Twixtmas

That in-between time from Boxing Day to New Year's Day: Twixtmas. At least as our pleasant, peaceful, comfortable and quiet hotel would have it, where we have spent a most enjoyable, relaxing, rather pampered Christmas.

Now to travel back to London and already we are preparing our New Year's List of to-do resolutions. Many involving house re-decoration; clearing unwanted wardrobe and household items; planting those fifty Ladies of the Night tulips which somehow never got planted; mending that broken hanging basket dislodged in the recent storm; repairing the garden wall and rethinking the overall front look; as well as completing the first draft of the next thesis chapter, finishing the practice-as-research verse drama and, ultimately, finishing the second practice-as-research prose drama; arranging read-throughs of both and then preparing for the scheduled performance of the first in July 2014; finalising my ten minute presentation for January 8th's international symposium, Sacred and Secular, and - generally - trying to eat less and lose weight. And not necessarily in that order.

Twixtmas: a period of transition and germination.

Tuscan Delights

Last night a lovely celebratory meal at what seems to have become a family reunion in London just before Christmas with my brother who lives in Bangkok. It's his Christmas present to us. We always have a meal, this time with my eldest son and his family. Last year, we were at Tom's Kitchen. Not impressive at all although the staff were great with the kids. Did not much enjoy my mint-suffocated fish pie or my gloopy, blow-torched lemon meringue. Why can't restaurants of this calibre make a decent lemon meringue pie?

This year we were at La Famiglia in Chelsea and the meal was much better. Staff were again great with the two grand-children although the youngest fell asleep all the way through. Food was of the Tuscan variety: delicious fish dishes, tasty sauces and mouth watering vegetables. Lovely light Gavi wine and tempting desserts from the trolley. When did we last see a dessert trolley?

The restaurant itself is family-run and like stepping into a Tuscan eating-place in the centre of London.We couldn't eat such food everyday, mind you. The richness of the ingredients allied with a liberal use of garlic and extra-virgin olive oil would be too much for palates more than content with home-made shepherd's pie, steak and kidney pudding, roast lamb and mint sauce, not to mention Irish stew and any variety of casserole, especially in these winter months. We did buy the cook-book, however, and look forward to using it.

La Famiglia stirred memories of those sultry Italian afternoons in Rome or Venice, with the occasional excursion into Tuscania, and late summer evenings spent drinking ice-cold prosecco in St Mark's Square, listening to that lively melodious band on the platform outside Florian's.

A Christmas Carol

Watching Guy Retallack's affecting one act version of Charles Dickens's story at the Bridge House (Fringe) Theatre in Penge, I was given to thinking how such nineteenth-century stories become timeless over the years and appeal to such a broad section of people. They are popular the world over. Scrooge is not simply a British Victorian archetype, he (or she) figures in most cultures, can be understood as emblematic of many societies.

I was reminded of the world appeal of such stories when I visited Haworth parsonage in Yorkshire a couple of years ago. Home to the Bronte sisters, the  house backs on to a graveyard which could have been a Hammer Horror film set. Especially on a misty, cold, wet, dark November afternoon. The lady who served me in the tourist shop was Japanese and had developed a love of Wuthering Heights when she first read it in Tokyo as a child. Her life's mission was to travel to Yorkshire and live as close to the story's source as possible. From that story she gained an indescribable sense of personal valorisation. Here she is now, twenty years later, smiling sweetly and selling me a guide to Haworth.

The Penge production of A Christmas Carol - professional, well-acted, expertly directed - is one of millions produced over the years the world over. There is something ultimately very moving and thought-provoking about its ability to stir profound emotion and make us reflect of the mean-ness of mankind and its redemptive opportunities. But the Scrooge we remember is not the redeemed transformed person: it is the selfish, inward-looking miser who alienates himself gradually from life itself until life, in its more powerful forms, literally comes back to haunt him. It is the memory of this Scrooge which fuels our imaginations and ensures the survival of this ever-new, ever-engaging fable.

The Waiting Game

In this lead up to Christmas, liturgically the season of Advent, waiting becomes even more affecting and thought-provoking. I am waiting for news of this, of that. Communication becomes complicated, especially when three or four parties are involved. Decisions are slowly reached until a consensus of all views is negotiated. As each revelation becomes a fixed arrangement, the process of waiting becomes dense and implicatory.

I am looking forward to presenting at the Sacred and Secular Symposium in January but am waiting to hear if I have been successful regarding the Missing Performance Symposium at a later date elsewhere. And then there may be the further waiting to see how each presentation is received...

My review of the extraordinary and very funny Peter Pan Goes Wrong has been published on the One Stop Arts site and quoted by the Pleasance Theatre but One Stop Arts itself is, as an online site, becoming defunct from January 2nd, 2014. So no more waiting there for review submissions to be uploaded...

It is like waiting for inspiration. As a creative writer, I value Jung's concept of the unconscious mind's ability, in self-regulatory mode, to work out the creative answers to most of life's problems. Don't be in a hurry, wait and see... It will all come out right in the end. Even if it doesn't - or does, but not as you expected -  at least the element of surprise might be revelatory enough.

Pennies from Heaven

Delighted to report that I have the first (small) tranche of funding for my practice-as-research play, scheduled to be performed at Goldsmiths in July. And a director, too. And a choreographer, possibly.

The money was awarded from Goldsmith's Graduate School Fund and very grateful I am. Now to look for further small donations to add to the fund...

The cost of a gun hired from Bapty costs about £50.00 upwards. And I don't want actors, technicians and the director to work for nothing.  Although it's a university project, I know they'll be doing it for love as much as anything else. As indeed am I. So every little helps to stage what I hope will be a really exciting production. It's based on a notorious British murder case, but will reveal more about that later.

Meanwhile we'll be looking for a male child actor (playing age: ten years) to play a pivotal role. And a female twenty-something actor to play the protagonist. Oh, and the play's in verse.

That Certain Feeling

Yesterday, while in a queue waiting to be served at a trendy Pets Parlour in Gloucester Road, the lady in front of me, with her young daughter, said. 'Let the young man be served first while we make up our mind.' The fact that I am almost seventy seemed to go unrecognised.

That certain feeling of not knowing if the woman was being mildly sarcastic or perfectly sincere took hold of me for a second or two. Smiling, I said thank you and moved forward to be served. I find this ambivalence about age typical of London: either I'm being addressed as 'young man' or I'm being offered seats on the tube by twenty year olds because 'You look as if you need it, sir'. Kindness and thoughtfulness rule the day in London, I find frequently. In Devon, I get asked to show my passport by suspicious bus drivers before they let me use my Freedom pass.

Favourite Off West End Theatres

Not wishing to retread an article I wrote for One Stop Arts explaining my favourite Off West End Theatres, I'd like to pose the question: Is the excellent Jermyn Street Theatre Off West End, West End or something in between? I could not make up my mind about this as I have seen and heard it described as both. All the productions I have seen there have been very good. So I did not include it in my survey. 

I would vote for The Print Room anyway as the most enterprising and consistently good Off West End venue, even if I was not bowled over by their recent offering Amygdala, performed in their cramped balcony space. But Arthur Miller's The Last Yankee and Harold Pinter's The Dumb Waiter, given in their main auditorium, were superb productions of two classics of twentieth century drama. Both plays revealed a topicality and societal relevance which perhaps the writers could not have foreseen. 

That The Print Room, like other Off West End venues such as the White Bear, Old Red Lion, Brockley Jack and Riverside Studios, is prepared to take risks with new work is commendable.

Finding the Right Words...

Reviewing theatre as I do for One Stop Arts and What's Peen Seen, I have become more aware of how difficult it is to assess a performance, particularly of new work, which is technically brilliant, very well acted and directed but is essentially an unconvincing, predictable piece of writing.

I had this problem with Coward which premiered at Kennington's White Bear Theatre recently and, lately, with Amygdala at the Print Room's Balcony. Both plays were beautifully performed and directed, with great technical support. But, for me, their plots were predictable, with a lack of dramatic surprise. At the risk of seeming mean I decide to go with my honest response to how the play strikes me at first viewing.

Of course, even with this honesty of response, one can often be proved very wrong.  And if that it is the case, so be it and good luck to the writers!