'Van Gogh: Self Portraits' at the Courtauld Gallery

The Courtauld Gallery re-opened in late 2021 after being closed for several years for renovations to make better use of the limited space it has in Somerset House, a listed building. Its first major exhibition of 2022 is a selection of Van Gogh's self-portraits, about half of all the self-portraits he painted in his short life. 

There are 15 paintings and one drawing self-portrait, one symbolic self-portrait and one portrait of his friend Eugene Boch. The Courtauld owns one of the paintings, the self-portrait of Vincent with a bandaged ear, and the other works come from various collections around the world. They're all roughly the same size and shape and most have a plain background rather a scene of a room or landscape behind him. 

I wandered from painting to painting wondering what Van Gogh was trying to achieve with these paintings. Was he just practicing and using himself as a convenient model? His style clearly changed between the paintings, sometimes noticeably, using his brush markings in different ways to evoke the image of his face but was there more to it? His colour palette changes frequently, from rather dark and 'formal' self-portraits to freer, lighter paintings, sometimes in a hat and formal coat or jacket and sometimes in more informal or work clothes. No doubt there'll be a learned essay in the catalogue about this.

In only one of the paintings does he present himself as a painter, with a canvas, palette and brushes, wearing his painters' smock. Artists have been painting themselves like this for as long as they've done self-portraits.

One of my favourite paintings is of Van Gogh in a straw hat, in which the only dark element is his eyes. It's slightly smaller than the others but is very attractive in the gentle, almost dappled, colours he's chosen for it. Perhaps that's why it's in the chunky black frame? It would look very different in a lighter and thinner frame (my hint to the Detroit Institute of Art where it normally resides).

Mr Van Gogh is known for his bright ginger beard and in one painting it almost jumps off the canvas at you. He was experimenting with pointillism at the time, using dots of contrasting colours to create the image. It's fascinating to look at his brush marks with dots and little dashes of colour on his jacket and filling the background with more usual marks on his face, particularly over his nose to create the contours, a definite mix of styles creating his own style. 

It's interesting to note the different frames his works are placed in, presumably the frames they came in when loaned to the Courtauld. Most are quite thick and chunky in different styles and colours and I can't help but think they'd look better in simpler frames. They're not big paintings so having a chunky frames makes them appear bigger by taking up more wall space but I don't think that adds anything to the paintings themselves. 

There is also only one full face self-portrait with Vincent looking straight out at the viewer. Apparently he didn't like showing his full face since it demonstrated his gaunt, sunken cheeks due to losing his teeth.

A final two paintings for you, the famous self-portrait with a bandaged ear that is the only one in the exhibition with a background of what looks like his room with art on the wall. In none of the paintings does he look particularly happy or relaxed. There must have been bright moments in his life but you wouldn't guess that from the self-portraits. 

A painting I am very familiar with is Van Gogh's painting of his chair, a symbolic self-portrait, since it's normally in the National Gallery. I don't have a problem with including this painting since it is a representation of him, his chair with his pipe and tobacco on the seat is saying 'this is me'. It was a companion piece to the painting he did of Gauguin's chair from the short time they lived and painted together. He signs it simply as 'Vincent'.

This is a lovely exhibition and I'm pleased I've seen it (several times now). It hasn't shown me different side to Van Gogh the man or the painter but it does emphasise his constant experimentation, even in relatively small ways. He died very young but left behind a wealth of paintings. Highly recommended.

'Raphael' at the National Gallery

The big exhibition at the National Gallery is all about Raphael, with works on display from across his career. Raphael is one of the big three of the high renaissance and stands beside Leonardo and Michelangelo in the pantheon of the greats in artistic achievement. Where they both lived long lives, Raphael died at the age of 37 in 1520 so who knows what he might have gone on to achieve? The National Gallery is blessed in having a good selection of his paintings in its collection and these are added to by works from around the world creating a rather large exhibition. 

The exhibition starts in Room 1 beside the portico entrance and then winds through other rooms so the Gallery is using the Getty entrance as the way into the exhibition. Exhibitions are usually in the purpose built exhibition space downstairs in the Sainsbury Wing but I like it when they use other spaces for exhibitions since it changes the atmosphere of the place. It's appropriate that these old paintings are on the original walls of the Gallery.

One of the first paintings you see is a small head of Saint Sebastian painted when Raphael was about 20 years old. Not for Raphael the usual near naked figure with arrows in him, he shows us a rather plump-cheeked saint idly playing with an arrow wearing sumptuous robes. The colours are gorgeous and immediately attracted me from across the room. Another early painting that immediately drew my eye was a small Saint George fighting the poor dragon. I liked the broken lance, the genteel landscape, the princess running away in the distance and just look at that big, barrel-chested horse - that's a war horse and half! The painting is about 12" x 9" and in an interesting tabernacle-style wooden frame. I'd be happy to have it on my wall but I'd be on the dragon's side.

As you'd expect, there are quite a few Virgin and Child paintings with various saints. I think my favourite was the round 'Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist' (also known as 'The Alba Madonna'). It's quite an arresting painting with rather over-muscled infants but what kept me looking were the eyes of all three characters - just look at their sharp gazes. Mary and the infant John are looking at the cross the Child is playing with, his future foretold, while the Child looks at John, the cousin who will later baptise him. Set in a gentle rural landscape with buildings in the background, not the sometimes harsh landscapes painters imagined they were like in the Holy Land or overly lush Tuscan landscapes, it's a bit pared back and all the better for it. 

Imagine my surprise when I walked into another room and 'The School of Athens' filled one of the walls at almost full scale. The painting is a fresco in a private room in the Vatican so it's actually painted onto/into the wall but it was still a delight to see this reproduction. It's debated, but I choose to believe that Raphael painted his fellow masters in this painting with Leonardo centre stage as Aristotle, a brooding Michelangelo on the steps and a self-portrait of himself just coming into the scene on the right. He's the new boy in town after all. 

The exhibition includes some of Raphael's delicate drawings, some on loan from the Ashmolean that held a great exhibition of his drawings a few years ago. Something I didn't know about Raphael is that he also started to produce prints, taking his lead from Durer. This was a very good way of getting his name more widely known and people who couldn't afford a painting might be able to acquire a print. Here is 'The Judgement of Paris' with an awful lot going on.

A large painting that caught me eye, mainly due to the composition, was 'Saint Cecilia with Saints Paul, John the Evangelist, Augustine and Mary Magdalene'. They're almost life-sized but there's a gap above and below them. Saint Cecilia is the patron saint of music but she is so enthralled by the heavenly music above that she drops all her instruments to the ground. I think my favourite part of the painting is the pile of musical instruments that are all so delicately and realistically painted. I also like the almost haughty Magdalene who, unusually, has her hair covered.

There is a room dedicated to Raphael's tapestry designs that, interestingly, had to be drawn backwards so when they were made up by the expert weavers in Bruges they could come out as a mirror image and the right way round. The V&A has the huge cartoons for some of the tapestries he designed for the Sistine Chapel in St Peter's at the Vatican. There is also a small room about Raphael's architectural work. He did a bit of everything it seems.

The final room is given over to Raphael's portraiture. Apparently he was too busy to do many portraits but did important political portraits and portraits of his friends. There's an extravagant portrait of Lorenzo de Medici in incredible fabrics but the painting I'll show is much simpler, his 'Self Portrait with Giulio Romano', possibly completed in the year Raphael died. Romano was one of Raphael's main assistants and the pose suggests that Raphael is almost saying if you get a Romano painting it's like you have one of mine, he's that good. It's quite a touching painting and sad when you realise he died shorty after completing it.

A final painting is the poster boy for the exhibition, one of Raphael's good friends 'Bindo Altoviti' on loan from the National Gallery of Art in Washington. It's a very delicate painting, just look at the strands of hair and the light hair growing on his cheek, so much detail added for his friend.

It's a very good exhibition and bigger than I was expecting. Highly recommended.

Exhibitions Unblogged

I've been very bad at blogging this year, especially about some excellent exhibitions I've seen, so here is a catch-up bloggie to get them into the Plastic Bag. 

'Durer's Journeys: Travels of a Renaissance Artist' at the National Gallery

Follow Durer on his journeys to Italy and the Low Countries through drawings, paintings and prints, the architecture and the strange animals he saw in zoos.  

'Surrealism Beyond Borders' at Tate Modern

I always think of surrealism as a European/American thing so who knew there was an active group of surrealists in Cairo and a thriving scene in Mexico. The exhibition does what it promises and shares the surrealist experience from around the world.

'Helen Frankenthaler: Radical Beauty' at Dulwich Picture Gallery

A real eye-opener in how to make prints. I still can't get my head around what I saw were really prints, even after watching a video of how she made the prints. Astonishing and beautiful. "No rules".

'Van Gogh: Self Portraits' at the Courtauld Gallery

A small but lovely exhibition of how Van Gogh saw himself throughout his painting career and how his painting developed.

'Virtual Veronese' at the National Gallery

Put on the virtual reality headset and you head back to the 15th century and see a Veronese painting in the chapel it was originally painted for, a very strange experience.

'Life Between Islands' at Tate Britain

A great selection of paintings, photographs and installations by artists with Caribbean heritage but associated with the UK

'Raphael' at the National Gallery

A wonderful romp through the artistic career of Raphael ending with his time in Rome before he died in 1520. Painting, drawings, bronzes, prints, designs for tapestries and even his architecture works. 

'Beyond Bloomsbury: Life, Loves and Legacy' at York Art Gallery

Lots of portraits of and by the Bloomsbury group of artists, forever painting each other, plus some lovely still lifes, a sampling of the Omega Workshop works and the ongoing legacy of Bloomsbury.

Plastic Bag Awards 2021

2021 has been an odd year, yet again, and continues to be so. Between official lockdowns and self-imposed lockdowns when the government wasn't doing its prime objective of protecting its citizens, I managed to get out and see and do some things over the year. The categories are, again, abbreviated to make sure there are enough contenders to make it worthwhile convening the judging panel, but here they are, the Baggies of 2021! 

Best Theatre (Drama and Dance)

I only saw one drama this year but several dance productions. The nominees are:

'The Normal Heart' @ The National Theatre
'Romeo & Juliet' @ The Royal Opera House
'The Midnight Bell' @ Sadler's Wells
'L'Heure Exquise' @ The Linbury at the Royal Opera House
'Curated by Carlos' @ Sadler's Wells

'The Normal Heart' was the only play I saw this year and, while it's an important work, it's not a great drama. It was wonderful to see Alessandra Ferri dance twice over the autumn, especially dance with Carlos Acosta, I also saw the ballet that made me fall in love with the art form with my original Romeo, Steven McRae on his return to the stage after his injury. But the dance work that made me sit up and pay attention was the new work from Matthew Bourne, 'The Midnight Bell', telling stories of the seedy side of Soho between the wars. I'm looking forward to seeing it again one day.

The winner is 'The Midnight Bell' by Matthew Bourne at Sadler's Wells.

Best Exhibition

I managed to see a few good exhibitions over the summer and autumn, with all major galleries open and the Courtauld finally re-opened after a three-year restoration project in November (and it's looking good). The nominees are:

'The Making of Rodin' @ Tate Modern
'Sensing the Unseen' @ The National Gallery
'Sophie Taeuber-Arp' @ Tate Modern
'Poussin and the Dance' @ The National Gallery
'Durer's Journeys' @ The National Gallery

There have been some great exhibitions this year that gallery curators will have been working on for several years but fewer people than expected will have seen them due to the plague. That's unfortunate but those of us lucky enough to see them are very grateful.

Who knew that Rodin made naked models of his works to get the musculature and stance right before adding clothes? Who guessed that Durer made sketches from his travels around Europe to incorporate into his paintings? There's a lot to learn from exhibitions. I didn't expect to like the Poussin exhibition but I did, seeing his graceful paintings of dancers and it was a joy to discover Sophie Taeuber-Arp, a colour master I'd never heard of. 

But the Baggie goes to 'Sensing the Unseen' at the National Gallery, a digital and interactive exploration of Jan Gossaert's 'Adoration of the Kings'. Not only was this a great painting to explore but it was perfect for this experimental exhibition of different ways of looking at it, one of my favourite paintings in the collection.

Best Installation

This year I've split off installations from exhibitions since they are, essentially, different things, different ways of experiencing art. The nominees are:

'Rupture No 1: blowtorching the bitten peach' by Heather Phillipson @ Tate Britain
'Infinity Mirror Rooms' by Yayoi Kusama @ Tate Modern
'Forest for Change' @ Somerset House
'In Love With The World' by Anicka Yi @ Tate Modern

This has been a fine year for installations in London and I admit to wanting a holiday cottage in Kusama's Infinity Mirror Rooms. I loved the 'Forest' in the stone courtyard of Somerset House and I want to adopt one of the alien creatures floating round the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, but the winner is Heather Phillipson at Tate Britain.

This is a fabulous installation that should be called 'The Great All-Seeing God of a Thousand Eyes' and I can't help but gawp at it as I walk through and experience it. It's a sound and vision experience and occupies the central galleries of the Tate. It's fabulous.

Best Face Mask

The pandemic went on from 2020 into 2021 and more places started selling masks since the need continued. Cressida Bell produced a 'Fireworks' mask and the V&A Museum produced different William Morris designed masks (I bought a green one), but the award goes to the Tate that produced a fabulous mask based on the 'Punjabi Rockers' work by Chila Kumari Singh Burman. I bought two.  

And that's it, the reduced Plastic Bag Awards for 2021. Here's hoping we can get closer to normal next year. 

'Duncan Grant: 1920' at Charleston House

The first solo show of Duncan Grant's works in the last 40 years is on at Charleston at the moment, a re-creation of his first solo show in 1920. I do find it odd that Grant isn't more prominent in exhibitions while his contemporaries seem to be exhibited. I've seen his paintings in group or thematic exhibitions many times but not an exhibition about him. The exhibition is in the new gallery at Charleston House in Sussex.

The first painting you see is 'Venus and Adonis', one of my favourite works of his that I saw at an exhibition about Sussex modernist works at Two Temple Place a few years ago. The huge pink Venus lounging lazily after what I hope was a very lusty session while the tiny Adonis runs away in the distance. You actually have to look for Adonis (if you don't know where he is).  It's an odd composition is some ways - the swag curtain taking up so much space, the contorted body of Venus and the jug in the foreground. The colours are rich and deep. There's something about it that just makes it work as an artistic statement, a very calm painting despite the subject matter.

The largest painting in the exhibition is 'Interior' set in the dining room at Charleston and features Vanessa Bell and David Garnett, both working. Vanessa is painting a still life of the fruit on the table (interestingly using a chair as an easel) and Garnett is working on a translation. A stray chair is in the immediate foreground with a highlight that draws the eye. We also don't see all of either character, both their bodies are cut off in some way. There's a lot to read and wonder about in this painting. 

There are a few flower paintings and interesting still lives and I particularly liked 'Still Life with Flowers' with the red of the poppies really popping out. It's painted from the side and the jug is overpowered by flowers (apparently he used that jug in other paintings around the time of making this painting). Wouldn't you want that jug of flowers on a table in your home? 

It's an interesting approach to an exhibition, re-creating an artist's first exhibition, and this was definitely worth seeing. I'm surprised that more exhibitions aren't curated on this kind of theme.

'The Normal Heart' at the National Theatre

My last theatre play before the pandemic was 'The Visit' on the Olivier stage at the National Theatre and my return to plays was 'The Normal Heart', also on the Olivier stage. 'The Normal Heart' is an odd play in some ways, very autobiographical by Larry Kramer about the AIDS crisis in early '80s New York and written in 1985 while the crisis was still raging and turning into a world-wide epidemic. 

The play starts with the characters assembling on stage, lights go down and the 'thump, thump, thump' sound of Donna Summer's 'I Feel Love' blasts out into the auditorium for a few seconds  and we see the characters pull their shirts off and dance in spotlights before it all vanishes and we're in a doctor's waiting room meeting the first casualty of the epidemic. The hedonism before the tragic results. I's quite a powerful move.

The play and the arguments start with endless words, words, words, shouting and confrontation. It's not the easiest of plays to watch, especially if you're around my age and lived through it all. The strange cancer gradually comes to be associated with gay men and with sex and Ned Weeks, the lead character, feels the need to tell his community about it. But others who fought for equal rights feel that you can't tell men how to live their lives after finally finding (relative) freedom. That's the premise of the play, the results of the freedom to be out and enjoy life openly versus the emerging medical epidemic that calls for restraint.

There's a lot of polemic on both sides of the argument - 'it's my right to have lots of sex' versus 'be careful' - and I can't help but feel that this would've benefited from a good edit to make the play flow better rather than get stuck in a position every now and then. At the time it was written this was probably relevant but seems odd looking back when people were dying. It made me wonder when I first heard of AIDS and I can't remember, probably the mid-'80s but I probably didn't really understand it. In 1987 I worked in an unemployment benefit office and had quite a few AIDS/HIV men on my caseload so certainly knew about it by then and visited one of the main treatment hospitals in London to better understand it (as it was back then).

There's no happy ending to this play, it was written in 1985 after all. Ned's lover Felix catches the disease and dies - did he catch it from Ned or not? The best it can claim is that it reconciles Ned and his brother, a sub-plot in the play. I can't say I enjoyed the play but it did make me think and remember. The covid pandemic isn't the only one I've lived through (so far), there was an earlier one in my lifetime

Ben Daniels played Ned and Dino Fetscher played his lover. I liked seeing Liz Carr come on in her wheelchair, showing that just because you're disabled doesn't mean you can't turn in a powerful performance. The play has now closed and, while I'm not sure I enjoyed it, I'm pleased I saw it. 

'Curated by Carlos' by the Birmingham Royal Ballet at Sadler's Wells

'Curated by Carlos' is a triple bill of one-act ballets by the Birmingham Royal Ballet of which Carlos Acosta is the director. It's made up of 'City of a Thousand Trades', 'Imminent' and 'Chacona' and was being performed at a rather busy Sadler's Wells. I've never seen Carlos Acosta dance so the main draw was that he would dance with the great Alessandra Ferri as part of the show. I saw Alessandra dance at the Royal Opera House a few weeks ago and it's always special to see her on stage.

'City of a Thousand Trades' is a new work commissioned by Carlos Acosta as a love letter to Birmingham.  It's more choreographed movement than ballet with a weird musical landscape with lots of banging and strange percussion sounds. I found the music and movement quite distracting at times through the dance, and I kept thinking 'how on earth do they remember to raise an arm just there?' or 'move right just at that moment?'. There was no real fluidity to the work, nothing to suggest that this movement follows that movement, so how do they do it? Endless practice I suppose, with muscle memory, but also a lot of mental discipline. I'm pleased I saw it.

I preferred the second ballet, 'Imminent', which was more balletic, girls in slips and lads in vests and pants. They danced round the stage, leaping and posing, inter-changing duos as some ran on and some ran off and then got together as an ensemble again. It was a more 'traditional' piece so felt more familiar, less manic than the first dance. I thought it was beautiful.

The final piece was 'Chacona' and they'd saved the best till last. The music was by Bach but played by a piano, a violin and a guitar and that was really effective. As with the other two works, all the dancers were involved, dressed in black with dramatic lighting. In the first movement the dancers formed a 'wall' that moved every so often and Alessandra Ferri and Carlos Acosta moved through the 'wall' as they danced together, backward and forward from one side of the stage to the other. Alessandra is aged 58 and Carlos is 48 but you'd never guess. It was a joy to see them together and he effortlessly lifted her high into the air.

Then the ballet lads and lasses took over, pulling dramatic shapes in the dramatic lighting, moving together and then splitting into four rows of four dancers to dance and writhe in their personalised lighting before joining together again. It really was a dazzling performance of movement and sound. I hope to see it again one day.

'Romeo and Juliet' at the Royal Opera House

Last week I went to see 'Romeo and Juliet' at the Royal Opera House, the ballet that made me fall in love with the art form and, luckily, the dancer who played Romeo in that production six years ago was dancing again. Steven McRae danced Romeo in 2015 and I was in the audience when he snapped an Achilles tendon in 2019 so I had to be there to see his triumphant return to the stage last week, once again dancing Romeo, with Sarah Lamb as Juliet. What a privilege to see this joyous ballet with such great and graceful dancers as my re-introduction to the main stage of the Royal Opera House. The Royal Ballet dance Kenneth MacMillan's version of this eternal story - I've also seen John Cranko's version in Boston and, more recently, Matthew Bourne's re-imagining of the tale, but I prefer the Royal Ballet. Prokofiev was having a good month when he wrote the score for this ballet. 

We all know the story behind the work, the rivalry between the two houses of Capulet and Montague in Verona, how Romeo falls for Juliet and pursues her to marry secretly while she is supposed to marry another nobleman. She feigns suicide to avoid the marriage but Romeo believes she is dead so commits suicide himself and when she finds him dead she follows him into death. Whenever we get to the marriage scene I can't help but wish they don't marry since marriage signs their death warrants, but they always do. Maybe one day the friar will refuse to marry them...

Needless to say, I loved it. It was great to see the excitement of the sword-fencing scenes again, see the Happy Strumpets strut their stuff and see Romeo and his mates enjoying themselves before tragedy strikes. There were a few tense moments when Steven McRae took off to fly across the stage but he was on top form and seemed to revel in performing again. It's what he does, after all. He received huge cheers when he strode on stage at the start of the performance and an even louder ovation at the end, with Sarah Lamb pushing him forward for bows at the end and to accept the cheers and love from the audience. The bows at the end are usually led by the ballerina but that night it was all for Steven, and rightly so. 

And I still love that ballet.

'Poussin and the Dance' at the National Gallery

There's a small exhibition at the National Gallery at the moment about Poussin's dance paintings in the ground floor galleries. I'm not a huge fan of Poussin or that 'French academic' style he inspired but he is a great painter. He left France for Rome in the 1620s and that is where he studied the antiquities there, the statues and other objects, seeing how the artists of the past portrayed movement in stone and that's what he tried to reproduce in these paintings. 

The exhibition probably contains more sketches and drawings than it does paintings, but that's bonus for me. I love seeing great painter's drawings and preliminary sketches, see how they played around with positioning characters in the scenes of the paintings and how they might've changed their minds. I find it all rather fascinating. Poussin seems to have preferred ink for his drawings which gives nice lines and makes them longer lasting. I think my favourite was a study for 'Dance to the Music of Time', a detail from the painting which is the poster for the exhibition.

I admit to not paying much attention to most of the paintings on show - that's pretty, that's colourful - but three paintings that did grab my attention were all painted for Cardinal Richelieu and they were hung together, the 'Triumph of...' Pan, Silenus and Bacchus. Each of them are rather raucous scenes of drunken debauchery as you'd expect from the protagonists. There's a lot going on in these paintings and they're full of movement with lots of dancing, leering, drunken collapses, people loosing their clothes, they're joyous celebrations of life. Look at the detail in the paintings and decide what's happening, like in the 'Triumph of Pan' one man is trying to pull a satyr to his feet after he's drunkenly collapsed - who would put that at the front of a painting? Poussin, obviously.

Apparently, the urn just in front of the pair is a copy of an actual urn that was recently found and was creating a stir in academic circles at the time.

The final painting of the show is 'Dance to the Music of Time' on loan from the Wallace Collection for the first time, and it gets a room to itself. It's a very allegorical painting and is, oddly, quite relaxing. It shows Time playing his lyre and Poverty, Labour, Wealth and Pleasure holding hands and dancing together. Unlike the other paintings, there isn't a crowd around them, just them in a pastoral landscape. Above them in the clouds, we see Apollo and Dawn crossing the sky.

The exhibition was quite busy when I was there so I'll go back again in a few weeks time when it should be calmer. I'd like the opportunity to see the three 'Triumph' paintings again to focus on the detail. 

'L'Heure Exquise' at the Royal Opera House

'L'Heure Exquise' is a work by Maurice Bejart based on Samuel Beckett's 'Happy Days'. In the play, the lead character is buried up to the waist in rubble so in this dance version, she is buried in pointe shoes. The lead was played by the ever-graceful Alessandra Ferri partnered by Carsten Jung. Ferri has a long relationship with the Royal Ballet, training at the Royal Ballet School and joining the company in 1980, achieving the rank of Principal dancer and later becoming Prima Ballerina Assoluta. And she's still dancing. 

The performance was in the Linbury Theatre, much smaller and more intimate than the main stage, and it's great to be so much closer to the dancers. Ferri tells her stories of her past through words, song and, of course, dance. It starts with her buried to her waist in ballet shoes and then the mound of shoes opens up and she steps onto the stage to sift through her memories. One minute she's singing then the next she's riding Jung like a childhood rocking horse. He was a very able partner, morphing into whatever Ferri needed.

The most tense and puzzling section for me was when Ferri discovers a handbag full of memories - a compact, a pair of ballet shoes - that she takes out one by one, and then she pulls out a gun and holds it up in the air. What is that for? Why is it there? What happened in her past to make a handgun such an important memory? Especially when she points it at Jung and he slowly takes it from her. Clearly an important memory and, like the rest of the show, a puzzlement...

For most of the show I had no idea what was going on - just like when I saw the 'Happy Days' play a few years back - so I just let it wash over me. You don't always have to understand everything, sometimes just experiencing it is enough. It's always a delight to see Alessandra Ferri and admire her skill and art and I look forward to the next time.