QUICK NOTE: I’d just like to pause a moment here and explain why I’m using only my friends’ initials, as opposed to their names. I don’t want to give their full names here, without their permission. I did consider writing ‘B –‘ in that way that Eighteenth Century novelists (and Alice Walker) sometimes do, but this looks like a disappointing exam grade rather than a person’s lightly-disguised first name. I also considered using pen names for everyone I mention, something I have done when referring to my mum-in-law in the past, and I might move to doing that eventually, but the people involved would probably hate their pen-names and I’d forget whom I’d called what…well, you can imagine the chaos, can’t you? So, for now, it’s alphabet soup.
2023: My Year Of Culture
In the past few years I’ve gone to the theatre less and less. Around 2018, I started making more effort to get tickets for things and we saw Eddie Izzard, Stewart Lee, Rod Gilbert and folk-singer Kate Rusby at Sheffield City Hall, and a few musicals at The Crucible. But then Covid hit and we just stopped attending performances of any kind. We haven’t even been to the cinema since 2019.
So I decided to fill 2023 with cultural events and expose myself to more art, music and theatre. Fortunately, this coincided with my friend B retiring and embarking on a programme of cultural activity that would make the Royal Family look like lightweights.
I think I might have put my finger on why I stopped doing ‘culture’. The fact is that I haven’t truly enjoyed much of what I’ve exposed myself to so far this year, whether low or high-brow. It began with P’s and my trip to the musical play based on the music of Bob Dylan which I told you about back in Feb or March. Regular readers know how that went (badly). Since then, among other things, I’ve seen two operas (Madama Butterfly and Carmen), one in York and one in Doncaster, both performed by the Ukrainian National Opera – who, quite frankly, I found underwhelming, though I don’t blame them. They’ve got enough on their plate at present.
I’ve reached the sad conclusion that I’m a high-brow Philistine [a’ Classic FM-er’, if you like]. If I have to listen to men with high-pitched voices, I’d much rather listen to a Handel aria than the Bee Gees any day of the week – but if I have to listen to Handel, I’d much rather listen to just ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’ or ‘Va Tacito’ than sit through the whole of Rinaldo or Giulio Cesare.
B and I did see a wonderful ballet in Sheffield, based on The Great Gatsby, with beautiful choreography, fabulous dancing, gorgeous costumes and sets, and a lovely score. Maybe ballet could be left on my list of high-brow stuff I genuinely love.
A few months ago, P, The Master and myself went to see two concerts as part of the Sheffield Festival of Chamber Music, and they were brilliantly executed, mostly on piano but with some saxophone. I enjoyed the first two pieces which were by composers I’d never heard of, one of them Japanese, but I found Debussy’s La Mer began to get a bit tedious towards the end, and the Rachmaninov programme, five pieces (none of which were the famous piece everyone knows and loves) played on two pianos, wore thin for me about half-way through the second piece. I used to listen to classical music a lot but I seem to have lost the knack.
More recently, P and I thought we’d bought tickets for the final concert in the Bradfield Festival of Music, which was a mixed programme with a fairly large ensemble of instruments, but when it turned out that something had gone wrong with the ticket-booking website and we actually hadn’t bought any tickets after all, I don’t think either of us were heartbroken.
I enjoyed Blood Brothers, which I saw with B and another friend, T, but I’ve seen it five times now over the years so it’s no longer fresh and exciting to me. It’s a testament to Willy Russell, however, that it’s still possible for me to enjoy this show at all. I can’t imagine the torture of having to sit through Rent again, for example.
***
What I have discovered is that there are innumerable videos of superb singers performing the most beautiful arias in the world. Here are some I like, if you're interested:
https://uk.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&ei=UTF-8&p=Youtube+Barcarolle&type=E211GB384G91764#id=1&vid=6d11cd71b5c1b59d2417255893cf8359&action=click
https://uk.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&ei=UTF-8&p=You+Tube+Casta+Diva&type=E211GB384G91764#id=3&vid=2b3d290dc0d9d0ab132af4809948233d&action=click
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF4_ZT1i7Uo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYB5QS8LS-4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV5zUa4zMnw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1C8NFDdFYg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWc7vYjgnTs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqdFoRjL1Bk
I thought I’d write in a bit more detail about one particularly bad production I’ve seen recently and one I enjoyed much more.
Quality Street by J.M.Barrie – performed by Northern Broadsides, Crucible Theatre, Sheffield
Moving away from music, P and I went with B and her husband, A, to see a play by J.M.Barrie called Quality Street, a few weeks ago. It was described as a farce, so we were expecting to be at least quietly amused.
It was a Saturday evening but the Crucible was only two-thirds full, which in retrospect was a bad sign.
I hadn’t realized it was a Northern Broadsides production. This company’s mission statement is to perform all sorts of plays in working-class northern accents, and though I applaud their attempts to broaden theatre’s appeal to the masses, frankly I can’t see the point. For one thing, this country has so many different working-class accents that this alone would seem to render the project futile. I’m sure there will be those among you who are massive fans of Northern Broadsides and who disagree with me entirely, and I accept this. We can’t always agree.
Quality Street is set at the time of the Napoleonic wars, the Regency period, and is about the upper classes (though some are relatively impoverished), so the formal language is difficult enough to follow as it is, without giving the characters Yorkshire accents as well. I can’t imagine how difficult Shakespeare must be to follow, when spoken in a northern accent (and I speak as a working-class Yorkshirewoman meself, tha knows). Anyway, we couldn’t make out a lot of the dialogue, despite all of us being from ‘the north’.
The well-known tins of chocolates which have been a staple of British family Christmases for decades took their name - and also their famous image of a regency couple (Miss Sweetly and Major Quality) dancing - from Barrie’s play. Northern Broadsides made a feature of this connection by intercutting Barrie’s farce with sequences where ex-employees of the old Quality Street factory in Halifax talked about their memories of working there. I don’t know whether these were actual ex-employees or just very bad actors, but none of us could see a reason for them being there. It certainly added nothing to the entertainment. They were like a poor-quality tribute-act to Victoria Wood’s Dinner Ladies who had wandered onto the wrong stage. Their contribution bore no relationship whatsoever to the ‘farce’ itself. At one point, one of them cheerfully claimed that a room in the factory contained a bed and was used as a ‘knocking shop’, which seemed potentially slanderous! I also couldn’t understand why, if these people were retired, or the factory had shut down, they were all dressed in white overalls and hair nets, as if they were still on the factory floor. B is a retired nurse but she doesn’t walk round wearing her nurse’s uniform. P is a semi-retired teacher, but he doesn’t wear leather elbow patches and a pocket-protector stuffed with board markers on his days off.
The second half of the play was funnier than the first (the people who left at the interval missed out, though not much). However, the cast had to work very hard to set up the funny bits and it really wasn’t worth it (stereotypical characters, improbable but also uninteresting plot, pointless pratfalls and at times incomprehensible northern accents). The bit I enjoyed most was a weird anachronistic dance performed by the whole cast. It was more Buena Vista Social Club than Jane Austen, a cross between a 1970s disco and a tribal war dance. The company also decided to include some peculiar theatrical devices such as using men in drag to portray female characters, even though there were enough female actors to play the roles, and having colourblind casting. I support the colourblind casting, even though I sometimes worry that it gives a false impression of history to young people. I mean, rich people in the eighteenth century weren’t working-class dark-skinned Yorkshire folk and it’s a lie to suggest they were. It seems to undermine the struggles of modern people of colour. But, yes, I do enjoy Bridgerton nevertheless.
They also used some completely unnecessary and very creepy puppets at one point, and there was a lot of disturbing talk about caning a child.
Halfway through Act One, P suddenly jolted in his seat, making the entire row of seats shake and catapulting his ice-cream onto the floor somewhere. Thinking he might be having a seizure, I asked him what was wrong.
‘My fucking shoulder’s seized up – cramp!’ he muttered, through gritted teeth, and a woman further along the row made a tutting sound. This was the funniest moment of the evening for me. [For those of a kindlier disposition, he made a full recovery!]
Simon & Garfunkel Through The Years In Concert, Cast Theatre, Doncaster
P is a huge fan of Simon & Garfunkel, and I like them too, so we decided to get tickets for this show as soon as we saw it was on. Performed by Bookends, an act consisting of the tremendously talented Dan Haynes and Pete Richards, this tribute to the fabulous folky duo fulfilled its brief with style and a pleasing seriousness.
Anyone who has seen the excellent sitcom The Detectorists will remember the two villainous metal detectorists who are the nemeses of the show’s protagonists. When they first appear (played by Paul Casar and Simon Farnaby), they are referred to by the derogatory nicknames ‘Simon & Garfunkel’, due to their ridiculous resemblance to the singers:
This joke works because Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel have an iconic ‘look’ which makes them instantly recognizable on stage – it consists mainly of Paul’s shortness and straight dark hair, and Art’s height and frizzy halo of pale hair, which are as well-known as their songs. We expected Bookends to look like their heroes but in fact they – admirably – rejected this easy route to conventional tribute-act success:
They explained that they weren’t interested in trying to physically resemble their heroes. It being Doncaster, some wit in the audience shouted ‘I bet you could do Right, Said Fred!’ but they ignored this quip. They were in fact clearly genuine fans of Simon and Garfunkel, singing their songs respectfully and very well. If anything, they were a bit too serious, particularly in the first half. At the end of the show, an elderly woman behind me told her companion that she’d enjoyed the second half better than the first:
‘Why was that?’ asked her friend.
‘Well, the first half was just them singing harmonies.’
This is the kind of review you tend to get in Yorkshire. I’m not sure what she expected from a Simon & Garfunkel tribute act. Maybe she expected a be-sequinned Paul Simon lookalike to swing across the stage upside down, clinging to a rope, Cirque Du Soleil-style, followed by an Art Garfunkel clone in a velvet leotard doing somersaults down the aisle accompanied by a confetti canon.
As I listened to the first song, ‘A Hazy Shade of Winter’, it struck me how poetic Paul Simon’s lyrics are. I do like songs to have interesting words. I like clever word-play, cliché-busting, avoidance of the obvious. People who have read my blog before will know my feelings about many of the songs chosen by the Rock Choir. Imagine the Rock Choir singing ‘Hazy Shade Of Winter’ or ‘Only Living Boy In New York’ or ‘The Sound of Silence’ – or even ‘Celia’. How much better than ‘Loco In Acapulco’ or Ed Sheeran. And how can you fail to love a songwriter who uses the line ‘My daddy was a prominent frogman’?
I don’t often visit Doncaster, and my mental image of the place is of a concrete jungle full of dreary shopping precincts. This wasn’t helped by our pre-theatre meal experience. The dark and slightly sinister multi-storey civic carpark was temporarily free due to a problem with the ticket machines, which was a stroke of luck for us, but parking there meant we entered the shopping precinct (where the restaurant we’d booked was situated) using a different route from the one I’d used last time I’d been. This route did not show the city at its best. Shops were boarded up. Crumbling, graffiti-covered walls looked like the backdrop to a Shane Meadows film, made worse by the occasional skinny youngster in a hoodie slouching along nervously, one on a skateboard which rattled off into the distance with that depressing supermarket-trolley sound they have. We found ourselves walking quickly and falling silent.
The restaurant, called The City and run by Polish people, is fairly unprepossessing from outside, with curtained windows at the front but none further back inside the restaurant so you can’t look in, and a solid wooden door with no glass panels you can see through. This makes it a little forbidding. P found he couldn’t open the door (my friend, B, had a similar problem last time I was here) and quickly assumed the restaurant was shut. However, I opened it without difficulty (both times). As we entered, we were accosted by what appeared to be a hoard of tiny children (actually, there were only three) trying to escape from a birthday meal they’d been forced to endure by their cruel parents. This, and the door, made our hearts sink, but actually the food and service were great. We only had a main course (my Gressingham Duck in a vodka jus was fantastic and the veg were all fresh and beautifully cooked) but we were given home-made rye bread with pork rillettes and brie as an appetizer, and choc chip cookies with our coffee and a free snifter of cherry brandy to finish. If ever you’re in Doncaster, I would recommend The City as a place to eat – though you might not enjoy its location.
Then it was back out to scurry through the menacing run-down Waterdale Centre and cross the road to the theatre. Built about a decade ago, Cast is comfortable and modern, with a nice bar and café. It was only a Thursday evening, but it was full of people. Despite Doncaster’s recently endowed city status, the theatre feels like the kind of local theatres you get in small towns, even though it’s fairly large and fronted by glass panels. It tends to put on tribute acts, juke-box musicals, pantomimes, comedians, and that sort of light entertainment. However, I saw the opera Carmen there earlier in the year with my friend P, and it was performed to a full house. I noticed that at least two ballets were scheduled for later in the year. And it operates a little like an arts centre, with a regular programme of creative writing classes and suchlike. It feels approachable and friendly.
There is a qualitative difference between theatres like Cast and more upmarket ones with names like ‘The Playhouse’ or ‘The Theatre Royal’ or ‘The Grand’, however. It is probably to do with their audiences (which often consist of many of the same people, of course, just wearing different hats, as it were). It is as if audiences feel more at home, less formal. I don’t mean they don’t dress up – South Yorkshire people like dressing up to go out. But there is more a sense of them having a Night Out With Their Mates rather than an Evening At The Theatre. It’s the difference between an audience of serious theatre-goers watching the Northern Ballet perform a piece based on The Great Gatsby at The Lyceum, and an audience of slightly drunk party-people watching a short fat bloke impersonating Freddie Mercury at the City Hall (both of which I’ve experienced this year). Neither experience is better or worse than the other (though I know which I personally prefer) – they’re simply different. I felt that many people in the audience at Cast weren’t sure whether they should join in with the songs or not – the performers acknowledged this themselves. This was a show performed by respectful and talented Simon and Garfunkel fans, and it was a tad subdued.
However, at the end, as the rows of seats in the stalls slowly emptied, I was reminded where I was.
‘KAREN!....KAREN!....’ yelled a voice from the balcony. A woman further along our row looked up and nudged her partner. The bloke upstairs continued yelling 'KAREN! MIKE! UP HERE!'...’ until they both spotted their friends. They then had a conversation lasting several minutes, shouting back and forth from stalls to dress circle, accompanied by large gesticulations indicating they would meet up in the bar. No one around them batted an eyelid as they used their hands as megaphones to amplify their voices. Bellowing and hollering as loudly as you can as you leave the auditorium is simply considered normal behaviour.
Ah, how I love the county of my birth.
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