s rarely anything I can understand or respond to and he speaks only in whispers. I think he usually recognises me even if he often isn’t sure who I am. As far as I know he hasn’t been out of bed for three weeks. Physios keep trying, using hoists, but since he can neither bear weight nor take instruction, it’s abortive. Given that it was being unable to stand up which put him in hospital in the first place I am at a loss to understand why anyone there thinks he’s likely to be any better at it now after three weeks in bed getting more wasted every day. This is, after all, a degenerative progressive disease. Why, therefore, keep disturbing and upsetting him?
I keep expecting to be told that he must be discharged because he’s bed blocking but to the great credit of the staff on the ward – who are all kind, courteous, caring and friendly from the ward manager down to the woman who sweeps the floor silently but always smiles at both MLO and me – no one has yet mentioned this except very vaguely as something for the future. In fact, whenever I ask, they tell me that there’s no question of it until occupational therapists and social workers have made sure that everything is right and ready for him at home. And none of them has yet raised the subject properly with me. Maybe they know something I don’t and there will be a call at 3.00am one morning telling me to get down to the hospital pronto. Or maybe this limbo will go on for months. And so we move into the fourth week … accepting, as the consultant put it this week, that “this may be the new baseline”.
Meanwhile I go to the hospital every day, fitting it in as best I can around work commitments. It now feels like a very familiar part of life. I even have a loyalty card for the café where staff recognise me when I pick up a cup of tea to take up to the ward with me. I’m also au fait with Ladywell station from where I have several times gone on into central London.
At present I’m stoical rather than sad most of the time although I wish very much that Ms A had allowed MLO a bit longer to enjoy the fruits of our move back to our native London three years ago. We had such plans for all the things we were going to do (visit the museums we missed in childhood, walk the Thames path, attend lunch time concerts at St Martin’s in the Fields etc) but because of his illness we have done almost none of it. Two years ago I tried to get him to do the Green Chain Walk from Crystal Palace to Nunhead but we had to abandon it half way. Earlier this year I walked him from Angel Underground to Kings Head Theatre, Islington (maybe a third of a mile) and he frightened me so much veering across the pavement that I bought a wheelchair the next day. The move has been a great success, in many ways, not least – as things have turned out – the escape from a large house with 52 stairs. For myself, I really love living where we now do, especially from a work point of view. The novelty of being about to meet someone for coffee at National Theatre half an hour after walking out of my front door has yet to wear off. I just wish he’d had more chance to relish it all too.
My favourite young audience pieces are always those featuring actor musicians. Increasingly I am seeing actor-musos in theatre for grown ups too. At present their skills are fashionable within the industry and they’re much in demand.
So how do you get to be an actor muso? Most of them are people who’ve learned instruments – perhaps to a high standard – but who knew they fell short of virtuoso quality or perhaps simply didn’t want to follow a music conservatoire route into a music career. Instead they want to cast the performance net more widely. As one young actor I interviewed told me “I did clarinet, saxophone and piano at school but I knew I’d never be good enough to work as a music pro. On the other hand, doing it this way, I get plenty of opportunity to play and sing as an actor.”
Two points about actor musicians. They’re versatile. If you’re a modestly competent pianist you will probably, with a bit of practice, be able to use an accordion or hit out a tune on a glockenspiel or xylophone if the director wants some particular effect. Brass players, whichever instrument they’ve learned can usually get notes out of other brass instruments. And the same applies to strings. I especially like it when I see a small cast moving round a piece of work as it progresses and by the end they’ve almost all played the onstage piano, guitar or double bass as well as percussion instruments. It’s also glorious when the cast forms a band, usually in a folky style, and I’ve sometimes heard a sound so good I’ve wondered if they go off gigging or busking together after the show. But it isn’t remotely like playing in, for example, a symphony orchestra because you have to act, really act, as well. Fancy being able to be a monkey – as cast members did in last year’s The Jungle Book (Children’s Touring Partnership, led by Fiery Angel and Chichester Festival Theatre) and play the cello at the same time!
Second, they’re very employable. And anything which makes jobs less difficult to nail has got to be worth pursuing. So an actor who ever played anything at whatever basic level would be well advised to blow the dust off it and start practising like mad.
Given all this it is hardly surprising that the number of full-time vocational courses for actor musos is growing. There’s a new one for 2020 at Leeds College of Music, for example. GSA’s course is just about to start work with its fifth cohort. Rose Bruford College whose course is very well established, has an excellent record for getting actor musicianship graduating students signed to agents, Mountview suggests that applicants need to play at least one instrument at around Grade 5 although more (both more instruments and higher grades) is welcome and they appreciate that not everyone has taken formal exams. In practice, it’s what happens in the audition which counts and potential actor musos have to do the usual monologues as well as play a piece on the chosen instrument.
And of course there are plenty of people working as actor-musos who simply trained as actors and who use their musical skills as and when required. Lucy Rivers stands very clearly in my memory. She took the lead role as a violin playing young Maia in Unicorn Theatre’s Journey to the River Sea (adapted by Carl Miller and directed by Rosamund Hutt) in 2006. She was simply bringing her music and acting together in her own way – although, obviously, it was the ability to do both as well as she does which got her the job. Since then she has since co-founded the multi award-winning company Gabblebabble. I also loved Blackeyed Theatre’s actor muso take on The Sign of Four, which has just finished touring. The music and the instruments simply drove the story.
All actors, therefore, would do well do try and cultivate it whether they trained – or are training – in “straight” acting or actor musicianship. Even if you didn’t learn an instrument in childhood it’s never too late to master the basics, at least. And some instruments such as the rudiments of guitar or ukelele for strumming chords or recorders and whistles for simple melodies can be picked up quite quickly. Even in opera the effect can be magical as in a production of Don Giovanni, I saw a few years back in which Duncan Rock in the title role, clearly a competent guitarist, accompanied himself in one of the seduction arias.
As in so much in this industry, if you can offer something extra, you are more likely to be in work than someone who can’t.
Photograph: GSA’s production of Betty Blue Eyes
He was 73 when he went into hospital and now, two weeks on, he is 74. Not a great age by 21st century standards.
The bedside birthday party went as well as it could. My Loved One drowsed and muttered occasionally while the rest of us – both sons, one daughter-in-law and elder two granddaughters – worked our butts off to be jolly and upbeat in an appropriate register. Hard work but I think we pulled it off.
First of all let me say a huge thank you to all the people – many of them readers of this blog – who sent cards. We had four times as many as he would usually get. We painstakingly showed him each and every one and reminded him who all these kind people were. I had something in my eye during much of this. At one point I had to slip out into the corridor, comforted by GD2. The messages were so carefully thought out and the cards chosen with exquisite tact. Of course we all know that there won’t be a 75th birthday. That’s why it was so poignant.
I baked a squishy chocolate cake and took it to the hospital. After a muted rendering of Happy Birthday I made sure that the other three men in the bay and their visitors all had a piece. And I was tremendously touched by two doctors, to whom I’d spoken several times previously. We met them downstairs by chance, while we were waiting for GD1 and GD2 to arrive from Suffolk before we went up to the ward, “Oh we’ve bought balloons and we’re on our way up with them” they said. What nice people – but actually that’s been true of almost every medical professional we’ve encountered at Lewisham Hospital. And interestingly, every single doctor we’ve seen has been female.
He’s now been there two weeks, having transferred to “Care of the Elderly” from Medical after the first five days. They’ve done a lot of tests and drawn several blanks. An MRI scan shows Alzheimer’s (as did the original one at his diagnosis two years ago) but no Parkinson’s although there may be some Parkinsonism. Neither has he had a stroke and his heart, blood pressure etc are more or less normal.
So why has he gone down so fast? Well, it’s partly bad luck and a hideous, hateful, galloping illness. The average survival time from Alzheimer’s diagnosis is four to eight years. But averages, of course, are just averages. For some people it’s less and for others it’s more. But why – and this is what has been puzzling the medics – has the rate of deterioration accelerated so much in the last month?
The new theory – and let this be a lesson to us all – is dehydration. MLO has been pretty tiresome about drinks all his life – always demanding tiny cups and glasses and refusing to drink more than a few drips of anything. And lately it’s got worse. As one of the doctors observed on the day of writing “Lessening of appetite and thirst is part of the progression of the condition”. In recent weeks I’ve been struggling, really struggling, to get even half a pint of liquid into him each day.
At the hospital they’ve been topping him up with an intravenous feed into a cannula. The aim is gradually to bring his sodium levels down because excess sodium can add to confusion. It seems to be working and he’s now awake a little more often than he’s asleep and sometimes makes a sensible comment such as a muttered “No more now, thank you” when I’m trying to feed or water him.
When he seemed to be slightly more with me briefly this morning I said “Come on. This is serious. You must drink more. You know what happens to slugs if you salt them? They shrivel up and die. That’s what will happen to you!” He actually grinned (sort of) and mumbled “That’s horrible!” I replied: “Yes it is. That’s why you must drink more both in this hospital and when you come out of here.” But by then he’d gone out of focus again.
As far as I know he hasn’t been out of bed for a fortnight despite the best efforts of physiotherapists so he’s pretty weak. Apparently they (physios) will now try to sort him out ready for discharge – maybe at the end of next week. We’re not going down the care home route if I can possibly help it.
The hospital bed awaits him at home with me. I have yet to discuss the dreaded “care package” with anyone but I envisage supplementing whatever I agree to have arranged for me with the man-sitting carers I already have so that I can still go out and continue working. And at least I shall be able to prepare some tasty vegetable and fruit purees. He only eats a few teaspoonsful of anything now and really doesn’t like what they try to give him in hospital. His swallowing mechanism is now quite poor but the catering people don’t seem to have got the messages about soft food – especially when you want it to be vegetarian as well.
I suspect he’ll be more or less bed-ridden from here on. And I sincerely hope that “from here on” isn’t for too long because his quality of life is non existent. Who wants to live for months as decelerating, muttering, largely prostrate body while well meaning people shovel food in one end and clean up the other?
I often think about MLO’s father, my father-in-law. He died less than five years ago at the age of 89. Had he had the longevity of, say, the Duke of Edinburgh or my feisty next door neighbour, he’d still be with us now. Thank goodness he isn’t. I am deeply relieved that he didn’t live to see his only child as he is now.
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat continues at the London Palladium until 8 September 2019.
Star rating: two stars ★ ★ ✩ ✩ ✩
It’s large scale, spectacular, energetic and impressive. In other ways, however, this eagerly anticipated revival of the first real success the youthful Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber (both in the audience on press night) had is disappointing.
No show can, or should, be set in aspic. Of course new generations and different directors will reinterpret and spin it in new ways. Theatre would be very dull and a bit pointless if they didn’t. But Joseph is not a pantomime and it’s a serious mistake to turn it into one. The first rule of directing is that you have to trust the material.
Sheridan Smith as narrator has masses of stage presence and gets howls of audience appreciation simply for arriving on stage. But her constant beaming at the audience, knowing asides and the use of her native northern accent for homely, comic effect quickly become a weary irritation …
Read the rest of this review at Musical Theatre Review: https://musicaltheatrereview.com/joseph-and-the-amazing-technicolor-dreamcoat-london-palladium/
The Sandman continues at the Southwark Playhouse, London until 29 June 2019.
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
Part of the BRIT School, the Foundation Bridge Company works part-time with recent school leavers and gives them valuable professional experience.
The Sandman (music and lyrics by Harry Blake who also directs) is an engaging 80 minutes of musical theatre which makes imaginative use of an ensemble cast of 14.
Nat (Kira McGovern) is disturbed in her sleep by a monster – a sort of amalgam of every teenager’s fears, choreographed here, often diagonally to maximise the impact of the square performance space, by Jennifer Fletcher. It’s quite menacing at times.
McGovern is …
Read the rest of this review at Musical Theatre Review: http://musicaltheatrereview.com/the-sandman-southwark-playhouse/