High Summer Madness
Those of us fortunate enough not to have had to bale out our houses or swim for help over the weekend were making the most of a few hours of sunshine over the high summer weekend. Things started off well enough on Thursday night when the delightful Lady be Good opened in Regent’s Park.
The irrepressible Su Pollard, last seen in Menopause the Musical, and not a whit abashed, was in the stalls, cheering up the rest of us and cheering on the cast. In fact, she had to be more or less restrained from running onto the stage to embrace the band.
On Friday, I took my friend and neigbour, the actor William Hoyland, to the Test Match at Lord’s. It rained until mid-day then got serious with a dramatic monsoon. The old red pavilion evaporated in a smoky mist and a small lake formed in front of the Mound Stand.
Miraculously, the outfield was drained, play started, and we had five hours of eventful cricket. Bill, who has played many a silky prosecutor in the series of tribunal plays at the Tricycle, has lately completed a new film with Angelina Jolie, A Mighty Heart. He confirms that Angelina is indeed covered in tattoos from head to foot. How does he know this? He avoids this question by confirming that he is “Jolie” good friends with Brad Pitt, too! We can see the film in September.
The rest of my weekend is structured around the matinees of Twelfth Night in Chichester and Love’s Labour’s Lost at the Globe. In the first, an Edwardian melancholic lament set in a great conservatory, owing much to Trevor Nunnn’s film, Patrick Stewart is indeed a fine Malvolio, but the show is completely stolen by Michael Feast’s brilliant Feste, possibly the best I’ve ever seen. Feast plays him as a battered old vaudevillian, with a Punch and Judy act; but his attack, and take, on every tricky line and so-called joke, is a marvel of technical invention.
Love’s Labour’s Lost is the least good of the Shakespeares I’ve seen at the Globe this season, but a packed audience is surprised and indeed transported by this delightful comedy.
Any schadenfreude at others’ floods of misfortune is stifled first thing on Monday morning when our street has its electrictiy cut off for six hours during some re-wiring work in the neighbourhood. Oh yes, and my mobile phone goes down.
All is not lost. I nip off to a lovely lunchtime Prom at the Cadogan Hall with a short world premiere by an American composer new to me, Aaron Jay Kernis, and a pair of sad and soothing violin sonatas by Mozart and Elgar. Going home, I get lucky: the Northern Line is working, even if my phone isn’t.