(Romney Abbey, a New Forest pony at Beaulieu, the Park at Hinton Abner House, Lymington Harbour)
The New Forest ponies are amazing – while they are all owned by local “commoners” (residents who have grazing rights) many of them roam freely in the forest and wander through the villages. My sister and I shared a moment of alarm at Beaulieu when three ponies suddenly charged around the street-corner where we were standing, startled by a passing fire-engine. They are all beautiful and febrile, and bring a whiff of Narnia to this idyllic, ancient landscape. And these truly are the English shires. We met our friends Antonia and Robin for supper at a “Pub with No Name” in deepest Hampshire – low ceilings hung with pewter mugs and dried hops, good hand-pumped beer brewed on the premises, a meal of bangers and lumpy mash. Had Tom Bombadil stomped through the door in search of young Frodo and that darned ring, not an eyebrow would have been batted.
The gentle tempo of the countryside brought comfort, for which I was grateful. This has been in fact a bleak time, as old friends and I mourned the loss of one of our number, a cornerstone of my life since 1967. Many of you will have seen the obituaries of Sue Sheridan (there’s a link to The Guardian one below) whose lovely voice has been part of our soundscape since the days of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide”. We joined with her remarkable family on Thursday at Windsor to say farewell. It was a perfectly planned event – Sue has been battling cancer for two decades, so the ceremony was to her own careful, immaculate design, complete with a neat farewell joke, which left us laughing through tears. I still can’t believe she’s gone.
This was to have been a fairly flippant entry – I indicated in the last one that I’d tell more tales of my time in China, including the visit to Tianjin, where I’d stayed in an amazingly luxurious hotel suite, complete with an alarmingly high-tech bathroom. But of course last week Tianjin saw those terrifying chemical explosions, and my first reaction when the news broke was concern for my university assistant Xixi, whose family live in the city. Fortunately they’re all OK, and she has sent me an inspiring account of the support the local community is giving the victims, especially the families of the young fire-fighters who perished. Clearly there has been at best gross incompetence, at worst wicked corruption. Tianjin is bigger than London – it’s full of elegant, post-colonial buildings, and is home to a world-class Music Conservatoire, which hosted a conference I attended. The journey there from Beijing was incredibly rapid – by a real high-speed train, at two hundred and forty miles an hour. I’ve only just come across this photo from the Daily Mail picture desk, which gives an indication of the devastation caused by the explosions. Imagine this in London’s Docklands… 
Photo: Daily Mail. Please note that sometimes press photos are taken down, despite the source being credited. The Guardian website has another powerful picture at this link:
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/aug/15/the-20-photographs-of-the-week#img-14
Before moving to cheerier matters, I must note a few more echoes of mortality. Richard Johnson’s farewell at the actors’ church in Covent Garden was graced by wryly affectionate mementoes from Laurence Fox and Janet Suzman, and with lovely singing by his daughter Suky. Like Sue, Richard was ultimately a victim of cancer, and this week there was dire news of the death from cancer at only 44 of Kitty McGeever, a heroic graduate from my early days at RADA, who became a much-loved star of “Emmerdale” despite being afflicted with blindness a decade or so ago . A friend of mine refers to cancer as “the blind sniper” – casual, random and merciless.
Sometimes – alas by no means always – the theatre affords a retreat from sadness, and brings a burst of joy. This summer, while many friends and colleagues are in Edinburgh seeking the new and marvellous at the Festival, my excursions into London’s theatre-land have been fewer than elsewhere in the year – but one such has been a sheer delight, the entirely aptly-named musical BEAUTIFUL, at the Aldwych. The ticket was a present from a friend, and boy did it cheer me up – and not just because I didn’t pay! Go if you get the chance – OK, it’s a sort of “juke-box” show, in that it showcases lots of songs – but hey, what songs Carol King has written – “You’ve Got a Friend” alone has always been on My Desert Island list – but it’s cleverly written, brilliantly staged and choreographed, cast to the hilt with stunning performers. There are two singing troupes – 4 black guys and 4 black girls – basically representing the Drifters and the Shirelles – who deliver hit after gorgeous hit with glorious, sexy panache. All the central performers give strong performances, and Katie Brayben as Carol King shows every second she’s onstage why she walked away with the Olivier award. She acts with raw honesty, and sings her heart out. DO NOT MISS IT!
Meanwhile, what are we to do about the Greeks? I don’t mean today’s poor souls grappling with too few euros and too many boat people, I mean the plays from their theatre’s Golden Age, which of late seem to have become a magnet for directors and star actors in London. Favourites among these writers from two and half thousand years ago are the trio of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Musings as to why this should be started when a friend from university days very kindly took me to see the current version of “The Bakkhai”at the Almeida Theatre in Islington, a piece which won its writer Euripides the equivalent of an Olivier Award in Athens back in 405 B.C., and in which my friend Tony and I both appeared at Manchester University almost as long ago, directed by Stephen Joseph (of whom more later).
The Almeida show has been scripted by the poet Anne Carson, who also adapted Sophocles’s “Electra” last year, which played at the Barbican and which I also saw. And in the same season I witnessed Helen McCrory giving “Medea” at the National, and Kristen Scot Thomas deliver “Antigone” at the Old Vic. Now I don’t dispute that these roles are tempting for actors, since they are supposed to get to the very core of human existence, and in order to work at all have to be performed with tremendous power and charisma. Ms McCory in particular has masses of both, as do both Ben Whishaw and Bertie Carvell, two Radagrads on top of their game at the Almeida.
But the plays themselves – what do they really add to the lives of modern audiences? As prescribed by Aristotle in “The Poetics” if I remember my first-year university studies correctly, tragedy will take an audience through an experience of both Pity and Terror. Ah. I loved watching Ms McCory – though I suspect I might have preferred her doing a play with a bit more zestful action – “Macbeth” for instance – and Ben and Bertie are both mesmerising talents, whose work I will travel far to watch. But in “The Bakkhai” their characters exist in the context of a story about a bunch of out-of-control Greek women, given to ripping men limb from limb in violent, drug-induced sexual frenzy. Now here’s a chance for Pity and Terror, you may well think. But at the Almeida the women are depicted by a beautifully controlled, tightly rehearsed choir of excellent female performers, delivering interesting musical settings of the relevant bits of the text, which I would have happily paid to listen to at concert in the Wigmore Hall.
Bertie acted Pentheus’s bewilderment extremely well, and yes, OK, I felt pity for his plight, but mainly I just enjoyed watching his consummate skill as an actor, without accepting for a second that he was under any real threat.The Bacchic chorus induced nothing remotely resembling Terror. On the other hand, when at the Aldwych Katie Brayben’s Carol King is told her husband has left her and their children to live with another woman, she hits the opening notes of “One Fine Day” – and lo! – the Pity arrives “wham!” in the pit of your stomach, and Terror of how Lust can destroy human dignity and compassion zaps you right between the eyes!
Through my letter box as I write this has come a flyer from Shakespeare’s Globe, announcing that a new version of “The Orestia” is to be offered there shortly, under the direction of Adele Thomas. Now regular readers will know that I took great delight in praising Adele’s splendid work on “The Knight of the Burning Pestle”. If anyone can bring an archaic text to vibrant life it’s her. So over to you Adele – no pressure…. 
Theatre of the not quite-so-distant past is being celebrated this summer up at Yorkshire’s finest seaside resort, at the Stephen Joseph Theatre. It is sixty years since the great mentor (who had huge influence on so many of today’s theatre practitioners – including me – and who died in 1967) ran the first season of plays at Scarborough’s Library Theatre, from which developed one of Britain’s most significant regional producing companies, for years of course under the leadership of Alan Ayckbourn. Sir Alan has directed a revival of his “Confusions” to celebrate the anniversary, which I’m looking forward greatly to seeing next Saturday. Not a man who could ever be accused of sloth, he opens his production of his new play “Hero’s Welcome” at the SJT on September 4th.
In this so often distressing world great comedy makers must be celebrated and cherished. Many miles from Scarborough, another great mirth-maker has been honoured by being appointed Artistic Director of the new Chinese National Theatre of Comedy. Chen Peisi’s show “The Stage”, the rehearsals for which I reported on in my last entry has opened to great acclaim in Beijing. Friendly contact has been made between Scarborough and Beijing, which may just produce interesting future developments. It’s very early days – watch this space….
Links:
Susan: http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/aug/19/susan-sheridan
Scarborough: https://www.sjt.uk.com/theatre/heros-welcome-0
Beijing:
http://english.cntv.cn/2015/07/17/VIDE1437127080140453.shtml
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