Tag Archives: Northampton

Review – G. M. H., Stalagmite Theatre Company, University of Northampton Flash Festival, St Peter’s Church, Northampton, 22nd May 2017

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330 years from now, mankind has created Genetically Modified Humans – GMHs for short. If you’re uncomfortable with the thought of Genetically Modified Food – what would you think about the prospect of our genes being played about with so that we can withstand the extreme changes in the Earth’s atmosphere? There’s been a new Ice Age, and the choice was to change, or die… so…? GMHs were used to build a sustainable world for humans to inhabit. But are they also human? Robot? Something halfway between the two?

It’s clear when we meet two black market scavengers at the beginning of the show that they’re part of “traditional” humankind and look on the GMH that they discover as subhuman; “it”, as one of them insists they call the GMH rather than “she”. But does there come a point where the GMH’s abilities supercede the humans’? Has man bitten off more than he can chew?

An inventive and clever play, with three strong characters as well as the looming disembodied voice of the “boss”. Very nice use of video, with the Colossal Incorporated company calling for volunteers to become genetically modified, long before the events of the play were to unfold. Jamal Franklin and Daniel Ambrose-Jones asthe two vagabonds build up a good relationship with banter and argument so you really feel you understand how these guys work together; and the sudden arrival of a GMH in the shape of Jessica Bridge throws them into uncertainty – and not without cause. Miss Bridge is delightfully aloof, misleadingly accommodating and full of surprises.All I can say is, if she ever asks you to give her a shoulder massage, tread carefully.

Smartly performed, clearly delivered – and with more than one surprising twist at the end. Good work and congratulations!

Review – Sand in the Sandwiches, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 25th May 2017

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I’ve always been a fan of John Betjeman. My earliest recollections of him are his TV interviews with Michael Parkinson, where he would come across as slightly bumbling, endearing like a favourite uncle, and with a wicked sense of humour. My big connection with him came with his TV film of Metroland. I went to Merchant Taylors’ school, in the heart of that mythical metropolitan county, and remember seeing the film crew at Moor Park station coming to record a sequence of him playing golf and watching the security guard refuse entry to a driver who just wanted to cut through the estate (after all, it was private!) He also filmed in Amersham, where I had many friends, and his Metroland journey ended up north of Aylesbury, where the train ran no more, at the little halt known as Quainton Road Station. That’s now a tourist attraction where Thomas the Tank Engine often comes to entertain, and I don’t know what Betjeman would have made of that.

Betjeman played by Edward Fox? An interesting concept. Like Betjeman, Edward Fox often cuts a larger than life figure on stage, making full use of his extraordinary voice with which he can make magic. His sonorous loquaciousness swirls around his throat like a 20-year-old Tawny coating the sides of an antique cut glass. He can stretch out a sentence, a phrase, even a word, so that it lasts so much longer than it would appear on a page, giving your brain uninterrupted opportunity to appreciate its full significance. I first saw Mr Fox on stage back in 1979 in Michael Elliott’s gripping production of T S Eliot’s The Family Reunion – he was every inch a star then and it has not diminished one iota since.

But as Betjeman? Betjeman didn’t sound like Edward Fox. He had quite a thin voice, somewhat tentative and lacking authority; the voice of the quiet, unassuming man that I believe Betjeman truly was. I always thought of Betjeman reading his own work as like listening to someone observing life from the sidelines, rather than participating in it. He would obsess on minor details in the background, and allow the reader/listener to fill in the gaps. But here’s the thing – Sand in the Sandwiches works absolutely! Mr Fox’s Betjeman acquires the patina of age; he is a more rounded personality, not bumbling but resolute. Moreover, Betjeman’s poetry responds beautifully to his interpretation. Miss Joan Hunter Dunn has never been so physically relished as she is in Mr Fox’s eyes; Oscar Wilde has never been so firmly removed from the Cadogan Hotel.

Hugh Whitemore has taken a number of Betjeman’s works – both popular and less well-known – and woven them seamlessly into a sequential narration of important events in Betjeman’s life, to create this charming and insightful one-man play. There are his well-documented days at Marlborough, and vivid recollections of friends like W H Auden and Tom Driberg; there are also the private experiences like the extraordinary day when his train stopped for ages at the station nearest to his father’s office, and he wondered whether he should visit him. It’s not all whisperingly reverent either. When Mr Fox tells us how it is decided he should address his new father-in-law, or Churchill’s reaction to Driberg’s marriage, or his own reaction to the Manchester Guardian’s opinion of his becoming Poet Laureate, he has us in stitches.

I thought this play could go one of two ways – it would either be serenely terrific, or it would be po-faced and dull. I’m delighted to tell you there’s nothing remotely po-faced nor dull about it. Mr Fox holds your attention from the very start to the very end; his delivery is intricate and exquisite; if he left a long gap of silence, you wouldn’t dare try to fill it. A surprise hit; after its few days in Northampton, the show has a week at the Theatre Royal Haymarket followed by visits to Cambridge, Malvern, Woking, Brighton and Bath. If you’re a fan of Betjeman, you’ll adore the reminiscences and the chance to hear his words again. If you’re a fan of Edward Fox, you’ll wallow in his effortless skill at bringing these words to life. Highly recommended!

Review – A Matter of Race, Zakiya Theatre Company, University of Northampton Flash Festival, Hazelrigg House, Northampton, 22nd May 2017

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Two girls, same age; different upbringings in different countries but circumstances force them both to move to England. No knowledge of each other until one day fate joins them together at an interview. What do they notice about each other? Their clothes; their potential as rivals. What don’t they notice about each other? The difference of their skin colour. They recognised their own colour much earlier in their childhood, as part of growing up, as part of acquiring their own identities. These things just are – you don’t choose, you accept them. But the other’s colour only becomes apparent after life takes a turn for the difficult. A party. A shot is fired…

As their story develops you realise how the media report events and people, their motivations and their integrity, differently depending on their skin colour. If responsible for a crime, the white girl will get the benefit of the doubt; the black girl will get automatic assumption of guilt. But their lives run parallel;to all intents and purposes, they are virtually interchangeable. Does innocence have a chance when faced with institutionalised racism?

A simple play with a simple message that you don’t need to me to spell out here. Performed with pinpoint accuracy by Jessica Bichard and Karr Kennedy,this is a superbly well assembled, poetic piece of writing, that both actors bring to life direct from the heart. They build up beautiful speaking rhythms and patterns, speaking in unison, speaking in time, speaking in syncopation, speaking together, speaking apart. Extremely effective and, despite the harshness of the injustice it highlights, extremely enjoyable.

Review – Broken, Out of Mind Theatre Company, University of Northampton Flash Festival, Salvation Army Hall, Northampton, 22nd May 2017

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The description of this production begins: “Billy Milligan is a young man struggling with Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) who is accused of crimes that he believes he did not commit. Tormented by 24 different personalities, every day is a struggle to gain control of his life….” Can you imagine that? Having that kind of racket going on inside your head? It’s not something I’d ever considered before seeing this extraordinary production and when it finished, I emerged much better informed… but I’m getting ahead of myself.

This was my first time at the Salvation Army venue, and what terrific opportunities it provides for a larger scale production. Entering the auditorium, you are very disoriented by both the overall darkness and also the luminescent blue from the back screens; they create a slightly disturbing and unnerving 3-D effect. Actors in the dark are prowling around, lounging, languishing; you don’t know who any of them are or why they’re here. You can tell from looking at the evidence boards at the back that you’re in the police station. You think at some point that you’ll probably get to scrutinise and understand these boards, to get a better picture of what Billy Milligan did. You don’t. But that is one of the fascinations of this production, the huge effort into detail that has obviously taken place, literally in the background, but that you don’t get to examine. A lot of love has gone into this production.

Focus on Billy Milligan – he’s clearly suffering mental agony. He’s no recollection of doing anything that he’s accused of – but the CCTV shows him, fair and square, assaulting various women in accordance with the accusations against him. He must be lying – or so the detective in charge believes. We see the detective interviewing Billy – but wait – it’s now a different actor playing Billy; Ben Hampton, who had played him in the first scene – and whose photo adorns the crime board on the back wall – is now playing the detective… Was there a last-minute re-casting? What’s going on?

What’s going on is a brilliantly inventive way of showing Billy’s MPD with a variety of actors portraying the characters behind the different voices in Billy’s head. One hears of people saying they heard “voices”; what I’d never thought about (and if this is my lack of imagination, please excuse me) is that these different voices are like different people; a six-year-old Liverpudlian girl, an assertive American guy, a sassy aggressive know-it-all chick, a sullen sulk. Men, women, girls, boys, all races, all ages, they’re all in Billy Milligan, and this superb piece of drama brings that multitude to life with humour, passion, tension and shock. Billy Milligan really existed, incidentally, although this play doesn’t represent him in any kind of factual or documentary way – our Billy was born decades later, is considerably younger, isn’t in America but in the Salvation Army hall in Northampton. This production stamps its own individualism on the story.

It’s a show of so many highlights: Billy’s victims, unable to come to terms with talking about what has happened to them; Ben Hampton silently reciting the words of all the other Billies as they take control of him; Liam Faik’s confused and cornered Billy nearly crumbling under the detective’s questioning; all the brilliant characterisations of the sub-Billies but perhaps most strikingly Victoria Rowlands’ young Elizabeth, and the hard-nosed bitch of a doctor who won’t believe that MPD exists; the meticulous mime scenes,which culminate in the other Billies each passing over one item of clothing to the real Billy, representing how he eventually acquires the other characters as part of himself; and the scene which made me cry, where Billy recounts to the doctor how his childhood was affected by his father – again brilliant use of video in the background that suggests just enough of what happened without having to spell it out.

Fantastic ensemble work, superb characterisations by all the cast; it was shocking, surprising, enlightening; it drew out humour from the most unlikely places; I absolutely loved it. This show should certainly have a life after Flash. Congratulations to you all!

Review – A Sinner Kissed an Angel, Merge Theatre Company, University of Northampton Flash Festival, St Peter’s Church, Northampton, 22nd May 2017

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It’s that time again when the 3rd Year students of Acting at Northampton University launch their Flash Festival. It’s like a mini-Edinburgh fringe, and each of the productions counts as the dissertation towards the students’ degrees. Last year I saw some Flash Festival plays and I was very impressed. This year I’m hoping to see all fifteen on offer: four on Monday, four on Tuesday, three on Wednesday, two on Thursday and two on Friday. I’m already behind with my blogging, so it might be a while before I write about them all – but bear with me! There are three venues for these plays – St Peter’s Church (evocative and they’ve built the stage platform higher so previous poor sightlines are now much improved), Hazelrigg House (many different sized rooms there offering a variety of acting spaces) and the Salvation Army centre on Tower Street.

To open my Flash Festival experience this year, I started with A Sinner Kissed an Angel performed by the Merge Theatre Company. This is the story of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the UK, for the murder of her lover, David Blakely, in July 1955. She was 28. I remember hearing from my mother, the Late Dowager Mrs Chrisparkle, how the atmosphere on that day was very sombre. Everyone was quiet and reflective, and there were many who thought this was an inappropriate death sentence; and to this day, Ruth Ellis is a figure of some intrigue and curiosity.

The play starts with the climax, in a sense – the scene just before she murders Blakely; and then goes back to her early life, tracing the relationships, the friendships and her descent into a lawless and immoral environment where murder would seem like a fair option, given the circumstances. Regularly interrupting the progressing story of Ruth’s life, we have three “Good Housekeeping”/”Dear Marje” type ladies, with their infomercial/magazine columns advising women on how to do the best for their men, and how to cope with darker and darker situations. These scenes make for an entertaining juxtaposition with the general sadness of Ruth’s life.

Olivia Sarah Jayne Noyce takes to the role of Ruth like a duck to water, looking every inch the part and strongly conveying the character’s wilfully coquettish nature. Ruth knows what she wants and she’s going to get it. Miss Noyce is great at showing Ruth’s obstinate, manipulative and demanding characteristics, whilst all the time looking like butter wouldn’t melt. A very good performance. I also really enjoyed watching Jennifer Etherington as her friend Vicki; she has a very authoritative vocal delivery which made me absolutely believe her character, and her diction was also very clear which is an attribute I always value.

Connor McCreedy’s Blakely had a very sinister, threatening style; wheedling his way into Ruth’s affections, infuriatingly self-mocking, and, quite frankly, thoroughly deserving to get murdered. He was also the source of some excellent on-stage fisticuffs – very nicely handled. Jenny Watson was a very likeable and believable Muriel, amusingly stomping through the dance to grab her sister and expressing genuine concern for her safety and wellbeing; and admirably tackling the tougher prospect of playing another of Ruth’s paramours, Desmond. All four actors also shared the roles of the “Good Housekeeping” ladies – and their change of tone and style for those scenes was very crisp and funny – even if at times you had to swallow your laugh because the material was so brutal.

Overall, a very good production that told its story clearly and intelligently, performed with precision and wit. Congratulations all!

Review – Tez Ilyas, Made in Britain, Underground at the Derngate, Northampton, 20th May 2017

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We have a specific spot we like to sit for the comedy shows at the Underground, gentle reader. They normally have two banks of chairs – three or four rows at the front, then a gap, then the seats at the back. I like to take the back row of the front bank – and sit on the aisle – that way you’re close enough to the action to feel involved but sufficiently far away not to get roped in. Usually. Imagine my disappointment on entering the Underground for Saturday night’s Tez Ilyas show to discover the front bank of chairs was just one row deep. A front row glistening in glamorous isolation. No chance. We instinctively sat on the front row of the back seats. No one sat in front of us.

Enter Mr Ilyas for his welcoming introduction. I knew what he was going to say. Our seating positions as a group were not acceptable. He said he’d turn his back and count from 1 – 10 in Urdu and when he turned around he expected everyone to have moved one row forward. He did so. And so did we! It was a very nice start to our audience/performer relationship: he delivered, we responded. One thing though – it meant we were catapulted to the front row. Dang my breeches!

We saw Tez when he did Screaming Blue Murder here last October, when he mistook Northampton for Peterborough (ouch!) and then slagged off our cricket team (double ouch!!) – and it’s fascinating to discover that he remembered those schoolboy errors, as though they keep coming back like a nightmare. I reckon Mr I probably keeps a collection of his faux pas in a box under the stairs and takes them out every so often for a happy reminisce – he strikes me as that kind of guy.

But that’s probably at the heart of why his stand-up is so endearing. He comes across as just a regular guy; no airs or graces, no persona he’s hiding behind – just the real him and as a result you feel as though you really understand him and his life after an hour and a half in his presence. Most other comedians I’ve seen and enjoyed weave imaginary material into their real-life experience to create a funnier version of the truth. But you get the feeling that absolutely everything Mr I says is the truth, and nothing but. Even if it isn’t, and he’s pulling the wool over our eyes, that’s a real gift.

I use the word “welcoming” in the second paragraph in two ways; first, it was a general welcome as we’d just arrived, none of us had met and he was being polite and offering the comic equivalent of canapes and cocktails. (No cocktails; alcohol has never passed his lips. Well, almost never…) But his style is also welcoming; he doesn’t ever make you feel uncomfortable, even when he’s talking directly to you (who’s my MP? What am I drinking? What’s my favourite Disney film? Where do I rank ISIS on the scale of despicability? I confessed all) You imagine at home he’d be the most gracious host. He seems genuinely chuffed that we came out to see him.

After he’d got us at our ease – and we’d played musical chairs – he introduced us to his support act, the fantastic Guz Khan. We’d seen Mr Khan with Johnny Vegas at the Leicester Comedy Festival earlier in the year and he’s a revelation. An ex-teacher, you know with that commanding presence the kids would have sat up and listened (well, I would have). He has brilliant material harking back to his school teaching days; but also really clever edgy observations such as the surprise use for a WhatsApp group and also his unconditional love for all his children. Mrs Chrisparkle and I were genuinely delighted when we realised he was coming on, and he went down a storm. Even if he did say I laughed like Jimmy Savile. (I don’t.)

The second part of the show was solo Tez, taking us through his life and experiences and opening up a whole new understanding between different racial backgrounds and cultural practices – but underlining that we’re all Made in Britain. He plays with his name; we are his Tezbians, even though at home he is not Tehzeeb; he said it meant the Scourge of Beelzebub or something like that but I Googled it and what he didn’t say is that it’s a girl’s name, so no wonder. He has telling, competitive material about not being mistaken for an Indian – catering industry observations aside. He points out the nonsense (that I’d never considered) that the Jungle Book characters are all voiced with classical western accents (viz. “Shere Khan: How delightful”) – how stupid is that? He talks about his unlikely but ultimately disappointing experience with Tinder and I absolutely get where he’s coming from. And there’s so much more. Primarily you come away with an understanding of how the openly Asian Tez has precisely the same aspirations, foibles and concerns as anyone else – including that tricky subject of how you refer to another race. Personally, I really don’t like the phrase “people of colour” because we’ve all got a colour of sorts, so what the hell does that mean? Tez has his own observations on this and some rather delectably embarrassing examples. But I’m not going to tell you about all his material because a) I can’t remember it, b) it’s not mine to tell and c) it’ll ruin it for the rest of you. Trust me though that the time flies by.

Very likeable, very funny and with instantly recognisable observations about how we all rub along together – or not. Truly the comedy of revelation; you may well come out of this show a different person from the one who went in, and there is no finer compliment I can pay to a performer! There are only a few more dates left in his tour but he’s got a new show coming up in Edinburgh this summer and I’m pretty sure we’ll be catching it. Highly recommended!

Review – The Grapes of Wrath, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 16th May 2017

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I bought Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (intimidatingly big fat book) and Of Mice and Men (welcomingly slim volume) when I was 16 with the intention of improving my mind, and let’s face it, it needed a helluva lot of improvement. At the time I found novels really hard going, so these were always going to be a challenge. They went with me everywhere; I took them to university; I took them to my second university (yeah, I know, you wouldn’t credit it); I took them to my first flat; my first house; my second house; my third house; and when it came to moving yet again, this time we had to downsize and a lot of my books got taken to charity shops. The Grapes of Wrath was one such sacrifice. And I confess, gentle reader, in all that time I never read it. I’ve still never read Of Mice and Men either, but that’s easier to accommodate.

Still, I’ve read the synopsis on Wikipedia, so that’s a start; and I can confirm that Frank Galati’s stage version, that ran for 188 performances on Broadway in 1990, is very faithful to the original book. It’s a massive tale, overflowing with pathos, with powerful themes of tolerance, injustice, and loyalty; it’s an environment where banks evict you from your property through no fault of your own, you’re lucky if you can get a zero hours contract and where fat cats grow fatter by exploiting the weakest of society. Thus it’s still incredibly relevant for our own time. There’s a large cast of distinctive characters whose dilemmas and reactions intrigue and surprise you. Put all that into a stage adaptation and it’s got to be great, hasn’t it? Hasn’t it?

I have to be honest to one of my theatrical mantras which is that I’d prefer to see a brave failure than a lazy success. I love to be challenged in the theatre by off the wall ideas that may not work but you can see how the creative team were maybe trying to subvert material, or question responses. Even if at the end of the day it doesn’t work, it’s much more rewarding than a bland drawing room comedy just phoned in by a complacent cast.

This, however, is something completely different. It’s theatre, Jim, but not as we know it. I ask myself if director Abbey Wright is trying to obstruct us from simple story-telling, because so much of what happens on stage really gets in the way of the plot. The play opens to a man playing a saw like a cello. To be fair, he does it expertly. The note he plays gets taken up by other members of the band, and it’s just minutely off-key. That sets the tone for the rest of the performance. Discordant, random music that doesn’t in any way please the ear bursts in when you don’t expect or want it. The car salesmen are ludicrously represented by three of the cast on adjustable aluminium stilts. The boy, whose father is dying in the final scene, is wearing a Superman outfit. Another of the nameless travellers the Joad family encounter on the way to California is wearing a T-shirt with the legend “Are we there yet?” (Is that meant to be funny?) and yet another, who’s in charge of one of the camps, is wearing a high vis jacket, very 1930s. The hordes of people all hoping for a better life are standing silently still within a screen looking for all the world like The Girl with all the Gifts’ Hungries, only better dressed. In a scene I found excruciatingly embarrassing, the cast members all perform a ridiculous dance routine, marked by stylised jerky movements and to what purpose? Simply because they could?

Important scenes take place on a terribly lit stage so you can barely work out who is talking to whom. Perhaps worst of all, the final, moving, image of the dying man being nursed by Rose of Sharon is totally ruined by the clunking of the movement of the set back into position. Surely there could have been some way to avoid this? It was like a phone going off at the vital moment in a funeral. The production is absolutely crammed with these bizarre, jarring intrusions, so I can only assume this is a deliberate form of unsettling the audience, as if the simple story of the Joad family wasn’t unsettling enough. In fact, I feel the production does not give the Joads and their acquaintances the respect they deserve.

An additional side-effect of the terrible situation they find themselves in, is that the characters are, for the most part, beaten by life, destroyed by circumstances; and, unsurprisingly this knocks the wind out of their sails. The cast convey this devastation very accurately by constantly talking in monotone; and, as a result, it is literally monotonous to watch. There’s very little flexibility to their vocal range – they’re down at mouth and down at voice too. There’s only one scene where there’s any real sense of life, and that’s where Tom, Al and Noah go swimming in the river – admittedly a very nice piece of stagecraft, and you may get splashed in the first three rows.

There was also a strange disconnect between some of the actors – as though they had rehearsed their speeches alone, independently, and this was the first time they had met and put their lines together. With a few notable exceptions, it very much felt like “A: It is a tough life we have here.” (Pause – over to you, B ) “B: Yes, you are right, extremely tough, don’t you agree, C?” (Pause – expectant look at C) “C: You took the words out of my mouth, B.” And so on. Exceptions to this were a beautiful, thoughtful, flowing performance by Julia Swift as Ma, straining to keep the family together at all cost, and a delightfully wry performance by Brendan Charleson as Casy, the preacher who took the benefits of his position but has now moved on. Daniel Booroff, also, gave some refreshing quirkiness to his characters of Noah and Jim Rawley at Weedpatch.

A compelling tale of human determination done a grave disservice by a clumsy, clunky production. Mrs Chrisparkle wondered if it hadn’t had time to “bed in” yet, but it’s already been to Southampton, Nottingham and West Yorkshire Playhouse, let alone being in its final week in Northampton, so it can’t be that. A brave failure? I’m not sure. I just didn’t get the vision behind the production at all; and of all the 50-odd Made in Northampton plays I’ve seen over the last eight years this is the most “amateur” in the pejorative sense of the word. Gives me no pleasure at all to say that!

Review – Christian Kluxen Conducts Tchaikovsky, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 14th May 2017

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Time for us to welcome back the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra once again for an evening of Italian, German and Russian music. Our conductor for this concert was the exuberant Christian Kluxen, one of those guys who really gets behind the music and cajoles every nuance out of the orchestra with every flex of his body. We’d not had the pleasure of Mr Kluxen’s company before, so I can only assume the photo on the programme is a little out of date; since then he has grown a full hipster beard so that he now resembles the Fred Sirieix of the Classical Scene.

They weren’t accepting interval orders at the bar (sigh) which can only mean one thing – a short first half. Our first piece of music was the famous William Tell overture by Rossini, with its irredeemably nostalgic final movement that reminds patrons of a certain age of the Lone Ranger. It’s easy though to forget the three other sequences that lead up to the finale, with its beautiful dawn opening – fantastic work by the cellos, the dazzling thunderstorm that follows, and the pastoral calm of the third part. But the final section must break through and does so almost before the pastoral has finished, and from there on it’s guns-ablazin’ and horses at the gallop. A delightful way to open the concert and the orchestra absolutely had it nailed.

Next was Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No 1 in G Minor, Op. 25. A piano soloist on the programme always causes a hiatus as the violins have to scatter to make way for the Steinway to be wheeled on. Meanwhile, the displaced musicians huddle round the back of the stage like they’re sneaking a fag break. It’s a very bizarre sight, but I guess there is no alternative. Enter Martin Roscoe on stage, an unshowy, quiet looking man with a sensible attitude to sheet music (i.e. he has it on display and continually looks at it) but who nevertheless unleashes passion at the keyboard when it’s required. The concerto is full of stunning tunes that Mr Roscoe hones and cares for as he coaxes them off the keys, and he is a true master of his instrument.

Because it is a short piece (and that is why we couldn’t pre-order interval drinks) Mr Roscoe took pity on the assembled crowd and gave us an encore: June, from Tchaikovsky’s Seasons, to whet our appetite for the second half symphony. I’d never heard this before and thought it was absolutely sublime. A simple, haunting barcarolle, I’m going to have to add it to my collection of classical CDs.

After the interval (yes we did get our drinks) we returned for Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No 6 (Pathétique). It’s a bold, exciting work with a number of themes that everyone recognises, that build to a dramatic climax. Most people thought the end of the third movement heralded the end of the symphony and started some rapturous applause; but no, the twist in the tale is that there’s a fourth and final movement that disconcertingly trades down from the triumph of the previous movement and ends not with a bang but a whimper. Such a mournful end will always be associated with the fact that Tchaikovsky himself died only nine days after conducting its debut performance. Those last few notes of the symphony were played so movingly by the RPO that the audience was stunned into silence, not wishing to break the moment by applauding. I think we were in a shared state of shock. A fantastic performance by the Royal Philharmonic that has made me go back to my recordings to listen again to some of these pieces and to want to explore anew – and I don’t think there can be any finer recommendation to a concert than that!

The RPO will be back in June with some more Mendelssohn and Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony – should be a blinder!

Eurovision Song Contest, Errol Flynn Filmhouse, Northampton, 13th May 2017

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This was indeed the 62nd annual Eurovision Song Contest and I’ve been waving them on, man and boy, ever since the 12th. Fifty years of Eurovision… I should be entitled to a medal. Well, forty-nine really, as the Dowager Mrs Chrisparkle took me on holiday to Cyprus during Eurovision week in 1974, much to my frustration; in those days I didn’t have the ability to record the show, so it all passed me by. Did anyone famous win that year?

You may have been forgiven, gentle reader, for thinking that this year’s Euroshindig took place in Kyiv, Ukraine. Not a bit of it. The real action was at the Errol Flynn Filmhouse, Northampton. Mrs Chrisparkle and I, together with Lord and Lady Prosecco, Mr and Mrs Jolly-Japester and Northampton’s own Mr Flying-the-Flag (and Mrs Flag) were in attendance. The sumptuous and (almost) new Screen 2 played host to another evening of wine, women, song, political intrigue, scandal, dubious taste, and snacks.

Among those women was BBC Radio Northampton’s very own Helen Blaby, all bedecked in sparkly sequins. She hosted the evening for us, judging the Fancy Dress contest (the three French girls won) and acting as the Jon Ola Sand of the East Midlands in ensuring our voting procedure took place fair and square. No embarrassing “can we please have your votes;” “I don’t have it” moments for us; although they did run out of Velcro.

Someone who didn’t win the Fancy Dress contest was a gentleman in a wheelchair, who said he’d come as Julia from Russia. Nice mickey-taking indeed, although he didn’t get her hair right. You’ll know that wheelchair-using Julia was refused entry into Ukraine by the state officials as she had previously performed at a concert in Crimea without permission – and Ukrainian law states that she could not enter the country as a result. The EBU, who run Eurovision, have no power to override a country’s laws but they were disappointed at Ukraine’s stance. All a ploy by Russia, of course, to make Ukraine look bad; in an attempt to make her performance possible, it was suggested she could perform by satellite from Moscow, but that was dismissed outright by the Russians. Therefore, no Russia this year. In an act of extreme contrition, on the evening of the semi-final where Julia would otherwise have been competing in the ESC, she attended another concert instead – in Crimea. Honestly it’s like putting the Krym in criminal. Julia is already nominated as Russia’s performer for the 2018 contest in Lisbon. Let’s hope she tries to sing the same song and is disqualified on the grounds that it was published before 1st September 2017. As you’ve probably guessed, I’ve no sympathy with Russia on this issue. They should have thought about it before aggressively invading another country.

The Errol is a great place to see the contest – it’s so comfortable, with a great sound system, and a great selection of food and drink. We even have our own hashtag – #Errolvision. I love the fact that you can take a proper bottle of wine into the cinema with you. No plastic cups, no trashy junk; it treats you like an adult. For the Eurovision, they do the usual game of “let’s bring out some appropriate food and drink for some of the countries” – so we were treated to (if I remember rightly) falafels for Israel, Babybels for Netherlands, Pinot Grigio (chilled individual bottles) for Italy, Fish ‘n’ Chip flavoured snacks for the UK, Black Forest Gateau for Germany, tzatziki for Greece; there may have been more. And, as hinted earlier on, we also have our own voting procedure where everybody has a douze points sticker and a nul points sticker and they award them to whichever countries they like and dislike most. My douze = Italy; my nul = Croatia; Mrs C’s douze = Germany; her nul = Ukraine (I think). But overall – and this will amuse you gentle reader if you know how this year’s results fell – the Errolvision winner was Moldova (gasp!) and the loser was Portugal (gasp, gasp!)

What of the songs themselves? We started with Israel, who got us off to a great start with a song I really like. Mrs Flag said that IMRI of Israel looks just like me. I will love her forever for that remark. Poland and Belarus followed, to no great interest, then Austria, with Nathan sitting on the moon (not the only incident of mooning that night). Armenia – still don’t get it; Netherlands – still too many harmonies; then Moldova and finally we all had something uptempo and flashy to get our teeth into – I’m sure it inspired many episodes of epic sax later that night. Hungary – still sounds morose, then my favourite Italy, which I willed on to do really well and win but… in the end, it just didn’t somehow. There hasn’t been a more obvious runaway winner than Francesco since Alexander Rybak in 2009; so how come it didn’t win? Great tune, clever lyrics, engaging performer, and the naked ape isn’t an out-and-out gimmick, he features in the song. Although making him wear a rainbow bow-tie was silly. That means he wasn’t naked anymore – and that’s just the point.

Denmark came and went and then it was Portugal, that slow burner that would either do incredibly well or fade away into obscurity. Salvador’s eccentric delivery made a few people laugh in the Errol, and once they realised it wasn’t going to go uptempo, most people just talked through it. Not what the typical Brit thinks is a typical Eurovision song, therefore they weren’t going to show any interest in it. Did they learn nothing from Jamala? Apparently not. Azerbaijan created some scornful cackling at the horse’s head. As for Jacques from Croatia, the Errol audience burst into hysterical laughter at the pompous and ludicrous delivery of the Z-lister from Zagreb, the homophobe from Hrvatska. Many of them voted for it, thinking it was a comedy number.

Australia, Greece, Spain and Norway all came, all went and there wasn’t a lot of interest – apart from the one Australian member of the audience who of course HAD to come down to the front whilst Isaiah was on and wave his wallaby at us. Then it was the UK – and we are of course pre-programmed to hope and expect the best and demand that the rest of Europe will respectfully acknowledge our national superiority and festoon us with high scores. Lucie, as we knew she would, performed brilliantly; I think she heightened expectation by having perfected a superb delivery of that song which made us all forget that the song itself is, basically, quite forgettable; and clearly that’s what the majority of the televoters thought too. Not so bad from the juries though, and it’s always a shame to see your country slowly and inexorably drift back to the right hand side of the screen.

Cyprus: yes okay; then Romania; and the Errol was soon filled with voices reflecting the lilting sound of rapping yodel. We all enjoyed that one. Germany did really well (IMHO), Ukraine had a shocker of a song, Belgium stood like a Brussels sprout left out in the rain, Sweden went on despite saying he couldn’t, Kristian from Bulgaria gave us an absolute belter, and everyone ignored France because by that stage you’re just adding up and working out your votes.

A bright spark in an Australian flag decided to brighten up proceedings whilst Jamala was performing yet another dirge by jumping up on to her podium and revealing his arse to 200 million people. Jamala was a trooper, she didn’t flinch one moment. I expect she’s seen better before. Still at least she got a visual souvenir of the arseholes she sings about in her song 1944. Turns out he wasn’t a drunken Aussie, but a regular Ukrainian prankster by the name of Vitalii Sediuk, and he might be facing a fine or up to five years behind bars, according to the Ukrainian Interior Minister, who goes by the name of Arsen Avakov (you couldn’t make it up).

Portugal won, massively; with Bulgaria in second place and Moldova in third. Portugal’s first win since they started competing in 1964 has been met with pretty much universal approval, even though there are still plenty of people who Just Don’t Get The Song. Not only Portugal’s first win but the best ever placing for the top three countries; and the winning song is the first to be written exclusively by a woman/women – so maybe they did end up celebrating diversity after all. Salvador peed a number of people off by using his winner’s speech to denigrate throw-away pop, and on reflection I think he spoke out of turn. Maybe if he’d spent longer in the ESC bubble he might have realised how some people would have taken it the wrong way. Still, there’s no disguising his success – and his big reception on return to Lisbon airport proves his current popularity.

Mrs Chrisparkle and I had made a secret pact that if either Italy or Portugal won we would almost certainly go to see the show there next year. It will have been three years since the sea of fans in the auditorium in Vienna parted to make way for Mans Zelmerlow to walk through and we were almost trampled to death by big blokes being forced on top of us; just about enough time to forget the pain and fear and endure it all again. Till then, hope you had a great Eurovision season, and don’t get too upset with the Post Eurovision Depression – plans for next year are already afoot!

P. S. I had Portugal at 11/1 win and Moldova at 100/1 each way, and combined with a few little bets about which countries would qualify, that meant I scored a £200 win from those nice people at Skybet!

Review – Screaming Blue Murder, Underground at the Derngate, Northampton, 12th May 2017

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‘Twas the night before Eurovision, and all through the house not a creature was stirring, because we’d all gone out to the Screaming Blue Murder comedy club. Our genial host Dan Evans was on cracking form as usual, sparring ever-so-gently with the people from TCL Landscaping, a 40-year-old birthday boy, a Jumbo-sized guy who dwarfed everyone around him – and Kate. Dan tried to rope Kate into a bit of banter but she wasn’t having any of it. But she didn’t just go coy and sheepish, she went on the offensive and all it went a bit Pete Tong. Sit anywhere near the front in a comedy club and you might end up part of the action. Dem’s de rules. Never mind, better luck next fortnight.

Our first act was Debra-Jane Appleby, quite a posh name for someone who isn’t really that posh. We’d seen her here six years ago (gasp!) where she was our commère for the evening. This time we got to see her act and there’s no doubt about it, she’s really funny. She had some brilliant bits of business – like the visual image of your entitlement to a pension getting further and further away, and her material about trying to be gay because you don’t know until you’ve tried it. She’s also great with addressing her weight issues, in which capacity I can definitely feel her pain. A fab start to the evening.

Next up was Bobby Mair, new to us, and once seen never forgotten. A wonderfully warped sense of humour, he delivers his material as though he was your local friendly psychopath. He’s the kind of guy you can trust to say the wrong thing at a funeral. Indeed – he picked one guy at random from the audience and empathised that if his wife were to die, the benefit of it would be that he could at least f*ck a stranger. I loved his material about music festivals and their similarity to refugee camps; but he’s the kind of comic who keeps the material coming at irregular intervals which in itself unsettles you and pulls you up short with a devastating punchline out of the blue. I can say no more. Utterly brilliant.

Our headline act was Christian Reilly, whom we’ve seen many times before and always puts on a tremendous show of musical comedy, parodying styles and performers, changing their lyrics and always for the better! His Bryan Ferry material was absolutely hilarious and as for his Donald Trump sequence… well yes indeed. He has just the right level of attack and he went down an absolute storm.

Three fantastic acts this week! One more Screaming Blue on 26th May before it hibernates for the summer. You should come!