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Forgetting and Remembering

The Alzheimer’s Society logo is based on a forget-me-not and how very apt that is. It’s all too easy to shut Alzheimer’s people away and forget them – so much easier than dragging them out to places and I’m as guilty of that as anyone. And, although I often observe that this ghastly illness is much more than memory loss, forgetfulness is certainly a major symptom.

I see this increasingly in My Loved One’s reading habits. I’m relieved he still reads a lot because neither of us has ever been a habitual TV viewer and of course he needs a default activity. Mostly he reads on his Kindle. We share downloads. “What are you reading?” I ask brightly. He simply can’t tell me. He doesn’t seem to be able to remember a word of it. Not only can he not tell me the title or author but he can’t even explain what it’s about. Whether he’s able to pick up the thread of a book when he returns to it I have no idea – and frankly don’t want to know because if he really can’t follow a plot and is just “reading” mechanically out of habit than that’s almost too sad to bear. To think this is a man with whom I used to discuss books. What a long time ago that begins to seem.

Then there are dates and commitments. He has no idea what day of the week it is and will say, for example. “This must be school traffic” if I’m driving him to the garden centre on a Saturday afternoon. I keep a big calendar on the kitchen notice board and cross off the days off but he still likes to write things (hand writing now quite shaky) in his diary. Quite often he notes things down on the wrong date and then gets anxious about them, I tell him over and over again that he’s made a mistake and usually end up correcting it in his diary myself. Every morning I tell him what day of the week it is and what’s going on today but it doesn’t stick for long – information is now for MLO what one of the educationists I studied at college called “plasters on the mind”.

Sometimes, I suppose forgetfulness is a mercy. What you can’t remember can’t upset you. I even hanker for a bit of it myself. Instead I’m blessed (cursed?) with a razor sharp memory. If you want to know the name of the dog who lived next door to my grandparents in 1960, I’m your woman. Ask me what I was reading on 9/11 or what grades most of my students got and I’ll tell you. Journalistically it’s useful.  I write most reviews and interviews without looking much at the copious notes I’ve made. But when it comes to reflecting on MLO and life with Ms A it’s distressing territory because the decline is so clear.

Two years ago we were preparing to move from our big house in Sittingbourne to a much smaller one in Catford – which we eventually did at the end of September. In July MLO was routinely driving up and down the M2 to see estate agents, sort out temporary accommodation for the cat and lots more. He also went more than once to Ramsgate to deliver paperwork to our solicitor. At home he competently joined me in packing/wrapping sessions – by the time we actually left we had filled many boxes with our most precious things ourselves because I didn’t fancy the removal men doing it. Saucepans are one thing. My collection of Wedgwood is another. He was perfectly able to talk to estate agents, solicitors and the like on the phone too.

And if I went to London for work he would routinely lock the house and come up on the train to meet me for an evening show – we’d agree a convenient meeting place. We did that hundreds of times over the years and it never failed until one occasion the week we moved when he couldn’t find me.  At the time (probably wrongly with hindsight) I put that down mostly to stress.

Well, thank goodness we moved when we did because he wouldn’t be able to do a single one of those things now. If I take him into town as I did last weekend for a show at The Old Vic and then a Prom (both review jobs for me) I have to lead him by the hand so I know where he is. I also help him on and off trains and down steps.

Much of the time he seems very vague about where we are and where we’re going. “We’ll go to Waterloo East because that’s handy for The Old Vic” I said several times, seeing off repeated enquiries about London Bridge and Charing Cross. On the tube – especially if he’s across the carriage – I keep mouthing the name of the destination station or counting them off on my fingers for him as you would for a child. These days it’s very tempting to suggest that he stays at home – which he’s more than happy to do because he finds going out a huge effort. I’m ashamed of the thought but life is, of course, much easier when I’m out and about on my own.

When we came out of the Albert Hall at the end of the evening on Saturday he said he was very tired (too tired to walk the ten minutes to South Kensington tube station?) and I had to get a taxi to take us back to Charing Cross. Where has my lively, energetic, healthy husband gone? Forget him not.

I’ve written about audition fees many times before and make absolutely no apology for doing so again. I shall keep relentlessly banging this drum until something changes.

It is quite wrong for Higher Education Institutions of any sort to charge audition fees.  Students wishing to apply for performing arts courses should be as free to do so as their friends who apply for courses in, say, maths, business studies or biochemistry.

As it is students who want to act, sing, dance or perform are disadvantaged and penalised almost before the UCAS form is completed. Somehow we have allowed a culture to develop in which it has become acceptable for students to be charged anything from around £40, and it’s often a lot more, merely for the “privilege” of applying to a drama school or specialist vocational university department. Yes, they get invited in for a face-to-face audition but too often, at first round stage, it’s a fiasco and applicants are dismissed after only a few minutes. But the institution has pocketed the fee.

A student who lives in, say, Newcastle, Truro or Aberystwyth will probably have to travel to audition much at all. Most of the drama schools people aspire to are in London and the South East. If Emma Bloggs from Shropshire wants to apply to four drama schools the chances are that three of them will be in London. That means that Emma has three expensive rail or bus trips on top of, maybe £200 in audition fees. If she doesn’t have handy friends or relations in London whose floor she can sleep on, and her audition is in the morning she may well also have to fork out for overnight accommodation. And before she knows where she is, Emma has run up a four figure bill and all she has tried to do is to apply.

Many students and their families simply can’t afford this. They are not necessarily “poor” and likely to get much benefit or charity but their disposable income is limited and they can’t stump up an “audition budget”.

Yes – before anyone jumps down my throat – some schools such as LAMDA now operate an audition waiver scheme whereby trusted organisations refer a quota of talented but impoverished applicants who then audition without charge. A number of schools conduct some first round auditions around the country and some are experimenting with allowing applicants to send in a video in lieu of a first audition. It’s a start but it’s not enough. No school should be charging for auditions at all.

I am totally convinced that many drama schools use the whole auditions procedure as a useful income stream. Consider this scenario: The (fictional) Southwark School of Theatre Arts, which is a top drawer establishment, charges £50 per audition and gets 2000 applicants.  A modest supposition. Many get far more than 2000 hopefuls. That is £100,000 which SSTA has just grossed. Large schools run several big oversubscribed courses so you can often multiply the £100,000 a few times.

Well, I accept that there’s a cost to running auditions. Many schools bring in and, presumably pay, freelance assessors. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that it pays them £200 a day and I bet it doesn’t because all pay rates are low in the performing arts industries.

How many students can SSTA then process in a day? Well I know one prestigious school which brings in 150 in the morning and another 150 in the afternoon so let’s go with that. It means they need to run seven or eight audition days to get through the 2000 applicants. More sums. Once they’ve paid three assessors, heated and lit the building and had the loos cleaned let’s allow a very generous £1000 costs per audition day – that’s a total of £8,000 if they run eight of them. It isn’t much of a dent in that £100k is it?

Audition fees are a scandal. And I’ve long been puzzled about why more people aren’t making more fuss about it. Does the DfE actually know what’s going on? Isn’t there a case for making such rampant exploitation illegal?

If it costs, say, £10,000 (I’m generously rounding up again) to run a year’s auditions for a single course then this should simply be budgeted for in the normal way. But “free” auditions would mean increased numbers of applicants which would make the system unwieldy, I hear the schools bleating thereby tacitly admitting that audition fees are a disincentive to potential applicants.

That’s easily solved.  Colleges, schools and departments could simply cap audition numbers making it clear that the earlier you apply the better because the number of available auditions is limited. Serious applicants, well advised by their secondary school teachers, youth theatre leaders and so on, will be there – although I’d also like to see some financial support from somewhere to pay travel costs for potential drama and other performing arts students applying to institutions a long way from base.

I’d also like to see a code of practice whereby every drama school had to give every applicant a decent audition experience. These nervous youngsters need time to warm up. The best schools offer workshops, informal Q/A sessions with current students and feedback. Someone who has travelled to Southwark from, say, Berwick especially for an audition deserves more than five minutes’ attention irrespective of whether a fee has changed hands.

A version of this article was first published in Ink Pellet http://www.inkpellet.co.uk/

 

 

 

Sometimes things go well. Good. My Loved One deserves a bit of luck occasionally. Hooking up with Ms Alzheimer’s when he was still only 71 was definitely not part of his life plan so anything which offsets the horror of that, even a tiny bit, is to be warmly welcomed.

Last week a nice surgeon (who chatted to me about how much he’d enjoyed War Horse as soon as he sussed me) whipped MLO into an operating theatre at Lewisham Hospital and got rid of the filthy, hideously prominent, plum sized, purple lesion which was growing on the side of his nose. I expected him to return looking like Dick Bruna’s illustration for Miffy Goes to Hospital and probably with “two lovely black eyes.” I also thought he’d be pretty shaken up. Not a bit of it. He emerged quite cheerfully with a very neat sticking plaster across his nose and as soon as we got home, ebullient with relief, tucked into a large bowl of muesli washed down with peppermint tea. Despite the decision to go for a local anaesthetic they insisted that he fast for 6 hours first and then kept us waiting for four hours when we got there so it really was a very long time since he’d eaten.

Five days later I removed the plaster, as instructed, cleaned him up a bit and apart from a small healing wound, more or less concealed by his glasses, MLO looks as good as new. It hasn’t hurt at all. He hasn’t needed so much as a single paracetamol. Let’s hope the medics are as pleased with it as we are when he goes back for the follow up appointment.

Then, as if that weren’t enough, two days later came his 73rd birthday. For obvious reasons the family decided that we should celebrate and make a big fuss of him. It will be a long, uncertain 12 months to the next one.

The day started a bit oddly. After I’d given him my present and the cards which had arrived in the previous day or two, he rummaged about and then presented me with an envelope. It was a Golden Wedding anniversary card. Oh dear. He had clearly remembered that there was something to celebrate but couldn’t quite remember what. Our Big 50 is next March. I swallowed hard and said “Oh how lovely. Thank you. It isn’t quite our anniversary yet but we’re in our 50th year so it’s spot on”. He replied: “I tried to work it out but couldn’t quite.”

I took him to see David Haig’s Pressure in the afternoon as a birthday treat. I’d reviewed it at Park Theatre earlier in the year and was very taken with it – so, of course, were lots of other people which is why it has transferred into the West End. I was pretty sure MLO would like it too and I was right. Despite the time it now takes to walk him through Covent Garden – his has only one speed: trudge – he seemed to be engaged and pleased to be there. When the play was over I bundled him into a taxi and whisked him off to Blackfriars as fast as possible for the train home.

He had some idea that our elder son was coming although I’d been very vague, telling him that we were going out for curry when we got home probably on our own although ES and his wife might join us. In his now customary compliant mood he didn’t ask me why there was a hurry to get home.

In fact I knew that both sons, their warmly supportive partners and our younger two  granddaughters, aged 7 and 3, were all at home busy festooning the house with streamers and balloons. MLO arrived home to find six people eagerly awaiting him, table laid, beer in the fridge and food pre-ordered by our younger son. All he had to do was to sit down and open his presents. It was all extremely jolly and a real pleasure to see the “patient” being relatively with it as pater familias and clearly feeling cherished. And I’m really grateful for all the effort which went into that.

Let’s hope MLO is still able to enjoy the planned celebrations when March 2019 finally arrives. We’re all (sons, wives, GDs et al) going to spend a weekend in a very big, rented house in Kent so that we can mark the occasion all together. Other family members will join us on the Sunday. No doubt there will be balloons.

Meanwhile an article in Daily Express reports on an American study which helpfully finds that the best ways to fight Ms A are dancing, gardening and swimming. Hmm. I took him dancing earlier in the year and I have to say it was very hard work. His idea of gardening is to stand in the middle of the grass and watch me do it. And he’s a non-swimmer. Next idea, please?

Investec Holland Park

Isabeau is a strange, rather clunky piece and it was completely new to me. Think Spamalotmeets The Merchant of Venice with a seasoning of The Emperor’s New Clothes which finally morphs into Lear or Oedipus. And with characters with names such as Ethelberto of Argyle and Randolf of Dublin it’s the sort of thing which provides ammunition for opera sceptics who want to ridicule the entire art form. It isn’t hard to see why Isabeau has more or less disappeared from the repertoire in the last 80 years or so although it enjoyed a fair amount of ongoing success following its 1911 Buenos Aires premiere.

Virginal Princess Isabeau i(Anne Sophie Duprels) is told by her tyrannical father (Mikhail Svetlov) the King that she must choose a husband from one of a series of competitors for her hand. She doesn’t fancy any of them, so her furious father says she must ride naked through the streets as a punishment. Citizens are forbidden, on pain of blinding, to look. Meanwhile a jolly falconer, Folco (David Butt Philip) has turned up – with lovely silver falcon puppet. He and Isabeau fall in love. He looks at her nakedness. He is blinded. They die. Yes the plot – or “book” as we would say if this were a musical – is utter tosh, however hard the production tries to find topical resonances relating to feminism, appearance and all the rest of it.

On the other hand Pietro Mascagni’s score is full of delightful orchestral colour every nuance of which is allowed to sing out under Francesco Cilluffo’s energetic baton. Isabeau gets a passionate aria in Act 1 in which she pleads with her father and each of her sustained notes is accompanied by shifting cadences beneath it. At one point the horns have a very dramatic and unusual repeated figure in which a very short note is followed by a stressed longer one. There’s interesting music for the harp and sometimes for percussion although the wood block for the horse’s hooves put me irreverently in mind of Monty Python.

There are some fine performances on stage here too. As a woman cheated of just about everything, Duprels uses her soaring top notes movingly to communicate passion and tragedy. Butt Philip’s tenor is warm and convincing especially when he is effectively in duet with the cellos. The piece finally becomes dramatically coherent in the last act when Isabeau visits Folco’s prison cell. Their duet work here is nicely balanced and judged in this production and you actually begin to believe in them.

Full marks to Opera Holland Park’s usual large, young chorus too. Chorus Master, David Todd, has done a fine job in making them sound really vibrant as they swarm over the set designed by takis.

There are problems with the set, however. It looks great with lots of steps, ledges and platforms on three moveable, interlocking “islands” presenting different configurations to connote a medieval castle. It’s visually a strong idea and it works especially well during Isabeau’s naked ride which takes place upstage behind the continuously shifting “castle” so that the audience gets the merest hint. The trouble is that these bits of castle are clearly very heavy and the cast and crew often struggle to start them rolling. And there’s a stage left chamber (a bit like a giant version of a disability lavatory on a modern train) whose big semi-circular door refused to budge on press night leaving cast members invisible to the audience who palpably resisted cheering when a stage hand, dressed as a churl, finally freed it, several minutes later. A case of a potentially good design whose practical problems have not been fully thought through? Let’s hope they sort it for the rest of the run.

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

Dulwich Opera Company

This rather elegant, intelligent Cosi is a good example of what can be achieved with six singers, a pianist and minimal props and set. Sung in Italian with “side titles” on small screens at the two edges of the playing area, it’s an enjoyably accessible take on the opera too.

Honey Rouhani is a delightful Despina. She makes every note sound gloriously effortless and she talks, quips and jokes with eloquent, flashing eyes. Her cynical, rippling 6|8 number when she first tells Fiordiligi (Loretta Hopkins) and Dorabella (Phillipa Thomas) what she thinks about men is sung with terrific verve.

There’s a strong performance from James Williams as the scheming bass, Don Alfonso too. He makes the bottom notes ring out with resonance – and cheerful malice. After all it’s a cruel joke he’s playing on the two women who are famously each tricked into yielding to the other’s disguised fiancé – to prove that no woman can be trusted because “cosi fan tutte” which translates roughly as “they’re all the same”.

I especially admired the ensemble work in this production. Many of the trios, quartets, quintets and sextets are beautifully sung, well supported by the warm acoustic of St Saviour’s Church. The solo work is generally adequate but not, in most cases as noteworthy as the group numbers – with the exception of Robert Barbaro’s 3|4 aria as Ferrando which is exquisite.

Loretta Hopkins – whose Fiordiligi is really troubled by the events which overtake her and, for a long time passionately resistant to seduction –  is an outstanding, very convincing actor which more than compensates for the harshness in some of her top notes and thinness at the bottom. David Fletcher (as Gugliemo) is entertaining and a strong duettist. Thomas is a good foil to Hopkins and has an appealingly colourful voice.

And, on the night I saw Cosi, there was a terrific performance from Janet Haney on piano. She and Elspeth Wilkes have shared out the performance dates.  I am, however, doubtful of the wisdom of opening this show – which is already quite long – with the overture played on piano. It feels a bit odd as if we’re starting the evening with a piano recital. Moreover, at times, especially in the first scene the piano seems to be drowning out the singers. Perhaps it is mis-positioned and would be better behind the action, further away from the audience?

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

Theatretrain, Sadler’s Wells Theatre

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

Styling itself “the company that loves to perform”, Theatretrain is a part-time children’s training organisation with branches all over the country.

It makes a specialism of bringing together groups of branches to stage big scale shows which they’ve rehearsed back in their weekly sessions.

Special Measures, the first of two shows at Sadler’s Wells, featured 400 children from Theatretrain branches in Basingstoke, Bristol, Maldon, Basildon, Southampton, Cambridge, Loughton and Reading …

Read the rest of this review at Musical Theatre Review: http://musicaltheatrereview.com/theatretrain-special-measures-sadlers-wells-theatre/

Artform at Broadway Theatre, Catford

This is an interesting ‘chamber version’ of a piece which is usually staged on a larger scale – at Menier Chocolate Factory in 2009 with a run at Theatre Royal Haymarket in 2010 – for example. Artform’s pretty competent cast of thirteen turns it into thoughtfully intimate theatre for which Catford Broadway’s studio space works well. And it’s a long time since I’ve seen a show of this type in a venue of this sort in which performers project more than adequately without radio mics.

It’s a 1960s show telling the story of a dance hall hostess (fine line between that and the Oldest Profession) desperate to escape and find true love. Her colleagues are justifiably cynical. And then just when it looks as if she has got her wish, her Prince Charming gets cold feet and she’s denied a happy ending.

There’s delightful work from Claire Goad as Charity who is rarely off stage. She is totally of top of the role with her expressively mobile eyes, eloquent flick of the blonde bob wig, ruefulness, comic timing, intensity and accomplished dancing. Her acting while concealed in Vittorio Vidal’s (Aneurin Pascoe – good) closet is lovely comedy.

Nathan Pollpeter plays Oscar Lindquist – so nearly the love of Charity’s life. He is a very accomplished, totally convincing actor. The scenes with Charity in the lift and at the top of the ferris wheel are very effectively paced. This more than compensates for his unremarkable singing.

Full marks to the other eleven cast members who play all the support roles and provide a vibrant ensemble. The sexy Big Spender number is terrific, for example. Sheila Arden, director, clearly knows exactly how to get the best out of a non-pro cast in a bijoux space and Caroline Essenhigh is, as ever, an imaginative choreographer.

The set – designed and constructed by various people as usual in a company where everything’s voluntary – provides a simple brick wall at the back, a moveable fountain, some basic furniture and simple suggestions of other things such as pole to suggest the lift and the ferris wheel – which means that actors can use mime for the lift button and so forth pretty successfully.

And oh yes, I do love a good band. One of the strengths of this enjoyable show is the six fine players squeezed into a stage right corner led by MD, John Hargreaves from keyboard. Well done Benjamin Essenhigh on drums in particular who has to make a 90 degree turn from his music to see Hargreaves but never gets out of synch.

First published in Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Artform-Sweet%20Charity&reviewsID=3258

Chichester Festival Theatre

It was one those ovation-for-the-understudy nights. Earlier in the day Matt Lucas, due to play Bill Snibson, had seen a throat specialist who decreed that he needed to rest his voice. So we got Ryan Pidgen in the lead role on the opening/press night. He had rehearsed for just a few hours. The result was a warm, confident, accomplished performance as the gor blimey jack-of-all-trades from Lambeth who inherits a title and a fortune. Pidgen dominated the stage with his singing, dancing and all those punning one liners for every second he was on it. It was a bravura performance by any standards. Had it not been obvious (to most people) that this wasn’t Matt Lucas I don’t think anyone would have known that Pidgen was an understudy.

Me and My Girl is a gloriously old fashioned, feel good musical dating from 1937. Like so many of the best British comedies it’s a play on social class with more than a whiff of both Pygmalion/My Fair Lady, Kind Hearts and Coronets and HMS Pinafore which is substantially referenced in Mark Cumberland’s sparky orchestrations of Noel Gay’s score.

Caroline Quentin is terrific as the fierce, bossy (but of course there’s more to her) Maria, Duchess of Dene. She flounces, frightens and fulminates in a fabulously frumpy tweed skirt until the very end when, Katisha-like she succumbs to the charms of her old friend Sir John Tremayne (Clive Rowe – engaging). As her glittering daughter, Siubhan Harrison flirts, swarms and there’s a very polished, make-you-gasp dance scene with a group of men in which she is thrown into all manner of unlikely poses. Goodness knows how long it had to be rehearsed for.

And there’s splendid work from Alex Young as Snibson’s titular “my girl” from Lambeth who really isn’t very likely to fit in as Lady Hareford. In her woollen beret and spectacles she initially presents a homely figure who can also sing and dance “to the manor born” – as it were.

But the real star of this tuneful, uplifting show is the ensemble who drive the piece along with energy and panache – assisted by choreographic strokes (by Alistair David) of witty genius such as suits of armour which tap dance and a tango with beach towels, The big set pieces such as Doing the Lambeth Walk (which I’m still humming 12 hours later) and The Sun Has Got His Hat On are gloriously vibrant too. The former, of course, keeps shifting its key up in semitones as it gets faster – hardly an original idea but it works very well indeed here and looks great as the pearly kings queens dance to the stage through the auditorium.

Anyone who reads my reviews even occasionally will know I’m a sucker for a good band and the 11 musicians led my MD Gareth Valentine certainly come up trumps here. It looks a bit odd to see Valentine’s head protruding from a triangular down stage trap while the rest of the band is concealed from view under the stage. But the sound works perfectly.

Daniel Evans knows how to stage a spectacle and he’s in fine form with this one which could, I suspect, be Chichester’s next West End transfer.

First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Chichester%20Festival%20Theatre%20(professional)-Me%20and%20My%20Girl&reviewsID=3255