'Treasure Island' x 2 @ National Theatre

Okay, so there was no grog flavoured ice-cream but I still enjoyed 'Treasure Island' at the National Theatre at Christmas so I booked to see the show again. This time we were in the fifth row of the stalls, in the middle and with a perfect - and close - view of the action. One of the good things about being so close was that I could see all the little ticks and movements of the animatronic parrot that sat on Long John's shoulder. 'Pieces of eight!' eh Parrot? And nicking Long John's sausages when he's cooking in the galley and the parrot looking away as if to say 'I have no idea what you mean'. O yes Captain Flint you rascal, I know your sort.

Anyway, where was I? O yes, being closer gave me a great view of the sword fight between Billy Bones and Black Dog which wasn't so much swashbuckling as lunging forward in the hopes of hitting something. Not the most elegant of sword fights but quite realistic when you think of the weight of a cutlass and flailing round with it. And pirates probably weren't the most healthy and agile of sea-farers. It was also interesting to see Billy covered in tattoos which, from further back aren't terribly clear on his arms.

When the good ship Hispaniola rises from the stage for the first time it's still a spectacle as we see the rooms below-decks and the crew starts wandering round them just as if we sliced down the middle of the ship to show us all areas, even down to the crew hammocks in the bilges. It's a wonderful sight seeing it rise up and up as we watch it emerge from the stage and netting appearing to climb on in the battle scene that closes the first half.

The island is still a bit meh with not a palm tree in sight - we all know that desert islands are covered in palm trees, that's a known fact and is probably a law too. But the action takes us forward as Long John faces down a mutiny against his leadership - you just can't trust pirates these days, can you? - and young Jim befriends Ben Gunn, sails the ship herself, rescues her friends, finds the treasure and lives happily ever after… except for the dreams.

It's great fun and, as you might have guessed, I loved it. Again! I must be an embarrassment to be with when I see this show - I go all 'avast there' and 'oo arrr' and 'lubbers' all over the shop. Sorry about that. And I did ask for grog-flavoured ice cream at half time and the usher looked startled for a moment and then laughed and gave me vanilla - didn't he realise I was serious? I should've run him through with my cutlass the damned lubber… except I didn't have one on me. Drat! That's one of the drawbacks of living in the 21st Century.

'Marlene Dumas: The Image as Burden' at Tate Modern

I went to see the new exhibition of Marlene Dumas paintings at the Tate Modern this week - The Image as Burden. I've never really seen much of Marlene Dumas so this was an opportunity to dive in and learn something new. She doesn't paint from life, she paints from other images and a few of the descriptions beside the paintings talk about trying to find different edits of the photos she used as source materials.

I wandered through the exhibition wondering why, wondering what she was trying to say and why she was trying to say it. My fellow viewers were largely female of a certain age and the subject of many of the paintings was female. In the majority of cases I must own up and say that I didn't really know what I was looking at and then I stumbled across something like 'Great Britain'.

'Great Britain' is made up of two contrasting portraits, one of Streatham's favourite daughter Naomi Campbell and the other of Princess Diana.  One is from a fashion shoot and the other from a royal sitting. How different but both are paintings of young women around the same age and in the same country. Naomi is largely naked while Diana is swathed in silks and yet they moved in largely the same circles, chatted to the same people and attended the same events. Being a supermodel elevates you and being a princess with a penchant for popular culture means you must compromise. What does this composition tell us about class and money and the 1980s?

Another work that made me stop and think was 'Helena's Dream', quite a simple picture in many respects but I wanted to know what she was thinking about, what was the dream? Her eyes are closed, hair pulled back from her face and lips slightly pursed - what's going on in her head? What is the dream?

I suppose that's the response to many of Marlene's paintings - what's going on? And it's up to us to decide for ourselves.

One of the rooms was dedicated to her 'For Whom The Bell Tolls' exhibition in 2010 in which she has film stars crying and she says:

"In 2007 my mother died at noon. 'For Whom The Bell Tolls' was about loss and departure, but also about transformation and freedom. A spirit set free. My grief and her relief. So I made the (film)stars and the gods weep for her."

I like the concept and conceit of 'I made the stars and gods cry', of that immense power to be able to make that happen, of the thinking behind the concept.

I liked 'Genetic Longing' that isn't explained in any way but it sits on the wall with all these other grey on grey and white paintings. flaunting its colour. It reminds me of one of Buffy Sainte-Marie's digital paintings. I imagine that this is an older woman whose biological clock is running down gazing over at a baby in a pram. The jealousy is there, the need and want. I have no idea what happens next.

There's a small room of what are considered pornographic paintings with a sign at the entrance saying some people might be shocked. Um, no I wasn't. It's probably easier and quicker to Google to see a woman fingering herself and a naked  man bending over than it is to find these particular pictures online. Don't worry Marlene, we've probably stumbled across it already.

Dumas' most recent work is also on display, a series of small portraits of influential gay men from the last couple of centuries created in response to the political situation on Russia and these were exhibited there last year. They're displayed side by side and include notables like Oscar Wilde and Alan Turing, all with a handwritten short paragraph about them underneath.

It's not really a happy or joyful exhibition, it's a bit ponderous and serious and there's certainly space for that. It's quite thought-provoking and I may well go back to see it again and see whether a second viewing makes me see the paintings in a different way. I suspect I will, having thought about the paintings and themes. I wonder what I'll see next time? 

'Di and Viv and Rose' at the Vaudeville Theatre

Last night I was treated to a ticket to see 'Di and Viv and Rose', the new play on at the Vaudeville and I had no idea what it's about. Three women I suppose, but what else? And it features three actresses I've seen on stage before: Tamzin Outhwaite (Di), Samantha Spiro (Viv) and Jenna Russell (Rose). Oddly, I've seen them all in singing roles but there wasn't a song in sight in this production, other than singing along to 'Walk This Way' by Aerosmith and Run DMC.

I've seen Tamzin in 'Sweet Charity' at the Menier Choccy Factory and in 'Boeing Boeing', Jenna in 'Merrily We Roll Along' at the Choccy and in 'Sunday in the Park with George' at Studio 54 on Broadway, and Samantha in the concert version of 'Merrily We Roll Along' to celebrate Sondheim's birthday and in 'Twelfth Night' with Derek Jacobi. And together, I must say, they are great.

It's the age-old story of growing up and being 'besties' (in today's tortuous jargon), sharing their young lives, hopes and dreams and then seeing what happens. So, the first half of the play is set in the early 80s where they all meet up as students and share a house. Di is a lesbian, Viv is a feminist swot and Rose just wants to have fun with as many boys as she can manage. They're not great friends initially but after they move into the house together that Rose's stepfather buys as an investment, we watch their relationships develop and deepen.

One gets raped and they rally round, one gets pregnant and they rally round. That's what friends do, they rally round. We see their evolving friendship in the first half and the second half sees them growing up and older, from one having children and one moving to New York to realise her dreams, to the harsher realities of life in the '90s and '00s. The first shock comes when Rose dies suddenly (and I really didn't see that coming). She's the calm centre that holds Di and Viv together and the centre of their memories. Rose brought them together in the first place and now she's gone - how will the friends stay together, especially when one lives in New York? It's all about memories.

In the final scene Di and Viv talk about still seeing Rose - her hair, her arms but never her face - the friend they lost too young with their shared memories. No one of them 'owns' those memories, they're all shared. Relationships are strained and there's no telling what might happen… until it happens. But I won't spoil it.

There's a great soundtrack to the play as well, mostly women (as is appropriate). Eurythmics, Bellestars,  Kirsty MacColl, Madonna and more. The music punctuates the scenes and the changing years. The sparse set (after the clutter of the student house) says 'look at me', focus on me and what I'm saying - or not saying.

The play particularly resonated with me since I was a student in the early '80s and shared a house with two friends. My reality being mirrored by this play - or at least some of the elements. There was me, Mark and Mike sharing a terraced house in Cardiff, growing up together for two years, two long years of starting to become the people we became. Mike sadly died and he was the sort of Rose figure, the one in the middle that linked us all. I hadn't thought about Mike and Mark for years until I saw the play and the memories came flooding back. I was at Mike's funeral but I've lost touch with Mark. After all these years he might've been in the same audience for this play and I possibly wouldn't recognise him.  

There are laugh out loud moments (a lot of them), big grin moments and moments of thoughtful quiet in this play. The women gel most effectively, demonstrating the fun and the niggles of being young and living away from home for the first time, using the freedom to explore in different ways. And it works, it's believable and real. It's a delight and great fun and you should go and see it! Now!

Steve Strange

I was shocked to hear of the death of Steve Strange when I got home tonight. The Visage Facebook page posted the following today:

We are extremely saddened to announce that Steve Strange died at 11.15 local time on Thursday 12th February, in Sharm El Sheik International Hospital, Egypt. Steve died in his sleep, of Heart Failure. Steve's family, band members and friends are all distraught at this sudden news of his untimely death. Steve’s family request privacy at this extremely difficult time.

Steve will, of course, always be remembered for 'Fade To Grey', the first New Romantic hit after he helped to create the genre so long ago. He was in the video for David Bowie's 'Ashes to Ashes' and his Blitz club was the place to be in the early 80s in Soho. Needless to say I never went.

Steve came and went over the years and the last time I saw him was when he was in that reality TV hairdressing show on BBC3 a few years ago where he was the 'style consultant'. Before that I saw him played as a character in Boy George's 'Taboo' with their love-hate rivalry and depiction of the highs of the early '80s through to the disappointments of the later '80s.

Steve was only eight months older than me and he became so successful so young - where do you go after that high? Being actively sought out by Bowie must have been a thing. Being a leader in the biggest scene of the '80s and courted by all must have been an ego boost. Coming down after all that must have been awful but at least he kept getting back up. Steve Strange clearly doesn't do fading. 

'Grayson Perry: Who Are You?' at the National Portrait Gallery

Grayson Perry has an exhibition on at the National Portrait Gallery at the moment, a follow-up to his TV programmes last year about identity and creating portraits of people he met. It's not your usual bung 'em in a room and let people gawp type of exhibition, no, with this one you have to work to find the art.

It's in the first floor of the National Portrait Gallery and at the start of the exhibition you pick up a floor plan with arrows taking you on a journey through the standing collection to find one of Grayson's objects. Will the next one be a vase or a blanket or a statue or a miniature portrait? Find it and find out! It's quite subversive in a way, mixing the old and the new, the usual portraits of the great and the good, mostly dead and named in history books with Grayson's works standing beside them. I wonder how it was decided which work to put in which room?

There are shiny vases, all about two feet tall in different shapes and showing different approaches to family as well as politics and emerging issues. We see gay adopters being celebrated on one side of the vase called 'Modern Family' with images of other family groups on the other side. Another vase is called the 'Idealised Heterosexual Couple' that has the mother and father on one side of the vase and a daughter on the other side but the couple have split up and the dad drives his daughter to dance classes even though he lives a few miles away so that he gets to see her regularly.

Another vase called 'Memory Jar' is about Alzheimers and shows an older couple on one side and the memory thief demon on the other side, stealing memories. Another vase is 'The Huhne Vase' about Chris Huhne, former Cabinet Minister who went to prison for perjury and is decorated with his name, his face, a phallus and balls and other images of what Grayson calls 'Default Man', ie white, middle aged, middle class man.

One of the most rebellious pieces in its own way is 'I Am A Man', a small metal statue based on the Benin images from Africa of a female to male transexual. It's very primitive and raw and very male. And it's placed in a gallery of large paintings of male war heroes. This isn't the best angle to take a photo but it shows the kind of portraits in the room so might help understand the power of finding the right position and site for a piece of art.

There was also a lovely miniature portrait of Rylan Clark as the 'Earl of Essex' in a room full of eminent Victorians, with him being compared to and thought of as modern day royalty. Grayson argues that reality TV stars are the equivalent of royalty these days since they're almost treated as such in everyday life so let's take that approach in the arts.

The largest piece greets you as you climb the stairs to the first floor - an enormous patchwork 'Comfort Blanket'! It notes all the things the British love and love to hate, sometimes in images and other times in words. It's marvellous! And here it is with some people admiring it to give you a sense of scale.

Beside each of the works is a small sign with the name of the piece but also a paragraph or two from Grayson explaining the background to the piece  and this is what he says about 'Comfort Blanket':

The exhibition is free to enter so take advantage of that and visit Grayson. There's lots more than the few I mention - I loved the ceramic fat ladies and would love to have them in my living room to cheer me up after a long day at work. I'm very admirationous of this exhibition and Grayson's works in general. They're fun and frivolous at one level but have something powerful to say if you can be bothered to think. The portrait of him in a madly colourful frock is also on display beside the final works.

Go and see it!  

'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?