Shepherd’s warning – November Thames dawn last week
I can just about get away with calling this my Autumn Blog – gardens have squashed remnants of pumpkins, fragments of sky-rockets crunch underfoot in piles of amber leaves, even as calls ring out in the malls to start shopping for Christmas….
Given each day’s world news, you can however see the attraction of escape into a realm of tinsel and brandy-laced pies. Not many of you were, but I was around for the last threat of nuclear obliteration, when the Americans spotted ballistic missiles in Cuba under a hundred miles from their southern coast, about to be supplied with atomic warheads by a convey of approaching Russian ships. As President Kennedy came on the radio demanding – his hand apparently poised over the nuclear button – that Moscow turn those ships around, I heard echoes in my head of Tom Lehrer’s jaunty, timely song “We shall all go together when we go….”
So as grief and despair swell in Ukraine and Gaza, as despots savour power while easy-answer right-wing mountebanks win votes in the US and Europe, as our own well-meaning leaders struggle with wobbly economics and scary politics – where do we turn for solace?
We who might seek London theatre tickets for respite find ourselves stalled by rampant price inflation. For instance I’d love to watch ‘Oedipus’ at Wyndham’s Theatre, given rave reviews and a cast including Lesley Manville, Mark Strong and June Watson – however once you click on “Buy Tickets”, the phrase “Tickets from £75” becomes “From £140” or sometimes “From £200” – and thus one’s non-subsidised winter heating bills start to take priority…
So behold, a FREE theatre treat is a joyous thing to report – reader, read on!
This week on my way back from running a TYA Shakespeare workshop in Leadenhall St I called in at the Red Eight Gallery at 9 Cornhill, a few steps from Bank tube station.
There I encountered Sirs Derek Jacobi and Ian McKellen, Dame Harriet Walter, Juliet Stevenson, Frances Barber and other respected stars performing Shakespeare with all the skill, aplomb and panache you could desire, while all being framed..
Here is an exhibition of portraits of ten of our most eminent classical performers, each picture contained in a fine gold frame. But these are no ordinary pictures. Stand in front of Juliet Stevenson’s face, for example, and you will see that she is quite still, but actually breathing… and then she will stir, and with arresting clarity speak to you as Isabella from Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure”:
….but man, proud man,
Dress’d in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d—
His glassy essence—like an angry ape
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep..
And as Juliet Stevenson’s face fades, more Shakespeare lines from another character in a different play will call you to an image elsewhere in the room, to see and hear another remarkable actor. This is an occasion when New Technology takes a theatrical bow – director Ron Daniels has collaborated with Stageblock Studio and its co-founders Arsalan Sattari-Hicks and Dr Francesco Pierangeli in creating something quite startling.. If you can get into London, escape the weather (I write as storm Bert clatters the windows) dive into the Underground and head for Bank station before December 6th – opening times and more details on the links below. The gallery kindly sent these pictures (with permission to publish them) of the ‘opening night’ – the first time the actors had seen the final assembly.
All photographs by JULIJA JEVSIKOVA. Source: Red 8 Gallery
In fact, if you look beyond the West End you can still enjoy top talent at first hand and you don’t always have to pay the earth . I’m lucky to live near two fine ‘outer London’ theatres. Last month at the Old Sorting Office at Barnes I caught Alison Skilbeck’s cracking show ‘The Power Behind the Crone’, a marvellously witty exploration of Shakespeare’s ‘mature’ female characters.
Alison and her partner Tim Hardy have a repertoire of terrific, thought-provoking solo productions, which show up at all kinds of interesting venues, so look out for them, and check the link below.
I relish the prospect next week of a bus-ride to the Richmond Orange Tree Theatre and to their special Christmas show, ‘Twelfth Night’, with a cast led by Jane Asher, Clive Francis and the wondrous Oliver Ford-Davies. Price range £15 to £56.
London still has a network of gutsy local venues where ‘quality’ work will often emerge – for example the White Bear pub theatre in Kennington, just near the tube station. There you can find an intriguing new play recently imported from New York. ‘Synchronicity‘ is about an encounter between the great thinker Carl Jung and an eminent scientist, gaining lots of favourable on-line reaction – link below.
Meanwhile, back in the West End – hot off the press this morning comes news of yet another Hollywood star bearing a classical offering: after Sigourney Weaver plays Prospero in ‘The Tempest’ at Drury Lane, at the Duke of Yorks Theatre Brie Larson will take on Sophocles, as ‘Elektra’ – in a new version by Ann Carson. As of this afternoon there were tickets advertised at ‘From £25’ – all I can say is – good luck…
If your budget runs only to paying your TV licence, connoisseurs of our craft have free access to the magnificent BBC ‘Wolf Hall’ series – Series Two is currently on BBC One on Sunday evenings, and Series One is still there on the iPlayer. If you’re not in the UK and want to see truly high-grade acting, directing, design and production values, then search the Web – use a VPN, whatever it takes – in fact Series One now exists on DVD.
In an interview the director Peter Kosminsky commented that all he needed to tell this engrossing Tudor story was to film Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell listening. All young actors, take note!
And for those interested in the journey of a once-young actor of yesteryear…
The Blogoire, Part Two
Regular readers will know that my full name is Peter Ellis Jones – when I joined our trade union Equity as a 17-year old Assistant Stage Manager the names Peter Ellis and Peter Jones were already being used – the latter of course notably finding fame in ‘The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’.
So I used my middle name, which I’d inherited from my mum’s side of the family – and here’s a picture of my grandpa George Ellis, outside his cobbler’s shop in Cardiff. George actually came from Lincolnshire, and had moved south seeking work in the depression-hit 1930s, first to Surrey where he worked ‘in service’ as a groom at a well-to-do house, and married the parlour-maid Violet Capp, my grandma. They moved to Cardiff where George found work on the docks before learning the shoe-mending trade.
(Later George’s craft became an inspiration for working on the famous comedy ‘Hobson’s Choice’, twice as a director and once as an actor playing Will Mossop, the play’s cobbler hero – of which more later)
The Jones bit of my name is of course, Welsh – some might have seen a previous blog when I found myself unexpectedly in the Jones ancestral town – well large village – Llanymynach, perched on the Wales-Shropshire border, beside the Montgomery Canal.
Growing up in the north Welsh borders, my paternal grandad William Jones also moved south in search of work and my dad Edwin Terry Jones was born in Cardiff. He worked in the food trade, first at a famous ‘chain’ of dairies, called The Maypole, and then for a firm of yeast importers, Thomas Whittick and Son Ltd. A religious young man, at Bible study classes Terry (he also used his middle name) met four exuberant sisters – Ivy, Edie, Joey, and Winnie – all daughters of George the shoemender. If you look closely at his picture you’ll see that George advertised ‘Free Bible Lectures’ on his shop door. After a lengthy courtship, Terry and Winnie got married, produced three sisters, Mavis, Olive and Ruth – and then, quite a lot later, me. In fact my mum was nearly forty at the time, and twenty or so years later told me “Your dad had always wanted a son, so we thought we’d have one last go before it was too late…”
When war came, Terry’s religious convictions were such that he applied to register as a conscientious objector, and after being interrogated by a government tribunal was sent to work on the fire-boats in Portsmouth harbour. Hence, as noted in the last blog-post, my entering the world at a grand country house/turned evacuation maternity hospital at Bramshott, Hampshire – only to be transported within months to Cardiff where I spent my first seven years.
The Jesuit contention that impressions gained in the first seven years become indelible seem to me to be quite evident – even though at seven I was whisked off to Yorkshire and have only been in Wales since as an occasional visitor I’ve always felt Welsh. I had to unlearn my quite thick Cardiff accent rapidly to gain acceptance among schoolmates in Hull, but it comes back at the drop of a Welsh-cake – sometimes quite usefully, for an actor. I played the Fool in ‘King Lear’ on TV when Kent was played by Ray Smith – a rugged, sadly now late Welsh actor and Plaid Cymru activist – who declared “I’ve claimed you, boy – we always claim back the good ‘uns…”
Memories of life in South Wales are scattered and fragmentary, but vivid. Each St David’s Day, March 1st, in the morning at school we sang Welsh songs and acted out stories – and then went home for the afternoon off, each of us sporting a daffodil in our lapel. My first theatrical experience? Playing King Arthur at the age of six in a St David’s Day pageant at Severn Rd County Primary, leading a parade before parents seated around the hall – Queen Guinevere, also six, stiffly clutching my arm. Suddenly my queen halted and froze. She refused to budge. She couldn’t budge – the elastic on her green school knickers had snapped – they had descended and tangled both her ankles! Fortunately a nearby mum had sufficient presence of mind to extract the offending crumpled item, and our Progress progressed. I often wonder what impact that event may have had on the subsequent life of Queen Guinevere…As for long-term effects on her stage husband, well – who knows….??
Images, sounds and smells still linger – of rides on trams and trolley-buses, of seaside outings to Penarth and to Barry Island, of castles, of Welsh cakes, and of buying hot bread-cobs for a farthing each…
The ‘Keep’ is the medieval core of Cardiff Castle – however most of the rest of this dramatic, sprawling city-centre site is a Victorian fantasy built by the Marquess of Bute, who made billions out of his Welsh coal mines. The stables now house part of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
A few miles outside Cardiff lies Castell Coch, another glorious Victorian expansion of a medieval original – like Cardiff Castle a creation of the ‘Gothic Revival’ master architect, William Burgess, again using Bute billions. A natural haven for Arthurian myth!
The legendary “Figure Eight” scenic railway at Barry Island – one of the biggest in the world when built in 1939, just as war broke out. It was dismantled in 1973.
Here’s that long-gone coin – worth a quarter of an ‘old’ penny – there were nine hundred and sixty to the pound – and in Cardiff with just one you could buy a hot bread-bun – a ‘farthing cob’.
These days the only time ‘Spotlight” casting bulletins clamour for older actors is now – the run-up to Christmas. “Authentic-looking Santa required 50-99 years…” I now wonder if the picture below taken at Howell’s Department Store in Cardiff at Christmas 1950 was my first encounter with an Equity member…
Next episode – leaving one war-scarred port city for another, far to the north in another country. The biggest deep-sea fishing port in the world beckons – Kingston upon Hull …..
P.S. My proof-readers (many thanks to David and to Karen) suggest the gloom in the first part of this post could perhaps be alleviated with a dash of humour- so see the final link below. Over to you Tom!
Links :
Red 8 Gallery: https://redeightgallery.com/whats-on/
Alison Skilbeck, Tim Hardy productions: https://hint-of-lime.com/2018/08/29/our-productions/
The Orange Tree Theatre: https://orangetreetheatre.co.uk/?gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADNgZcr1k9-lmHbSI3cd1Buj5HHu8&gclid=Cj0KCQiAgJa6BhCOARIsAMiL7V-vIX06Y5irHgiAvkpxCGtpo1pp2g3K_LoM6-jdRcZklshmD3bQ9M8aAtBUEALw_wcB
The White Bear Theatre: https://www.whitebeartheatre.co.uk/whatson/synchronicity
Photo credits:
Red8 Gallery: Julija Jevzikova – Instragram @julijajevzikova https://www.instagram.com/julijajevzikova/?hl=en
Alison Skilbeck:Tim Hardy https://kimhardyheadshots.com
Orange Tree Theatre: Ellie Kurttz https://elliekurttz.com
Wales photo sources: Cardiff Castle – https://www.britannica.com/place/Cardiff-Castle; Castell Coch https://www.reddit.com/r/castles/
Barry Island:https://www.urban75.org/blog/barry-island-photos-sea-sand-beach-huts-and-butlins/
AND TO CHEER US ALL UP and generate a festive mood – just click on this link!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIoBrob3bjI