'A Victorian Obsession' at Leighton House Museum

It's a new year so that means a visit to a museum I've never heard of before to see an exhibition I never expected to see. The museum was the Leighton House Museum, the former studio-house of Lord Frederick Leighton just off Kensington High Street. The house seems to be one of those hidden gems tucked away on the website of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea council and not publicised in any way. Given the number of visitors there the other day then that's no bad thing since people seem to be finding it anyway!

I've never heard of Lord Leighton but, then again, there were so many Victorian painters that's it's unlikely that most people will have heard of them. This visit is really in two parts - to the house that is, I think, normally hung with Leighton's works but for this exhibition, is filled with works from the Perez Simon collection of Victorian paintings. That makes it doubly worth visiting.

The house is rather unprepossessing from the outside, a typical Victorian redbrick building. You enter through the ground floor and walk into a rather chilly-looking public hallway with a lot of tiles. To the left is the Arabian Room, covered in tiles and a small fountain in the centre, windows on either side covered by grills to maintain privacy and nothing even remotely like a fireplace. This room looks fabulously exotic but must have been freezing in winter! There are two built-in couches beneath the windows on either side that just made me think that anyone lounging there would be even colder. Impressive but hardly practical!

Behind this is a small drawing room and a dining room all laid out for dinner, the small dark rooms beloved of the more domestic Victorians. Then, on the other side of the hallway is the exotic staircase to the first floor and the artists's private apartments and studio. The lower part of the staircase is covered in large turquoise green tiles (that have come out blue in this photo) with paintings higher up. All terribly exotic, with a grilled balcony overlooking the hallway below. Leighton clearly liked his tiles and exotic looking rooms but I kept looking for the practicality of fireplaces to no avail.

I've seen lots of willowy young women and men over the years in Victorian paintings and the first one of this collection that made me look twice was 'In the Golden Days' by John Melhuish Strudwick. At first glance it looks like a bog-standard Pre-Rapaelite but the composition made me look twice - the shapes and the colours make it worth looking at. The line of the flat book leading to the lute at a 45 degree angle pointing up to the hand waiting to catch the notes. That hand belongs to Guinevere, dancing with her maidens before Lancelot appeared. I think if I was the queen of Camelot I'd want somewhere larger to dance in. I'm not sure what the blue cloth at bottom-right is meant to show but it adds a nice contrast to the colours and has the added drama of having flowers strewn over it.

There's a lot in this painting worth decoding and I'm sure there's meaning in the colours and shapes - I suppose the obvious question for the Victorian painters is why do we need to decode it at all? Are you just showing off Mr Strudwick?

There were quite a few painters I hadn't heard of before - or rather, hadn't noticed before even though I've probably seen their works in other exhibitions, museums and galleries. The name that leaps out at me is Lawrence Alma-Tadema, later knighted as a great Vicorian despite being born in Holland and trained in Belgium. But it was Britain that appreciated him so he moved here in 1870.

The painting that first made me take a second look at his works was 'Her Eyes are with her Thoughts and they are Far Away' - a silly title for such a powerful painting. It's one of those where the Mediterranean sun is the real feature of the painting, with the young lady of antiquity gazing out over the Bay of Naples with the searing white light playing on her clothes and surroundings. It's quite small but perfect for what it is. And you just know that if you were there at the time you'd reach for your sunglasses and hat…

Of course, the highlight of the show is another of Alma-Tadema's paintings, 'The Roses of Heliogabalus', which is housed in a special temperature-controlled and scented room. Yes, 'scented'. A real 'smell-o-vision' experience for a really odd painting that sums up Alma -Tadema in a sense.  It's a large painting that depicts the young Roman emperor Heliogabalus (who didn't last very long) watching his dinner guests get smothered by rose petals, the sheer weight crushing and stifling them.

There's also an earlier, small draft version of the painting on display to compare this with and it's noticeable that the woman bottom-right is in different clothes but also that she seems to be appealing to us to save her. The blond man beside her - presumably a northern European slave - is missing from the draft version but I like him being here with the woman on the couch peeping round to see if he's still alive. Were they lovers or was she just being prurient? I like intrigues like that.

One of the oddities of the show were the paintings depicting the oriental scenes with dusky maidens and those with Victorian matrons playing dress-up. It was quite obvious in some of the paintings, with the blushes on the cheeks and the matronly bosom and body fully covered.

If you find yourself on Kensington High Street with an hour or so to kill then you could do worse than head over to Leighton House Museum for a gander at the exhibition. I'm in two minds about going back myself - I suspect I'll absorb more from a second viewing.

'Taken At Midnight' at the Theatre Royal Haymarket

'Taken At Midnight' is a new play by Mark Hayhurst and has transferred from Chichester straight into one of the posher venues of the West End. It's nice to have a new play to see - we could do with more really - and even nicer to have the lead role designed exclusively for a more mature woman. How many of them do you get for the pound these days? In this case, the mature woman is Penelope Wilton who created the role in Chichester last summer.  Last years' season at Chichester was excellent  and it's nice to see this transfer to the West End, along with 'Gypsy' with that immense performance from Imelda Staunton which opens shortly at the Savoy. I'm seeing that in April.

I've seen Penelope in a few plays over recent years - 'Hamlet', 'Bernarda Alba' and 'John Gabriel Borkman', none of them laugh a minute musical extravaganzas. Penelope seems to have a different persona entirely on telly and in film - the loving wife and mother, slightly dizzy and wanting to please. She showed both sides in the 'Marigold Hotel' film a couple of years ago and I always remember her performance turning into a zombie in 'Shawn of the Dead', so similar to but a million miles from her role in 'Ever Decreasing Circles' decades ago. Suffice it to say I like seeing Penelope Wilton on stage - you never know what you're going to get but she will be good. She should be our next theatrical dame.

'Taken at Midnight' is the tale of German lawyer Hans Litten in the 1930s who prosecuted the Nazi SA thugs who terrorised left wingers in the early '30s. At one memorable trial he summoned Adolf Hitler to the witness stand and tore into him. He won the case, obviously, but Hitler had a long memory (and, I assume, a big notebook for all the names). The night the Reichstag burned down he was conveniently put into protective custody for his own sake and not detained in a prison but in a concentration camp. No-one in the play bats an eyelid at the term 'concentration camp' because it had a different meaning after the Nazi's use of the term. We follow him from camp to camp until he ends up in Dachau where he's classified as a Jew and where he manages to hang himself to escape his constant tormentors.

But it's not really about Hans, it's about his mother - and, by extension, the mothers of all the 'disappeared' over the years. Hans' disappearance forces her to deal directly with the gestapo and she makes no secret of the fact that she will annoy them and continue to annoy them until she speaks to someone who has real information about her son. And she does. As the years pass by her relationship with the gestapo officer develops - but she never trusts him - and it's quite a shock the first time she greets him after a few years with the Nazi salute and a shouted 'heil Hitler'. That made me do a double-take.

 She eventually gets to see her son at Dachau where she pleads with him to give the Nazi's what they want since 'the time to be brave is over'. She wants her son to live and, seeing him enter hobbling and with misshapen legs, she knows he can't have long to live without some kind of major intervention. She shouts at the threatening guards who don't want her near their prisoner but she moves her chair near so she can grasp his hands and plead. But to no avail. He's been through too much now to allow himself to weaken and he reminds his mother how she brought up him and his brothers, to tell the truth and be true to themselves.

The set is very simple with the front of the stage simply a wooden floor that, with the addition of a desk and some chairs, can be a living room or a gestapo office. The back of the stage is the prison area, bare with a chair or a bed depicting an interrogation room or a cell. The lighting did it all really, with shadows projecting all over, subdued one minute and then bright for a summers day. It was very impressive. And that's how the play ended, with Hans recollecting the trial with Hitler only to stride off as his shadow loomed only to turn into a shadow of a man being hanged.

It was a very impressive play, particularly Penelope Wilton as Irmgard, Hans' mother, who played to full-on and not willing to take any crap from the gestapo officers she dealt with. Don't mess with me, her attitude shouts, not a soft and complaint woman, but a woman of power and character with some standing in the society that slowly vanishes. Martin Hutson was great a Hans and, when he entered the final scene to meet his mother I couldn't believe the silhouette of his broken body was him. All the performances were excellent.

This play is well worth seeing, for the performances as well as for  story we shouldn't allow to be forgotten. Penelope and Martin were both great and touching and the spare set is something to behold in the different lighting shots. Go and see it if you've got the time.

The Buddha of Humility

I went travelling round Asia in the '90s and, in about 1996, I ended up in Kathmandu in Nepal. I remember visiting Buddhist temples with prayer-flags fluttering in the breeze, a rather scary ceremony at a temple to Kali (that I left quite quickly), six feet tall marigolds, the burning ghats and seeing a body being burned in a bonfire, and going out in the freezing pre-dawn to see the sun rise over Mount Everest. I caught cold in Kathmandu and remember wandering round New Delhi a few days later with a bag full of tissues.

The other thing I came back from Kathmandu with is a better understanding of humility and humanity and a Buddha image that I think of as the Buddha of Humility.

The Kathmandu Valley is the home of the cities of Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur, ancient royal cities in their own right for the Nepalese. They're all quite close and full of old wooden monuments, palaces and temples, some of which are still in use. And grand squares that host markets mainly focused on us foolish travellers who will pay anything for our essential souvenirs.

I have Buddha images from all over the East - no, I'm not going to buy a Buddha image from a garden centre or trendy shop in Covent Garden or Brixton when I can get them from where they were made and where they mean something. I have delicate Buddha images from Thailand and Sri Lanka and India. I even have a small head of the Buddha made from volcanic rock from Borobadur in Java, Indonesia. My most intricate image is made of sandalwood from Varanasi near the site where Lord Buddha achieved enlightenment. I got that image after I'd made an offering to Mother Ganga at dawn beside the burning ghats at Varanassi, visited the Deer Park and the site of the first ever Buddhist monastery. I'd also been blessed in a Jain temple. That's a special image.

But the Buddha of Humility is also special. It reminds me of my own behaviour and where I need to improve.

I went to Bhaktapur to see the royal palace and temples and, walking through the town square, saw there was a market selling mainly tourist stuff so I thought I'd have a browse after viewing the temples. And I did. Tarpaulins spread on the ground to define the 'stall' area and people all wrapped up crouching over each 'stall'. A small brass Buddha image about four inches tall caught my attention - the Buddha subduing Mara with one hand and the other hand holding the supplicants bowl while sitting on a lotus flower. A common image in Nepal and Tibet.

I asked how much it was and the old woman looking after the stall showed me the asking price on a calculator. Too much I indicated and halved the price. No, that's too low indicated the woman and showed me a new price on the calculator. We agreed a price and I said thank you. And I promptly paid the original asking price, not the agreed price. It was a matter of pennies to me but a lot to her so I thought I'd just pay the full price anyway for the little statue to remind me of Bhaktapur.

And as I walked away with my little brass Buddha wrapped in newspaper in my bag it dawned on me what I'd done. I'd played with this old woman because I could. Because a few rupees this way or that means little to me but means a lot to her. I thought I was being helpful and generous but all I was being was another Western tourist playing the cash game with the locals. I wonder: did she mind or was she just pleased to get more rupees out of the tourist wandering round in the heat of the day? It's humbling and a lesson well learned.

That Buddha image sits on the top of the bureau in my living room as a reminder of far off days and strange sights and a little old woman sitting on the ground selling stuff to tourists. Namaste.

Sigmar Polke at the Tate Modern

I finally got round to seeing the rather large Sigmar Polke exhibition at the Tate Modern, once again, on  the closing weekend. I really must do better. It's a very big exhibition as well, full of paintings, installations and projected films (usually of the hippy triply variety with shaky had-held camera). I rushed over to the Tate Modern after work on Friday and walked over Blackfriars Bridge that doubles as the railway station and there's the Tate Modern waiting for me. And Sigmar.

So. Sigmar Polke. I know nothing about him and had never heard of him until this exhibition was announced. Wiki tells us that he was born on 13 February 1941 in Poland and, eventually, grew up in West Germany in the 1950s. This exhibition covers the vast body of his works and styles between 1963 and his death in 2010, or another way of looking at it is, his works during my (approximate) lifetime.

He experimented with photography and, later, with what might loosely be called painting. Some of his earlier works looked almost like they'd been photo-shopped before photo-shopping was invented. Paint in various combinations on a printed image to see what that creates and some of the works were quite spectacular. His installations were less so, and just made me think that I'd seen them before in a different guise but the majority of items were hanging on walls and that worked for me. I also looked at a  couple of his video-films projected in side galleries but soon gave up on them. What was I meant to see?

The first massive painting that forced me to look at it was a portrait of Mao from the early 70s - I glimpsed it through a door to another gallery just after I'd entered the preceding gallery so I whizzed round that gallery to see the painting that called to me. For some odd reason Chairman Mao is inextricably linked with John and Yoko Ono Lennon and his song 'Revolution' with the Beatles and Yoko's 'We're All Water' from 'Sometime in New York City'. Odd, I know, but I can't help it. And here was a giant painting of Mao - or is it really about Mao at all?

It's huge and is a lot redder that this image looks with the giant head of Mao surrounded by little pictures of 1950s-style women and more. It fills a whole wall so it's difficult to get the full impact from this poor reproduction. But it also made me wonder why artists produce such huge pieces of art that can only be displayed in a gallery or in the houses of the rich. It's far too big to fit in my house or yours so where is the egalitarian art? The Paul Klee exhibition last year was full of living-room sized paintings and I think I'd rather have one of his complex, meditative pieces hanging on my walls.

A bit further into the exhibition (and it felt like it was going on forever) were a couple of paintings using Superman as the focus and I quite liked this one which was titled 'Supermarkets!'. There are lots of superimposed cartoon images of Superman bottom centre. It has all the energy and pace of a cartoon Superman and a crash-bang-whallop feel to it. It was another huge wall-filler but it was fun!

This is another exhibition that would probably be best seen at a repeat visit, see it when it opens and then later in the run after I've had time to mull it over it and get a clearer picture of what I want to see in it. But should that be necessary? Some art you have to work at and others reach levels of love through osmosis. Last years' three biggies - Klee, Matisse and Mondrian - didn't have to try too hard to make me love them so I suspect I've been spoiled. O well.

One of the funnest pieces (if that's a word) was 'Polke as Astronaut' hung quite high so we all had to look upwards at it. Again, I'm not sure why, but like the Mao painting this called to me across the gallery and I obeyed. A daft face in a green space with astronauts doing spacewalks. What more could one ask? The next time Mr Polke visits London I'll be better prepared to see him.

'Dara' at the National Theatre

We went to see the new production of 'Dara' at the National Theatre last week, a new play about the struggle for the throne of the Mughal empire in northern India in the mid-1600s. Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal for his wife Mumtaz Mahal and it's their sons, Dara and Aurangzeb, who contend for the throne while their father is still alive. I'm familiar with the name of Aurangzeb from my travels round northern India - and particularly around Delhi and Agra - in the '90s, but I've never heard of his older brother Dara before. Apparently he's still a respected Sufi poet in India but it shows how the victor writes the history books.

The play is from Pakistan and was first performed in Lahore in 2010. It was written by Shahid Nadeem and adapted for this production by Tanya Ronder. Shahid has campaigned through his writing for human rights and justice in Pakistan and it's quite interesting that this play has come here with the arguments about the nature of Islam, Sufi and Hindu and with Aurangzeb's hardline  Muslim beliefs versus his brother's idealistic Sufism and poetry.

Here we have a very declamatory play with set speeches and set pieces and family conflicts versus the state, inter-family squabbling and revenge and the fate of nations depending on a few people at the top. It was rather Shakespearean in it's reach. One reason to take so long to blog about it is that I'm still not sure what I thought of the play. Do I like it or do I appreciate it? It's certainly worth seeing and is getting great reviews but I'm still in two minds.

The play opens with Dara and his son seeking sanctuary at the edge of the empire, being chased by Aurangzeb's army but he's betrayed and handed over to his brother's army. We get flashbacks to see where this enmity might have originated, back to when a Sufi mystic singled out Aurangzeb as the threat to his father's throne - would that threat happen anyway or did this cause it? This cumulates in a lengthy court scene at which Dara is accused of apostasy and questioned about wearing a Christian cross round his neck and a ring with a Hindu inscription as well as his Sufi ways and symbols. Will he be found guilty and executed or banished?

We see more of Aurangzeb's past and his love for a Hindu dancing girl who asks him to drink wine against his principles and he goes to do so for his love of her but she removes the glass so he doesn't have to. It was a test to see whether he would, not see him drink. He was willing to bend his principles for love so what made him so harsh and unyielding in later life? Probably lots of things, and probably ordering his brother's beheading which comes back to haunt him.

I thought it was an excellent production and the set was just right, largely bare but with corners of the stage filled with Mughal arches and lattice screens sliding across the stage as the scenes changed, creating intricate patterns of light. The light was dramatic throughout, almost a character in its own right. Zubin Varla as Dara and Sargon Yelda as Aurangzeb were great as the lead characters, with a large cast around them to bounce off.

But did I enjoy it?

'My Night With Reg' at the Apollo Theatre

We went to see 'My Night With Reg' at the Apollo Theatre, the West End transfer of the revival of the play from the Donmar Warehouse. We saw it twice last summer and loved it so were due a top-up on the joy and frivolity and sadness. I first blogged about it last year and it won a 2014 Plastic Bag Award so it must be worth seeing.

The play has recently been noticed for the poster which was turned down by the Transport for London authorities for showing a bit of bum (see right). The poster that's been published uses 'Ziggy Stardust' to cover the bum entirely and most demurely except we all know he's naked behind that record sleeve. I've no idea why Kevin Elyot chose Ziggy to embody his characters but we get a fun version of 'Starman' during the play.

Anyway, you know the story, right? If not then read my previous blog. It's the same story and the same cast just played a bit bigger to fill the Apollo Theatre as opposed to the more bijou Donmar Warehouse.

We never meet Reg but he's referred to constantly. He's Daniel's lover and, seemingly, everyone's slept with him apart from Guy but Daniel doesn't know. The play opens in 1985 with Guy's flat-warming party when three gay friends from university fifteen years earlier get together again. We have Guy, a copywriter who's just bought his first flat, Daniel, a flamboyant art dealer and John who lives off family money but who Guy fell in love with at university but has never told him.

There's Eric who's finishing off painting the conservatory while listening to the Police on a walkman (how novel - I probably listened to my first walkman at about the same time). There's also Bernie and Benny, the mis-matched gay couple who frequent the pub Eric is a part-time barman at.

 Three acts introduce us to the characters and let us see what happens to them in the short-term.  All scenes take place in Guy's flat with its nice, big sofa and conservatory. The first act introduces us to the characters and the second takes place at the wake after Reg's death that Guy hosts and the tales about Reg start spreading. The third act takes place after Guy dies and leaves his flat to John. There's a lot of death in the play but it's really funny - even I laughed out loud a few times.

There's a difference between a Donmar theatre audience and a West End audience. The Donmar audience was middle-aged male dominated but the Apollo was more representative, particularly with some older couples who possibly saw the original production in the '90s. I liked the couple in their 70s in front of me laughing along to the rude jokes and the old folks discussing the 'gay plague' and people they knew at the end as we all left. The play brings people together. It's a shared history in some ways.

It was nice that we saw the same cast as at the Donmar. Jonathan Broadbent as Guy, everyone's friend but no-one's lover, Julian Ovenden as John the rich kid and Geoffrey Streatfield as Daniel, Reg's lover and art dealer with a jet-set lifestyle. Then we have Matt Bardock and Richard Cant as the mis-matched gay couple Benny and Bernie and, of course, Lewis Reeves from the poster as Eric, the painter, decorator and part-time barman.

It's a play of secrets and lies, of infidelity, of friendships, sexual mores and unknown consequences. What will happen to me?

I laughed on and off throughout the play, laughter alternating with moist eyes. The final scene between John and Daniel was particularly thought-provoking when Daniel said he had to leave because he was tired after a night of cruising on Hampstead Heath in the rain. John agrees that he can't sleep and that he's tired too but with yearning eyes that say there's more.  Is this John saying yes I'm tired so you can go so I can go to bed? or John saying I'm tired, join me in bed? Or John saying I'm tired, I think I've got it as well? I think it's the latter and that's sad. The 'plague' continues.

Perhaps Eric is the future? The young man who doesn't sleep around and won't let John seduce him. But he's also been seduced by Reg. So what happens next?

Go and see this play if you can - it's very thought provoking, particularly to anyone who lived through the 80s.

'A Little Night Music' at the Palace Theatre

On Monday we went to the Palace Theatre to see a staged concert version of Sondheim's 'A Little Night Music' to celebrate the show's 40th anniversary in London. I've seen the show twice before and enjoyed it both times, firstly the revival at the Menier Chocolate Factory in 2008 and then the same production on Broadway in 2010 with Angela Lansbury and Catherine Zeta-Jones, and with Alexander Hanson playing Frederick in both shows.

This is possibly one of my favourite Sondheim's, not too challenging but quite delightful with great songs and roles for three generations of actors. It's nice and there's nothing wrong with nice. It's a tale of love, of ageing and still loving, of finding your true love and all of the characters find their lovers eventually (apart from Desiree's daughter, who has her life ahead of her). With some people it just takes a bit longer but it will come, don't worry...

There's a great score and some great songs - and not just 'Send In The Clowns' - with a lot of scope to make this show your own. I left this show wanting the concert cast to do a full on stage version - and a cast recording, obv - and I'd like it to open next weekend please. Can you arrange it?

It was the women who ruled this concert version, with Janie Dee as Desiree, Anne Reid as Mme Armfeldt (her mother), Joanna Riding as an incredibly deadpan Countess and Laura Pitt-Pulford as the earthy servant girl. They were all excellent and the sequence of Janie's 'Send In The Clowns', sitting at the front of the stage followed by Laura's feisty 'Millers Son' was marvellous. Anne Reid was great as the woman who's seen it all and Joanna was great fun as the disillusioned wife of the count who's having an affair with Desiree - such great one-liners! And kudos to Bibi Jay as Desiree's young daughter, Fredrika.

In the final moments of the show during the reprise of 'Send in the Clowns' Janie seemed to forget the lines of the song. Is that possible? So the orchestra stopped and started again so she and David Birrell (as Fredrick) could start again. Did she really forget the lines or was it an opportunity for her to milk the applause when she sang 'was that a farce' - I'm in two minds!

It was a great evening, lovely to hear that music and those songs again and to see those people on the stage. I'd say 'go if you can' but it was a one-off event. I hope there's another revival in the works since this is definitely a show worth seeing.

'The Scottsboro Boys' at the Garrick Theatre

I saw 'The Scottsboro Boys' at the Young Vic in 2013 and, after a bit of a gap, it transferred into the West End to the venerable and ornate Garrick late last year and it's got another month or so to run. I thoroughly enjoyed the first viewing and blogged about it at the time so wanted to see it again.

The production is the same and the cast is almost the same with a  few changes, like the inclusion of Brandon Victor Dixon as lead lad, Haywood, who originated the roll on Broadway in 2010. It's still staged within an old time minstrel format with Mr Tambo and Mr Bones, still has an imaginative use of chairs and the silent woman who eases her way into scenes and never speaks until the very end. It's the final Kander & Ebb musical and it does them proud, telling a little known story from the deep south, of injustice and unthinking racism because that's just the way it was. But it doesn't have to be that way.

It's the story of nine young black men and boys seeking work by heading north, full of enthusiasm and hope for a new life when the train pulls into Scottsboro in Alabama. Two white women are also riding the rails and they accuse the boys of raping them. No evidence is needed since white women wouldn't lie about such a thing.

That's the start of the real story of the Scottsboro Boys and their endless trials, always found guilty even when one of the women changes her story and admits that they weren't raped. But the south can't admit it got it wrong when black men are concerned. We follow the boys as they grow old and some are released, then others are, but Haywood dies in prison. They were all pardoned by the Governor of Alabama in 2013.

Despite the rather dour story the play zips along between comedy and tragedy at a nice pace so it keeps moving and we learn more about the leading characters. The white women are played by two of the boys with the addition of hats and shawls and Mr Tambo and Mr Bones play the sheriff and his deputy and various other white characters simply by saying they're white. They bring the comedy but, at the same time, the terror of a system that doesn't believe you have rights if you're not white. The only white man in the play is Julian Glover who plays the Interlocuter and the judge (and later, a bus driver), which is quite telling, wanting the lads to sing happy songs.

It's a song and dance spectacular and the staging is excellent. The props are minimal, a set of 12 chairs that are used with some planks of wood on top to depict the train rumbling through Alabama and are constructed to resemble their prison cell and as solitary confinement for Haywood. Some tambourines and a couple of clothing changes and that's it. Most of the play is set with the lads wearing a white prison uniform, every now and then re-assembling the chairs into a semi-circle to represent the court.

The main difference between this show and the one I saw back in 2013 - which is, otherwise, the same production - was that Brandon Victor Dixon took the lead role as Haywood Patterson, the lead lad of the Scottsboro Boys who wrote their tale in prison and died there. Brandon was excellent, a definite presence on stage and with a voice to match. He seemed to play it more angry and determined and pulled it off. He plays a formidable character who will not lie - even to get his own freedom - since he's suffered for the consequences of a tiny white lie for most of his life. It was a powerful performance.

Colman Domingo and Forrest McClendon played Bones and Tambo and James T Lane played one of the lads and also Ruby Bates, one of the white women (with a shawl and hat, of course). Dawn Hope played the mysterious lady who appeared now and then and finally had a speaking line at the end of the play when she said 'no' to moving seats on a bus.

It's a grand play and a great production. Pop along to the Garrick if you can and see something very unusual - a musical with a serious and powerful message. And these are the real Scottsboro boys:

'Widowers' Houses' at The Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond

Last week Chris took me to see a George Bernard Shaw play I've never heard of (one of many I've never heard of) at the Orange Tree Theatre in deepest, darkest Richmond upon Thames. I've not only not heard of the play, I've not heard of the theatre either and that was part of the impetus for going - a rarely performed play in a theatre neither of us had been to before. So ok, let's go.

The theatre is only a few minutes from the station on the main road and it's partially painted orange so you can't really miss it. It's been there for donkeys years and seems to have been recently renovated but there's an awful lot of steps to get anywhere in the building. It also prides itself in putting on rarely performed plays, hence Mr Shaw. This play is from 1892 so relatively early in the Shaw cannon and it reeks of the late Victorian-ness that I always have a problem with.

The play opens with two English gentlemen on a tour down the Rhine, one of whom falls for a young heiress travelling with her father while the other gentleman is an unspeakable prig and snob and, for all that, great fun (in a kind of poking fun at and laughing at rather than with, if you see what I mean). They agree to marry and the father agrees subject to his beloved daughter being accepted by the posh gent's titled relatives. Only when they get back to London do they find out that the father's vast fortune that he'll settle on his daughter is based on being a slum landlord (he's the widower in the title). The righteous gentleman, who is a doctor and sees folks from the slums every day, can't accept this and takes it even worse when he finds out that his entire income is raised from the slum landlord's mortgage on the property that has been in his family for a long time.

The second half gets even murkier when it seems there's a new scam in London town as the municipal councils seek to build new roads and spruce the place up a bit by getting rid of the slums. The scam is to do up the slums and then claim huge compensation when they're pulled down. Will the good doctor resist this temptation? will he win back his love? will he ever hold his head high again? That's for me to know and for you to guess.

After my initial 'o no, what have I let myself in for' worries, I actually started to enjoy the play. It's performed in the round and I was sitting at the end of the row so I often had actors coming up behind me and starting to act as they approached the stage which made me jump a few times (particularly when the waiter rang a huge bell behind me to announce dinner) but it was good fun, a bit wordy in places but fun nonetheless. The only thing that drew attention away from the play were the oddly Dickensian poses of Simon Gregor as Lickcheese which were a bit over the top.

Stefan Adegbola was great fun as the camp snob Cokane who is only concerned with how things look and our young lovers were both good value with Alex Waldmann as Doctor Trench and Rebecca Collingwood as Blanche, the particularly violent and demure young lady. It was nice to see Rebecca in her first professional play since I saw her in the final year student's performance at the Guildhall last year when she played Flaemmchen in 'Grand Hotel'. I noted in that blog that she had the best voice on stage and, although this was a non-singing role, it was still nice to see her (and I went up to her afterwards to say 'well done').

The play is sold out for the rest of its run but I'm pleased I've seen it and visited the theatre. I suspect we'll be returning!

Two Lates - Rembrandt and Turner

I went to see two 'big' exhibitions in January - 'Late Rembrandt' at the National Gallery and 'Late Turner - Painting Set Free' at Tate Britain. The Turner exhibition closes this weekend so I popped along after work on Friday since Tate Britain is only 10 minutes from where I work - so why did it take me so long to go and leave it until the last few days?

I was lucky enough to get a ticket to a private members viewing of the 'Late Rembrandt' exhibition at the National Gallery. The Gallery had only opened it's membership scheme in the autumn last year and this was only it's second members evening and I was looking forward to going. But it didn't start well. Firstly, we were kept out in the cold in the street rather than being allowed into the foyer to buy a glass of wine while we waited. Secondly, the woman I handed my email ticket to didn't look at me or smile or act remotely welcoming while she crossed my name off the list and handed the ticket back to me, all without looking at me or speaking. Thirdly, the cloakroom staff were brusque in the extreme - 'move along move along'. The human element of the evening was a complete failure.

But then there's the art and that's what it's all about. The art, yes, the reason for being there in the first place. I've never been a big fan of Rembrandt and this was a great opportunity to be surrounded by his works and see what he's all about.

Sadly, this exhibition did nothing to change my mind about Rembrandt and it only reinforced my prejudices. Black on brown with another hint of brown and some deadly nightshade black with a hint of a white collar somewhere. Repeated again and again. Was colour illegal back then or something? Some finely marked faces with incredibly fine lines etched into them doesn't make a great painting for me when 90% of it is just swathes of black or brown.

I did like a few of the paintings, such as this one, 'Portrait of Catrina Hooghsaert' who was about aged 50 when this portrait was made despite looking like 70. I also liked the parrot on the left which doesn't show up at all in this picture (but it's there, honest). I also liked some of the drawings and etchings, like the lovely 'Recumbent Lion, facing right' in, I think, pen and ink - doesn't that mane just make you want to stroke it?

'Late Turner - Painting Set Free' has been the big exhibition at Tate Britain over the last few months and it's closing weekend was bound to be very busy so I popped along late on Friday afternoon. As with Rembrandt, I've never been a big fan of Turner and generally just glance at his paintings as I walk past them in galleries. As with the Rembrandt, it was an opportunity to be immersed in his works and see whether that would change my mind. And it did.

As expected, it was incredibly busy, especially the first couple of rooms, with people milling around, forgetting they're wearing back-packs and carrying big coats against the January weather (there was a huge queue at the cloakroom so I did the same and just carried my coat).

People listening to the audio guide and peering at the paintings, chatting quietly and gesturing at different paintings, and me just wandering round and glancing right and left like a magpie hunting for shiny things but nothing attracted my attention. And then a painting did, 'Dawn of Christianity' in an ornate frame. I'm not sure what attracted me to the painting but it was the first one I stopped at, waited for people to move on and then took a closer look, seeing the holy family on their trek into Egypt on the right bank and the serpent in the river to bottom left. I like the palm tree outlined against the clouds and the deep blue sky. There was something very harmonious and relaxing about the painting, with an element in intrigue as to what was going on.

Wandering deeper into the exhibition, and paying a bit more attention now, brought me to some grand panoramic scenes that made me yearn for some lightening flashes and wild glare from a John Martin 'end of the world' scene. No such drama from Mr Turner, but he brings his own kind of drama such as this lovely small watercolour (I think) titled 'Bamborough Castle' from 1837 (properly spelled Bamburgh).  The storm and the wild, mad waves with little boats bouncing around and the majestic castle on the headland… o yes, I want this one. It's made up of course, since the castle isn't that high above the sea and it's not based on any particular event but the drama and storytelling are marvellous.

Other paintings made me stop and look twice, like 'Undine Giving the Ring to Massaniello' and 'Mercury Sent to Admonish Aeneas', a few paintings here and there. A painting I crossed a room to look at was another small watercolour 'Lake of Zug' from his travels in the Swiss Alps. The blue on blue and the sun peeping out behind the mountains, the misty depth and people in the foreground. I just had to take a look and wonder what was going on.

Being surrounded on all sides by an artists' works can change your mind about them and see things to appreciate that you haven't thought about before. And this exhibition did just that for me. I'm not a convert or a fan, but perhaps I just don't know how to look at Turner's paintings? And that's part of the problem of only seeing the exhibition on it's closing weekend. If I'd gone a couple of months ago and felt this way then I could've read a book or two and gone back to see if I'd learned how to look and see. Unfortunately I can't do that and that's my own fault. But I'll certainly look at any Turner painting differently and maybe, just maybe, I'll see them in a new light.

I learned something at this exhibition. Thank you Tate Britain and, of course, Mr Joseph Mallord William Turner.