Malta – Mosta, Mdina, Golden Bay and Bugibba – a Hop-on, hop-off experience

Posted on October 15, 2012 by therealchrisparkle

It’s only a little island – and Gozo is even littler – but they both seem to be awash with red and blue tourist buses offering you their Hop-on, Hop-off services. You see them everywhere around the world now, and a snobbish part of me is proud to say that we’ve never been on one before – until this trip to Malta, that is. Given that we were trying hard to keep up the relaxation levels and weren’t keen on making decisions, or doing “real travelling”, this seemed the perfect solution. The Maltese Hop-on, Hop-offs do two different routes – a north and a south. Our main objective was to visit Mosta and Mdina as we had done in 1993, so we plumped for the north, and decided we’d do the south another day if time/energy/willingness/ sanity allowed. What I didn’t realise is that about 90% (or so it seems) of these buses you see everywhere are feeder buses, collecting people from hotels all over the island and taking them to the start point, which is at the Sliema Ferries terminus. There, you get off your first bus and wait for your proper bus to turn up, and they basically set off a new bus on the same route every half an hour till mid afternoon, which becomes the last one at the end of the day.

The route takes you round the harbour to a good place to get off for Valletta, but we thought we’d leave that for another day. The bus driver gives you earphones when you get on, which attach to a socket by your seat, but with no instructions. For the first half hour or so I heard nothing; either it was faulty, or I was tuning in to the wrong channel, I never did fathom out which. Mrs Chrisparkle and I had been tempted to get off at the San Anton Gardens stop, but without the commentary you couldn’t tell which stop was which, and it wasn’t until after I saw the gardens sailing away behind us that I realised we’d missed the stop. That made me get a bit miffed. We also decided to skip the Ta Qali crafts village and stay on until we reached Mosta.

Mosta, if you don’t know, is an inland town famous for its beautiful church that miraculously survived a WW2 incident when a bomb fell through its roof but failed to detonate. A replica of the bomb is on display at the church. It’s also a stunningly beautiful building with a massive dome that you can see for miles; in fact, apparently, it’s the third largest unsupported dome in the world. Inside the church it’s ornately and elegantly presented, and, like the dome, it’s circular in shape. It’s definitely worth spending a good half hour here to appreciate this amazing building. Out in their “back room” (I expect there is a proper word for that), some guys were polishing and returning artefacts to their cabinets that I presume had been paraded round town for Mosta’s Festa, just like St Julian had been the previous day. It was interesting to note the complete lack of security with these artefacts, which are presumably somewhere on the scale of pricelessness. They were just hanging around on tables, with us tourists wandering around them, whilst the guys were bringing in other valuable items of silver.

From Mosta it’s just a very short hop to Mdina, the old capital of Malta, perched high on a hill; an old walled town that just oozes atmosphere with its narrow streets, tall buildings and hushed eeriness. With the HOHO bus, you approach it via the Mdina Gate, which is flanked by a pair of lions for protection, although they’re not much use against marauding tourists. Once through the gate you could visit the Natural History Museum, but Mrs C isn’t much of a museum person, so we carried on down the main street, Triq Villegaignon, just soaking up the feel of the place. Not for the first time, nor the last, I admired the knockers on the doors. No titters please, they genuinely are fascinating – intricate and ornate, shapely and sometimes very big too. I said no titters.

We decided we would visit the Cathedral. It’s not free, but you do also gain entrance to the Cathedral museum, which contains lots of interesting old items. The cathedral is grand and refined, with a colourful dome and some excellent brightly decorated tombstones on the floor. I’m sure you could while away a fascinating hour or so just piecing together the lives of the people commemorated by these floor plaques. Anyway, as I’d paid for the privilege, I took a lot of photos.

We basically did the full circuit of the old town, which in itself doesn’t take more than half an hour if you don’t stop anywhere. We hid from costumed salespeople wanting us to visit the Mdina Experience and its spin-offs; I’d sooner see the real thing than a Hollywood version of it. We reached Bastion Square and took in the commanding view of the rest of the island, with the Mosta Dome plonked right in front of you. Our visit to Mdina in 1993 was one of the windiest experiences of our lives, but this summer it was just glorious. If you come to Malta, you just have visit Mdina, it’s like a little world of all of its own.

Back on the HOHO bus and our next stop was to be Golden Bay, with just a temporary pause at Mgarr to see (from the outside only) the “Egg” Church – so called because it was paid for by the proceeds of egg sales, rather than because it looks like Hercule Poirot’s head – and we heard with interest from the commentary (which I could now get to work) that all the clocks on the churches in Malta are set to two times – one correct, one wrong, in order to fool the devil. If that’s all it takes to fool him, you would have thought evil would have been eradicated long ago.

Onwards to Golden Bay. It is basically just a beach, but a very beautiful one, and absolutely chock full of people. We thought we would just take a quick stroll around it and then find something to eat. Our options were limited – Munchies, basically, which is the name of both a restaurant on one side of the bay, and a smaller café on the other. The restaurant was packed so we tried the café and it was a surprising delight! We each had salad and it was plentiful and fresh and very tasty. We ordered a bottle of white wine – Delicata’s Gran Cavalier Chardonnay, and it was absolutely perfect. Although it was a bit cramped, we ended up spending an hour and a half here, and it was worth every second.

Our final port of call for the day was to be Bugibba, as we had stayed there in 1993. We remembered it as a jolly, friendly if unattractive town. We got off the bus a little earlier than we intended – in St Paul’s Bay, I think; so then decided we would walk into Bugibba and pick up the bus at its next stopping point. A friendly lady in a bar pointed us in the direction of Bugibba town centre – basically turn right and keep walking downhill. That was fine, and we found the centre square, and we thought that Bugibba looked probably a little better nowadays and would certainly be a lively place to base yourself for a self-indulgent boozy, party holiday, and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, we couldn’t locate the bus stop. So we thought we’d carry on walking along the direction that the bus was bound to follow. So we walked. And walked. No buses. Eventually we came to an ice-cream kiosk, where we asked the embarrassing question, “do you know where we are?” Qawra, apparently. I was pretty sure the HOHO bus didn’t go via Qawta, so, totally lost, our only choice was to find the bus station to catch an Arriva bus back to town, as the last tourist bus would have gone by now.

That, of course, wasn’t as straightforward as it should have been, as the gentleman at the bus station told us that there had been a serious road crash somewhere and that no traffic of any sort was getting through. They expected the next bus to arrive in about 90 minutes – if we were lucky. Sigh; but we put it down to being all part of the travel experience. We sat down and watched as commuters and tourists alike got more and more anxious and rude about the delays. We saw one man roundly abusing the bus company official – using the kind of language that we found offensive so I’m sure the poor bus man would have been. Naturally, the bus arrived – way before the predicted 90 minutes; and squashed like sardines we took the slow route back to St Julian’s.

After such a long adventurous day we of course needed our restorative afternoon nap. Actually it was an early evening nap, but it does the same job. For dinner that night, we didn’t go far – one of the restaurants adjacent to Spinola Bay at right-angles to the Juliani Hotel – we chose the San Giuliano. It’s a bit of a tourist trap really, quite expensive for what you get, but the location is stunning. The food was adequate, and cheered up by a bottle of Delicata’s Green Label wine, which the young lady recommended and I thought was perfectly respectable. So, overall, an exhausting day, but good fun. I’m sure there’s an art to mastering the HOHO buses, but you probably need more than a week’s holiday to achieve it. We would, however, have another go later in the week…

Malta – St George’s Bay, St Julian’s Bay and Sliema

Posted on October 12, 2012 by therealchrisparkle

We saw no reason to get up early so we squeaked into breakfast with just enough time to be soothed into the day by Zsuzsi and Kenny’s serving skills. The brekky in the Hotel Juliani is great. The orange juice is superb, the muesli tasty and crunchy, the cooked breakfast is made up of several delicious individual constituents – including the best scrambled egg I’ve ever had in a hotel – and there was always a different “breakfast cake of the day” that was officially fabulous.

When we did eventually face up to our sightseeing duties, we decided to walk north up towards St George’s Bay and from there take a look at Paceville before returning to St Julian’s for lunch – unless we saw something we fancied more beforehand. If you’ve been to Malta, then you’ll know that the coastline is very rugged and unbeachy, and there are so many little inlets and headlands and bays that you can never be sure quite how far you can walk and still stay close to the sea. Such was our experience. A welcoming looking outcrop near the Dragonara Casino beckoned us and we explored it, but then found we could get no further, so it was necessary to retrace our steps over the rocky pools and back to the busy streets in order to make any progress. Those streets weren’t particularly interesting or attractive at 11.00 on a Sunday morning, the night after everyone stayed up to enjoy St Julian’s Festa. Nevertheless we persevered, and eventually found ourselves walking down an incline with the rather beautiful St George’s Bay on our right.

It’s one of those Maltese rarities – a little sandy beach. As a result it was pretty heavily oversubscribed by bronzed beauties. Not that beaches hold much attraction for Mrs Chrisparkle and me. I can’t imagine anything more boring than a holiday spent lazing in the sun, so it was not a matter of regret that we couldn’t stretch out on the sand. However, it wasn’t long before Mrs C spied one of her pet loves – they had pedalos. She spoke to the lady in the shop who said it was €8,00 for an hour. We struck the deal. Pedalo lady hollered at her long-suffering husband to procure us one said pedal operated sea-going vessel, and in a few moments we were on the crest of a wave. The only words of instruction or advice we were given were not to go out beyond the casino. That was quite far enough out to sea for me, frankly.

We let a group of over-enthusiastic Italian youths go first – not that we were ever going to stand in their way – so as to reduce the chance of maritime intimidation. Once pedalling, the main hazard to shipping in those first few moments were the bathers, who seemed determined not to move out of the way even though we were much bigger than they were. So we progressed very slowly and carefully, trying hard not to side-swipe local beauties and fat foreigners alike, till we got beyond the swimmers and alongside the yachts moored out in the middle of the bay. Some of them were rather splendid, and contained wealthy-looking owners, unimpressed with the sight of a middle-aged English couple hurtling towards them at full pedal speed. But we knew what we were doing. Once we’d put the wind up them, we swerved aside and pottered on happily up to near the casino, then did a wide sweep-round in the clear blue sea, and headed back into the bay. The bunch of Italians had stopped their pedalo in open water and were playing at pushing each other into the sea. What larks they must have been having. In the course of our hour we managed to do the full round circuit of St George’s Bay four times. On our final leg, we returned to the shore, extremely slowly as some bikini clad ladies refused to yield their patch of beach to us, until, miffed, the old pedalo bloke told them to sling their combined hooks. We regained land safe and sound, and I have to admit it was a lot of fun.

From St George’s Bay it’s a very brief walk until you find yourself in the centre of Paceville. By day it looks a little run down, with stretches of identical bars and restaurants all next to each other. It comes into its own at night, as we would discover later in the week. We had a little wander round but the restaurants all seemed a bit chicken ‘n’ chips-like for us, so we decided to follow the road back down into St Julian’s. Profiting from our walk the previous afternoon, we traipsed all the way round the bay and up and over towards Sliema, and got as far as Peppi’s Restaurant. We had seen the day before that they had gluten-free pizza bases and pasta so thought we just had to give them a try. Well Mrs C did – I had a burger. It was ok, it tasted rather like those burgers we used to eat in the seventies, fried rather than grilled – nothing special but perfectly adequate, and we did have a wonderfully positioned table overlooking the bay. Mrs C’s pizza looked gorgeous, but she didn’t finish it. When questioned on its merits, she described it as “a plucky attempt”. To drink, we ordered a bottle of white wine from the Marsovin winemakers – La Valette Blanc. If you want a subtle, complex, awe-inspiring wine, don’t even consider it. If you just want a simple, refreshing white wine it’s a very nice option – rather like an old-fashioned Liebfraumilch.

After the lunch and relax it was time to explore again. We thought we’d cut through the centre of Sliema and emerge at the coast where the ferries connect Sliema and Valletta. So we walked down the snappily named Triq Sir Adrian Dingli, got a little bit lost trying to find the Triq San Vincenz, so a kindly old local gentleman wandered up to us and tried to help – only he didn’t know where it was either. No worries, eventually we found the way down to the sea. It’s an absolutely splendid view of Valletta from that coast road – no wonder all the ferries do that stretch of water, it’s not often that the direct route and the “pretty way” are the same. From there, we walked along to the Fortina Hotel and up and over in front of Tigne Fort and past the new big shopping centre there, Tigne Point. Reminiscent of Milton Keynes but bizarrely deserted on a Sunday; the skateboarders seemed to enjoy it though. I noted loads of padlocks attached to the railings, which appears to be a new trend for courting couples and newlyweds – at least it’s more environmentally friendly than carving their names with a penknife. We dropped back down the steep streets and found ourselves back in the older shopping centre of Sliema around Tower Road, where Mrs C took note of a few establishments for her to patronise when they would be open later in the week.

We started to head for home – taking a more direct route through Sliema back to Balluta Bay and then round the water’s edge to our hotel. Preparations for the final evening of St Julian’s festa were well advanced. An effigy of the Great Man himself was marched through the town; I say marched, what actually happens is that he is so heavy that the guys carrying him can only manage a few yards at a time before they have to put him down and massage their hernias. Sooner them than me.

Following our afternoon nap – which came pretty late that day, but still had to be observed as it is a statutory requirement – for dinner that night we went to the Sardinella Restaurant in St Julian’s. Mrs C had the Tagliata, and I’m afraid common decency does not allow me to impart to you her exact description of it, suffice to say that it was “extremely” yummy. I had a pizza and it was very nice, thank you.

Malta – St Julian’s Bay

Posted on October 11, 2012 by therealchrisparkle

It’s rare for Mrs Chrisparkle and me to have a relaxing holiday. We tend to get up and go places, explore off the beaten track, visit areas that are not yer actual normal holiday destinations. Oh, and go on cruises, which is the complete opposite. But this time we did feel like having more of a slow, self-indulgent wallow of a holiday. We chose to go to Malta, as, apart from a couple of day’s strolling around Valletta on cruises, we hadn’t been there since 1993. That time, when we were Relatively Hard Up, we spent the grand total of £189 each on two weeks at the Hotel San Pawl in Bugibba, half board, with Blue Sky Holidays (remember them?) One day on that holiday we visited St Julian’s Bay, which we remembered as being unspeakably beautiful – although your average abattoir is probably more beautiful than Bugibba – and we vowed if we ever came back to Malta we would stay at St Julian’s. So, true to ourselves, that’s precisely what we did.

We flew with the now defunct bmibaby from the splendidly useful East Midlands Airport to Malta’s international airport at Luqa, which has certainly enjoyed a facelift since 1993. On that occasion, only one of our two cases made it to Malta; the other went on a trip to Rome and it was five days before we were reunited with it. That was a good lesson learned – before then, we used to pack “his” and “hers” cases, but ever since we have always divided our clothes up half-and-half between each case so that if one bag doesn’t make it, you don’t have the problem of one of you being fully dressed and the other naked, which can be very embarrassing.

Our pre-arranged taxi met us and whisked us to our hotel, the Juliani, facing the westernmost tip of Spinola Bay. We chose the Juliani on the strength that it was the Number One hotel for St Julian’s on Tripadvisor, and I’m not surprised at its rating. It’s a charming, welcoming hotel, superbly located, with wonderful staff and delicious, big breakfasts. In fact I still miss Kenny’s, Zsuzsi’s and Gabor’s attentiveness in the mornings. Their combination of friendliness and politeness was very hard to beat. We had a junior suite, which meant we had a balcony overlooking the bay, perfect for an afternoon read and relax, or indeed a late-night relax combined with a half-bottle of wine from the minibar. Goodness me, hasn’t Maltese wine improved since 1993? More of that later, I expect.

Anyway the Saturday we arrived (25th August 2012) St Julian’s was gearing up for its annual festa day. Every town in Malta has a day when they celebrate its saint, and St Julian’s was certainly in party spirit. The streets are decorated, fireworks boom day and night, the roads are closed, marching bands perform and seemingly thousands of people descend to enjoy roadside eating and drinking. On the Sunday, a large effigy of St Julian would be paraded through the town, to and from the church I suspect. Everyone is in a very jolly mood and it was a pleasure to witness it. Our hotel room balcony had a great view, as you can see from that top picture!

Regular readers will know that when we are abroad we need to sniff out the availability of gluten-free food so that Mrs C doesn’t starve to death. Some Internet research beforehand suggested it wasn’t going to be a problem. And indeed, I am delighted to report that Malta is great for coeliacs. I understand there are quite a few high profile Maltese who are coeliac and as a result there is considerable awareness out there. A lot of Maltese cuisine is Italian-influenced; the majority of restaurants are the pizza and pasta type, which would normally be hell for a coeliac, but I would say that every third or fourth Italian restaurant in Malta will have provision for serving gluten-free pizza bases and pasta. As for the taste of the offerings, well, that’s another matter. But there are very many plucky attempts to integrate gluten-free food with standard fayre, which will make your favourite coeliac appear less of a sore thumb, when it comes to standing out with your restaurant choices.

With average temperatures 34 degrees every day, and mornings, noons and afternoons filled with wall to wall sunshine, we thought we’d start off with salads for lunches and see how it progressed through the week. For our first lunch, we turned right out of the hotel and strolled past Spinola Bay and got as far as Paul’s Sea Breeze Restaurant at Balluta Bay. We sat by the sea edge and had delicious, huge salads and a nice bottle of white wine and instantly felt we were in holiday mood. It’s an unsophisticated but perfectly friendly place, perfect for a restful lunch, and whilst we didn’t actually go back again during the course of the week for a meal, we did buy White Magnums from them whenever we were passing.

We walked on, round the bend of the bay into Sliema, just to see how far we could get in how short a space of time. The answer is quite a long way, and we identified a number of potential eateries en route for later in the week. After half an hour or so, we decided to head back, as our very early start (leaving home at 4am) was catching up with us so we were in great need of that delightful institution, the afternoon nap. It was, after all, a holiday.

The nap got extended, and extended again, but eventually we shook ourselves out of our comas and changed for dinner. This time we turned left out of the hotel. We got the last available table (not having booked) at Lulu Restaurant. Unfortunately we were too distant from the bay to see all the evening fireworks, which was a shame – although we did catch some later on after the meal – those fireworks go on for some time! There’s one price at Lulu – and it’s for a three course meal chosen from their menu, which includes a bottomless jug of mineral water too. The atmosphere and the food were great, and the service was friendly and polite if occasionally a little forgetful. I had the Pear and Gorgonzola Salad, followed by the Pork Schnitzel and the Apple Pie. I can’t offhand remember what Mrs C had, but she enjoyed it very much. Sadly they didn’t have a dessert that was gluten-free, so her set price three course meal had perforce to become a two-courser. Lucky she’s not a big eater.

We were also introduced here to what would become our favourite Maltese wines – the Gran Cavalier range from Delicata. Twenty years ago, Maltese wine was absolute paint-stripper. You had to buy really expensive imports to get anything decent – or simply stick to drinking Cisk beer. But the arrival of the EU has had a splendid impact on the Maltese wine industry and nearly everything we drank during our week was decent to some degree (with one major exception). We had the Gran Cavalier Sauvignon Blanc at Lulu and it was to die for. Yes, it’s a bit expensive for a local wine, but absolutely worth it – actually at €17,50 for a bottle Lulu was about the cheapest place you can buy Gran Cavalier wines.

Thus, full and satiated, we fought our way back to the hotel past the good natured crowds all happy to be celebrating good old St Julian, sat on the balcony to watch the end of the midnight fireworks, indulged in a half-bottle of Delicata from the minibar – alas not Gran Cavalier but the Cavalli Sauvignon Blanc if I remember rightly – which was fine for a nightcap. By about 12.30, our poor tired little bodies gave as an ultimatum – go to bed or collapse where we were standing. Bed it was.

Review – The Woman in Black, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 9th October 2012

Posted on October 10, 2012 by therealchrisparkle

Well here’s a successful formula. Stephen Mallatratt’s dramatisation of Susan Hill’s novel, directed by Robin Herford, first hit the stage of London’s Fortune Theatre in 1989 and is still going, making it London’s second longest running play after The Mousetrap. Mrs Chrisparkle and I have seen it twice in London; once a few years after it opened, and a second time in the early 2000s. It works best in a small, intimate theatre like the Fortune, which only seats about 430 people, so the cynic in one could say that a small theatre helps get you a long run; but the truth is that it’s a finely crafted, beautifully written play that delights and will continue to delight audiences purely on its own merit, no matter the size of the theatre.

The current run of the play at the Royal in Northampton is a case in point – there are hardly any seats left for any show and last night’s performance was a full house. The Royal is an absolutely perfect location for the play; Victorian, elegant, atmospheric, maybe a little spooky. The setting for the play is inside the very theatre where it is being staged (wherever that may be), and the set itself cleverly overlaps the usual stage area and spills out into the front stalls with additional walkways and pits, blurring the boundary between where the performance begins and the audience ends, which is a vital aspect of the story. As the action unfolds, you also realise that the solid looking but old and scruffy curtain at the back of the stage is not in fact a back boundary, but that lots of activity can be revealed behind it too.

If you haven’t seen the play, here’s a little taster of what it’s about, without, hopefully, giving too much away. Elderly Arthur Kipps (nothing to do with Half a Sixpence) has written out a lengthy account of what happened to him long ago when as a young solicitor he was required to attend the funeral of an old client living in a remote old house, and then sort through her papers afterwards. He has hired the theatre so that he can recount his tale to his family and friends in the hope it will put an end to his prolonged anxiety about the past. He has enlisted the assistance of an actor, who desperately tries to make him perform his story as a gripping yarn – but Kipps is no actor. They therefore decide that the actor will play Kipps, and Kipps will fill out the story with words from the minor characters. Thus we watch rehearsals of the story being acted out; but you soon forget that it’s just a rehearsal – what happens to young Kipps becomes very real indeed.

The play has intricate lighting and sound plots which transform the stage into whatever your imagination wants, or suspects, or fears. The lighting and sound effects play such an important part in the play, it’s almost as though they are the third and fourth performers – or fifth, depending on your point of view. What’s wonderful about the way these effects work is that they’re not remotely sensationalist or gruesome; they’re realistic and subtle, although rarely reassuring. The effect on the audience is of an overwhelming impact – from the set, the sounds, the lights, the characters but primarily perhaps from your own imagination.

This touring production is blessed with two excellent performances. Julian Forsyth plays Kipps with authority, dignity and not without humour when the text demands it. He gives life to all the side characters and I especially enjoyed him as Mr Jerome the agent in Crythin Gifford and as Sam Daily who tries to warn him of the dangers he faces. As the story becomes more urgent and terrifying, so Mr Forsyth’s narration becomes more animated and vivid. It’s a very powerful performance.

The nameless actor is played by Antony Eden, slightly foppish in appearance, and exuding that slight arrogance of a young man whose world/oyster ratio is improving heartily. Bright-eyed and innocent until his first night in Eel Marsh House, his subsequent rise in fearfulness and decline in confidence are convincingly portrayed so that we, the audience, share in everything that he experiences – and it’s scary. If I have a criticism, it would be that the very final twist in the tale didn’t come across with quite the force that I would have expected. But that may be due to the behaviour of certain sections of the audience…

The play is currently part of the GCSE Drama curriculum. This may account for the large number of young people in the audience last night. Now, I accept this is a scary play. Its whole objective is to put the willies up you; and of course it wouldn’t be doing its job if there weren’t a few loud sharp intakes of breath, some involuntary exclamations of fear, some nervous laughter. I learned last night that teenage girls don’t do sharp intakes of breath. What they do is scream – loudly, sustained, for anything up to seven seconds per outburst. It was like there was a whole swathe of Violet Elizabeths at the back. The effect of this is manifold – first, you get people around them going “shush”; then you get other members of the audience laughing at their reaction; finally you realise that you haven’t heard the last few speeches on the stage because of the audience noise and distraction. There is a fourth too – which is that you dread the next scary bit in case they do it again. Rest assured, they do. I don’t want to be an old curmudgeon, and I do remember the exuberance of youth – honestly – but that level of noise can definitely be filed in the over-reaction drawer. Boy, am I glad I was sitting nowhere near them. The Dowager Mrs Chrisparkle would have said “Empty Vessels make the Most Noise”, in that slightly priggish way of hers. Sadly, the overall effect of the screams was to replace enjoyable fear with something a bit more camp, to the detriment of the performance as a whole. Back to that final twist – the audience were generally unsettled by one of these over-reactions a few seconds previously, and I believe that they were too distracted to take in the significance of that final couple of sentences; shame.

I wouldn’t want you to think that only the young misbehaved in the theatre last night – oh no. Despite being given one of the clearest, most thoughtful, most reasoned requests at the beginning of the play to switch off our mobile phones, phones went off at least four times in the first act. The first was about ten minutes in; a gentle, otherwise pleasing tune of sunny disposition that emerged from somewhere to my right. A rustle of bags and coats and it was fairly quickly silenced. After about another ten minutes came number two – from somewhere quite close to me – and this time the phone had obviously been set to vibrate, but it must have been rattling against something as it sounded as loud as a lion’s purr. Unfortunately the owner declined to do anything about it, so it purred away for a good minute before the caller decided to give up. This was a heavy distraction from the action – and I could tell that Mr Eden was put off by it too, as he stumbled a little over his words during that sequence. Five minutes later, the caller decided to try again; and this time the woman directly to my left did an audible sigh – of inconvenience rather than embarrassment – picked up her handbag, took it out and turned it off. After about another fifteen minutes yet another phone went off – again the vibrating sound, again causing great annoyance to everyone around, again leading to noisy coat rustling, handbag clasp snapping and other assorted fumblings. I really was amazed and dismayed by how much interference came from mobiles last night. No wonder before Act Two started the disembodied voice reminded us to turn the bloody things off again (my words, not his). That just left Mrs C to be irritated in the second half by the person on her right and their plentiful supply of wrapped sweets, best consumed in the quietest moments, apparently.

Nevertheless, as for the play, it still has the ability to shock and terrify, but with subtlety and reason, and no loose end in the story is left untied at the end. A very good production, and certainly worth catching; but please, think before you scream, and turn that phone off!

Review – Charley’s Aunt, Menier Chocolate Factory, 7th October 2012

Posted on October 9, 2012 by therealchrisparkle

Charley’s Aunt – from Brazil – where the nuts come from; the phrase is the stuff of legend. I saw sure I had seen a production of this in my youth at the Young Vic but my memories of it were hazy. I did a bit of online research and it revealed nothing. But the irritation of not being able to bring it to mind started to get too much…So there was nothing to be done for it, I would have to search my theatre programme collection. And there it was – a production at the Young Vic that I attended on January 3rd 1977 when I was still sweet 16. It was directed by Denise Coffey and had a great cast – Lord Fancourt Babberley was played by Nicky Henson; Jack and Charley were Ian Gelder and Simon Chandler; Amy Spettigue was Natasha Pyne (from Father Dear Father) and Ela Delahay was a young Miss Janine Duvitski. I remember thinking at the time that, for such an old play, it was still very funny.

That would have been its 85th anniversary production – if you care to look at it in those terms. The current production at the Menier celebrates its 120th anniversary, and it is still as fresh as the proverbial daisy, or indeed Sir Francis Chesney’s wandering carnation. You get an instant high as you enter the auditorium from looking at the beautiful, versatile and (by Menier standards) extremely large set designed by Paul Farnsworth. We loved the gargoyle effects and the dreaming spires, the way the outside courtyard transformed into Spettigue’s house, and how by removing or reversing panels you can create what was outside, inside, and vice versa. And from our vantage point of Row A, you feel so close and involved in the action. Mrs Chrisparkle and I felt like imaginary seventh and eighth people attending the Act One lunch as the dining table was almost within arm’s reach of us.

I did however want to dash across the stage to where Jack was writing his opening scene letter and replace the book he was leaning on with something genuinely from the period. They’re using a 1970s red leatherette Readers Digest book godammit! Why not use an old anonymous brown leather bound tome, you could get one off Ebay for £3.50. Tsk!

Anyway I think that’s my only criticism of the play dealt with. Apart from that, it’s a dream. The packed audience laughed all the way through – sometimes hysterically; sometimes having to fight the urge to exclaim back at the cast at the onstage larks. There’s a moment when Lord Fancourt Babberley is hiding behind the piano, and when he is discovered, there is an almighty thud suggesting he’d walloped his head against the back of the piano. Not only was I laughing my own head off, I ended up cradling it in sympathetic agony too. There were pained groans from all over the audience. I must say that the moments of comic business littered throughout the show are all done marvellously.

“Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive”, the Dowager Mrs Chrisparkle used to warn, and this play could almost be the dictionary definition of that old saying. Jack and Charley want to progress their chances with their sweethearts Kitty and Amy, but propriety requires a chaperone. Fortunately Charley’s rich aunt Donna Lucia d’Alvadorez is expected from Brazil (where the nuts come from) so the girls agree to risk the naughtiness of proximity to the boys provided she is there to stand guard. Unfortunately though, her arrival is delayed; so Jack and Charley convince their fellow undergraduate toff Fancourt Babberley to disguise himself as the aunt so that their separate loves may be professed to the girls before the latter go to Scotland, for apparently what was going to be a helluva long time. Naturally things get out of hand; the aunt’s finances attract amorous advances; the real aunt turns up; farce ensues.

It was first produced in 1892, the same year as Lady Windermere’s Fan, and almost exactly in the middle of Georges Feydeau’s career as farceur magnifique d’Europe, which is definitely reflected in its content. However, it also has quite a Shakespearean structure to it. Cross-dressing, old fools making an idiot of themselves over love, a humorous servant and with four engagements to be married before the curtain comes down. No wonder people were falling over themselves to procure tickets for it back in 1892. This production is, appropriately, absolutely faithful to Brandon Thomas’ original text and I really liked the fact that they have gone for two intervals. I know it’s not trendy to do so, and that frequently directors look for a cliffhanger moment in the middle of act two just to chop it in half for simplicity’s sake; but three-acters were written for a reason, and it gives audience and cast alike a chance to pace themselves.

When it was first announced that this production would star Mathew Horne and Jane Asher my immediate thought was that it was perfect casting; and so it is. Mathew Horne is brilliant at taking those “put-upon” roles – whether it be Gavin, or Nan Taylor’s grandson – where the source of the comedy is elsewhere but requires the visible suffering of an innocent everyman figure. Nan Taylor reminds me of the Dowager Mrs Chrisparkle so I’ve always identified with Mr Horne in those scenes. Mind you, Lord Fancourt Babberley isn’t that innocent; he does try to nick the four bottles of champagne after all. Cue a perfect example of Mr Horne’s acting eyes; when after some undergraduate horseplay he lands chest down on the bag containing the bottles and you hear that agonising clink of glass on glass, with one glimpse of his anxious expression, the audience groaned and shared his alarm. He has an extraordinary ability to convey that “I don’t believe what just happened/I just heard/they just did” emotion with a fractional eye movement.

Brandon Thomas is very clear in his stage instructions that “Fanny Babbs” should be in no way effeminate as Donna Lucia; and Mathew Horne catches that ridiculous set-up perfectly. He has to veer towards the pug-ugly and behave like a bloke so that the attractions of Spettigue are even more absurd; and a lot of the comedy comes from the juxtaposition of Donna Lucia’s presumed gentility and FB’s chummy Etonian boisterousness. That all works really well in this production. His genuine distress at being put in this embarrassing position is real and funny; and when he dissolves into a puddle of love at the prospect of Miss Delahay, I actually found it quite moving. It’s a great performance, full of physical comedy, technically spot-on and not a word garbled or hard to hear, so hurrah for that.

Of course it’s great to see Jane Asher on stage, giving a wonderfully balanced performance based on the refined but warm character of the real Donna Lucia and her comic teasing of the fake Donna Lucia. She has super stage presence, which lends itself perfectly to the dignity of her character, but also with a very light human and comic touch. Her little utterance of excitement after she has re-established contact with Chesney Senior is a moment of delight. She also made a very good double act with Charlie Clemmow, as Ela, both of them giggling in a co-conspiratorial way at the depths to which the young men are digging holes for themselves. I liked Miss Clemmow’s performance a great deal, as she brought life and depth to the character of Ela, rather than her just being the “third girl”, which it easily can be.

All the actors are splendid though, and the show’s got a great ensemble feel. Dominic Tighe (excellent in Barefoot in the Park earlier this year at Oxford) as Jack is thrusting and imperious as a bossy toffee-nosed undergrad, who goes all matey with his dad when there’s money in the offing; and he too has a very strong stage presence and a crystal clear voice. 1892 is a long time ago; if I’d addressed my scout like that in 1978 I’d have been rusticated. Benjamin Askew’s Charley is a delightful duffer with something of a toned-down version of Harry Enfield’s Tim-Nice-But-Dim to him; he also makes a very good puppy dog when in Amy Spettigue’s presence. As their wannabe girlfriends, both Leah Whitaker and Ellie Beaven are perfectly matched to their chaps; Miss Whitaker credibly providing the bolder approach to proposals, and giving a perfect visual response to being told she’s a brick.

Steven Pacey makes a strong impact as Sir Francis, full of vitality and spark, absolutely the old Indian Colonel and really relishing his lines. “That’s not the way an old soldier makes love” brought the house down. Norman Pace’s Spettigue is a great creation; bombastic at first – Mathew Horne’s giving him short shrift for his rudeness is hilarious – and then later a picture of ridiculous besottedness as he admires and adores every move the fake aunt makes. Fancourt Babberley describes him as looking like a boiled owl and somehow that’s precisely how Mr Pace manages to make himself look. Brilliant stuff. Finally Charles Kay – whose performances I have enjoyed dozens of times over the years – is excellent as Brassett the scout, doing his best to answer the call of His Master’s Voice when necessary but pompously facing down effrontery when required.

It’s a wonderful production, one of the best things we’ve seen at the Menier, and we laughed about it on the train home, which is always a good sign. It surely deserves a transfer after its spell at the Menier. Take the opportunity to catch a great cast do justice to a classic comedy!

Review – Screaming Blue Murder, Underground, Derngate, Northampton, 5th October 2012

Posted on October 8, 2012 by therealchrisparkle

We’re well into this autumn’s season of Screaming Blue Murders at the Derngate, and as usual our compere was Dan Evans, giving us some good new material as well as a few old favourites, and most of it worked pretty well. Dan’s job is to get us all in the mood and to explore a few possibilities with the audience which he always does superbly. When he announced he was selling his book outside at the end, it received a “NOT AGAIN!” from a lady who I think had done precisely the same heckle last year. And she still hasn’t bought a copy.

It was a real quality trio of comics this week, two of whom were new to us. First up, and one of our newbies, was Joe Lycett. The bastard lovechild, if such a thing were possible, of Julian Clary and Kenneth Williams his act is very camp and very funny. He starts off with the slightly threatening chatting up of guys in the front row but wisely uses that as a base to spin off onto other punchy material, rather than dwelling on it too long. He had excellent observations about being a hypochondriac, and his act ends with a funny account of an email exchange after appearing on a TV programme. Quite a lot of f***s and c***s in that account, but it added to the ridiculousness of the material.

Nick Doody was our second comic, and he started his act with an awful lot of c*** words. One knows that “less is sometimes more”; this was a very good example of how more can be very much less. We thought his act started very slowly, which was odd as I remember him being excellent throughout when we saw him last time. For some reason he didn’t tap into the general mood. However, as the old cliche would have it, it was a game of two halves; for his final fifteen minutes or so were brilliant, ending up with a nightmare account of how Margaret Thatcher is still held in high esteem in some circles, which was very telling and hard-hitting; and with which he completely redeemed himself in my eyes.

Our final act was Ian Moore, and he was just superb. He didn’t have to put on any persona, he didn’t have to swear a lot, he didn’t run round maniacally. He just relied on really funny original material that covered the kind of situations we can all recognise – and as a result he had the audience in the palm of his hand. Highlights that I can remember include fresh observations of travelling Ryanair; environmentally friendly light bulbs; and the enmity between brothers of different nationalities. Absolutely brilliant stuff. Best act we’ve seen at Screaming Blue Murder for a long time.

I ended up having a little chat to Dan again after the show about how it went. I think I’m becoming his customer liaison representative; or a counsellor. There could be some money in this.

Review – Marcus Brigstocke, The Brig Society, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 4th October 2012

Posted on October 5, 2012 by therealchrisparkle

The old Royal Theatre in Northampton is a great place to fill with a comic act that is too big for Screaming Blue Murder but maybe not big enough for the Derngate. In the last twelve months it’s hosted Jeremy Hardy, Shappi Khorsandi and now Marcus Brigstocke. You get all the benefits of a full house – great atmosphere, loud laughter – but in an intimate setting which brings you not only closer to the “act” on stage but also to their “victims” dotted around the theatre. Marcus Brigstocke creates a number of “victims” in this show – but rest assured, it’s all done very unthreateningly. To fill out the cabinet of his “Brig Society” government, he’s looking for ministers to fit the tasks ahead. Mrs Chrisparkle very nearly volunteered to be the Chancellor. Instead, the job went to Mr Brigstocke’s mate Shaun who he apparently met on the way to the theatre from the railway station. In any case, it’s a really clever way of involving the audience and gives rise to lots of unpredictable laughs.

But I’m running before I can walk with this review. A nicely edited sequence of soundbites concerning David Cameron’s Big Society and how the PM defines it is used to introduce Mr Brigstocke onto the stage; and we know straight away we’re in for an evening of intelligent and very funny left of centre comedy. He instantly gets a great rapport with the audience. He doesn’t seem to put on an act in any way; you feel that the person speaking to you is absolutely for real and saying precisely what he would say in the pub, or the privacy of his living room.

The “Brig” Society is a very creative idea for a stand-up assessment of the current government and the people who run it, but I particularly liked the fact that the whole evening wasn’t chained to that concept. There were plenty of times when he could take us away from it and talk about subjects like racism (which was hilarious and without the slightest hint of offensiveness), the Olympics, and The Sun for example; all of which he made relevant but which could also be taken as “stand-alone humour modules” in their own right. He’s at his savage best though when making a mockery of the “we’re all in this together” aspects of David Camoron (sic) and Gideon Osborne (also sic) and reflecting on the benefits of Eton College’s charitable status. I also liked his assessment of Jeremy Hunt’s (careful) legacy as Minister for Culture.

Without giving away all his material, there’s also some great observations about Smokers Outside Hospitals – which gets huge laughs of recognition, and a witty and hard-hitting lesson on banking and bankers which involves the movement of an alarming amount of cash around the theatre. Mr Brigstocke obviously had some fans in, as he was presented with a rather splendid oversized silk £10 note at this point, which was funnier than it sounds.

We saw Mr Brigstocke playing King Arthur when Spamalot came to Northampton in 2010 and indeed he came third in the category Best Performance by an Actor in a Musical in the much-coveted 2010 Chrisparkle Awards. On the strength of this stand-up he could well be in line for another award this year. An intelligent, thought-provoking and very funny show that reveals some truly ludicrous things about our beloved nation. All that, and a great selection of 70s Reggae classics played before and after to which Mrs C and I sang along. This tour is carrying on round England and Wales right up till Christmas. A must-see!

Review – The Mousetrap, Milton Keynes Theatre, 28th September 2012

Posted on October 1, 2012 by therealchrisparkle

You know the Mousetrap – it’s been on in the West End since 1952. You may have seen it once, long ago; you wouldn’t dream of going back to see it again, though. Yet when they announced this “first ever UK tour” (not strictly true as it had some regional try-outs fifty years ago), it obviously piqued the nation’s curiosity, as the seats at Milton Keynes, for example, got booked up more or less an in instant. Mrs Chrisparkle and I were certainly very keen to go. She hadn’t seen it before; I saw it with my mum in 1971. The cast then included Carol Marsh (Rose in Brighton Rock) as Mollie, Steve Plytas (Kurt the Fawlty Towers chef who falls in love with Manuel) as Mr Paravicini, Bee Duffell (the Old Woman in Monty Python and the Holy Grail who refuses to assist the King in the search for a shrubbery) as Mrs Doyle, and Kevin Sheehan (who sang on my 1967 Music For Pleasure album of Doctor Dolittle) as Sergeant Trotter. I got all their autographs at the Stage Door. Carol Marsh asked my mum and me who we thought dunnit. I remember we all had a very jolly conversation.

Of course there are still three members of the original cast alive I believe – Richard Attenborough, who played Trotter, Sheila Sim (his wife) who played Mollie and Jessica Spencer, the original Miss Casewell. John Paul, who played Giles, and who many people will remember from that old BBC TV series Doomwatch, lived near us and used to go out drinking with my dad. So maybe those personal memories account for why I was very keen to see the play again. We are both Agatha Christie fans too – but I’m afraid we’ll never again get Mrs C into a production by the “Agatha Christie Company” – we saw “The Hollow” and she hated it.

Back to this touring production of The Mousetrap. It was without doubt an evening of highs and lows. The set is 100% faithful to Christie’s original and the costumes and props are 1952 to the Nth degree. The accents are cut glass crystal English genteel except for Paravicini and Trotter, which is more or less how Christie wrote it. So if you were expecting any bold modern adaptations in this production you will be sadly disappointed. If you would prefer time to stand still, you will approve, although I didn’t see the point of the final line of the play, which is an addition that doesn’t appear in my French’s Acting Edition text – I wonder when that was introduced?

Unfortunately I wasn’t very convinced by the performances of Jemma Walker as Mollie or Bruno Langley as Giles. Miss Walker seemed a little too glamorous to be an industrious wannabe hotelier, and I didn’t believe her growing friendship with Wren – I just didn’t “get” the moment when they suddenly start to get on. I also didn’t really care for her more hysterical moments – they didn’t come across to me as genuine shock and terror, more like a thwarted starlet on the casting couch. As for Mr Langley, he seemed to be doing an impersonation of a rather bumptiously hearty young husband instead of actually being one. It’s quite early on in the tour – which is very extensive – so hopefully they will grow more into the roles in time. The same applies – although not quite so much – to Thomas Howes as Sergeant Trotter. Mrs C found him rather shouty, whereas I found it hard to think of him as anything other than a Downton Abbey footman. I think he was good expressing the character’s quieter, less officious moments – but turned into a Gatling Gun when he was laying down the law and bullying the suspects.

On the other hand, I thought Steven France as Christopher Wren gave more or less a faultless performance. This must be such a hard part to play. The character’s speeches are incredibly camp and he has to deal with the most awkward, laboured, over-the-top lines, appearing to be both neurotic and “most peculiar” (according to Mrs Boyle). It must be very difficult to play it other than in “outrageously gay” mode. However, Mr France really conveys a filled-out character here – yes, you get the campness but you also get the sense of a disturbed mind, a character both easily threatened and potentially very threatening. I was very impressed with the way he conveyed it.

Another excellent performance came from Clare Wilkie as Miss Casewell. Another gay character – interesting in itself for 1952 – physically she captures Christie’s description of a “young woman of a manly type” perfectly without becoming a stereotype, and I really liked her portrayal of the character’s irritation with the world and its inhabitants, especially Mrs Boyle and Sgt Trotter. Without giving any of the game away, there is a moment towards the end of the play when Miss Casewell makes an important realisation – and I thought Miss Wilkie caught that moment really well.

Jan Waters plays Mrs Boyle – she has done so in the past in London too – and it’s a good, thoughtful performance, although she is not how I imagine Mrs Boyle to be. Christie describes her as a large imposing woman in a bad temper – I would see that as a Margaret Rutherford or Maggie Smith creation – but Miss Waters is rather elegant and formally well behaved, and you get the feeling that her sense of her own dignity requires her to keep her annoyance close to her chest rather than letting rip. By contrast, I remember Bee Duffell playing her as a right bitch of a tricky pensioner.

Karl Howman’s Paravicini lacked a little of the camp that I think would make him more like Hercule Poirot (again Christie’s description) but he was quite eerie and disconcerting in his own way, and I think it was a pretty impressive performance. Graham Seed’s Major Metcalf was insufficiently military for my liking – I think he should be more like the Major in Fawlty Towers but with all his marbles. This Metcalf was very nice but rather bland – more like a Customer Services Representative than a Leader Of Men.

The moments of high tension still work extremely well. The gloved hand that emerges from a side room that turns off the lights and will commit murder is still delightfully creepy, and the moment when the identity of the murderer is revealed still inspires a wave of gasps of incredulity throughout the theatre. As is traditional, at curtain call the murderer asks that the audience keep the secret as to whodunit, and I for one am certainly not going to spoil it for others. As the audience were leaving the auditorium you could sense a general satisfaction with the evening; people were comparing who they thought dunnit with each other; so, for want of a better phrase, it absolutely Does What it Says on the Tin. If you haven’t seen the play before, really it’s a no-brainer; you should see it, simply to broaden your general knowledge. If you have seen it before, there are plenty of things to enjoy about this production, even if, overall, it’s just a little bit creaky for today’s discerning theatregoing public.

I said it was an evening of highs and lows. All the above were highs in comparison with our seats – C18 & 19 in the stalls. I’ve already told you that the Milton Keynes Theatre have created an extra row – Row CC – in front of Row C, and that it looked like it was a recipe for disaster. Well, now I can confirm it. Row C used to have magnificent leg room, and have a nice little rake up from Row B. Now the rake is gone and Row CC appears where your feet should be. The seats in both rows are slightly smaller and fold away discreetly when not in use, but if you’re trying to get past someone sat in Row C, and if the seat in front in Row CC is also occupied, even if the Row C person stands up to let you through, you’ve got precious little chance. You need scaffolding to get across – there is absolutely no room whatsoever. Mrs C found her seat very uncomfortable and also had an atrocious view of the stage. She could tell that the lady in CC in front had an equally, if not worse, view, by the way she was darting her head all over the place every time an actor moved. A large amount of the action of the second act of The Mousetrap takes place seated on the sofa at the front of the stage. Mrs C could see nothing of that. In the end I observed she had given up struggling to watch, preferring to look downwards at her lap and listen to the play as though it were the original Three Blind Mice on the wireless. If, like me, you like to sit Front Stalls, your choices at this theatre are now very limited. Rows AA and BB are too close to the stage and you will need a chiropractor to help you with your neck strain afterwards. Row A is fine. If you can’t get in Row A, my advice is don’t consider any of the next rows till you get to E. In the No Man’s Land in between, it’s cramped, with no rake and thoroughly disappointing. What was once an auditorium to look forward to is now an auditorium to dread. How sad.

The Real Chrisparkle

Monthly Archives: October 2012