I will be doing another of my London Walks - ‘Bond, James Bond – The London of 007 and Ian Fleming’ walks around Mayfair and St James’ on Saturday August 21st 2010 at 2.00pm outside Exit 2 (Park Lane Exit) of Marble Arch tube. For more information, see the synopsis of the walk under ‘Walking Tours’ or click here to watch the video
Let’s face it – the 1987 film ‘Dirty Dancing’, staring the recently deceased Patrick Swayze was always a chick flick. Not really one for the boys. For a number of ladies, it is their favourite film of all time. It would therefore take a confident producer to decide to put this show onto stage here at the Apollo Theatre in the heart of the West End. In retrospect, it would seem to have been an inspired decision, as the show is enormously entertaining from beginning to end.
For those not familiar with the story, the protaganist Baby heads off to a summer holiday camp with here parents and sister. There she meets alpha male Johnny Castle, who inevitaby sweeps her off her feet – in both senses of the word.
The key to this show is fun fun fun. The performers are having fun, so we have fun, and the set is a wonderful combination of different backgrounds, which really does effectively transport us to the 1963 holiday resort setting.
The audience were amazingly enthusiastic. Of course they always are in a West End musical, but particuarly with this show, and particularly at the climactic scene involving the big lift – in fact almost the entire theatre went completely bonkers. It was all remarkably unenglish and yet rather marvellous.
This show is an incredible piece of entertainment in the West End at the moment. The couples dancing the combination of latin and ballroom are all champions from different parts of the world, and it is a sight to behold seeing the enthusiasm and althleticism in which they pursue their passion – both for their art and their partner.
There really is not much of a story as such, that links the respective scenes together. However with all the sizzling chemistry between each of them, this hardly seemed to matter. Each dance between each couple is almost a story in itself. There are other scenes involving a girl with a number of men, and one of those was the highlight of the show for me – a Rumba dance that the girl did blindfolded, just effortlessly moving from one guy to the next…….melting almost – wonderfully demonstrating the instinctual nature of it all.
It is not like they just stay on the stage either. In that respect, it reminded me of ‘Hair’, with the performers occassionally heading out into the auditorium in all directions. All the people around me seemed to be mighty appreciative of the opportunity to see them strutting their stuff up close and personal.
There were things I saw in this show that I did not think the human body was actually capable of doing! I left the theatre with a swing in my step, or hips to be precise, trying to pull off some equally fancy moves. It is just a well I stopped fairly quickly, or I probably would have ended up in hospital. This show should come with the warning – ‘Don’t try this at home!’
The pros can pull it off, so we’ll just leave it to them.
Ahhhhhhhhh the funky 70’s. So much better than the camp 80’s. Sure men had long hair, but at least it wasn’t all girlie like the following decade.
‘Hair’ is phenomenal. Apparantly it originally opened at the end of the 60’s here in London. It was a historic moment, since it was the first show ever to benefit in this country from the end of the Lord Chamberlain’s censorship laws, which meant that the nude scence could go ahead. In our modern era, flesh on stage is nothing new, although that was probably still one of the main pulls for my Dad to see the show, so it serves him right that he missed it since he fell asleep beforehand! He was never much of a hippy apparantly. It must have seemed incredibly modern back when it first showed here, roaring along with the zeitgeist of the times. It still works well in this very different age we live in. The story revolves around a bunch of hippies in the US doing hippy type things and becoming sad when one of the members of their group heads off to fight in Vietnam. For Vietnam back then, read Afghanistan today. Although obviously there is one major difference between then and now – back then there was conscription.
That is the story in a nutshell. In fact, that is as complex as the story gets! However we are not here for the intricacies of sophisticated storytelling. We are here for entertainment, & boy do the Broadway cast sock it to us. It goes without saying that the costumes look fantastic, but for me the highlight was the funkiness of the music & the singing. I defy anybody not to be thinking the short song ‘Coloured Spade’ is one of the coolest songs ever, ‘S****y’ one of the funniest songs ever, and ‘My Conviction’ one of the most brillantly performed songs ever.
As I looked around at the audience, I saw lots of tapping of feet & nodding of heads. You could sense that people just wanted to get up & strut their stuff like the cast members were, (all around the theatre). At the end, the cast invited people onto the stage, & it became a wonderful seething mass of contented, blissful humanity. Almost a week on, and I still have the superb tunes in my head. I’m off to buy the CD now.
Ahhhhhhhhh the 70’s. Peace out man.
‘And did those feet in ancient time, walk upon Englands mountains green,
And was the holy Lamb of God, on Englands pleasant pastures seen!…..’
So begins the William Blake poem, ‘Jerusalem’, describing Jesus’ visits to the area of the West Country around Glastonbury back in the days.
This poem became, through Hubert Parry’s score, Englands marvellous anthem, and the play begins with an angel appearing on the stage and giving us a heavenly rendition.
Then the curtain goes up and we’re in the middle of a full-on West Country rave, and the contrast is spine-tingling. We seem to be in a very different England to Blake’s Jerusalem, and I’m not too sure what both Jesus or Blake would make of it. When the morning comes around, a scene of utter bedlam greets us – welcome to the mad world of Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron – scourge of the establishment just like his namesake. A 21st Century Green Man of England, his ‘mobile’ home, (it doesn’t seem to have been moved in a few decades), is called ‘Waterloo’, and we certainly seemed to have walked onto a battlefield – casualities lie everywhere in the carnage. It is St George’s Day in the rural backwater of Flintock, the day of the village fair and the day of Rooster’s eviction from the local woods by the bureaucrats. A huge night has been had, and he can’t remember much about it. A young girl is missing. People are looking for her. Things feel like they are going to get ugly……….
Mark Rylance takes his character Rooster on an incredible journey, and his performance has been met with deservedley critical aclaim pretty much everywhere. However, the play is – mostly – full of strong performances, especially from Mackenzie Crook as the frustrated Ginger, and Alan David as the Professor, who acts as a cultural anchor throughout the play.
The play has two intervals, but the acts are shorter than most, and you are on such an emotionally-charged journey, the time positively whizzes past in this extremely enjoyable production.
If you are from London, you have probably been to one of these restaurants already. If you haven’t, you should get out more! Eat Busba Thai has been going for at least a decade, and it hasn’t lost any of the original sparkle. You can’t book, and there are always queues at the Wardour Street branch on Saturday and Sunday evenings. People forget that the Bird Street branch close to Selfridges, (W1U 1BU) and the Store Street branch off Totenham Court Road, (WC1E 7DF) are never as busy and just as good!
Having been to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, I was already aware that Van Gogh was an amazing talent. I was aware of the incredible journey his painting took during the short 10 years he painted – From the dark and heroic paintings of Dutch peasants toiling the fields at the beginning of his artistic career, to the riot of colour and inventiveness associated with his later work. This exhibition at the RA however, really brought home the tragedy of the man. Sure we all know that, but this resonates as you look around the galleries. It shouts at you. Why? Because it is packed to the rafters! The man pulls in the punters like nobody else! Brits and overseas visitors can’t get enough of him. Can there be a case study of starker contrast between abject failure in one’s lifetime and superstardom afterwards? It makes for an emotional time when in here. Van Gogh started as out as a good artist, and through some serious hard work, determination and productivity, ended up becoming great. He is a man who was desperate to sell his work, and had a supportive brother who just happened to be a succesful art dealer. Yet he sold a mere one painting in his life. He was a man who had dreams of setting up an artistic community of like-minded creatives in Arles in 1888 -yet just one artist turned up. Van Gogh and Paul Gaugin lived together for two months in ‘The Yellow House’, before yet another blazing row between them culminated in Van Gogh hacking his ear off, and sending it to a – I imagine rather shocked – local prostitute named Rachel. The following year he was in an asylum, and the year after that dead. I’d never really appreciated the immense sadness of it all until now.
But what a talent! The guy is more eclectic than Shakespeare! He nails perspective with the most innovative of techniques – Swirls, pointillist dots, zigzags and lines of all shapes and sizes fuse together to produce these wonderful landscapes, still lifes and portraits. Many are very good, but I was particularly flabbergasted by two. The first is a bowl oranges in Room 3. These wonderful bright fruit look spell-binding against the different sides of the blue wall, and what a wall of contrasting blues! – as if the two sides are made out of completely different materials. The second is not even a painting, but a drawing in Room 5 – ‘Landscape near Montmajour’ is a masterclass in the insumountable powerhouse of creativity and skill that was this man, Vincent Van Gogh – and all achieved with no more than a reed pen and ink.
As for the letters that form such an important part of this exhibition, I will have a look at those next time around – if I can tear my eyes away from the paintings that is.
The 21st Century is well underway at the moment in West London. In fact, the future has very much arrived in Earls Court, with the new Abba World exhibition running there at the moment. With it’s use of both a veritable cornucopia of Abba exhibits and cutting-edge technology, the exhibition is both fascinating and lots of fun.
It doesn’t matter what your level of Abba knowledge is, since there is something there for everybody, and in fact your knowledge of Abba will be tested in a couple of entertaining interactive quizes as you go around the various rooms. It is the interactivity on offer that will be the highlight for a number of people. There is the opportunity to sing Abba songs in various booths, dance to their songs, appear on their album covers and my own favourite – the opportunity to get up on stage and sing along, surrounded by life-size holograms of Benny, Frida, Bjorn and Agneta.
The kind of place you definitely want to be going with a group of friends, as opposed to on your own. The really fun part is all the above is put onto a members section of Abba World, and visitors have a week to download it onto their computers and laugh at themselves until they go red in the face.
Alas the vast majority of the New Year’s sales are over, and they generally won’t be around again until the summer sales during July. I was in Zara at the weekend however, and am pleased to say their sale is around until the end of February. There are some great jackets available for £39.00, and if you have a particularly narrow or large waist, you can pick up some great pairs of trousers for just a tenner.
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