Well we are now officially a “Golden” couple. The much anticipated 50^th anniversary fell last Friday and we are now enjoying (or something) our 51^st year of marriage.

I used to think that we’d probably sail on to 70 years together like the late Lord and Lady Longford or the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. After all, if you marry in your early twenties, you have only to live into your early nineties which, given our healthy vegetarian, active lifestyle seemed a reasonable ambition. But fate and hideous, hateful Ms Alzheimer’s have decided otherwise.

I’ve realised for some time that this will be our last landmark anniversary so despite My Loved One’s vagueness about it all it seemed a good idea to Do Something. For our 25^th we had a big party at home and we took 45 people to lunch in a hotel on the 40^th anniversary.

This time I hired the eight bedroom Tudor Wing, attached to an even larger house in lovely countryside near Tunbridge Wells so that the entire, immediate family could spend a long weekend together. That meant a house party with two sons, two daughters-in-law, four granddaughters and eldest granddaughter’s boy friend. My sister and her family – seven of them – joined us for Sunday lunch along with GD3’s lovely mother.

It was all pretty upbreat and fairly restful for me because there were lots of other kind people around to help MLO who never, for example, could find his way round the large premises, which – variously dating from 1350, 1460 and the nineteenth century – has a lot of doorways, stairs and steps. And on Saturday morning I was able to go to Tunbridge Wells with elder son and family knowing that MLO was being safely looked after back at base by younger son and co.

The next generation did the catering, cooking and shopping. All I had to do was eat and drink and there was, of course, plenty of both. Some of us swam (rather a good heated, covered outdoor facility) played table tennis, pool and other games. And there was a lot of sitting, chatting with cups of tea and wonderful homemade biscuits – with everyone working hard to include MLO and jolly him on as much as they possibly could.

Although we had masses of Golden Wedding cards which I displayed at the weekend (and still have “up” at home) most of the time MLO hadn’t a clue what we were doing and why we were there. “Well done for putting up with her for 50 years” said my sister, cheerfully when she kissed him goodbye on Sunday. Blank stare. “So glad to share your Golden Wedding with you” said younger daughter-in-law. Flash of understanding. “See you again at our 60^th?” he said. Ouch. Momentary poignant pause. Does he really think we have another ten years together? “Oh I think you might see me before then” she said with kind presence of mind.

As I drove MLO homewards on Monday morning I probed gently. “Do you remember what the weekend was really about?” He thought for some time before answering “Was it to get the family together?” Me: “Yes, partly a bonding exercise I suppose but one with a very specific point. Can you recall what that was?” I prompted for a while but in the end I had to tell him. Again.

All of this raises the issue of whether it’s worth celebrating an event in which one of the key participants doesn’t know what’s going on. Is it appropriate? Is it in questionable taste? Well, the 18 other people who took part all had a good time and it’s important to build family memories. I love to see them all in the same place for a bit too. It brings out the materfamilias in me and it doesn’t happen that often. The youngest two GDs (7 and 4) fell in love with the gloriously Blytonesque house, which was like nothing they’d ever seen before apart from on National Trust visits, and immediately named their atmospheric attic bedroom “The Harry Potter Room”. I expect they will remember celebrating Grandpa and Granny’s Golden Wedding in that huge and mysterious house with its exciting low beams, panelling, uneven floors and hiding places for the rest of their lives and I like the idea of that.

I bang on about the appalling lack of civilised lavatorial facilities in theatres so often that it’s become a joke amongst my friends in the industry. There she goes again: Susan “Lavatories” Elkin. Perhaps I’m in danger of becoming what the late, great Bernard Levin disparagingly dubbed a “single issue fanatic”. If so, well take me as you find me. I think it’s a vital matter because it makes a huge difference to the quality of a theatre going experience. One really shouldn’t be reduced to remembering to pop into Costa over the road before the show or making sure you drink nothing for three hours before curtain up.

Imagine then, my joy, when I went to Above The Stag at Vauxhall recently. I was there to review Goodbye Norma Jeane and it was my first visit. For a start the venue specialises in LBGT+ issues and there were far more men than women in the bar beforehand. I looked round and thought gleefully: “Oh good. There won’t be much of a queue in the ladies tonight”.

Now, Above The Stag – which began as a pub theatre – is now housed in a new purpose built venue in a railway arch. It moved into its new home last year. And when I got to the intelligent loos I was both amazed and delighted.

A single door indicates both male and female facilities. Beyond the door are six cubicles, three on each side with a circular hand washing arrangement in the middle. It’s all communal. Then there’s a door with a very clear illustration of urinals on through which people with penises, who only want to pee and are happy with that arrangement, can go. Brilliant! Sensible use of space and maximum speed through-put. I think every theatre manager in London (and beyond for that matter) should be compelled to go and look at it. It’s a design well worth considering for all new builds and many refurbs.

Meanwhile Above the Stag gets the Susan Elkin Award for 5* theatre lavatories. And the play was OK, too.

It’s a question I’m now asked all the time now, usually by people with lots of kind, knowing sympathy in their eyes. They see My Loved One, weakened by the ever-heavier weight of Ms Alzheimer’s on his back, while hearing me obliged to talk to him as if he’s a biddable three year old. And they wonder.

The answer is that in many ways I’m absolutely fine. I’m blessed with excellent health and a brain which seems to be locked in overdrive. If people push me I confide that I have a bit of arthritis (?) in my left thumb which hurts so I wear a thumb splint to play the violin and try to avoid doing up too many buttons on my clothes or MLO’s – hardly a major issue.

And it’s important that I stay that way. It’s the crashing aircraft principle: fit your own oxygen mask before helping anyone else. If you’re not fit (or breathing!) you won’t be any use to anybody. So I eat healthily, watch my weight, try to build exercise into daily life, go very easy on booze and of course I don’t smoke.

There are, however, two negative factors which are beyond my control and not, I suspect doing me any good at all. One is sleep and the other is stress.

MLO now needs a great deal of 24/7 help. I have to shower him at night (a sort of hosing down operation) assist with drying, and then physically put him into his nightclothes before easing him into bed – and of course we do the whole operation in reverse each morning including another very necessary shower. It means that I can’t even start to get myself into the bath etc at night until about 45 minutes after I start to help him. By the time I eventually get into bed he’s probably been asleep for a while but, typically wakes up five minutes after I’ve put the light out and has to be helped out to the bathroom – a routine we sometimes go through four or five times in a single night and on a bad night several times in a single hour.

Twice last week I got less than four hours sleep – and then only in short bursts. MLO gets very confused in the night too and will wake up and talk a lot. He wants answers and I do try but most of what he’s saying is incoherent and dream-related so whatever it is, it isn’t a conversation. But it means I’m awake. Sometimes I give up, get up and do some work in my office next door in the hopes that he’ll settle. If he stirs I can still hear him. I could sleep in another room of course, except that I can’t. There’s no way he can just be left to get on with it. Half the time he doesn’t know what building we’re in or where any of the rooms are. I wouldn’t be able to relax for a second if I shut myself away in another part of the house. It would be like parking a baby out of earshot. Not on.

So if you meet me out – at the theatre, say, reviewing ( while a carer I’ve paid “mansits” at home) and you think I look hollow-eyed with tiredness, then you’re right. Lack of sleep – and the stress it causes – is said to be very bad for your health and if I read another article telling me that, I think I shall scream. In my situation you can’t manage the number of hours you get. I’m happy to allow 7 or 8 hours but it’s most unlikely that Ms A will allow me to sleep for most of that time. Roll on the three days next month when I’m going to stay with a friend in Yorkshire while our elder son takes over at home.

And it’s the toll that this constant tiredness takes on the carer which isn’t generally recognised by the decision makers although our GP quizzed me about it only last week when I took MLO for a routine “condition and medication review”. And people I know personally, or whom I’ve got to know virtually or actually through these blogs are very understanding.

It is, however, in the government’s economic interests to keep people like me going for as long as humanly possible. If I weren’t looking after him day and night, someone else would have to and that would cost the country a great deal of money. Alzheimer’s patients are entitled to “free” (ie paid for by life long tax payers like us) care via the NHS Continuing Home Care service, providing that their health problems have no other underlying cause. In practice, of course, provision is very patchy.

I was delighted to pick up a little video of Derek Thomas MP for St Ives, West Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly last week addressing parliament about the plight of people like me. He has clearly met lots of us and spoke with real authority in support of Alzheimer’s Society’s new campaign “Fix Dementia Care” following its report earlier this year. Want to help? Well, it’s worth lobbying MPs who aren’t already on the support list to sign up to it. https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/our-campaigns/fix-dementia-care.

On a happier, but related, note I am uplifted and cheered by Hunter Davies’s joyous new book Happy Old Me (Simon & Schuster UK, 2019) which I’ve gobbled in the last few days. Like us, he and his late wife – respected novelist Margaret Forster – had been together since their teens and had been married 55 years when cancer got her in 2016. He is delighted to be alive and reasonably well at 83, determined (like me) not to retire and busy carving out an enjoyable life for himself. It’s one of the most encouraging, positive books I’ve read for ages and all couched in his characteristically insouciant, self-deprecating style. Thank you, Hunter, for reminding me that there IS a light at the end of the darkest possible tunnel and that it IS possible to come through battered but generally pretty OK.

Last week Henry Bell, Sheffield-based lecturer and performance director, tweeted: “I’m currently helping a student to apply to drama school. They are auditioning for five schools and the cost just to apply (travel and audition fees) is £500. The student has taken on another job to afford it. This HAS to stop if the industry wants to change”.

Well said, Henry – with whom I, and several others then had angry, supportive follow-up twitter conversations. Now I return – yet again and without apology – to the topic here and elsewhere. And I shan’t stop until something gives.

Drama School audition fees are a scandal. They are immoral and unfair. Drama aspirants should not be punished for their passion. Beyond the initial UCAS registration fee, no hopeful maths, history or business studies student has to pay for the “privilege” of applying to his/her chosen institutions. To make potential drama students pay a substantial audition fee is a nasty form of discrimination – exactly what, in other contexts, the performing arts industries work so hard to demonstrate they are against.

And yes, before you jump down my throat, I know that some drama schools run modest – numbers usually capped – audition fee waiver schemes for low income families and “hard to reach” groups. Auditions are sometimes conducted around the country to save student travel expenses. And some enlightened schools build workshops into the process so that the applicants get some sort of value for money too. But none of that is the norm for most students most of the time. The vast majority have to travel, often expensively at peak times, and pay a fee to the school in question.

Some of the fees are very high too. RADA charged £76 this year unless you applied before 13 December in which case it was a “mere” £46. The fee to audition at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School is £50 and at East 15 it’s £55. No student, obviously, applies to just one. Henry Bell is right. You need a generous “audition budget” if you’re to stand any chance at all.

The truth, of course, is that for the larger, most sought after schools this exploitation of students is a jolly good income stream because they see the applicants in big batches and, typically, get rid of them pretty fast at the first sift.

On one occasion a distressed and disappointed student told me he had been part – at one of London’s most famous schools – of a group of 200 auditionees. I carelessly quoted this figure, without checking it, in a printed piece which brought the wrath of the school’s principal (whom I knew) down on my head. I had damaged the reputation of the school in question, I was told furiously, because “only” 150 were brought in at a time. It would be funny if it weren’t scandalous.

No school is willing – surprise, surprise – to share with me the exact profit it makes from auditioning. So consider, once more, my back-of-the envelope calculations which allow the hypothetical school a generous margin and so are probably an underestimate. Bigger schools run lots of different courses too and my figures relate to just one. I’ll leave you to do the additional multiplication at the end.

Let’s say School X, which is based in central London and therefore expensive to get to, has 2000 applicants each of whom pays a £50 audition fee. That’s £100,000. It auditions 200 per day over ten days in batches of 100, one lot in the morning and the second group in the afternoon. For this it pays a freelance audition panel of three people £200 each per day. That’s a £6,000 overhead. It also has to heat and clean the building and maybe provide a few refreshments. Let’s allow a further £400 per day – £4,000 in total – for that. And we’d better factor in some “on-costs”. I’ll assign £5,000 which is £500 per day.

So it might cost £15k in all to run 10 days of auditions. Not much of a dent in that £100k is it?

In my view – and that of any other decent person – it is quite wrong for a drama school to be “pocketing” something in the region of £80k from the applications of students. It’s exploitation and it stinks. It’s a miserable blot on the industry too.

society/company: Fourth Monkey Theatre Company

performance date: 20 Mar 2019

venue: The Monkey House, 97-101 Seven Sisters Road,London N7 7QP

Photo: Fourth Monkey

Directed by Simone Coxall and staged in the top floor theatre in the company’s own building, The Monkey House (off Seven Sisters Road near Finsbury Park) this is a feistily imaginative, feminist take on one of Shakespeare’s finest plays.

For over two hours you wonder just why Rebecca Wake, as chorus, is quite so edgy, distressed and being grumbled at by other characters. Then at the end – and it’s part of a very neat, arrestingly topical framing device to do with spin and documentary making – she becomes what is arguably the most abused, used character in the play. Another character delivers the epilogue and you’re left stunned but impressed.

It’s a very pacey take on Henry V – no English lesson, or proposal scene and quite substantial cuts elsewhere – and the tension never flags in the hands of this talented company of fifteen young actors coming to the end of their two year rep company training. There are thirty in the class and the other half are doing Pericles back to back with Henry V.

The entire cast is strong – and this version is very much an ensemble show – but there’s exceptionally good work from Caitlin Croke as Girl (as opposed to the boy who normally accompanies Pistol, Nym and Bardolph to war following the death of his master, Falstaff). She is gloriously sardonic and never stops listening and reacting. She is also delightful as Orleans and the traitor, Grey using a range of accents and body stances to excellent effect. Definitely one to watch out for in future.

Ruth Newbery-Payton gives us an icy Henry, every inch the single-minded aggressor and go-getter with very little human warmth. Her Harfleur speech is uttlerly chilling and when she gives the order to kill the prisoners – well before the French have killed the baggage-guarding boys – you are not remotely surprised. This Henry is capable of anything. Also very watchable is Elizabeth Cristo as an attractive, Paris-chic, grape eating Dauphin with impeccable French accent. And Naomi Denny is a sober Exeter with lots of unsmiling gravitas.

With only four men in the cast this is a powerful exploration of female achievement and needs but there are a few niggling problems with this way of doing it. The pronouns have been changed so that all the normally male characters who have become women are referred to as “she”, “her”, and so on. But in most cases they remain “My Lord” and Henry is referred to as the King throughout which seems incongruous. It isn’t a case of gender blind casting in which some males are played by women and I don’t think we’re expected to assume they’re all trans or transitioning. So it feels a bit uncomfortable. I thought some lines had been changed – simplified, updated or whatever – unnecessarily too.

On the whole, though, this is a fine and fascinating production. Fourth Monkey continues to select and train its students expertly.

Photo: Fourth Monkey

First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Fourth%20Monkey%20Theatre%20Company%20(student%20productions)-Henry%20V:%20Of%20Land%20and%20Sea%20Classical%20Season&reviewsID=3515

Goodbye Norma Jeane – ★★★

by Liam Burke

society/company: West End & Fringe (directory)

performance date: 18 Mar 2019

venue: Above the Stag. 72 Albert Embankment, Vauxhall, London SE1 7TP

reviewer/s: Susan Elkin (Sardines review)

★★★

It’s always good to see an accomplished, neatly directed two-hander although this show which runs 90 minutes with interval would do better to run 70 minutes straight through. It all feels a bit protracted as it is – not helped by starting twenty minutes late on press night.

Jack Cole (Tim English) was an influential Hollywood ‘dance director’ before the word ‘choreographer’ was coined and the job was, arguably, sidelined in the credits. He worked with the likes of Lana Turner, Betty Grable, Gwen Verdon – and Marilyn Monroe, who is never referred to by her stage name. Liam Burke’s play presents Cole, having just heard of Monroe’s death, reflecting on his career, visited by and remembering the women he has worked with all of whom are entertainingly and convincingly played by Rachel Stanley. Above the Stag is London’s specialist LGBTQ theatre but there is only the tiniest, not very relevant, nod to Cole’s gay-ness in this play.

Both actors are accomplished. English is very natural and the intimacy of the Above the Stag studio space lends itself well to long passages of monologue. Stanley – after the manner of Alex Guinness in Kind Hearts and Coronets – keeps appearing in different outfits and, with skilled mimicry really does manage to convey the essence of the seven screen icons she’s depicting. I especially noted and admired her voice work. These women hailed from different parts of the US and Stanley has worked hard at getting it right. There are some effective moments of informal dance round Cole’s sitting room too.

That said, this play is a bit slight. It explores a few issues – such as the importance of choreography and its ‘ownership’ – but the narrative is thin and the play doesn’t really go anywhere much. And it isn’t helped by being staged in a railway arch theatre. This was my first visit to Above the Stag and I found the thundering trains overhead very distracting. If this had been Macbeth it might have been atmospheric but in a play set in a sunny condo with a swimming pool outside (imaginative set by Stewart J Charlesworth) it is quite the opposite.

First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-West%20End%20&%20Fringe-Goodbye%20Norma%20Jeane%20-%20%E2%98%85%E2%98%85%E2%98%85&reviewsID=3512

The Dome, Brighton, 17 March 2019

It was a resounding concert end to the season, and a real pleasure to see the Dome nearly full with an audience which included a surprising number of quite young children, excited and attentive, for what was by no means a “children’s programme”. Hurrah for the enlightened families who brought them along.

The heady atmosphere was enhanced, of course, by the central performance of the notoriously difficult Rachmaninov Third Piano Concerto. Stephen Osborne scaled the heights of this pianistic Everest with understated panache, terrific control, plenty of drama and admirable stamina considering that it is a 40 minute piece and the piano part, with its frequent changes of mood and mode, barely pauses for breath. I shall treasure his dramatic opening to the third movement during which his whole body was bouncing off the piano stool. The piano chord and legato string passage in the finale was nicely done too. Barry Wordsworth and the orchestra really rose to the challenge too. So much of the orchestral writing is in apposition to the piano in this work that it’s always tricky to bring off. In this performance we got lots of loving, sympathetic detail, for the most part accurately placed.

The concert had opened with ever-tuneful Chabrier’s Joyeuse Marche – always fun to play and to listen to, and I’ve rarely heard it played with quite so much incisive “joie”.

And so to the glorious end piece: Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.It never palls does it? You’ve got to love a piece which uses two tubas, two harps, double timps (at one point requiring four players) and was at least a hundred years ahead of its time. In many ways in this programme, it sounded more “modern” than the sometimes schmultzy Rachmaninov. The highlights in this fine performance included some attractive work in the second movement with the harps underpinning the waltz. And it was an inspired idea to position the “off stage” oboist visibly in the gallery to play that beautiful avian duet with the cor anglais in the third movement. Then, for March to the Scaffold, the tubular bell was at the top of the choir, twenty feet above the main body of the orchestra which made it sound eerie and distant. I really liked the lovely broad tuttesound in the finale too.

Yes, it was a memorable concert which sent this audience member, at least, home with a spring in her step. Thanks, Brighton Philharmonic for another strong season. See you in the autumn.

First published by Lark Reviews: http://www.larkreviews.co.uk/?cat=3

Something Old, Something New was presented by students from the Musical Theatre Academy (MTA) at the Bridewell Theatre, London.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, the MTA (Musical Theatre Academy) was founded in 2009 by composer/musician Annemarie Lewis Thomas.

And it’s a success story. The school is the only organisation to have won The StageSchool of the Year Award twice and it has secured impartial, professional agent representation for every student it has trained, over three quarters of whom are working at any one time.

Something Old Something New is the MTA’s annual spring revue. It’s unusual for a student show in that it features the entire college – both first and second years, 15 of the former and 19 of the latter …

Read the rest of this review: https://musicaltheatrereview.com/musical-theatre-academy-something-old-something-new-3/

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★★★

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