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Susan’s Bookshelves: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench

Of course I was going to grab Judi Dench’s new book about Shakespeare. How could I not? I bought it on the day it was published last month.

The Man Who Pays the Rent is a series of conversations  between our greatest theatrical grande dame, who is anything but prima-donna-ish, and Brendan O’Hea, an actor, theatre director and Associate Artist at Shakespeare’s Globe. The illustrations – who knew she could draw and paint? –  are by Dench herself.

They discuss twenty plays that Dench has performed in, not always agreeing with each other. And she comes at each discussion from a whole range of angles. In some cases she has, at different points in her career, played several roles in the same play and, of course, everything she says is informed by 88 years of life experience.

Oh, how I wish I could have shared her insights with my A level students when they were studying some of these plays. They would have loved her chuckling, perceptive earthiness.  For example, we would all have laughed, and then agreed with her, that Angelo in Measure for Measure would have been “up all night wanking, probably” at the prospect of Isabella coming back with a “yes”, the next day. With a grin which leaps off the page she tells O’Hea not to put that in the book. “Say ‘having dirty thoughts and interfering with himself’ “ she says. Yes, I hope some of my former students are reading this.

She knows what each character is thinking and quotes text continually to support her points in a gloriously unstuffy way. She loves the plays (except for The Merchant of Venice of which more in a minute) and the language which she argues should never be “translated” or updated because everything you need is there on the page written by the amazing Mr Shakespeare.

Inevitably we get a lot of memories about fellow actors, directors, mishaps and anecdotes.  Working with Franco Zeffirelli on Romeo and Juliet was, for example, a roller coaster. And she is funny about John Woodvine as Cornwall, hurling a “bloodied” lychee which stood for Gloucester’s gouged-out eye in the RSC production of King Lear in which she played Regan. How safe did she feel being thrown around by Daniel Day-Lewis in the closet scene when she was Gertude to his Hamlet? “Oh God, yes, I always felt safe with him. The fight was all choreographed. Violence on stage can’t be real, otherwise you’re going to get through a lot of Desdemonas.” She’s very good on Gertrude too observing that she’s “a bling person” who has probably always had the hots for Claudius. It can’t all have developed in a few weeks and, half jokingly, she suggests that old Hamlet was probably boring. “Perhaps he had gout. Or maybe he couldn’t, you know – get it up.”

She says of King Lear that you can see it from everyone’s point of view. “Regan tries to reason with her father. Yes, of course he must come and stay but she doesn’t want him bringing the whole court with him, making all those demands. And besides she’s ‘out of that provision, which means she hasn’t had a chance to pop to Tesco’s”. I really like the way she casually, wittily, uses anachronism to stress relevance –  yet another reason why every A Level English teacher should be directing students to this book.

So what does she have against “The Merchant of fucking Venice” which she variously describes as a “vile” “ horrible” “loathsome” and “insufferable” play? She was Portia in an RSC production directed by Terry Hands in which her late husband Michael “Mikey Williams played Bassanio. “All the characters behave so badly. Nobody really redeems themselves …. “  She says. “I’d  spend the day thinking: God I’ve got to do that bloody awful show again tonight” instead of skipping to work as she usually did.

Dame Judi is immensely good company but she dosen’t suffer fools. Several times O’Hea says something provocative or something she disagrees with and she comes back at him very assertively. She knows these works like almost no other and yet she remains humble and wanting to learn. She brings a child-like “naughtiness” to the discussion but is very serious about the beauty of Shakespeare’s poetry and how it can, and should, be spoken. Viola’s “Make me a willow cabin at your gate” speech from Twelfth Night, for instance is ravishing, she asserts.

Students, academics and critics know these plays from the outside in. You can, and I am in many cases, be very familiar with a play and have thought about its nuances and meaning a lot. But you remain on the outside.  There’s no substitute for knowing and understanding dramatic texts from the inside out. That’s what makes this entertaining, thoughtful and informative book such a useful addition to the several shelves in my office devoted to  books about Shakespeare.

And I shall long treasure her quirky and unexpected epilogue which made me shed a tear of two.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Dance of the Dwarfs by Geoffrey Household

 

MATHILDE MILWIDSKY, VIOLIN AND HUW WATKINS, PIANO
at the LEVINSKY HALL, PLYMOUTH UNIVERSITY, Saturday 11 th November 2023

Part of the Musica Viva series, which brings classical music to the Arts Institute for the benefit of
students and the wider community, this delightful concert was well-attended and received, as it
deserved to be. As always with these concerts the programme started with an introduction by both
musicians, telling us a little bit about the works they were to perform. Some of these helpful nuggets
of information I shall mention when writing about each piece. The programme was wide-ranging,
using works from Classical early Beethoven, Romantic Cesar Franck to twentieth century Vaughan-
Williams, Eugene Ysaye and Anton Webern. The contrasts of style and form were a wonderful
showpiece for the range and ability of both performers.


They started with the gorgeously emotional The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan-Williams.
Milwidsky told us she had chosen it for the programme because the 11 th November was Armistice
Day and the piece, in the version they were performing it, had been composed at the beginning of
the First World War. After this war Vaughan-Williams reworked it for solo violin and in 1920 the first
orchestral version was delivered. The composer was inspired by George Meredith’s poem of the
same title, where the lark is described as producing ‘the silver chain of sound/ Of many links without
a break/ In chirrup, whistle, slur and slake.’ Later in the poem he describes how the song of the lark
descends into the valley below: ‘ and he the wine which overflows/ To lift us with him as he goes.’ That
extraordinary little bird, so high in the sky as to be almost invisible, pours down his song which, to
human ears, takes us up into the heavens.

This is indeed what happened as we heard the exquisite rendering of the violin, sometimes
carrying us upwards to ‘far and wee’ heights, sometimes plunging downwards, but always tender
and expressive, the piano echoing and colouring the music. The middle section broadens out with
chords that describe the pastoral scene before we return to the bird, his courage and determination,
the violin almost defiant as the lark disappears once more to impossible heights in an echo of the
beginning.

There is always an edge of sadness to this piece and it was indeed a fitting reminder of that
most terrible and wasteful of twentieth century wars in this new century, where it seems pointless
and collateral death still abounds.

Next were four very short pieces for violin and piano by Webern, a pupil of Schoenberg.
Pianist Huw Watkins said one thing about these pieces that resonated with me. He said that the
characteristic of all four was that it ‘made you listen.’ And it did. The first piece contained single
notes sometimes bowed, sometimes plucked. The silences between gave each sound importance.
The stormy second piece employed a variety of colouration from the violin with the piano supplying
a tense undercurrent. In the third, single shorter notes on the piano were played against longer
violin strokes. The single notes were like raindrops that made the listener wait for the next sound
from either instrument. And the last piece contrasted loud with soft, including scrapes and falling
runs. This composer and his work were thought-provoking and challenged one think of music in a
different way.

The last part of the first half was on the more familiar ground of Beethoven’s Sonata for
violin and piano in A minor, Opus 23. Here is Beethoven, young but already pushing away at those
boundaries set by earlier composers.

The first movement Presto plays with echoes between the instruments, questions posed
and answers given, threaded through with beautiful melodies which emerge and then build to a
crescendo but which end on a quiet note. In the second Andante Scherzoso piu allegretto the piano
leads and the violin picks up the tune; it has the pleasing effect of the fitting together of two
brackets. Here the two instruments are in true duet, weaving in and out of each other, often with
skipping rhythms and contrasts between strong and light colouring. In the third movement Allegro
Molto the duet is maintained. It is a strong, fast movement, full of echoing returns between the
two, contrasts in tempo and colouration between legato and staccato until, with frantic bowing cut
across by strongly broad chords the piece races to its emphatic finale.

After the interval we were treated to the third movement of Eugene Ysaye’s Sonata for solo
violin in D minor, Opus 27, labelled Ballade. Ysaye, we were told in the introduction, was the greatest
violinist of his day. In his compositions he is often inspired by Bach’s polyphonic writing, though he
takes it to greater extremes.

The opening was soft, full of lingering long notes which Milwidsky dwelled on  with obvious
enjoyment. Being a solo piece it allowed a lingering in the listener too, who experienced the quality
of each note, each fantastical run and playful phrase, often repeated. It is clearly a very difficult
piece but Milwidsky never let us realise this. Particularly enjoyable were the little scampers, followed
by longer deeper notes, the variations in tempo giving the idea that here was a soloist set free to
explore and enjoy the wonder and range of her instrument.

Finally came Cesar Franck’s Sonata in A major for Violin and Piano in four movements, where
we experienced the whole full-blown delight of romanticism at its best. It opened with strongly
bowed rich melodies, as always Milwidsky getting the most out of the length and quality of the
notes. She is a very watchable performer, her face, eyebrows and whole body showing her
involvement with her instrument while always, in every piece of the evening, judging with a firm
accuracy the depth of each note. The piano gave a rich battery of sound so that the whole
movement created an intricate tapestry of sound. The second movement began with a restless
piano which dipped to allow the voice of an equally restless violin. The partnership between the two
was on show here as the tempo slowed then speeded up to a frenzied close. The third movement
again began with a strong piano theme which then swapped back and forth with the violin. Both
came together in a triumphant emphatic melody, dipping into tender moments. The end of this
movement was really beautiful, making the most of the range of both instruments and both
musicians’ ability to explore the emotional content to its full. The final movement had a more
positive feel to it. It was full of lovely tunes from both instruments. The piano rippled along with the
broader notes of the violin rising above. Then both dived into a lower but equally tuneful register. It
was noticeable how big a sound the two instruments could make as they weaved towards the
conclusion – an almost jaunty, strongly marked ending.

What a wonderful evening from two very talented musicians. Huw Watkins is already a well-
known composer and soloist who was recently awarded an MBE in the 2021 birthday honours for his
services to music. Mathilde Milwidsky has been dubbed a rising star by Classic FM. She has already
won many prizes and worked with a wide range of composers and as a soloist in many concert halls.
The talents of both musicians were evident throughout the evening. Their sensitivity to each other
as well as to the demands of the wide range of musical styles was clear. Thank you for a wonderful
evening, which was rounded off with a tender work by Debussy as a fitting encore.

 

I’m not really a dog person. Cats are more my thing. I like dogs, though. In the last year or two I have acquired two as close canine family members and I always engage with friendly dogs I see on trains or in the park. I just have no wish to take full responsibility for one.

Veteran crime writer Peter James, unlike me, is clearly every inch a dog man and his new Roy Grace title spells out the horror of dog crime –  now apparently, even more rampant than drug crime first, because  there’s a lot of money in it and second, because the pandemic has triggered a huge thirst for dog ownership which in some cases is shortlived.

I’m a sucker for crime fiction. It’s my go-to for light reading, Peter James is always a curl-up-on-the-sofa treat. And I suppose the gripping, overarching narrative from novel to novel, now de rigeur in all crime series, is the reading woman’s answer to TV soaps. And in this case I also enjoy the Brigton setting because it’s a city I know pretty well.

As always there are several story lines in Stop Them Dead which eventually come together. A genuine, decent farmer who has bred a litter of puppies is killed in his yard when he tries to stop a gang of thieves stealing his dogs. A (usually) sensible family deny common sense and advice and buy a puppy for cash in a lay-by after which their beloved, only child becomes seriously ill. Meanwhile Grace and his wife Cleo want a second dog … and there is a spate of dog thefts (to order) in the streets and parks of Brighton. This is Peter James so, of course, it’s a perfectly plotted page turner and will eventually attract millions of viewers when it’s televised for ITV with John Simm as Grace.

I like this novel particularly because James evidently wants to spread information about the cruel, dark ruthless world which forms the background. Yes, in real life as well as in fiction, there are still gullible people who find “breeders” online and buy dogs from them in motorway service stations for cash only to find that all the paperwork is fake and that, often, that the dog is weak or, at worst, seriously ill. At a time when a proper pedigree dog from a registered breeder costs thousands it’s not surprising that a half price bargain seems attractive to some. But some of the puppies are imported from abroad, or bred in terrible conditions in Britain and they’re almost always too young to be taken from their mothers. Caveat emptor or buyer beware. The only way to stop this dreadful trade is to boycott and report it.

You’ll be pleased to know, by the way, that my granddog (pictured) was born and rescued  in Cyprus before finding a new home in Britain via a reputatable charity.  My nephew-dog meanwhile came from a registered breeder and my sister saw the whole litter with their mother, more than once.

Kayla

But, another relation who has kept dogs all her life bought, in order to rescue, a three year old “Covid dog”,  who had never been chipped, vaccinated or checked by a vet after producing eleven puppies. That particular dog has now landed on all four paws but they aren’t all so lucky. These horrors really do go on. Read Peter James’s gripping novel and pass on the information.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench

Show: The Inquiry

Society: Chichester Festival Theatre (professional)

Venue: Minerva Theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre. Oaklands Park, Chichester PO19 6AP

Credits: By Harry Davies.

The Inquiry

4 stars

Photo: Manuel Harlan

Whenever there’s the national crisis, the government of the day calls for an independent public enquiry: Chilcot, Levenson, Covid. We’re all used the concept. Although they take years they are meant to be fully impartial and a force for the good  – except that nobody is legally bound by the findings and a process known as “Maxwellisation” means that anyone adversely criticised in an enquiry is now often, and controversially, shown the report in advance and given time to respond before it goes public.

That’s the starting point for Harry Davies’s first play. He’s an investigative journalist on The Guardian who originally trained and worked as an actor so he knows both his subject and his craft. The result is intelligently riveting.

Hundreds of people have died because of water pollution. The water company responsible is squirming, unsuprisingly. There are hints of pay-offs, vested interests etc. So of course a public enquiry is underway chaired by Lady Justice Deborah Wingate (Deborah Findlay). The Rt. Hon. Arthur Gill MP (John Hefferman) who is Minister for Justice is concerned both in, and about, the outcome. There are leaks. No one is clean. I wonder whether Davies considered titling his play Quid Pro Quo?

Findlay is outstanding as Deborah Wingate. She has all the right clipped gravitas shot through with plenty of human observation in private. Then eventually, she crumbles (no spoilers) and it’s spellbinding. Hefferman gives us a pretty plausible camp, self interested minister and Malcolm Sinclair shows us just what an outstanding actor he is as Lord Patrick Thorncliffe KC, a schoolfriend of Gill’s, with his icy RP, use of “Darling” and Machiavellian, face-saving plotting. I last saw him playing Eisenhower in David Haig’s play Pressure and he is anything but typecast.

The strong cast of seven is well directed by Joanna Bowman who makes imaginative use of the Minerva’s horseshoe playing space – often placing physical distance between characters to stress their positions within the action. It sits, moreover, very neatly on Max Jones’ set which uses lots of House of Lords red chairs, wooden panelling and a long table so that we never forget where we are. And the moment when it opens to reveal Wingate and her friend Jonathan Hayden KC (Nicholas Rowe – good)  sharing a bottle of wine in her very flowery Suffolk garden is nicely done.

The Inquiry is a refreshingly – and enjoyably – grown up play, unsullied by fancy music or special effects. Its power lies entirely in its words and you need to listen – as suggested by the very word “audience”. Obviously, it’s also bravely topical. I noticed a child of about nine in the audience at the matinee I attended, however, and couldn’t help wondering what he made of it. It would be too esoteric for most children.

 

  • All photos: Manuel Harlan

First published by Sardines https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/the-inquiry/

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Philharmonia

Bach Choir

David Hill

Royal Festival Hall

02 November 2023

It was a good idea to open this large scale choral concert with Samuel Coleridge Taylor’s Solemn Prelude because it set the mood for what was to come. It was performed with lots of lyricism, bombast, fresh charm and excellent work from three trombones. And my goodness SCT could turn out a good tune. If only this music – and I thought the same about his Ballade in A minor   recently –  were heard more often I’m convinced the public would soon be voting it top of the classical music charts.

 

Then came Amy Beech’s Canticle of the Sun which was completely new to me. It’s a choral setting, for orchestra, choir and four soloists  of words by St Francis of Assisi translated by Matthew Arnold which sounds very much like Parry when it gets going. The passage which opens with lovely growling basses followed by unaccompanied quartet of singers was especially striking. The choir faces a challenge in Royal Festival Hall because the altos are, perforce, so far from the sopranos although most of them are facing each other across the orchestra. Hill has found ways of making it work, though and there was some lovely singing in this piece with an immaculately controlled morendo ending.

 

But the main event was, of course, Brahms’s German Requiem with all its plangent mood and tempo changes. This was an intelligently measured rendering in which Hill really got the balance right and leaned on the detail. I have never before, for example, noticed quite how much timp there is in this piece (I’ve sung it many times but never played in the orchestra). Here we heard every single drum beat under Hill’s very clear downbeat. At the very end, I liked the way he made sure we heard the harp too because it can so easily get lost.

 

We got all the sweetness and warmth from the choir that Wie lieblick sind deine Wohnungen needs but without self-indulgence and there was some good staccato work in Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit although Clare Rutter sang the soprano solo with too much vibrato for my taste. Baritone Ross Ramgorin made a decent job of both his numbers but it was really the choir which deserved the most applause – and got it.

 

I started reading the Booker shortlist as an annual project in the 1980s. I saw it a personal, horizon-widening exercise. As a reader, as with so much else in life, it’s all too easy to like what you know and know what you like. And some of the discoveries were wonderful. I first read, for example, David Lodge, Carol Shields and Peter Carey because one of their titles was shortlisted. I then went on and read everything else of theirs I could lay hands along with their new titles as they appeared.

In early 1989 when Salman Rushie and The Satanic Verses hit the headlines because of the fatwa demanding his execution for blasphemy, I was the only person I knew who had actually read it. it had been shortlisted for Booker the previous autumn. It didn’t win although Chairman of the Judges, Michael Foot, made it clear that he thought it should have done. Personally, I didn’t enjoy it very much but took the view as that if you don’t like it, or don’t think you will, then don’t read it. But nothing gives you the right to stop, or try to stop, other people reading a book – any book. Of course, though, I am not a religious extremist and see things differently.

Another good reason for reading those shortlists was that I was teaching secondary English to GCSE and A Level, and it meant I could talk to my students about current titles as I tried to encourage them to follow my example and try books which were not necessarily within the habitual comfort zone – because therein can often lurk new treasures. I always regarded developing wider reading as almost as important as getting everyone through the exam although, naturally, I did that too.

Since I stopped teaching to become a full-time writer in 2004 I have got out of the Booker shortlist habit although I have usually read the winner and sometimes one or two of the others if I liked the sound of them. This year, however, the final announcement is not until 26 November. The shortlist was announced on 21 September which meant there was full two months to get acquainted with the books. So I did.

It’s strong, beautifully diverse list:

Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein (Canadian)

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery (American)

The Other Eden by Paul Harding (American)

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch (Irish)

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray (Irish)

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo (British Indian).

I found things to like in them all but the one which moved, shocked and haunted me most was Prophet Song.

We’re in Ireland in the present day when a totalitarian regime is elected. Changes are small to start with, as ordinary citizens’ rights begin to disappear. It made me think, initially, of the pandemic, lockdown and government emergency edicts. Of course the situation rapidly gets worse and you know that nothing is going to get any better for the family at the heart of it: Eilish, a scientist, her husband Larry who’s a teacher/trade unionist and their children Mark, Molly, Bailey and Ben. Suddenly it’s a world of torture, death, sudden disappearance, corruption and suffering. And the arrival of the rebels to overturn the regime doesn’t make any discernible difference for families on the ground.  What Lynch has done is to retell the story of Syria in a European context and I’m deeply ashamed of what it says about me that I found this much more disturbing than anything I’ve ever read about horrendous atrocities thousands of miles away.

The depiction of Eilish’s despair and declining mental health is masterly. I suffered every shred of the horror with her – especially when she goes in search of 12-year-old Bailey. That will stay with me for a very long time.  The novel ends in bleak, ambiguous hope, tempered with horror and anxiety.

I read it in just a couple of days – it’s very compelling. On the first night I slept for an hour, then woke up instantly alert because I thought sometime was flashing a torch and shouting up aggressively from the garden.  It took me a few minutes to recognise that I’d been dreaming. Perhaps I shouldn’t read novels as powerful as Prophet Song just before I put the light out but it is testament to its strength.

So this is the book which would get my vote, if I were on the judging panel. I suspect, though, that the prize will go to Sarah Bernstein for Study for Obedience which is original, edgy, topical because its protagonist is Jewish, and written in an unusual style, It just didn’t hit me between the eyes me as much as Prophet Song did.

Booker-Paul_Lynch-031

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Stop Them Dead by Peter James

Show: The Loaf

Society: London (professional shows)

Venue: The Bridge House Theatre. Bridge House, 2 High Street, London SE20 8RZ

Credits: By Alan Booty

 

The Loaf

4 stars

This 70 minute, two hander play has matured a lot since I saw it last year at Jack Studio. Playwright Alan Booty, who also plays Hermann and directs, has found ways of making it seem much more natural and less awkward.

We’re in Hamburg, two years after the end of World War Two. Food is in very short supply. Hermann wakes in the night and, unbearably hungry, sneaks into the kitchen for a piece of bread although the small loaf has to “last until Thursday”. His wife, Martha (Joanna Karlsson) hears him moving about and comes to see what’s up. What follows is a long conversation in which we learn about privation, loss, fear, life under the Nazis and the relationship between a couple who’ve been married for 39 years.

Booty finds a child-like impishness in Hermann – using silly jokes as a way of covering his character’s refusal to succumb to despair under awful circumstances. Karlsson, meanwhile, gives us a Martha who is variously anxious, decent, caring, maternal and desperately worried about her own elderly mother in Russia-controlled Berlin. Her active, finely nuanced listening while Hermann is talking beautifully done. They, are, in this revised version of the play a totally convincing couple. Apparently childless, they have lived through two world wars. They have only each other and we sense that, despite occasional exasperation they will live on peacefully together.  She is distressed, for example, that he has sold his father’s ring for a few vegetables and a small bottle of schnapps but later he tells her, for the first time, how much he hated his father. They are still learning about each other – with tenderness and affection.

The dialogue now flows believably because Booty has dropped any attempt to mimic German syntax in English. Instead, both characters speak in gentle, quite subtle but well sustained German accents and the dialogue is peppered with German words which seem to lie happily in the context. As a device, it works well. And the pacing is adeptly managed.

Rose Balp has done a good job with evocative props and costumes too. The bread board is vintage and in period, a fresh loaf is placed on it at every performance and she knitted the slippers to a 1940s pattern.

I enjoyed this reworking of a thoughtful play very much. I’m, glad moreover that a decision was made to open and close with Beethoven’s piano sonata Op 27 no 2 (“Moonlight”) because it sets the scene at several levels. C# minor connotes the poignant but ultimately positive mood beautifully.

First published by Sardines https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/the-loaf-2/

Show: Owners

Society: London (professional shows)

Venue: Jermyn Street Theatre. 16b Jermyn Street, London SW1Y 6ST

Credits: Caryl Churchill

 

Owners

3 stars

Photo: Steve Gregson

This early (1972) Caryl Churchill play hasn’t had many outings over the years which is a pity because it’s sharp, very funny and remains topical – in a country in which property ownership is still, for many, life’s ultimate goal.

Clegg (Mark Huckett), a butcher, is fed up with his property tycoon wife, Marion (Laura Doddington) and fantasises about killing her. Alec (Ryan Donaldson) and Lisa (Boadicea Ricketts), with whom relations are doubly complicated, are her tenants. Worsley (Tom Morley) works for Marion and Clegg. Also in the mix, in much smaller roles, are Alec’s mother (Pearl Marsland) who has dementia and Mrs Arlington, a neighbour (Laura Woodhouse). What evolves from this is a dark – there’s a lot about death – comedy which explores ownership in every sense.

Now let me get this out of the way first. I do not find dementia-based comedy remotely funny and although the audience responded with gales of laughter I was distinctly unamused by the scene in which Pearl Marsland’s pitiful character attempts to make tea. Surely, in this age of much greater Alzheimer’s awareness, this could have been toned down rather than hammed up?

Otherwise this is an engaging 135 mins of theatre featuring some good performances. Doddington gives us a magnificently rounded Marion, outrageously used to getting her own way but also with unfulfilled needs and desires – which don’t include her ghastly husband. There’s fine work too from Tom Morley whose Worsley is hilariously deadpan and lugubrious. He has tried and failed to die by suicide so often that it has become a joke as he sustains more and more injuries – or maybe not, come to think of it, for anyone who has actually had to deal with suicide in someone close to them.

Cat Fuller’s design is delightful and very neat in Jermyn Street’s small space. She gives us a crescent of front doors, all different, to connote property and its importance. Some moveable items slide in and out of a hole where meters would be between two houses. Alec and Lisa’s bed emeges, like a drawer, from the air vent beneath two doors. Her 1970s costumes are lovely too – “expensive” brightly coloured outfits for Marion, simple plain dresses for Lisa and a tweedy brown suit for Worsley.

 

  • Photos: Steve Gregson

  • First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/owners/