Plastic Bag Awards 2023

I haven't done much blogging this year  but that doesn't mean I haven't been out and about and doing things. It's that time of year again - The Plastic Bag Awards, also known as the Baggies of 2023!

Theatre: Drama

The nominees are:

‘As You Like It’ at @Sohoplace

‘Orlando’ at the Garrick Theatre

'Dancing at Lughnasa' at the National Theatre

'The Motive and the Cue' at the National Theatre

'Beautiful Thing' at Theatre Royal Stratford East

It's been a funny old year for theatre with theatres all competing for audiences and putting on some interesting shows but not that many stuck in my mind. All five nominees did that in spades. I loved the latest production of 'As You Like It' at the new theatre at the top of Charing Cross Road, @sohoplace, with its piano on the stage in use throughout and Rose Ayling-Ellis signing her lines and it all fell together nicely. 'Orlando' was as daft and magical as you could want with the dozen Virginia Woolfs forming a nice chorus and 'Dancing at Lughnasa' with its wonderful set and mysterious winding plot making me wonder what happened next as I left the theatre. 'The Motive and the Cue' was the only new play I saw this year and Mark Gatiss's excellent portrayal of John Guilgud and 'Beautiful Thing', a small production but a huge play. 

The Baggy goes to 'Dancing at Lughnasa' for its tale of an old Irish world that no longer exists, the great acting, the lovely staging and the plot that kept winding round in my head after I left the theatre. 

Theatre: Musical

The nominees for Best Musical in 2023 are:

'Sylvia' at The Old Vic 

'Rock Follies' at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester

'Ain't Too Proud' at the Prince Edward Theatre

'Flowers for Mrs Harris' at the Riverside Studios

‘Sondheim’s Old Friends’ at the Gielgud Theatre

I saw quite a few musicals over the year including some big ones like 'Oklahoma!' and 'Frozen' but they didn't make the cut according to the Baggies judging panel. The first musical I saw this year was 'Sylvia' and everything else had to reach its high standards - few did. Then there was a lean period into the summer when I went down to Chichester to see 'Rock Follies' and loved it, such a great theatre experience for an old fan like me. I saw 'Ain't Too Proud' just before it closed early and it was a great show - I still don't understand why it closed early - I suspect it wasn't the show, it was the ticket prices. 'Flowers for Mrs Harris' was a lovely new musical full of hope and wishes and 'Sondheim's Old Friends' was a great revue of a show with fab songs and star performers. with Bernadette Peters finally doing a West End show. 

The Baggy goes to 'Sylvia' at The Old Vic for its concept, staging, costumes, songs and sheer power. I'd love to see it again. 

Theatre: Dance

The nominees for Best Dance in 2023 are:

'Sleeping Beauty' at the Royal Opera House

'Woolf Works' at the Royal Opera House

'Alma' at Sadler's Wells

'Romeo and Juliet' at the Royal Opera House

‘The Dante Project’ at the Royal Opera House

The nominations are dominated by the Royal Ballet dancing at the Royal Opera House with only one nominee from Sadler's Wells this year, a flamenco show as part of its annual season. 'Sleeping Beauty' is a standard in the Royal Ballet's repertoire but it's 'Woolf Works' that made me interested in ballet as an art form in 2015 and, later that year, 'Romeo and Juliet' made me fall in love with it all. How can people jumping around be so beautiful? Wayne McGregor created the wonderful 'Woolf Works' and his latest creation is 'The Dante Project' - I had tickets to see it on its first airing a couple of years ago but didn't see it due to a lockdown or something so I made sure to see it this year.  

The Baggy goes to 'The Dante Project' by Wayne McGregor and danced by the Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House, a marvellous spectacle. 

Exhibitions

I saw many exhibitions and discovered new artists in 2023 but the nominees are:

‘Donatello’ at the V&A

'After Impressionism' at the National Gallery

'Action Gesture Paint' at Whitechapel Art Gallery

'Frans Hals' at the National Gallery

‘Rubens and Women’ at Dulwich Picture Gallery

Donatello was one of the first masters of the early renaissance in Florence and has influenced art ever since and I loved the exhibition at the V&A, being surrounded by all that old Florentine stuff, even a small predella painting by Masaccio, a friend of Donatello. 'After Impressionism' was a wide-ranging exhibition showing what happened in western art after the impressionists, dipping into many movements as artists discovered abstraction, a fascinating journey, while 'Action Gesture Paint' explored the spread of abstract expressionism around the world through women's art - who knew if was a world-wide movement of artists delving into their own abstratctions. Frans Hals was a master portraitist and the National Gallery explored his works while Dulwich Picture Gallery explored Rubens' paintings of women.

It's been a difficult decision but the Baggy goes to 'After Impressionism' for the sheer breadth and quality of the exhibits.  

Film

In an occasional category for films, the nominees are:

'Late Spring' at the BFI

'Angelheaded Hipster' at the Ritzy

'Tokyo Story' at the BFI

‘Scrooge’ at the BFI

‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ at the BFI

The only new film I saw this year was 'Angelheaded Hipster', the new documentary about the life and music of Marc Bolan who sadly died at the age of 29 in 1977. All the other films are over 65 years old and in black and white but all worth seeing, from the gentle films of Mr Ozu-san to the sentiment-fest that is 'It's A Wonderful Life'. I particularly liked Mr Ozu's 'Late Spring' mainly because I've never seen a film quite like it and his 'Tokyo Story' is always voted in the top ten films of all time, a marvellous melancholic film.

It's a close-run decision with 'Late Spring' coming a close second to the winner, 'Angelheaded Hipster'. Keep a little Marc in your heart. 

Performance

This award is for the best individual standout performance I've seen over the year and it can be almost anything. The nominees this year are:

Beverley Knight in 'Sylvia' at the Old Vic 

Mark Gatiss in 'The Motive and the Cue' at National Theatre

Siouxsie at The Troxy

Jenna Russell in 'Flowers for Mrs Harris' at the Riverside Studios

Beverley Knight played Emmeline Pankhurst (the mother of Sylvia) in the musical 'Sylvia' at the Old Vic. The cast were all excellent in an excellent production but, Beverley has been a pop star for nearly 30 years and knows how to work the stage at her gigs and she brought that extra energy to her performance. She was stunning and that's why she won an Olivier Award for her performance. Mark Gatiss delivered a truly believable performance as John Gielgud and Jenna Russell was the warm heart of 'Flowers for Mrs Harris'. And, of course, Siouxsie was magnificent at her first London gig in ten years, striding the stage like she owned it (and she did). 

The Baggy must go to Beverley Knight for her stunning performance as the leader of the suffragettes. 

So there you have it, the Baggies for 2023!

'Rock Follies' at the Minerva Theatre , Chichester

Do you remember 'Rock Follies', the mid-70s series about a girl group?  Think carefully now, it was a long time ago. The series spawned two massive albums in 1976 and 1977 and even a top 30 single. Fans will have bought the albums on vinyl and then CDs and also invested in the DVDs of the series' and kept the memory alive. It starred Julie Covington, Charlotte Cornwall and Rula Lenska, that bloke who went on to be the mainstay of 'Casualty' and a range of other faces that became familiar on telly. Even Tim Curry had a role in one episode as a rock star.  Yes, *that* Rock Follies.  

'Rock Follies' is the new show at the Minerva Theatre in Chichester so I had to go down to see it and I'm very pleased I did. It was fab! OK, I'm biased but so what?

When I got to the theatre I could hear background music and stood for a moment thinking ‘I know this song’... and it was ‘A touch too much’ by Arrow! I was all whaaaat? To set the scene they were playing a 70s compilation which was nice but whoever chose it clearly wasn’t alive at the time of ‘Rock Follies’ since it wasn’t all that appropriate. A nice touch though. Then the audience started drifting in, mostly old (as with every matinee). But I couldn’t decide if they were ‘Rock Follies’ fans or just Chichester locals who go to every matinee as an afternoon out. I was probably in the younger third of the audience.

And then it was the main event! Zizi Strallen as Q, Carly Bawden as Anna and Angela Marie Hurst as Dee. It opened with ‘Broadway Annie’ as the girls are struggling actresses and Anna gets fired with Q and Dee resigning in solidarity and then meeting up in the pub afterwards to sing ‘Blueberry Hill’ and hatch the idea of a group. They didn’t really need the ‘Broadway Annie’ sequence and could’ve easily started in another way but maybe the full story was part of the agreement on gaining the rights to the show? Who knows? The first real, full song was ‘Outlaws’ as they decided to form the band and then lines from ‘Stairway’ as it develops to the first full song of ‘Little Ladies’ for their first proper performance on the small stage. 

Most of the songs were shortened, just a verse and chorus, to fit them in, which was both good fun and quite frustrating at the same time. Clearly they wanted to fit in as much as possible - which is good - but maybe a few full length songs would’ve been good too. I got a bit annoyed every now and then when they gave their songs to other characters, such as ‘Hot Neon’ was given to the rock star Stevie Streeter (ie the Tim Currie character) to sing with them as backing singers in dustbins.  

Their first single is ‘Struttin’ Ground’ and that’s where Dee sings Anna’s vocals (rather than in ‘OK’). I always think of the market off Victoria Street with that song, on Strutton Ground, where I sometimes went for lunch when I worked. They somehow end up on Top of the Pops with a very stereotyped presenter (who’s already playe
d a couple of roles by now). That’s when the problems start and Anna starts going off on booze and drugs. And then Roxy appears to complicate matters. I wasn’t keen on what they did with her character, making her too ambitious and a bit of a gold-digger, only with the record producer to get her into the group and then a solo career - that wasn’t the Roxy in the series.

Anyway, after Top of the Pops, this is where the story starts changing. The girls start arguing in the dressing room and Q gets fed up with always being in the middle and soothing egos and declares that she has a voice too and launches into a full-on rock star version of ‘OK’ with flashing lights and screaming guitar and Zizi letting rip with her vocals! Big wow moment! Why haven’t they used all these lights before? It was a big reveal but why so late in the show?  After the song she announces she’s leaving the band and strides off.

After Anna's sacked we're left with just Dee and Roxy as the Little Ladies and somehow they’re big in America and have spent 6 weeks at No 1 in America with ‘Biba Nova’. I loved this bit - We’re all gonna live forever! - and got a bit teary even though the costumes weren’t good (well, awful is closer really). They’re on a telly programme in America and in the interval Dee says she can’t work with Roxy anymore and the band splits up with Roxy wanting a solo career. 

The end. Or is it? I won't say any more in case you're going to see it but It's good and Dee becomes a global superstar. At the end she invites Q and Anna to join her on stage for a few lines of ‘Good Behaviour’ (a la Dream Girls in a ‘without these girls I wouldn’t be here’ moment). Lights out and clap clap clap!

I loved it! It wasn’t perfect but that’s not the point. A lot of it was a bit copy-cat, just following the story from the series.I liked that, but trying to squeeze the whole of the story across both series’s into 2:45 hours would always be a challenge. I quite liked it when the writer (Chloe Moss) took her flights of fancy and invented the story afresh. I liked that the programme said it was ‘In memory of Charlotte Cornwell 1949- 2021’ who played the original Anna on telly. 

'As You Like It' and 'Orlando'

Earlier this year I went to a new theatre and an old one: Sohoplace at the top of Charing Cross Road to see 'As You Like It' and the Garrick at the bottom of Charing Cross Road for 'Orlando'.

'As You Like It' is one of the more often performed Shakespeare plays, a tale of power and families and, as ever, love. Luckily, it's one of my favourites too. The latest performance was at the new Sohoplace Theatre at the top of Charing Cross Road, just over from Tottenham Court Road station. The ground floor is a restaurant and bar and the theatre is above with great views over Charing Cross Road from the bar windows. It's quite compact but a nice theatre space and a great view from my seat in the circle. 

It was a fun production in which we see Rosalind escape to the Forest of Arden to find her love, Orlando. We see Rose Ayling-Ellis as Celia dn Alfred Enoch as Orlando. I think this is the best version of 'As You Like It' I've seen so far.

The old theatre was the Garrick and 'Orlando', a new play based around Virginia Woolf's novel of the same name in which a man wakes up one morning in the court at Constantinople as a woman, a tale from the Elizabethan court to the 1920s. I didn't really know what to expect but I loved it, with its chorus of Virginia Woolfs appearing every now and then and Orlando's housekeeper keeping her on the straight and narrow over the centuries. Emma Corin was great as Orlando.

'Spain' and 'Donatello' Exhibitions

A couple of weeks ago I visited two new exhibitions in London: 'Spain and the Hispanic World' at the Royal Academy and 'Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance' at the Victoria & Albert Museum. The new exhibition season is kicking off in style.

'Spain and the Hispanic World' includes around 150 exhibits from the collection of the Hispanic Society Museum and Library in New York so it's as much an exhibition about the Society as it is about the Hispanic world. The first room contained works created a few thousand years ago by the first waves of settler to occupy what we now consider to be Spain, including Celts. It then moves forward in time from the different kingdoms to the unification of Spain and to conquest in the New World, ending with works by more modern artists including Sorella.

The exhibits covered everything you could think of: ceramics, glassware, cloth, books, paintings, sculptures, jewellery, religious works and more. I particularly liked the travelling writing cabinets with all the little drawers for papers, pens and inks, some decorated and others plain. The signs on the walls helped with context, pointing out that the high costs of importing goods from Spain to South America meant that local craftsmen and women sprang up to meet the demand from the colonisers for their luxury goods. The downside of that is so many exhibits being attributed to 'unknown artist'. 

There was a gorgeous little 'Pieta' by El Greco, a room with a few Goyas and two works by Velazquez, one of a man at court with the most perfect left hand where you can see the hints of veins underneath the skin. Such astonishing skill. 

The exhibition closed with some Sorella paintings including a sketch in gouache that Sorella did for his epic work, 'Visions of Spain'. Apparently he sketched it out on rolls of kraft paper so he could extend it to any length he wanted. I didn't know Sorella used gouache, the sketches I've seen in the Sorella Museum in Madrid were all in oils. 

The second exhibition, 'Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance' focused on the work of the early 15th Century Florentine sculptor Donato di Niccolo di Betto Bardi known as Donatello. I couldn't help but smile as I entered the exhibition and saw the first of the old glories awaiting me. I've seen Donatello's works before, in exhibitions and in situ in Florence but never so many together. 15th Century Florence was a hothouse of artistic and intellectual development, the creation of mathematical perspective and re-discovery of the art of the ancients.  And Donatello was there at the start of it all, helping to create a new way of story-telling through his art. 

As you'd expect, there are lots of works by Donatello, sculptures, reliefs and bronzes, as well as example of works he influenced by painters and sculptors, not just contemporary but in the centuries after his death. Sadly, many works were attributed to 'unknown artist', something that always makes me sad. Someone worked for years to acquire the skills to create great art and we don't even know their name. On the other hand, we actually have Donatello's account books showing the detail of what he earned and spent (and what on) and these are in the exhibition. I wonder who's account books will be discovered next in a dusty library somewhere?

My first moment of excitement came when I spied a small painting out of the corner of my eye that included what I think of as Fra Angelico pink and I wondered and then hurried over to it. It was a small 'Adoration' by Masaccio and, apparently, Donatello picked up the payment for the work since they were friends. Masaccio is also thought to have been a chum of Fra Angelico so it's likely that they all knew each other and their works. There were other paintings by Filippo Lippi and Bellini illustrating Donatello's influence in both composition and technique.

There was a marvellous little bronze called 'Attis-Amorino' by Donatello which is a mixture of various classical characters: the shepherd Attis with the wings of Cupid, the tail of a faun, the winged feet of Mercury and the snake associated with Hercules. So many allusions to classical tales to identify and such a joyous pose and smile. I loved it. 

As a Quattrocento boy I loved the exhibition, full of so many joyous and emotionally charged works. I will visit again.