The George Orwell Challenge – Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)

Posted on May 6, 2021 by therealchrisparkle

Orwell had used his experiences living in deliberate poverty in Paris and London to create material for essays that had already been published, including Hop Picking and Common Lodging Houses. In 1930 he wrote an account of all his Paris experiences, including working as a plongeur (washer-up and general dogsbody) in restaurants, but it was rejected by publishers Jonathan Cape. The following year he added his London memoir to the first part, but this larger version was still rejected, this time by Faber and Faber. Editorial director T S Eliot wrote “We did find it of very great interest, but I regret to say that it does not appear to me possible as a publishing venture.” He left the manuscript with Mabel Fierz, an older woman with whom Orwell had a relationship and who was keen to help young authors, and she sent it to an agent who thought it would be a perfect fit for the new publishing house Victor Gollancz. And, subject to a few changes, it was! Initial sales were low, but it was taken up by Penguin seven years later, when Orwell was a much more established writer, and reprinted, to greater success.

The book is simple in structure; thirty-eight short chapters in two clearly separate parts, the first twenty-three describing his time in Paris and the rest of the book covering his return to London. It opens with an epigraph: O scathful harm, condition of poverte! from the Man of Law’s Prologue in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Living in poverty is the miserable, evil, and unifying thread that runs throughout the book, so it’s a good choice for an epigraph. Down and Out in Paris and London is narrated in the first person, as a memoir; you sense that every word he says is true and this encourages you to keep reading, to share at first hand in his (largely poverty-stricken and grimy) experiences. Orwell indicated in his introduction to the French edition of the book that everything he writes about is more or less true, just with some flexibility on the characters he meets, the order in which things happen, and natural writers’ exaggeration.

This blog post isn’t an attempt by me to write a “proper” piece of literary criticism, it’s just my own reflections on the book and some of its aspects that particularly jumped out at me as I was reading it. I first read the book when I was eighteen and it had a strong effect on me. But I could remember few of the details, apart from Orwell’s advice that you should always take a flyer from someone in the street if it is offered (or even if it isn’t): “When you see a man distributing handbills you can do him a good turn by taking one, for he goes off duty when he has distributed all his bills.” I’ve always put that into practice, even if I’m not remotely interested in what the flyer has to say. It’s the reason that I always come back with dozens of them whenever I’m walking about during the Edinburgh Fringe!

If there’s one message that comes out from this book more than any other for me it’s Orwell’s ability to make the best of a bad situation and how he offers the reader advice so that you can do the same. One of the eminently practical things about Orwell’s writing is that he doesn’t just describe a bad situation and then bemoan the lot of anyone who has to endure it. By making the best of every situation, and also describing how others do the same, he has created a remarkably uplifting book, considering the poverty and degradation strewn on its pages. For example, his first description of life in the Rue Coq d’Or includes the story of the Bulgarian student who makes intricate and elegant shoes all morning before attending lectures at the Sorbonne. He’s someone who is obviously on his way up and out of trouble, much to Orwell’s admiration. An example of Orwell offering advice on how to cope with a bad situation is when he tells how, if you burn sulphur, you can drive the bugs marching around the floor of your room into the next door room – very helpful advice when you’re besieged by them. Also he tells us: “you can live on a shilling a day in Paris if you know how. But it is a complicated business.” He has advice on how not to look destitute even when you are, describing how Boris the Russian soldier “managed to keep a fairly smart appearance. He shaved without soap and with a razor-blade two months old, tied his tie so that the holes did not show, and carefully stuffed the soles of his shoes with newspaper. Finally, when he was dressed, he produced an ink-bottle and inked the skin of his ankles where it showed through his socks. You would never have thought, when it was finished, that he had recently been sleeping under the Seine bridges.”

He also offers solutions for society to escape from bad situations. He has a range of ideas for stopping the continuous problem of tramps in England – specifically in London – roaming the streets pointlessly and dejectedly. They could, for example, be given work on farms to grow their own food. Or they could put an end to the rule that a tramp could not stay at the same casual ward within a thirty day period, which therefore requires him to stay on the road rather than attempt to set down roots.

One tends to think of Orwell as a political writer, but in this book there is no sense of identifying with any one political party. What does come across is that Orwell is strongly on the side of the working man, but not the shirking man. He has little time for the Communist waiter Jules, who stands on the side-lines and watches whilst everyone else breaks their backs trying to get the Auberge de Jehan Cottard ready for opening: “Boris and I did all the work. Jules was skulking…” Orwell doesn’t pass comment on how Jules puts his communism into practice – but he doesn’t have to. “Did any man alive ever see me working when I could avoid it? No, And not only I don’t wear myself out working, like you other fools, but I steal, just to show my independence. Once I was in a restaurant where the patron thought he could treat me like a dog. Well, in revenge I found out a way to steal milk from the milk-cans and seal them up again so that no one should know. I tell you I just swilled that milk down night and morning […] it wasn’t that I wanted milk, you understand because I hate the stuff; it was principle, just principle.”

Orwell describes Jules has having a “curious, malignant spirit”. He goes on: “he told me, as a matter of pride, that he had sometimes wrung a dirty dishcloth into a customer’s soup before taking it in, just to be revenged upon a member of the bourgeoisie.” Jules is an angry and hostile man; a man driven by vengeance and selfishness. He’s one of Orwell’s most vividly drawn characters in this book – of which there are plenty – and one wonders if he was perhaps the first true communist that Orwell ever met, which might inform his opinions about communism that we will characterise future works. He’s also very different from the other waiters that Orwell gets to know in Paris, who approach their work from a completely opposite direction. “Never be sorry for a waiter” he stresses. “Sometimes when you sit in a restaurant, still stuffing yourself half an hour after closing time, you feel that the tired waiter at your side must surely be despising you. But he is not […] he is thinking, “one day, when I have saved enough money, I shall be able to imitate that man”. He is ministering to a kind of pleasure he thoroughly understands and admires. And that is why waiters are seldom Socialists, have no effective trade union, and will work twelve hours a day […] they are snobs, and they find the servile nature of their work rather congenial.”

This observation, about the nature of waiters, is typical of Orwell’s writing style, in that it is a clever mix of pure journalism and social commentary, part factual, part gossip, part truth, part inference. With great lightness of touch, he can express a complex issue in a simple sentence – so that you feel you’ve absolutely grasped what he’s trying to convey. He devotes a considerable amount of time in the book discussing the life of tramps, and what can be done to ameliorate their position, and how the rest of society regards them; but he sums it up beautifully in the phrase “a tramp is only an Englishman out of work, forced by law to live as a vagabond”. His friend Boris tells a story of a Russian duke who swindles restaurants and waiters by getting them to pay for his meals, playing on his status as being a guarantee of his integrity (wrongly). Orwell infers that the duke made quite a lot of money that way, and that probably the waiters did not mind being swindled. His summing up: “A duke is a duke, even in exile” expresses the rationale perfectly.

He’s delightfully matter-of-fact in dealing with some of the desperate aspects of the poverty-stricken life. One night, whilst he is working long hours as a plongeur, a murder takes place right outside his lodgings. Everyone in the house is awoken by the noise and disruption; they get up and see what’s happened for themselves. But that is all. “We just made sure that the man was done for, and went straight back to bed. We were working people, and where was the sense of wasting sleep over a murder?” There’s another passage where Orwell encapsulates the reality of employing plongeurs, who are a vital element of the restaurant trade but simply not to be trusted: “the food we were given was no more than eatable, but the patron was not mean about drink; he allowed us two litres of wine a day each, knowing that if a plongeur is not given two litres he will steal three.”

Other lines and descriptions just shout out from the pages, capturing the reader’s imagination and understanding. He describes the moment when you realise that thousands of people in Paris work long hours with no hope of ever doing anything else, as “a good cure for self-pity”. Tramps gathering outside a church in the hope of a free tea are “like kites round a dead buffalo.” In a Paris restaurant, the fewer the waiters involved in the preparation of your meal, the greater the chance it will be clean: “roughly speaking, the more one pays for food, the more sweat and spittle one is obliged to eat with it.”

Orwell does seem to have caught some of the French scorn for the well-to-do foreign clients staying at the Hotel X; they “seemed to know nothing whatever about good food. They would stuff themselves with disgusting American “cereals”, and eat marmalade at tea, and drink vermouth after dinner, and order a poulet à la reine at a hundred Francs and then souse it in Worcester sauce. One customer, from Pittsburg (sic) dined every night in his bedroom on grape-nuts, scrambled eggs and cocoa. Perhaps it hardly matters whether such people are swindled or not.” He recognised that waiters are snobs, and he has become snobbish himself.

One thing that did strike me about the book is how relevant much of it is today. Whilst we no longer have common lodging houses, we do have Houses of Multiple Occupation, which, like in the 30s, need to be licensed and have to meet certain standards. Similarly there are no casual wards today, but there are shelters for the homeless. The meal ticket swindle, where vouchers worth sixpence were given to the tramps but were redeemed at an eating-house for only fourpence worth of food – thus having the proprietor effectively stealing twopence from each tramp – is strongly reminiscent of the recent scandal where school meal vouchers were exchanged for hampers containing food worth less than half the value of the voucher; basically, there’s always someone there to make money from the disadvantaged. Orwell could see there was no end to this type of swindle: “this kind of victimization is a regular part of a tramp’s life, and it will go on as long as people continue to give meal tickets instead of money.” And Paddy, Orwell’s Irish tramp companion, saw “all foreigners” as “dem bloody dagoes” – for, according to his theory, foreigners were responsible for unemployment.” Rightly or wrongly, that was one of the reasons people voted for Brexit. Things don’t change as much as we think they do.

The Orwell of this book enjoys his own company; he’s perfectly happy being solitary, taking rooms on his own, writing his essays, observing others. When poverty kicks in, necessity requires him to work alongside other people. But whether he’s on his own or with others, it’s the characters that flit in and out of his life – especially in Paris – that give his memoir extra colour and depth, elements of horror, humour and simple incredulity. We’ve already mentioned the Bulgarian student, working on his shoes before his daily visits to the Sorbonne. There’s the Russian mother and son – she darning socks for sixteen hours a day whilst he loafs in the Montparnasse cafés – it’s not difficult to see with whom Orwell’s sympathies lie there. Orwell points out that poverty breeds eccentricity; “people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent. Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work” – another of Orwell’s pearls of wisdom.

He then talks about the true eccentrics he has met in Paris. The Rougiers, for example, who sold postcards on the Boulevard St Michel, packaged as if they were pornographic, but in fact they were merely of Loire chateaux. They spent their lives half-starved and half-drunk and “the filth of their room was such that one could smell it on the floor below.” Henri, the melancholy and silent sewer worker, whose ability to talk about anything other than work had been dashed out of him by a bad love affair. There’s Charlie, the young innocent-looking lad, who tells a tale so shocking of his experience with an unwilling prostitute that is really a brutal rape; Orwell describes him as a “curious specimen”, and an example of the “diverse characters” to be found in the Coq d’Or quarter. Orwell’s relating of Charlie’s story is so appalling and cruel that Gollancz nearly didn’t publish the book because of it.

There is Boris, whom Orwell liked, the brash and booming Russian soldier, now on hard times trying to scrape a living as a waiter; Boris was Orwell’s chief companion in Paris. There is Valenti, a waiter at the Hotel X, whose life is a novel in itself: “crossing the Italian frontier without a passport and selling chestnuts from a barrow on the northern boulevards, and being given fifty days’ imprisonment in London for working without a permit, and being made love to by a rich old woman in a hotel who gave him a diamond ring and afterwards accused him of stealing it, were among his experiences.” There’s Furex, the Limousin stonemason, who worked hard all week so that he could spend Saturday interminably drunk: “the queer thing about Furex was that, though he was a Communist when sober, he turned violently patriotic when drunk. He started the evening with good Communist principles, but after four or five litres he was a rampant Chauvinist denouncing spies, challenging all foreigners to fight and, if he was not prevented, throwing bottles.“ And of course there’s Jules, the lazy, vengeful and proud Magyar waiter. Time for another Orwell bon mot: “Proud and lazy men do not make good waiters. It was Jules’s dearest boast that once when a customer in a restaurant had insulted him, he had poured a plate of hot soup down the customer’s neck, and then walked straight out without even waiting to be sacked.”

Orwell goes into less detail regarding the characters he meets in London; the main two are Paddy, the Irish tramp, and Bozo the screever, or pavement artist. Paddy was unusually smart and didn’t resort to crime in order to eat; he took Orwell under his wing and showed him how to survive as a tramp. Bozo was an artist through and through, intelligent and thoughtful, creative and inspirational. Lame, following what we would now call an industrial accident, Bozo tried to get work, selling books like his father, then toys, then finally resorting to screeving. He had travelled; spoke French, knew Shakespeare, had watched a corpse burn in India. Orwell clearly finds him a very impressive character. The London folk are less eccentric, and more like friends on whom Orwell relied; whereas the Paris characters are quirkier and more peripheral; for the most part Orwell did not need to rely on others in Paris in order to survive.

Whether it’s despite or because of the poverty and the wretchedness – and I’m tempted to think it’s both – there’s a lot of humour hidden away in the darker recesses of this book. As we’ve already seen, Orwell has a wicked turn of phrase, that can convey multitudes in a few syllables. This applies just as well to the humour lurking behind the sorrow. His account of pawning his clothes in Paris, having to take a number and waiting to be called, being swindled out of a decent price for his property, watching the old man pick his woollen pants off the floor, and so on, is delivered as though he were giving a witty and urbane after dinner speech à la Oscar Wilde. Throwaway observations like: “afterwards, when it was too late, I learned that it was wiser to go to a pawnshop in the afternoon. The clerks are French, and, like most French people, are in a bad temper till they have eaten their lunch” are very funny whilst conveying a grain of absolute truth.

Another example of Orwell’s wry sense of humour comes when he is describing how he and Boris applied to work as hands at a circus. “You had to shift benches and clean up litter and, during the performance, stand on two tubs and let a lion jump through your legs. When we got to the place, an hour before the time named, we found a queue of fifty men already waiting. There is some attraction in lions, evidently.” There was also the time when Orwell became involved in a secret society of Communists looking for journalists; anyone arriving at their location brought a bag of washing, to make it look respectable. But it was a con, because you had to pay twenty francs to be allowed in the society. They promised him 150 francs an article, but they swiftly disappeared; however, his sense of humour allows him to respect their inventiveness. “They were clever fellows, and played their part admirably. Their office looked exactly as a secret Communist office should look, and as for that touch about bringing a parcel of washing, it was genius.”

On another occasion, Orwell recounts how he was offered a permanent job as a plongeur at a restaurant, where they spend the entire time swearing and cursing at each other, but treat each other as equals when work is finished for the day. “The head waiter says he would enjoy calling an Englishman names. Will you sign on for a month?” I could go on – but you can see how Orwell’s use of humour, even in the depths of despair, played a major part in seeing him through – as indeed it did all the people whose lives he crossed whilst down and out.

There are plenty of serious observations to be made, however. The hoops that have to be gone through, and humiliation that has to be endured in order to get a Salvation Army bed for the night, mean that, whatever spirit of generosity might be there in the intent, Orwell will resent the Salvation Army for the rest of his life. Churches, generally, come in for a lot of criticism – there’s another oddly hilarious scene where a number of tramps are made to sit through a service, and they behave so riotously badly in revenge against the people offering charity. “The scene had interested me. It was so different from the ordinary demeanour of tramps – from the abject worm-like gratitude with which they normally accept charity. The explanation, of course, was that we outnumbered the congregation and so were not afraid of them. A man receiving charity practically always hates his benefactor – it is a fixed characteristic of human nature; and, when he has fifty or a hundred others to back him, he will show it.”

Here are some more of Orwell’s observations and deductions from his couple of years living down and out. The fact that clothes are powerful things; when Orwell is finally able to wear anything other than rags and patches, “my new clothes had put me instantly into a new world. Everyone’s demeanour seemed to have changed abruptly […] dressed in a tramp’s clothes it is very difficult, at any rate for the first day, not to feel that you are genuinely degraded.” The fact that begging is loathed by society is because it’s impossible to grow rich from begging. “In practice nobody cares whether work is useful or useless, productive or parasitic; the sole thing demanded is that it shall be profitable […] Money has become the grand test of virtue. By this test beggars fail, and for this they are despised […] A beggar, looked at realistically, is simply a businessman […] he has merely made the mistake of choosing a trade at which it is impossible to grow rich.”

The fact that fatigue has a bad effect on one’s manners. The overworked, under slept, underpaid, underwashed hotel workers in Paris treat each other abominably, not only with foul language, but physical and mental cruelty in a manner that no other professional would ever dream of behaving or accepting. Take the argument between Orwell and the cook: “Once she nagged and nagged until at last, out of pure spite, I lifted the dustbin up and put it out in the middle of the floor, where she was bound to trip over it. “Now, you cow, “ I said, “move it yourself.” Poor old woman, it was too heavy for her to lift and she sat down, put her head on the table and burst out crying. And I jeered at her. This is the kind of effect that fatigue has upon one’s manners.” Orwell knows he behaved despicably; but he tells us the tale with honesty as an illustration of those desperate times.

The fact that there is a caste system in a French hotel, with the manager at the top of the tree, the maitre d’hotel next, who “did not serve at table, unless to a lord or someone of that kind”; he would be followed by the head cook, who dined in the kitchen but at a separate table; then came the chef du personnel, the other cooks, then the waiters, who would only receive a retaining fee and their tips, then the laundresses, the apprentice waiters, then the plongeurs (like Orwell), then the chambermaids and finally the cafetiers. The relationship rules were unwritten but fully understood; but only while they were at work. Outside of work, a spirit of liberté, egalité, fraternité took over.

The fact that there is a similar hierarchy of status of begging in London; “there is a sharp social line between those who merely cadge and those who attempt to give some value for money […] The most prosperous beggars are street acrobats and street photographers. On a good pitch – a theatre queue for instance – a street acrobat can often earn five pounds a week […] Organ-grinders, like acrobats, are considered artists rather than beggars […] Screevers can sometimes be called artists, sometimes not […] Below screevers come the people who sing hymns, or sell matches, or bootlaces, or envelopes containing a few grains of lavender – called, euphemistically, perfume […] there is not a singer or match-seller in London who can be sure of £50 a year – a poor return for standing eighty-four hours a week on the kerb, with the cars grazing your backside.” This is just a small selection of the revelations and insights that Orwell offers us throughout the book.

It’s been suggested that Orwell expresses a lot of antisemitic sentiment in the book, particularly in the Parisian section. Is this evidence that Orwell was antisemitic, or is it simply the product of the age? I don’t know enough to comment, but I would point out that he also writes intolerantly of homosexuality; not so much in this book, but in the earlier essays he rather despises the tramps who turn to other men for sex – an almost inevitable consequence to the fact that their daily life completely prevents them from ever meeting women. I’m tempted to think that this is due to the times in which he lived, rather than betraying a truly antisemitic or homophobic characteristic; maybe this will become clearer with his later books. I will keep a watch out!

One other point – if your copy of the book, like mine, was printed many years ago, you may find that chapter 32, where Orwell writes journalistically about everyday London slang and swearing, contains a number of words that have been replaced by a euphemistic dash; this is because Gollancz couldn’t consider the book for publication if those foul words were included – much to Orwell’s fury. It’s only been in very recent publications that the dashes have been replaced by the actual words that Orwell originally used. And, to fulfil your curiosity as to which words they are, I can reveal that they are our good old friends f*ck and f*cking! This is a genuinely fascinating chapter, because a number of the slang words used, which Orwell foresaw would quickly go out of style, either never did, or have since come back into use. You don’t need a glossary to understand what is meant by mooching, dideki, boozer, kip, or knocking-off.

There is so much more to be got out of this book – I can only recommend that you read it for yourself, if you haven’t already! And if you’ve read it too, I’d be fascinated to know your thoughts, please add them in the comments below! Orwell’s next published writing were a few poems, but, for brevity’s sake, I’m not going to include them in my George Orwell Challenge, After that comes his first novel, Burmese Days. Hopefully I’ll read it over the next few weeks then get my thoughts down on paper soon after! Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the book.

And here’s another bundle of old theatre and dance memories! May to December 1999

Posted on March 31, 2021 by therealchrisparkle

Carmen – Northern Ballet Theatre at the Swan Theatre, High Wycombe, 6^th May 1999

The always stunning and elegant Northern Ballet Theatre brought their production of Carmen, choreographed by one of our favourite dancers, Didy Veldman, to the 1999 Swan Dance season. Set in Rio de Janeiro, in 1999, this Carmen was a packer in a cigarette factory, Jose was a police officer and Escamillo a Rock Star. A fantastic re-imagining of the classic work, with superb performances by Charlotte Broom as Carmen and Daniel de Andrade – who today is Northern Ballet’s Artistic Associate – as Jose.

Nederlands Dans Theater NDT2 – Swan Theatre, High Wycombe, 23^rd May 1999

Another wonderful tour from the NDT’s youth company. The programme started with Round Corners, choreographed by Johan Inger, then we saw Déjà vu, choreographed by Hans van Manen, Skew-Whiff, choreographed by Paul Lightfoot, and finally Indigo Rose, choreographed by Jiri Kylian. It’s always a privilege to see this amazing company.

La Sylphide – Ballet de l’Opera National de Paris at the Palais Garnier, Paris, 18^th June 1999

Moving past a fairly bland revival of Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth at the Wycombe Swan, starring Peter Bowles and Michael Maloney, our next show was a glamorous visit to the Palais Garnier in Paris, during a wonderful ten day holiday in the French capital. La Sylphide, with choreography by Pierre Lacotte, was given a tremendous, pure production, with Fanny Gaida dancing the title role, Manuel Legris as James and Delphine Moussin as Effie. I had never seen a production quite like it. And since then we’ve always tried to see a ballet at the Palais Garnier if we go to Paris.

Rent – Shaftesbury Theatre, London, 19^th August 1999

Rent had already been playing at the Shaftesbury for more than a year by the time we finally got around to seeing it. It was a great production, but for some reason – probably my age and latent conservatism – I’ve never quite got on with it as a show. Three of the roles – Mark, Mimi and Maureen – were played by understudies; I’m not sure if that played a part in how the show came across. Whatever, this production by Michael Greif, is a major part of musical theatre history.

Rambert Dance Company 1999 Autumn Programme – Swan Theatre, High Wycombe, 14^th & 16^th October 1999

Rambert returned to Wycombe with two programmes – so we saw them both. The first programme started with Gaps Lapse and Relapse by Jeremy James, followed by my all-time favourite dance, Christopher Bruce’s Ghost Dances, and finally The Golden Section choreographed by Twyla Tharp.

The second programme was the full-length dance God’s Plenty, Christopher Bruce’s dance exploration of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The classic company included Paul Liburd, Hope Muir, Matthew Hart, Laurent Cavanna, Christopher Powney, Glenn Wilkinson, Vincent Redmon, Didy Veldman, Marie-Laure Agrapart, and Rafael Bonachela.

The Lion King – Lyceum Theatre, London, 19^th October 1999

A good friend worked for one of the companies that sponsored The Lion King, and as a result he received an allocation of tickets for its first night, and he kindly invited us! So we walked on the red carpet (briefly) and went star-spotting in the bar. The show was good too! The original cast featured Josette Bushell-Mingo, Rob Edwards, Roger Wright, Martyn Ellis and Paul J Medford. Very enjoyable!

Mark Morris Dance Company – Swan Theatre, High Wycombe, 23^rd October 1999

I’ve always really liked the choreography and style of Mark Morris, so it was great to catch this brief tour, over from the United States. The programme was Dancing Honeymoon followed by The Argument; then after the interval, Bedtime followed by Grand Duo. All pieces were choreographed by Mark Morris. Hugely entertaining!

Closer – Milton Keynes Theatre, 13^th November 1999

We didn’t get to see the original West End run of Patrick Marber’s Closer so when this tour was announced it seemed like the perfect opportunity to plug that gap. A harsh and uncomfortable play, but beautifully performed and produced, with Amanda Ryan, Barnaby Kay, Darrel D’Silva and Lizzy McInnerny.

Richard Alston Dance Company – Swan Theatre, High Wycombe, 3^rd December 1999

We were really looking forward to seeing the return of the Richard Alston Dance Company, on what had already become a regular annual event. The programme was: Red Run, followed by Light Flooding into Darkened Rooms (which we had seen the previous year), and Roughcut. All pieces were choreographed by Richard Alston. A Sudden Exit had been scheduled for this performance but was replaced by Light Flooding at the last minute. The company was led by Martin Lawrance, but all the dancers were magnificent.

Comic Potential – Lyric Theatre, London, 29^th December 1999

Passing over yet another visit to see Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake, this time visiting Milton Keynes, and with Simon Cooper and Tom Ward in the iconic roles, our next show was the most recent Alan Ayckbourn to hit the West End, Comic Potential. Janie Dee and David Soul (yes Hutch himself) led the excellent cast that also featured Matthew Cottle. Low paid actoids have replaced actors in this sci-fi comedy set in a TV station of the future. Rather weird, but tremendous fun!

Review – Jiri Kylian, Three Dances, Ballet de l’Opera de Paris, Palais Garnier, Paris, 10th December 2016

Posted on December 15, 2016 by therealchrisparkle

A special occasion calls for a special occasion. As Mrs Chrisparkle was celebrating her **th birthday (and they don’t come much bigger than the **th), we decided to jetset it to Paris for a long weekend of culture. And Disneyland, of course. We’ve been to the Phantom’s Own Palais Garnier a few times over the years and even though I’ve attached a few photos, they really do not do it justice. It is just the most stunning theatre in the world. You could be in Versailles. It’s so chic that it doesn’t have a bar per se, just irregularly positioned tables with someone dispensing glasses of Taittinger for 12 euros a neck. One of the splendid things about a programme of three individual ballets is that there will be two intervals, each perfectly champagne-sized. Including our pre-show drink, we got through three glasses each; that’s 72 euros spent on divinely spoiling ourselves. Well, we’re worth it.

Jiri Kylian has long been a choreographer to admire. I first encountered his work when seeing Rambert and NDT2 at High Wycombe in the mid-90s; and, in fact, we saw one of the three dances in this programme, Tar and Feathers, in 2007 when NDT1 were performing it at Sadlers’ Wells. He’s always been daring, stylish, funny and unpredictable; never one to create a piece that you can predict how it will develop, you’re always guessing where he’s going to take you next. The programme is satisfyingly structured to the tried and tested formula of Dance 1: accessible, straightforward, enjoyable; Dance 2: difficult, challenging, unpredictable; Dance 3: crowd pleasing, funny, lively. Each dance was originally created for Nederlands Dans Theater.

The first dance on offer was Bella Figura, created by Kylian in 1995, and which first entered the repertoire of the Paris Opera in 2001. This is a stunning piece of work on many levels. Primarily, you get an overwhelming feeling of balance and beauty. The dancers move exquisitely, with steady control, to a tender baroque soundtrack, radiating elegance and refinement. Kylian takes you by surprise with the sequences where the dancers appear topless, both men and women, all dressed similarly in billowing red skirts, creating a surprisingly asexual and uniform tableau. The semi-nudity is a great leveller, making all the dancers appear remarkably similar. The other surprise element in the staging is how the curtains take on a life of their own and create smaller box-like dance spaces on the stage. This gives you a feeling not only that your gaze is being drawn specifically to what Kylian wants you to see, but also that sensation that you are being deprived of seeing other activity elsewhere on the stage. Both unnerving and reassuring at the same time. Suffice to say, it was performed with immaculate class and sheer delight throughout, and Dorothée Gilbert and Alessio Carbone were simply superb.

The second dance – Tar and Feathers – was choreographed by Kylian in 2006 to Mozart’s ninth piano concerto and is both spellbinding and unutterable nonsense at the same time. Skirts made of bubble wrap; a piano standing on stilts loftily in the air; dancers who occasionally break their silence by barking like a dog. Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo would love it. Plenty of slow, deliberate walking across the stage; and there is some significance in the fact that one side of the stage is coloured black, the other white. On the black side, dancers peer curiously under the floor covering to find – who knows what? They don’t seem to find anything, but sometimes they just like to stay there, protecting themselves from the outside world with lino. The dance ends with one of the dancers walking, tentatively, over a mountain of bubble wrap, cringing each time she steps and makes a cracking noise. All thoroughly weird and beyond comprehension. And also, there wasn’t a lot of what you’d call dance in it – a lot of posturing, a lot of silence, a lot of awkwardness, but not much actual dance. Yet again, it was performed with such style and grace that you can’t help forgive it its nonsense. Well, I forgave it. The rather grumpy man to my right refused to applaud.

The final dance was Symphonie de Psaumes, with Stravinsky’s music of the same name, composed to celebrate the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s 50th anniversary in 1930. Jiri Kylian created the dance in 1978 and it’s an absolute crowd-pleaser. Rich looking oriental and Indian carpets hug the back wall of the stage to present a warm sea of reds and oranges, whilst on the ground dancers dressed in black and grey walk and dance in formation across a square surrounded by chairs. Waves of dancers criss-cross the stage, picking others up and dropping others off in their wake, like some human knitting pattern on a huge machine as they work towards a distant inexorable goal. It’s mesmeric to watch and full of beautiful and invigorating dance moves. The audience absolutely loved it.

The production continues in repertory at the Palais Garnier until 31st December – a rewarding and most refined evening.

Production photos by Ann Ray. Theatre photos by me.

Review – Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, Charing Cross Theatre, 10th November 2014

Posted on November 12, 2014 by therealchrisparkle

I think I’d heard of “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris” before I’d actually heard of Jacques Brel himself. The show first saw the light of day in 1968, off-Broadway, and gained something of a cult status as it clocked up a four year run in its initial production, plus the many other international versions that followed. But through my early years the work of M. Brel remained something of a mystery to me. Then about fifteen years ago my friend the Lord Liverpool introduced me to the album “Scott Walker sings Jacques Brel” and particularly the song Jacky, which famously was banned by the BBC because of its lyrics – you won’t want me to reprint them here. Suffice to say, I loved it – and the rest of the album, with my other favourite being the savage Next – more of which later.

The album also features If You Go Away, but to be honest I always preferred Terry Jacks’ 1974 version, his follow up hit to “Seasons in the Sun”, (always enough to reduce a grown man to a deluge of tears), and which was itself an adaptation of Brel’s Le Moribond. But I realise now that in comparison to the originals, these Scott Walker renditions are really overblown, over-orchestrated and over-fussy. So when I saw that “Jacques Brel IAAWALIP” was having a revival at the Charing Cross Theatre I thought it was a perfect opportunity finally to acquaint myself with this cult show. However, I knew that it wouldn’t be Mrs Chrisparkle’s thing. If I’d said to her, “would you like to see a show based on the songs of a Belgian who died in 1978” she would have looked at me more than askance. But my friend HRH the Crown Prince of Bedford is another Brelhead, and so it was that he and I went to see the show last Monday night.

I’d never been to the Charing Cross Theatre before. When I was growing up it was the Players Theatre Club, having been home to the original production of Sandy Wilson’s The Boy Friend in the 1950s. If my memory serves me right, in the 1970s members of the Players Theatre used to perform on the BBC’s Good Old Days programme (all together in your best Leonard Sachs voice: Once again, Good Evening, Ladies and Gentlemen!) But today it is its own little theatre in its own right, seating 250 at a push, and with a rather charming atmosphere, helped or hindered (you decide) by the regular rumblings of trains passing overhead, and with a comfortable bar/restaurant offering an excellent and filling pre-theatre dinner at a much cheaper price than is decent for such a Central London location.

To say the show has a simple structure would be something of an understatement. If, like me, you were expecting some kind of narrative, or some theme to the evening, you might be in for a disappointment. I had thought it would be a kind of Side By Side By Brel, with some Ned Sherrin style bonhomie taking us through his career and illustrating it with choice examples of his work. Alternatively, it might have been an early example of the Mamma Mia genre, where you have an original plot but into which the Brel numbers would have dovetailed perfectly. But it’s neither. You simply have a running order of 28 songs, performed by the cast of four, accompanied by Dean Austin’s splendid five piece band nicely integrated with the action, scattered around the set, which resembles a modest cabaret club. The cabaret feels spills out into the auditorium in fact, as the usual first few rows have been taken out and replaced with five cabaret tables, each with four chairs. His Majesty and I sat at one of these and I have to say that, although you really have to look up high, our proximity to some of the action was breathtaking. At times it was as though we were on the stage with them, or they were performing promenade style around us – Miss Gina Beck even poured us out a glass of water. There’s no particularly rhyme or reason to the sequence of the songs that I could make out, no attempt to create a real narrative strand; but that’s not a problem as each song is its own mini masterpiece of a drama, and there are plenty of opportunities for the cast to excel both musically and dramatically.

The structure of the show means that its success or failure lies completely with the quality of the songs and performances; and for me I can definitely say it was a resounding success throughout. The songs that I recognised, I loved; and those that I didn’t know were, almost without exception, exciting discoveries. The cast are a superb combination of young, pure and idealistic (Gina Beck and Daniel Boys – brilliant in last year’s High Society) and the more mature and experienced (Eve Polycarpou and David Burt – an excellent gangster in Kiss Me Kate and hilarious in Hamlet the Musical), giving a nice sense of balance to the production. The evening begins with Eve singing Le Diable (Ça va) in both French and English, creating a very moody and melancholic atmosphere, which leads into If We Only Have Love and the sumptuous Alone. The English lyrics, by the way, were written by Eric Blau and Mort Schuman who together created the original production of the show. Other first half highlights included a very original presentation of Jacky by David, with a laid back, reflective, self-satisfied first verse, which then gains triumphant self-confidence as the song progresses. David also performed a very emotional rendition of Fanette which I really loved; and the whole company joined together for The Desperate Ones – again with the performers right up close to us you could see their unflinching commitment to what they were doing which somehow made it even moving; these Brel songs can be very raw as you witness the passion and pain in the performers’ concentration. There was also a very perky performance of Timid Frieda by Gina and then David took us into the interval with a rousingly angry (as is traditional) version of Amsterdam.

Act Two began with the whole company performing Madeleine (HRH’s favourite) – a tune that I now realise was shamelessly ripped off in the song Veronique in the 1970s musical On The Twentieth Century. Act Two continued with some spectacular performances including Eve singing Ne me quitte pas in French, sat on the edge of the stage with her guitar, right in front of us – a right goose-bumps moment if ever there was one; Daniel and David doing a very funny version of Middle Class (during which David cheersed me with his champagne glass; Gina singing a very moving Old Folks, David providing a hilarious and immaculately timed Funeral Tango, Daniel performing a very touching Song For Old Lovers and the whole company presenting a highly disturbing and effectively staged Next (Au Suivant), the least romantic song about sex that you could imagine. There is some nice subtle updating going on with a few of the numbers, with Iraq and Afghanistan taking their place and even Nigel Farage muscles in on the action at one point.

I really enjoyed the show, but what was the reaction of a true Brel aficionado? The Crown Prince was extremely impressed with it, and was in fact on tippy-toe point of leading an ovation when a sudden wave of self-consciousness overtook him, which he regretted all the way back to the station. Despite the fact that it is now 36 years since Jacques Brel literally was alive and well and living in Paris, the show gives us another opportunity to appreciate his extraordinary contribution to 20th century music and is a fitting and lovingly performed tribute to one helluva character. The show is on until 22nd November and if you like your musical entertainment to be francophone and with a bit of bite, I can’t think of anything better.

Review – Le Parc, Ballet de l’Opera National de Paris, Palais Garnier, 27th December 2013

Posted on January 2, 2014 by therealchrisparkle

If ever there was a venue where the artistic impact of the building provides as much pleasurable anticipation – probably more – than the prospect of the show itself, it’s the Palais Garnier in Paris. Yes, the original home to the Phantom of the Opera, built over a hundred years before Andrew Lloyd Webber created the music of the night, it’s the most breath-taking structure, that gives you a sense of fabulous privilege just walking up the stairs on your way to locating your “fauteuils” in the “orchestre”.

All sorts of delights await you before the show starts. Of course, you must have pre-theatre drinkies. About the only thing available is a glass of champagne. Well that’s fine by me. I approached the bar where the lady before me was ordering “deux verres de champagne, s’il vous plaît”. “Oui monsieur?” enquired of me the formally dressed but quite friendly guy behind the counter, as he was preparing the champagnes for the lady in front. “Aussi deux verres de champagne pour moi, s’il vous plaît” I stumbled in response. The lady beamed at me in recognition of a champagne comrade. “Vive la champagne!” she said, joyously. “Absolument” came my idiomatically iffy reply. Mrs C and I supped our delicious champagne (top quality, 12 euros for a small glass) whilst staring down over the grand vestibule.

Then you have to work out whereabouts in the auditorium you are sitting. You show your tickets to an usher and hope that you understand their directions. “Tout droit, au bout”. We got there ok. There must be a reason why the seat numbering system isn’t consecutive; Mrs Chrisparkle and I had seats 179 and 181, which were next to each other about seven rows back from the orchestra pit. In a UK theatre you’d think of them as seats G6-7. The auditorium is stunning. So lavishly baroque, apart from the 1964 Chagall ceiling that depicts scenes from 14 operas and which I think is rather splendid. And of course there is the central chandelier, that did once famously come crashing to the stalls and killed an unfortunate opéraphile, so be careful where you choose to sit.

We were there to see a post-Christmas performance of Angelin Preljocaj’s much-loved ballet Le Parc, which has been part of the Paris Opera’s repertoire for twenty years or so now. It contrasts courtly, romantic love as suggested by the Mozart chamber music that is played exquisitely by the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris under the direction of Koen Kessels, with the sexual motivation and tension that bubbles under the surface to a modern abstract soundtrack by Goran Vejvoda. As a result there are juxtaposing scenes of both pure 18th century ritualistic elegance, and 20th century direct physical contact. In Chaucerian terms, imagine the Knight going on a date with the Wife of Bath.

Now, this show has been running on and off since 1994 and I know it is considered to be something of a modern classic, but I have to confess I found most of it strangely unsatisfying. Much of the choreography was, I thought, tame and unadventurous, with a lot of repetition and I would guess largely unchallenging for the hugely skilful dancers on stage. If this were “Strictly Come Ballet”, Len Goodman would criticise it for having far too much posing and faffing around and not enough “Gertcha”. Much of it was very predictable as well. In the first act you witness a lot of chair repositioning; a male dancer will place a chair down on the stage surface with a loud clatter, which is the cue for a female counterpart to do precisely the same thing. And then another man. And then another woman. Stomp, stomp, stomp – clatter; stomp, stomp, stomp – clatter. Forgive me, but we’ve seen all that before; it’s not dancing, it’s removals. It wasn’t saying to me “I’ll test you with my aggressive-assertive behaviour and see if you respond”, but more like “that’s the last time I buy from Ikea”.

In the second act, there are eight (or so) posh ladies, one of whom faints. The other ladies gather round her, get her back on her feet, and all is well. Then, blow me down, another lady faints. They gather round her too, reinstate her vertically, and she’s ok. You’ll never guess what happens next. Yes! Another lady faints. The same sequence is repeated ad nauseam until every one of them has had need of the smelling salts. This is not dancing. At primary school they might have called it “music and movement”. It really was tremendously tedious. The framework of the whole ballet is to have regular reappearances of four gardeners, who make slow modern shapes to abstract technothrob, and who were more athletic than artistic in my view.

For sure, there are some tremendous scenes. At our performance the chief roles were danced by Aurélie Dupont and Nicolas Le Riche, and they are simply superb. A brilliant pas de deux towards the end involved Mlle Dupont clinging hold of M le Riche’s neck as he swung her round and round; an extraordinary display of trust and elegance that stood out as a stunning visual image. There was also a rather beguiling scene where various ladies and gentlemen followed each other round stylistic tree trunks in a playfully coquettish game of catch. Not a lot of dancing involved but it was charming.

Whether or not they scheduled this dance for shortly after Christmas as being the perfect choreography for performers who’ve enjoyed too much dinde over the festive period, I don’t know. Certainly for much of the time the dancers weren’t required to do much more than walk around and do some finger pointing. Sadly there’s no interval; not having an interval at the Palais Garnier deprives you of twenty minutes relaxing in luxurious surroundings. The show lasts just over an hour and half as it is, and on reflection I might guess that with an interval a number of people wouldn’t bother returning for the final act. The very keen balletomane on Mrs C’s right who looked all agog before the show started spent the final act with his head in his hands as if trying to work out where it all went wrong. I feel his pain. This was the third, possibly fourth time we’ve seen the Opera de Paris at the Palais Garnier and it’s the first time where the applause at the end was respectful instead of wildly enthusiastic. Oh well, on ne peut pas être gagnant dans tout, as I’m sure they don’t say in French.

Review – Another theatrical catch-up post

Posted on April 9, 2010 by therealchrisparkle

I really must keep up to date with these entries. I’m disappointing myself.

Sunday March 28th saw us at the Lilian Baylis theatre at the Stage Door of Sadler’s Wells to see the Lost Musical, Paris, by Cole Porter. If you don’t know, Lost Musicals is a fantastic thing. They dig up shows that haven’t seen the light of day for yonks and then perform them on an empty stage with just chairs and a piano. We’ve seen seven or eight of these over the years and they never fail to delight. This year’s show, Paris, (it’s the one where “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love” first appeared), is one of the funniest and most entertaining we have seen. The cast includes the wonderful Anne Reid who completely steals it. All hail the miraculous Ian Marshall Fisher who puts these things together. There are two more on this year, I confess we haven’t booked for them and I fear it may be too late to get decent seats. Ah well, there’s always next year.

Good Friday, April 2nd, we saw Hedda Gabler at the Oxford Playhouse. Front of House at the Oxford Playhouse were obviously having a bad hair day. It’s always been a wonderful theatre, I remember it from when I was a teenager going there with Mum. And as a student, I was their College Rep. Happy days. But it’s not a good idea to have just one position where you can buy programmes when it’s a full house, and then only when they require you to have the correct change…. And why have they removed the signs that say Seats 1-10 this way, Seats 11-20 that way, we were all walking over one another to go in the right direction. Sigh.

Anyway it was a very good production of Hedda Gabler; Ms Gabler herself played by Rosamund Pike was a very dismal person right from the start. It was never a good idea to let that woman anywhere near those pistols. It was great to see Tim McInnerny again, I last saw him in a student production of Measure for Measure on the very same stage and I am pleased to say I gave him a glowing review in a student newspaper. My hunch was right, he came good. I didn’t enjoy the show quite as much as I thought I would, and it brought back memories of a more thrilling Janet Suzman in the role circa 1977, maybe it was my age!

Then last Sunday, April 4th (Easter Day, you may remember) we saw a celebration for Stephen Sondheim’s 80th birthday at the Derngate in Northampton, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the wonderful Maria Friedman, with the also wonderful (if not quite as much) Graham Bickley and Daniel Evans. It was a most jolly and entertaining affair. They started off with a concert version of Merrily We Roll Along, none of which I had heard before and it certainly made me want to see The Real Show. Much of the rest of the evening brought back memories of Side by Side by Sondheim, but with some twists: a gay version of “Getting Married” – with Amy now Jamie – which worked pretty well. Daniel Evans and Maria Friedman in bed doing “Barcelona” was a hoot, and her “Send in the Clowns” was most moving. There was a fabulous symphonic suite containing about three songs from Sweeney Todd; and then some more Todd songs, including A Little Priest in which Ms Friedman forgot the lyrics, which shows that even the divine are human. It was a great night and left you buzzing for more.

The meaning of the Real Chrisparkle

Posted on January 7, 2010 by therealchrisparkle

Thanks for the warm welcome to Blogland. Whether it’s good news or not, it has spurred me on to write more.

I doubt anyone reading this who has met me would think of me as Chrisparkle. But that was a nickname my mother had for me for as long as I can remember. Chrisparkle was the formal nickname – sometimes shortened to Sparkle – more often shortened to Sparks. If she called me Sparks I knew I was in her good books and there was nothing to fear. If she called me Christopher I knew I was in trouble.

I don’t know whether she was in a particularly literary erudite mood when she coined this nickname but it does come from the Reverend Crisparkle (note the lack of “h”) in Charles Dickens’ unfinished work “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”. Or, if you saw the musical show back in the 1980s with the late Ernie Wise, “The Mystery of Edwin Droo-oo-oo-oo-oo-ood”. He’s a goodly (not to mention Godly) soul who almost certainly didn’t do away with Edwin, although someone did. Crisparkle, that is, not Ernie Wise.

Here is a picture of the actor Martin Wimbush playing Cedric Moncrieffe playing Crisparkle (a.k.a. me) in the show in the 1980s – actually 15th May 1987 was the day I saw the show according to my ticket stub.

And here are all the suspects who might have killed Edwin. He is/I am Number 1.

Now that my mother has fallen foul of the dreaded dementia, she doesn’t think of me as Sparks any more. She does think of me as Chris, which is a good thing, although she does suspect I may be her brother and not her son. Whenever I see her she does try to ascertain our relationship early on in the conversation, but sometimes she forgets during our chat. So by resurrecting Chrisparkle online, I’m bringing back something that had otherwise been lost, and I’m quite pleased about that. I also think that to sparkle or to spark is not a bad ambition.

Here’s a picture of Mum in more carefree days. I believe this was taken on the steps of the Madeleine church in Paris shortly after the end of the Second World War. Even though this was a long time before I was born I can certainly recognise some of the joie de vivre that survived for many years.