Blood and Gifts - a preview

Howard Davies has done some truly remarkable things at the National, most recently with a trio of classic Russian plays/adaptations (Philistines, Burnt by the Sun, The White Guard) that received almost universal acclaim. All three had epic, remarkable Realist settings and the latter two centred on the theme of war and its impact on ordinary people and their families.

His latest offering, a new play by JT Rogers, deals with the same theme much more explicitly, with a contemporary subject matter whose consequences still appear on seven o’clock news headlines on a weekly basis. Spanning the course of a decade, it chronicles the development of US involvement in the Afghan war under the Regan administration, which sees the demise of Soviet control over the country and the eventual rise of Islamic Fundamentalism in Afghanistan. It is, in short, a contemporary epic play.

And thus it was only natural that Davies should be directing it: in many ways, it is a real spiritual child of those Russian writers, from Tolstoy to Bulgakov, who knew how to distil the stories of most complex and traumatic chapters of human history, poetically yet precisely, by zooming in to the ordinary human beings who are inadvertently sucked into the vortex of these massive conflicts and battles, and whose every decision could eventually lead to much bigger consequences than they could have imagined.

The protagonist of Blood and Gifts, James Warnock, is a CIA agent whose first encounter upon arriving in Pakistan is a KGB agent Gromov, who unsurprisingly is well appraised of every agonising detail of Warnock’s previous assignment, in Tehran, and especially of the context of his exit there. Despite their ‘strategic positions’, the two men establish a tacit, human rapport and one of the final scenes (but not THE final scene – this is reserved for the much less melancholy cadence) sees the two of them parting at the same airport terminal, in the shadow of the fast-crumbling USSR. Warnock, (according to the programme notes) loosely based on real-life CIA Station Chief in Pakistan, Howard Hart, is almost a cliché of an American agent who has appeared in thousands of Hollywood films: charismatic, intellectual (by the end of the play, you gather he speaks fluent Farsi, Russian and Arabic – some peoples’ talents can be so irritating), personable, a good colleague and a devoted (albeit often absent) husband. But most importantly, he embodies that brand of naïve idealism, with the unshakable belief in the intention and capability of his great country to ‘do good in the world’, that we now invariably associate with these front-line American field-workers (‘This is a strategic war, NOT a religious war,’ he proclaims righteously). This idealist sense of mission drives him throughout his on-off presence in Afghanistan during the ten years although, for the most part, he’s not even allowed to set foot on its soil, having to resort to operating first through a slithery Pakistani colonel, then his friend and partner-in-war, a battered Afghan war lord. There are dark times in his personal life that he has to endure, sacrifices that he ultimately deems worthy for the greater cause of what he and his colleagues are defending. Only in the very last moments of the play is his idealism relentlessly shattered in a setting of peace and calmness that he has fought so hard to achieve.

In any lesser hands, Warnock would have been a Clooney-lite caricature of a character. Not so as written by Rogers and acted with such moving conviction by Lloyd Owen here. That’s because there’s a very fine line between clichés – which exist for a very good reason – and caricatures, and Rogers knows exactly where to stop. His portrayal of Warnock’s various associates – the KGB worker (Matthew Marsh), the MI6 worker who is forever frustrated by ‘the cheapness of Her Majesty’ and worn out by cynicism already at the outset of the action (Adam James); the Pakistani Colonel and his excruciatingly sycophantic side-kick; the Afghan warlord and his right-hand-man who is obsessed with Western popular culture (Phillip Arditti, whose surreal fixation on pop songs and film stars provide some of the best comical moments of the evening); the boss at CIA with his own brand of cynicism because he’s seen it all (Simon Kunz) – are similarly spot-on without being presented as mere stereotypes. Rogers has accomplished the one crucial task to lift them beyond such: he makes us care about what happens to these people. Each of them has a glint in his eye, for they all know that they have a very specific place in this vast historic canvas of global warfare, and any slightest disturbance to the delicate balance of things could tip it all over and turn their lives upside down. Blood is shed, gifts are given, but only so that more blood shall be shed, and, as with all wars, there appears to be no real winner and no one ends up any the wiser.

Having seen Davies’s Russian plays, I had expected a realistic set again, perhaps with painstaking details portraying the craggy mountains of Afghanistan (where, lest we forget, Osama Bin Laden is still purported to be hiding) and 1980s-tyle CIA offices. But here’s the other twist: the stage design (by Ultz) is abstract almost to the point of minimalism, with container-like compartments cleverly sliding out of, into, and alongside each other, accentuated only by the bare essential of props to indicate the location of each scene. The rest is left to the sound and lighting designs (also notable) and, well, our imagination. To me, this was a good call, for the dialogue and actions on stage were rather gripping enough and we didn’t really need any other multi-layered background, visual or otherwise, to distract us. The bare setting of the ending also added to the immediacy of its poignancy: these are real people, and it is now. Just like Warnock, whether we intended to or not, we have all been drawn into it somehow.

Alternative Olivier Awards 2009! - a preview

I had the incomparable fortune to sit on the Olivier Awards panel in 2008, which made the whole year of theatre-going experience all the more special. Because they wouldn't take on the same people as lay panellists (which was what I was) in consecutive years, 2009 was a judging-duty-free year in the theatre. However, as I was astounded to have the total number of productions we'll have been to see by the year-end counted by my dutiful partner (sixty-one - including all plays and musicals; eighty-one if you include opera and dance), I thought that perhaps I was adequately qualified to put together an awards list after all. Alas this one will have to depend entirely on my personal taste (eclectic enough, I believe) and judgement (wise enough, I hope). Here we go:-

Best new play

When the Rain Stops Falling, Andrew Bovell
We've had a good year of Bovell plays in London: Toby Frow's new production of Speaking in Tongues shed new light on this earlier work, albeit with an uneven cast; and the European premiere of this stunning new piece, a characteristically multi-layered entangled plot spanning four generations and across two far-apart continents, was a resounding confirmation. Of how a dramatist at the height of his power can judge the narrative and psychological tensions with rare precision, distilling the word 'thriller' with a new, deeper meaning. Also, of the scale of accomplishment by Michael Attenborough in his Artistic Director role at Almeida, one of the independent powerhouses of London theatre. The ensemble cast boast no mega stars yet were uniformly outstanding. The night I was there, Keira Knightley and Rupert Friend were sitting a few rows behind us – now that we know they're both appearing in the West End, it would seem that they were wisely learning from the real pros. It was also one of the very few occasions this year that I was moved to uncontrollable sobs, at any arts event.

Honourable mention: Enron, Lucy Prebble (Royal Court Downstairs); Cock, Mike Bartlett (Royal Court Upstairs)
So much has been said about Enron, all I'd like to add is GO to see it in the West End, if you missed the Royal Court run. It will probably fit the bigger stage a bit better too. I was so pleased we booked for Cock very early on, as it became one of the highlights of the entire year, and because the bare, cock-pit set design (maximum seating: about 60) befit the text so perfectly, it'd be hard to imagine it being transferred to any West-End venue (or anywhere else, for that matter). Here's my 150-word review of it for the Olivier Award panel application:

Mike Barlett's provocatively titled, ninety-minute-long 'Cock', is a compelling piece of work. The series of tableaux portray an emotionally (and sexually – but that's the lesser concern here) confused young urbanite (John, the only named character) oscillating between his long-term male lover (M) and a loving, quietly tenacious female encounter (W), driving everyone involved – including the spectators – into sheer agony with his indecision along the way. If this equivocation sounds like the behaviour of a modern, metrosexual Hamlet, the denouement, a scene of 'the ultimate bitch fight' (as M puts it bitterly) with the threesome plus M's father around dinner table, evokes Ayckbourn at his best. Yet Bartlett shows great promise as an acute observer of contemporary conundrums of the heart, and demonstrates a distinctive style with his spit-fire dialogue in all the two-hander scenes, often delivering piercing poignancy and a great joke in one stroke. Ben Wishaw, as John, leads the superlative cast.


Best musical production
A Little Night Music, Menier Chocolate Factory
It was a shame that the subsequent WE transfer of this superbly elegant revival by Trevor Nunn wasn't much of a hit. Without a superstar billing it really struggled in competing with the likes of Jude Law in Hamlet and Helen Mirren in Phedre, both big summer audience draws. I didn't see it again (at Garrick), nor was I surprised to read about the mostly lukewarm reviews of Catherine Zeta-Jones's return to stage as Desiree in the Broadway transfer a few days ago. The original cast, on the living-room-sized MCF stage, conveyed much more emotional nuance than is usually expected from a musical, even one by Sondheim. The singing was exemplary, the simple design imbued with charm.


Best director
James MacDonald, for Judgement Day (Almeida) and Cock (Royal Court Upstairs)
We've had an exceptional year of London theatre, and yet these two stood out as the most perfect productions of the year for me. The fact that they came from the same director speaks volumes, and yet they couldn't have been more different in idiom and execution. The Horvath revival featured a hugely imaginative and effective use of the Almeida space with its design, which befits the 1930s play about moral responsibilities in its historic details, while also distilling it with a compelling, poetic modernity. Cock, on the other hand, would probably seem on paper like a real headache for many a less able director, with its writer specifying the lack of any set or props. Yet MacDonald achieves that most important task missed (or dismissed, in some cases?) by many directors – he makes us care about the characters, through their primal human behaviours and reactions. The rest is built by our imagination, easily.

Honourable mention: Rupert Goold, for Time and the Conways (Lyttleton, National) and Enron (Royal Court Downstairs)

Enron was the big theatrical event of the year in publicity terms (deservingly so, I hasten to add), but Goold's JB Priestley revival was a revelation of how powerful this 'time play'can still be. With its narrative structure, daringly ahead of its time, and the perpetually familiar setting of a dysfunctional family, the work also features themes of class, mortality, the impact of war, the power of money and the futility of kindness. Phew, quite a heavy-going recipe, you say. Yet above all, what Goold gives us is a poignantly human story, and to me the opinion-splitting multi-media choreography sequences lift the text to a powerfully charged emotional height.

Best actor
Kevin Spacey, Inherit the Wind (Old Vic)
Most pundits have hailed Mark Rylance's turn in Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem as the performance of the year. I beg to differ. Spacey's artistic direction at the Old Vic finally got onto the right track last year, and seems, for the moment, to be going from strength to strength. He's a Big Performer on stage in the same sense as Rylance – powerful deliveries of lines, big physical gestures, sweeping emotions running the whole human gamut. If some of the dramatic movements appear to manoeuvre our emotions, they're there for a reason. Spacey's compelling Darwinian lawyer edges out for me over Rylance's West-country misanthrope, perhaps because so often do powerful plays impress with cool intellectuality stirred and shaken with cynicism, that when a good old fashioned debate (courtroom scene, no less!) fills you with warmth and hopefulness for mankind, it stays in the memory just a little bit longer.

Honourable mention: Ben Whishaw, Cock (Royal Court Upstairs)
I've added it to my Santa's wish list for this year that we see more of Whishaw on London stage before his schedule becomes inevitably monopolised by Hollywood blockbusters and the occasional arthouse films (New Yorkers who're reading this: get a ticket to his turn in 'The Pride' before it sells out NOW – another new play courtesy of Royal Court, this was the winner of the 2008 Olivier Award for an Affiliate Theatre that my fellow panellists and I voted for). It's not everyday that you have a truly dashing leading man who effortlessly exudes indelible charisma as well as piercing intelligence, and when the performer in question is not yet thirty, you know there's a wonderful career ahead waiting to unfold spectacularly.

Best actress
Rachel Weisz, A Streetcar Named Desire (Donmar Warehouse)
I wrote in my pre-review of Streetcar, back in July, that Weisz was excellent in this role but was far too beautiful and youthful for what we expect Blanche Dubois to be. This was echoed by a number of broadsheet critics, and Weisz herself pointed out – rightly – that Williams's text had specified Blanche as being a woman of thirty, a full eight years short of her own actual age. This, if nothing else, is illuminating on how Western society’s perception of youth has changed in the last century. And when I look back on the leading ladies of the year, Weisz's performance still stands out for the integrity and conviction with which she inhabited this well-known character.

Honourable mention: Juliet Stevenson, Duet for One (Almeida)
A superbly understated study of the helplessness of a superb mind, gradually and irreversibly being deprived of the body attached to it. We're accustomed to having such eternally fighting characters on stage now as well as surrounding us in real life. But once in a while an exceptional thespian shows us that the familiar story can be seen through different angles, with a kind of immobile viscerality we hitherto didn't know existed, and that's the case in point here.

Best performance in a supporting role
Bertie Carvel, Rope (Almeida)
Carvel impressed me in the aforementioned Royal Court production of The Pride last year (and as leading man in the new musical 'Parade' before that!), so I'd been looking forward to his latest role, in this Hitchcock adaptation. So much so that I nearly missed his entrance, because the handsome young man I remembered was unrecognisable as the cynical war veteran, so convincingly does he embody the role completely. Now that he's proved himself to be a real chameleon, I think he could become one of the great character actors of his generation. Surely being blessed with good looks doesn't hurt.

Honourable mention: Katherine Parkinson, Cock (Royal Court Upstairs; Rebecca Hall, Winter's Tale and The Cherry Orchard (Old Vic)
Parkinson, along with Ben Whishaw, talks us through a highly charged and deeply confused sex scene (her partner here being a gay man discovering the female species for the first time, literally) with no more physical movement than slowly circling the tiny stage in centrifugal steps. And it's one of the most sensual moments I've ever experienced on any stage. Her diffident, gentle yet steely character is no less complex than others in the play, but is the one who wins our heart. She can do the understated comical too, which is a rare gift.
Hall was memorable in both plays that constituted the inaugural Bridge Project in the summer. It takes a real actress to tackle both Chekov and Shakespeare – her characters effectively divided by twenty years in age – concurrently, with aplomb. As with Wishaw, I sincerely hope her commitment to the stage shall remain for a while, and I can see her maturing into Arkadinda one day already, via Nora and many more Shakespearean heroines along the way.


Best new choreography
Russell Maliphant, AfterLight
One quarter of an evening of world premieres created to the brief 'In the Spirit of Diaghilev', Maliphant's short, mesmerising male solo is deceptively simple by description: a theme and variations of the dancer (Daniel Proietto, ethereally beautiful) spiralling in semi-light. It succeeds, in breathtaking fashion, in what the choreographer set out to do: to capture the essence of Nijinsky the dancer.

Ten Days in October

[optional subtitle: 'Finally we've realised why we never manage to do all the laundry...']


1 October, Thursday.

Philharmonia Orchestra concert, Royal Festival Hall
It's always a treat to hear Janacek's mindblowing Sinfonietta, and the RFH is probably the only London venue fit for the piece. I shouldn't be lavishing Magnus Lindberg's chorus-and-orchestra piece Graffiti with praise due to conflict of interest, but for me, it really revealed itself as a substantial addition to the repertoire, especially with the splendid choir (Philharmonia Voices) in this performance. I had heard the piece at its world premiere back in May, in Helsinki, and this second hearing eally helped to confirm my faith in it. If only more contemporary orchestral works could be blessed with repeat performances similarly in quick succession, by different but equally devoted interpreters - can't wait to hear the third commissioner (Oslo Philharmonic) tackle the piece, alas it's going to be 18 months away.


2 October, Friday

Judgement Day, Almeida Theatre
A five-star production in all aspects for me. Christopher Hampton's beautifful translation of the Horvath play keeps that most crucial element - the ambivalence of morality - exquisitely poignant throughout. The ensemble cast is uniformally powerful yet subtle, with Joseph Millson the devastatingly effective leading man. Why isn't this guy more famous? I sure hope every casting director who knows their business came to see this and that he lands a big starry role on stage somewhere soon, before we lose him to the screen. Special praise also goes to the set and lighting designers - this was probably the most daring transformation to the Almeida set-up I had seen for as long as I can remember, and it packs a punch.


3 October, Saturday

Le Grand Macabre, English National Opera
I knew from the curtain rise that I was going to like this production immensely. ENO's director-led programming strategy has has its hits and misfires, but this one firmly belongs to the first category. Everthing that happens to the naked giantess that dominates the stage, literally, dramaturgically, musically, anatomically - made me shudder. Ligeti's score, as a whole, actually convinced me less than I'd expected, despite the wonderful playing from the pit. But all in all this was an outstanding achievement by everyone involved. A lot of the straight-faced operagoers manifestly hated it, some politely baffled by it, but sure enough no one was going to forget it in a hurry.


4 October, Sunday

District 9
So this is what a mock-documentary, quasi-arthouse, humanitarian/existential/Sci-Fi/racial morality tale in the shape of a sleeper hit looks like. The only thing that displeased me about it was the rendition of the ending, which was an undisguised act of paving the way for sequel(s) to come.Those Big Blockbusters offering simpler versions of the plot usually try their mightiest to restore your faith in humankind, this one shatters it ruthlessly - or does it? See it and decide for yourself.


Another, more notable event of the day: our first-ever attempt at making seafood risotto, a joint operation, ended up a resounding success. The whole thing was gone in a matter of minutes.

5 October, Monday

Enron, Royal Court
Everything those five-star reviews say about this is true. No wonder there was already a queue of about 20 people waiting for returns when I collected my tickets 2 hours before the show started (such irrational tenacity never fail to amaze me - why would you join a returns queue at a sold-out show if there're already more than 15 people in front of you?!). Rupert Goold and his team clearly knew from the beginning that their show was destined for West End and Broadway, for this was conceived as a blockbuster show of the smartest kind, multi-media theatre par excellence. The changes he made to the script (which is still in pre-rehearsal form in the published version) all make perfect sense, tightening up the dramaturgy considerably. Sam West's central performance as Jeff Skilling deserves at least a nominatin for every acting award going this year, and the young, energetic ensemble tackle their many fantastically choreographed scenes (never will you think of the trading floor in the same way again) with total panache.

6 October, Tuesday

Cloudgate Dance Company, Barbican Theatre
If you turned up expecting dazzling contemporary dance, you'd leave disappointed. If you changed your mindset and decided to take it all in as an 80-minute piece of performance art as devised by one of China's most interesting visual artists working today (Cai 'Olympics Firework Architect' Guoqiang), you could end up reasonably gratified. I say 'reasonably' because with this length the poetry is diffused (as is our attention), and although there were undeniably breathtaking moments, in the end the piece as a whole seriously lacked coherence. Still, the final moment, which really delivers the impossible and sucks you in relentlessly (yes, I mean it), was worth spending the evening with this troupe.



7 October, Wednesday

Alas, a night in (early train tomorrow morning to Brussels)! Repeated the same risotto recipe with the same satifying result. Now firmly a new addition to the repertoire.



8 October, Thursday

Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra concert, Palais de Beaux-arts, Brussels
This was the opening concert of the Europalia-China festival hosted by the capital of the EU. If you happen to be in town, or have the chance to go, anytime in the next two months, it's well worth checking out the festival programme, which features an impressive line-up of artists for what is essentially a government-led diplomatic event. I was also pleasantly surprised to discover that the Margrittte Museum next to the Palais had just opened its shining doors, after being shrouded in a giant Margritte-esque building facade for the last couple of years. Even though I didn't get a chance to go in on this trip, it's certainly been added to my long list of reasons for returning to this (still highly underrated) city for a personal visit as soon as possible.



9 October, Friday

Life is a Dream, Donmar Warehouse
How rare it is these days to see a major institution (for that is what the Donmar is, for me) taking the Spanish Golden Age really seriously, and it probably would have faulted in a production any less dazzling than this one (literally - the bare back wall of the stage is gilded with golden splashes which later metaphorphoses into a vertical pool of blood). Legions of The Wire fans can drool about Dominic West for all they like, for me this performance - utterly frightening with uncontrolable rage one minute, vulnerable with nuanced confusion the next - showcases a very fine stage talent indeed. For once, the big TV-name casting for the sake of box office allure is justified. Some would say the material is merely second-rate Shakespeare from a lower latitude, and in places the long monologues do drag a bit, but the fine actors here (Kate Fleetwood, aka Mrs Rupert Goold, is the worthy equal of West with her dramatic arias as well as her depth and gravitas) give us a consistently gripping evening, and even the ludicrous all's-well-that-ends-well finale can be forgvien with a smile. Additional marks to the haunting music provided by Dominic Haslam (complete with muscles, in the 'cage').


10 October, Saturday

Inherit the Wind, The Old Vic
There are two things you need to know about this: one, when someone like Trevor Nunn who applies the broad-stroke brilliance he's known for (this is the man who brought Les Mis to life, after all - he really hasn't needed any work for the last 30 years on account of this royalty bill alone) to something that might otherwise looks a bit on the dull side on paper, it works. And two, Kevin Spacey gives his most memorable Old Vic outing yet (I don't want to think of this as 'the culmination' - more to come, please!), and his is a tornado of a performance, eclipsing a remarkable David Troughton and various supporting acts. We've all seen the American courtroom face-off scene in films that we can all rattle off for a good few minutes, but this is infinitey more gripping, intelligent, funny, complex and humane - all these things in turn.



"And on the morning of the eleventh day, we decided -"

- that we really needed a nice, big dose of visual arts. Turning up at Tate Britain 20 minutes after opening time on a Sunday morning to find the Turner and the Masters exhibition already crowded was uplifting (we aren't the only freaks!) and dispiriting (I'd hoped to see this in a much emptier setting!) in almost equal measure. Some of the aesthetic parallels theorised, between Turner and the sources of his inspirations seemed a little too academic/arbitrary, whereas the comparisons of his later works with his contemporaries were more fascinating to this viewer. While we usually conjure up those mesmerising seascapes as the main association with Turner's name ('Atmosphere is my style', apparently the man declared), it was particularly interesting to discover his forays into portraiture, and to conclude that some of those attempts were a bit clumsy. Later, in the courtyard of the Royal Academy, we couldn't help wearing the smug smile of the RA member while walking past the substantial queue (limited timed entries, no doubt) for the Anish Kapoor show. The word 'retrospective' is utterly inappropriate and irrelevant here, for the centrepieces are tailor-made for the space, and even pieces that weren't, such as Yellow, looks like it was always destined to be on that side of the wall. Breathtaking, thought-provoking, dizzying (literally, in one of the rooms).

A Streetcar Named Desire - a (p)review

Walking into the intimate space that is the auditorium of Donmar Warehouse, you're immediately struck by the sense that something quite familiar has been subtly changed. Upon closer inspection, all three sides of the balcony seating area have been transformed into decorative balustrades that echo the spiral staircase in one corner on stage, and the railings that seem to constitute 'floating ceilings' high up in the air. Welcome to Tennese Williams's New Orleans. Even before the play starts, you're captivated by this elegantly constructed world (designed by the Donmar veteran, Chris Oram, in his signature grey hues) where there's a sense of mad decay lurking just underneath the plain surface, in every corner, of the Kowalski household. It captures the stage direction by Williams perfectly, juxtaposing the exterior and the interior in one setting.

Any production of Streetcar, though, ultimately depends upon the central quartet of the cast, and in particular to whoever portrays Blanche Dubois, the faded Southern beauty whose own decay in this household forms the emotional core of the play. Vivienne Leigh's Oscar-winning performance on silver screen was such a definitive interpretation, made all the more poignant by her real-life descent into madness, it's almost the inevitable yardstick to which every actress taking up the role would be compared. I suspect Rob Ashford (who choreographed Donmar's celebrated 'Guys and Dolls', and also directed the excellent yet underrated 'Parade' here) thought long and hard about choosing Rachel Weisz as his Blanche. Despite a slightly faulty start, she quickly takes total command of the role, showing us Blanche's deceptive dreaminess, innate passion and vulnerability, jealousy (fundamentally, of everyone else whose life seems simple and straightforward compared with her own) and eventual derangement, layer by layer, an onion of a human tragedy, to devastating effect. Her long, breathless monologue to Mitch, the eager and clumsy suitor, revealing her unfortunate past (or at least part of it) at the end of Scene Six, was the highlight of the whole evening, an acting tour-de-force, and the perfect spot for an interval filled with a much-needed stiff drink (for the audience, not her).

Yet there's one fatal problem to this otherwise commendable casting choice: Weisz is decidedly not a faded beauty, but a beauty in full bloom. When Blanche, pondering the possibility of bagging Mitch (an Barnaby Kay, also impressive) as her last chance at settling down with someone, nervously suggests to Stella that 'Men lost interest [in women] quickly, especially when the girl is over – thirty', the intended comic effect cannot possibly be achieved, because she truly and honestly looks like, well, thirty one. And later, when a drunken, heart-broken Mitch confronts her about her less-than-honourable recent past, tearing down the lampshade which she's used to create the eternal haze in the room in order to hide her own decay, what's startlingly obvious to anyone in the room is the fact that this is a stunning young woman, not the memorable, deeply-lined, heavily made-up face of Vivienne Leigh from the same scene in the film. One may argue that this should be overlooked in lieu of the strong performance from Weisz, but impressed as I was, I couldn't help thinking this was a perfect example of dramatic incongruity.

The rest of the cast also did a good job, although easily eclipsed by Weisz's central performance. Elliot Cowan's Stanley is muscular, ruthless and viciously attractive in the Brando mode, who also handled the comic element in some of the early scenes (especially when he scavenges through Blanche's suitcase) well. Ruth Wilson is a competent Stella, though one would have wished for a bit more emotional depth. A very nice touch from Ashford is the ghostly appearances of Blanche's ex-husband and his old lover, in her reminiscence/monologue scenes. It would be churlish to dismiss such a remarkable effort just on the grounds of miscasting, so I would really recommend that you do go to see it. Just use your imagination and try to accept Ms Weisz as really being fifteen years older than she appears. You may need to try very, very hard but this Streetcar's worth it.

Barbican, week two

Six days later, now in better physical shape and newly recharged by a quick trip to Berlin, I went back to Barbican with M for another pre-show dinner at the Riverside cafe. As with last week, I now noticed the 'other audience' roaming in the foyer - a lot of them wearing exquisite pearls, quite a few elegantly pearl-clad, gingerly sipping their overpriced red wine. This was not 'our' crowd today as we were here to see Pied Piper and they, Parsifal (third act) in concert with Valery Gergiev. We recognise a few friends across the hall and wave to them. I point out to M a riotously-dressed woman in her 60s in scarlett-framed spectacles and her tall, younger companion who looked like an incredibly masculine gypsy. Vivienne Westwood and her Austrian husband, Andreas Kronthaler. Were they here for the hip hop or for Wagner? We managed to amuse ourselves for a full five minutes with the guessing game (the answer was the latter). The LSO concert, as always, started at 19:30 and our opera-loving friend looked on at us with great confusion, from the door across the foyer where he was just about to get in to the concert, as we were not making any attempt to gather ourselves and enter the hall: 'Are you not going in?!' 'No' - we shouted back - 'we're going to see hip hop dance instead.'

And what a show it was. The re-setting of the classic Pied Piper story in the nameless underbelly of contermporary metropolis plagued by ASBO youths was ingenious. The synopsis, divided cleverly into 'chapters', seemed to fit the thrilling choreography (which really favours and befits the episodic narrative as much as classical ballet does) while also making a nod to the medieval literary origin of the story. Kendrick Sandy, the Piper and godfather of the company, Boy Blue Entertainment, clearly inspires so much in his young apprentices and presides the action with unshakable authority. The most virtuosic parts were often left to the youngsters, though, who were capable of doing the jaw-dropping acts with such effortlessness that we cheered and shrieked as spontaneously as the young crowd around us (M had come straight from work in his City suit - for once we really stuck out in the sea of hip-hop audiences). The really breathtaking moments, though, came at the end with the Charming of the Kids scene. Onto the stage came bouncing a score of real kids - we're talking 6- to 10-year olds here - of such a wide range of ethnicity that their mere presence presented a portrait of contemporary Britain right there. And they all bounced and danced and swinged and then did all sorts of gravity-defying things with their limps and on their heads. A lot of 'awwww's emanated from every corner of the theatre. In the final act, 'The Piper's Training Camp' (here's Naughties East London's unique contribution to the tale), they were united with the rest of the cast in a show of disciplines as much as technical brilliance. Isn't this the real morale of this production? The programme states that Boy Blue Entertainment's aim is 'to encourage youth to embrace dance, while teaching them discipline and team building and exposing them to performance and storytelling'. The thought that this company, and this enraptured audience, happily spent the same evening alongside the Wagner die-hards who were just as emotionally moved by a completely different experience, filled me with joy. We might be walking out of a building in the heart of what is now officially a doomed industry, but arts will continue to transcend our otherwise mundane lives, and because of that, this city will never die.

Pitmen's chorus

I had all the facts about 'The Pitmen Painters', Lee Hall's universally praised play about the Ashington Group, the group of miners from Ashington (north of Newcastle, our second hometown) who defied circumstances (1930s Britian was steeped in recession as well as its age-old class barriers) to become a celebrated school of painters. I knew the run at Cottsloe last year had been a huge success, and the current transfer to the much bigger Lyttleton had also been completely sold out. I had expected lots of near-impenetrable Geordie accents (thank goodness for our 3 years of living there) and lots of quick-witted dialogues (Hall has a real gift for colloquial rhythms). What I hadn't expected was the impressive amplitude and astounding quality of the miners' works (my ignorance) - nearly accenturating and complementing the plot on the three large slides - and how moving the play was.

The closing scene of Act I featured the five miner/painters upstage, in the centre, in turn delivering each line of the following prose (which, by nature of being prompted by each of the characters in print, automatically becomes beautiful verse) with increasingly focused lighting. This was their collective gut response to what they've seen on a pilgrimage to the great galleries in London, and the spontaneous announcement of their own arrival as a Group. Works of Cezannes, Blake, Turner and Van Gogh appeared on the slides, 'thick and fast' (Hall's stage direction), followed by early drawings of the miners themselves. Their reactions to the masterworks resonated with ours, and their emotions overwhelmed us by their sheer simplicity. A truly powerful moment.

You can take one set of things
some board, some paint, whatever
You can take this one set of things
and you can make them something else.
Whatever your circumstances
rich or poor
And you make them something else.
This is what art shows you.
No matter how hard or how easy
you can take things
and transform them.
You don't have to put up with what you're given
and not just into anything.
You can transform things and make something beautiful
something profound.
You can make something
That's the work of art
that you can change things.
And you can overcome whateber you need to overcome.
No matter who you are, where you come from
You need a brush
or whatever
canvas or bit of old card
and change things.
And that is what is important about art.
You take one thing
and you make one thing into another
and you transform
who you are.

In praise of... Menier Chocolate Factory

Where else can you get such incredible value for money? In the West End, top-price seats regularly go for £45 to £55 (I think the 'hottest tickets' such as Oliver! at Drury Lane are even pricier). Menier Chocolate Factory offers a 'meal deal' at £37 per person. You get a two-course pre-theatre dinner at its lovely restaurant (I had crayfish salad followed by meatballs with rice, and also stple a few bites from M's chocolate-and-pistaschio tart - DELICIOUS), then walk across the room to see the show. Yes, £37 for dinner plus a two-hour-forty-minute show - if you happen to come from any of the territories of the non-sterling major currencies, this is even more startling at the moment.

And what a show! I don't claim to be a Sondheim expert but I could immediately see why people say this piece is best realised/experienced in a chamber setting. MCF is one of those venues where they could justly claim 'every seat is a good seat', and we had the best of the lot, right in the front row. Only after we were 10 minutes into action did I suddenly realise 'A Little Night Music' was actually based on one of my favourite Bergman films, Smiles on a Summer Night. Everything about the production was commendable - the Scandinavian design poetic, the comical timings spot-on, the melancholic moments heart-breaking. The only exception to the otherwise uniformally excellent cast, for me, was Jessie Buckley who played Anne Egerman. Again, this wasn't a biased judgement: I had thought, after her first number, that both her acting and the singing voice were a trifle amateurish compared with the others. Only when I browsed through the programme book during the interval did I discover that she was the runner-up of one of those Lloyd-Webber talent shows making her professional debut (the bliss of not having a TV in our household!). It was a good effort, nonetheless, and she had a tough challenge for a debut facing off Hannah Waddingham as Desiree Armfeldt, whose rendition of 'Send in the Clown' was nothing less than a classic. Interval whispers we caught upon implied that the show was destined for a West End transfer, and I can't wait for the details to transpire so I can recommend it to all my theatre-loving friends. Even though they'll probably have to pay a bit more, and it won't come with the meatballs.

Statistics of the past week

ONE each of disapponting and good theatre trips that bookended the working week. 'Private Lives' (Noel Coward) in a new production at Hampstead theatre on Monday - the only merit of the evening ended up being the venue itself. We'd not been there before but was hugely impressed by the building. The auditorium was almost a mini version of the fabulous new opear house in Copenhagen: lots of Scandinavian-style wood panels and good view/sound from every seat The cast and crew should be praised for their effort, which unfortunately was wasted on an underserving play. Coward's best moments, for me, are the farcical scenes involving multiple characters (I'm especially thinking of some of the most hilarious moments from Present Laughter) - which are the few truly funny moments in this play about an ex-couple bumping into each other on their respective (collective?) honeymoon with their new spouses. His two-person exchanges, be they smouldering or fiery moments, are not effective in any way. Pity. On Friday the ferociously topical 'Roaring Trade' (Soho Theatre, about - you guessed - a bunch of traders at an investment bank) played to a roaring full house. It reminded me of the (equally popular) store-floor-set production of Oxford Street we saw at Royal Court Upstairs last year, in that neither tried to be didactic about any grand theme or profound theme, but instead depicted a specific corner of life with totally convincing vitality from everyone involved.

TWO Japanese films at Barbican's 'After Tezuka' season, brilliantly curated by the resident expert Helen McCarthy. She's one of those people whose intrinsic enthusiasm for the object of her studies (which is an almost degrading term - Japanimation is clearly the air she breathes) is so totally infectious, her way of presenting the subject so succinct yet erudite, witty yet serious, that I would have happily gone along for the pre-screening talks alone. Of course the films themselves weren't half bad either: Dororo (which is actually a live action feature film) serves up all the best ingredients of a proper blockbuster, only with heaps more class and style than the regular Hollywood fare could ever dream of; Akira, being a 20-year-old manga animation, blends dizzying visual kaleidoscope, multi-layered narrative convolusion and metaphysical themes (Darwin, Nietsche, Foucault, Freud, you name it) all in one breath in such sweeping manner, that I stepped out of the dark screening room feeling physically drained.

THREE performers in the totally undefinable site-specific performance 'The Memory of W.T. Stead', in the most unexpected - and unpredictable - space that is the Steinway showrooms on Marylebone Lane. There were two hour-long performances each on three consecutive evenings, with seven invitees/audiences at each, for a specific reason. It's the sort of things that happen a lot more in downtown Manhattan (and probably far too much), but not nearly enough in London (which has both the venue possibilities and the potential audience to offer - someone smart will soon put two and two together, no doubt). We're seated in the eerily surreal ground-floor showroom, each between a pair of Steinways. They become performers already in this silence and semi darkness. Then someone appears, equipping us each with a pair of noise-cancelling headphones and all-concealing eyemasks. With the murmurred instructions, reminiscences, echoes and fantasies through the headphones (pre-recorded and live) we enter a mysterious world with our invisible guides. There's a sombre-looking piano tuner in the far corner of the room. Or is he there? How did he get there? Are we really in a perfectly real, perfectly tangible building moments away from the bustling Oxford Street, or have we somehow fallen into a (David) Lynchian world of intrigues? The performers (Swedish dance duo Lundahl & Seitl, British pianist Cassie Yukawa) explored every inch of the available space, both in the tuning workshops and in our consciousness, and made perfect judgement of the elasticity of their materials. We emerged out of the building, a bit stumbling in our steps trying to find our way towards the tube station. It would have been more reassurling to have the directions whispered to us through the headphones.

FOUR pianists heard in contrasting circumstances. On Tuesday, Cassie Yukawa's performance of Bach's Fugue in A minor (BWV 543, arranged by Liszt) was the deeply personal yet powerful climax of the performance installation 'The Memory of W.T.Stead' (see above) - all the more striking as she conjured the entire piece out of almost total darkness, literally. On Thursday, Simon Crawford Phillips and Philip Moore's piano duo recital at LSO St Lukes offered two 20th-century classics by two Russians who were both master composer-pianists themselves - Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Knowing both well as iconic cornerstones of the orchestral repertoire of the last hundred years, hearing them in this version, side by side, was a revelation, with the shining winter sun as backdrop. On Saturday, Nikolai Demidenko gave an effortlessly exhilarating reading of Shostakovich's second piano concerto with Philharmonia Orchestra and Tugan Sokhiev. I felt all the more fortunate for having heard the rehearsal the previous afternoon in the intimacy of Henry Wood Hall - as the only 'audience' up in the gallery, I was washed over by the opening strings of the second movement, and then the piano solo, as played by this London-resident Russian, made me realise for the first time how Shostakovich did the impossible: the cross between Mozart and Rachmaninoff.

(No.) FIVE of Tchaikovsky's immortal symphonic output, with Philharmonia Orchestra under an increasingly impressive Tugan Sokhiev. One of those pieces that I know inside out (not least because I had to do a three-hour presentation about it during my academic days, now happily in the past) and frankly had got a bit sick of (reason: see previous brackets). And he gave such a fresh reading, including some remarkably daring but effective tempi and - all too rare in Tchaikovsky interpretations - meticulous precision, that it shed interesting new light on the piece for me. In a week when an older and (for now) much more famous Russian compatriot is giving a string of headlining concerts across town at the Barbican, with his own two home bands from London and St Petersburg, it pays real tribute to Sokhiev's star quality that his two Philharmonia concerts filled Festival Hall. Yes, the programms offered some big blockbuster items (second half of Saturday's concert was Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony), but London's audience wouldn't really be so generous with their ovation afterwards if the performances hadn't been so genuinely outstanding. I expect his star to rise much higher still in years to come. On top of everything else, he's so nice in person that it's impossible to envy his posession of youth, talent and good looks.

SIX more cultural events I'll have been to by this time next week. If you prefer to read about something else, let me know.

TWELVE: the number of times a certain friend told me he went to see 'Push' (the lauded collaboration last year between maverick British choreographer Russell Maliphant and iconic Parisian ballerina Silvie Guillem), because he liked it so much. And you thought I was a culture vulture of the mad kind?!

Adaptations - Part II

Donmar Warehouse presented Be Near Me - 'a stage version by Ian McDiarmid, from the novel by Andrew O'Hagan' - in a co-production with National Theatre of Scotland. It's the story of an Oxbridge-bred Catholic priest in his late fifties, who takes up a new post in a small Ayrshire town. His housekeeper, Mrs Poole, adores him and he in turn teaches her about the finer things in life from wine-tasting to French conversations. The community finds his quintessential, upper-middle-class, intellectual Englishness slightly alien but accepts him and his occasional eccentricity. He befriends a group of local youth in his charge and one fifteen-year-old boy, Mark, in particular. Grown up in a dysfunctional family and entrenched in bitterness and hostility (towards his parents, Muslims, and the world at large), Mark is gradually drawn in by Father Anderton's warmth and reciprocates the friendship by showing him around his secret drinking den (a delapidated pub) where they share a drink, smoke some pot and try to open up to each other. Inevitably, Mark ends up on Father Anderton's Persian rug one late night and the two of them are discovered lying hand in hand, by Mrs Poole who has lately been in a state of constant agitation because of her newly diagnosed cancer, and Father Anderton's nightmare of condemnation and - even worse - agonising process of soul-searching thus begin.

McDiarmid apparently loved the book so much that he decided to adapt it himself. The result is a true showcase for the veteran actor (his two London roles last year, in John Gabriel Borkman, also at the Donmar; and Six Characters in Search of an Author at Gielgud, couldn't have been more different but both encapsulated the essence of good acting perfectly), but it also provided ample platform for ensemble acting with breadth and depth, which I would argue was even more moving and gratifying. McDiarmid is undoutedly a consummate actor capable of running the whole emotional gamut within the space of one sentence, and my favourite moments of the play include Father Anderton's clumsy and desperate attempts to decipher text messages on what is evidently a newly acquired mobile phone, where no a single word is uttered but you can read the impending despair in the way he holds the device and stares at - into - it. Some might feel though that at times the tour-de-force performance (which is truly what it is) becomes too mannered, and we're made to feel as uncomfortable at the way he becries moral hypocrisy (those of others as well as his own) as the villagers are at his intellectual foreignness.

In comparison, the ensemble depicting the villagers, are compelling in different ways. Blythe Duff's Mrs Poole, whose transformation from the chirpiness and wittiness at the beginning of the play to her cancer-ridden, tortured and diminished self to her empassioned and dignified defence of her former employer in the extensive court scene in Act Two, is the most memorable. The two youngsters, Mark the 'victim' (Richard Madden) and his on-and-off, unruly girlfriend Lisa (Helen Mallon), convey their precocious lack of morality through every movement of teenage confusion effortlessly.

The production, directed by John Tiffany, starts with a stage all bare except for six chairs and a long table. The chairs are soon pulled downstage to the back of the wall where the actors who are not involved in the current scene sit, mostly expressionless and occasionally taking part in a startling manner (an almost mechanical, all-sat-down Ceilidh dance became more poignant by the minute). Father Anderton's gradual downfall and self-redemption are told through tableaux, each accompanied by the minimum props but to maximum effect (this has become a noble Donmar tradition, surely). The use of clever sound effects (the echos on the beach) and video (the teenagers giving evidence in court) are perceived as an organic part of the narrative rather than intrusive technical accessories. The folk songs - which I usually find arbritrary and gratuitous in such plays - are sung beautifully by the ensemble who almost metamorphoses into a Greek chorus. The excerpts and discussions of classical music always feel appropriate, including my first experience of hearing a five-minute discussion of a living composer on London stage.

In terms of the plot, everything that Father Anderton goes through, and the reaction of others to it, is quite predictable. In that sense there's no great dramatic arch here, but a journey that's almost too smooth. But to begrudge that would not do such a poetically realised production justice, and the notion that human nobility can transcend moral sins is rarely presented in a contemporary story so convincingly. Having grown up in a culture and society with little resemblance to the vast majority of materials presented in London's theatres, I always take note of evenings where those universal elements of humanity reach out to me from the stage despite a storyline which I have no personal connection with, and this was one of them.

Adaptations - Part I

Adaptations are tricky matters, especially if your source material is regarded as part of the canon. Yet, I suspect, that's precisely the reason why some writers/directors are drawn to face down this uniquely formidable challenge time and again, with varying results. Katie Mitchell's take on Strindberg's A Dream Play, at the National a few years ago, was thoroughly spellbinding. It pushed the text to the edge of possibilities while a new, powerful narrative emerges from within. Her next two productions for the National, Iphegenia at Aulis and The Seagull, were almost identical in many approaches - the bleak stage set; the suffocating lighting design; the droning soundscape; the singularly nihilisic undertone with which every actor in the cast seemed to deliver every line, whatever the circumstance - while neither managed to convince (The Seagull, in particular, was almost disastrous in my view. Most characters ended up being caticatures of what Chekov intended them to be - well, if that had been Mitchell's artistic agenda, then she certainly succeeded).

Having seen two new adaptations in their previews this week (both open in the next few days), I thought I'd make an attempt at writing a review of both here.

Mrs Affleck, at the National (Cottesloe), is a modern take on Ibsen's Little Eyolf, by the young British writer Samuel Adamson, whose previous works include the original play Southwark Fair (which we enjoyed very much) and an adaptation of Ibsen's Pillars of the Community (which we sadly missed, but it received almost unanimous acclaim). I suppose the success of the latter paved the way naturally for this new venture, directed here by Marianne Elliott (whose recent work at the National included War Horse, Saint Joan and the aforementioned Pillars). Little Eyolf, being one of Ibsen's lesser-known works, features similar themes as those of his masterpieces such as Rosmersholm and John Gabriel Borkman: the ambigious and conflicting aspects of familial love, the inate battle of responsibility and desire, the inevitability of past sins - especially those of former generations - catching up with the present and the future.

Adamson is undoubtedly an intelligent writer who wanted to add even more layers to the original story by transferring the actions to 1950s England. Unfortunately, the extra devices he brought into the story in this regard seemed clumsy and superfluous. The Rat Wife in the original story, the mysterious figrue (think a quasi-malicious, female Pied Piper) who might or might not have been responsible for the boy's untimely death, is here replaced by a teenage punk, Flea (was this a deliberate anachronism - I thought they didn't materialise until the sixties?). His appearance in the first act, which ought to be suspenseful (if you read the Ibsen original, this material has potential for a truly creepy moment) is marred by the incongruous combination of metaphysical babble and street slang, and his return in the second half, in the middle of the Afflecks' grief for their now-drowned Ollie (the Adamson incarcation of Little Eyolf), amounts to more exasbating annoyance than anything more illuminating. There's also a second boy, George, who bears witness both to Ollie's ongoing unhappiness and his actual death scene. The fact that he's Carribean is cause for a whole scene in Act II, an emotional confrontation between his usually mild-mannered mother and Mrs Affleck who blurts out a viciously racial remark. Does it add anything meaningful to the emotional core of the story, except as a validation of the new historic/social context here? Not for me.

The heart of Ibsen's story is the intrinsic, moral battle of a man between the life he wants (the almost incestuous passion he's harnoured for his half sister al his life) and the one he's created (the wife whose wealth and beauty he couldn't resist, the child whose disability he may have played a part in causing, the books that he's no longer able to write). There's enough gripping dramatic depth to be explored here without the other distractions. The author and director should have also trusted the transferrability of the material (1880s Norway is a blissfully abstract enough setting) not to need the additional flag-ups. One further qualm about the plot revision is the fact that Audrey, Affleck's half-sister (Naomi Frederick, in a show-stealing performance) discovers the dark family secret - that the two of them are actually not related, thanks to her mother's promiscuity - during the action, rather than before the play begins. The original scenario would create more suspense and nuanced tension during a large part of the play until the secret is revealed, where as here, the discovery results in a moment of impulsive passion in the rain. Not all the newly added elements are problematic, however: the scene where Ollie reappears on the beach, in Audrey's imagination, playing with sand, is a beautfiul trance that we are all willing to be part of.

Finally, It's a shame that Claire Skinner's Rita Affleck is a mostly one-dimensional performance, whether she's conveying jealousy, guilt, hatred, helplessness or despair, whereas Ibsen's RIta Eyolf probably embodied all of these at the same time.

Another not-too-busy week

Monday: re-viewing of Woody Allen's under-rated classic 'Deconstructing Harry' on DVD. Funny how we often say of an actor 'Oh but he/she's always just playing him/her-self in whatever role...' and that's usually meant as a negative remark. For me the one exception is Allen the actor. You can't possibly picture him as anything other than the quintessential, neurotic, hapless, highly intellectual, vaguely nihilistic Jewish New Yorker. And why should he be?

Tuesday: the Guardian interview with David Hare at the NFT (I still refuse to call it the 'BFI Southbank'). We hadn't seen any of the screenings at the Hare season (TV films, really mostly 'plays on TV') but recently saw Gethsemane, his latest, at the National, which has just a few more final performances. Apart from the predictable moment when he couldn't help expressing irritation at critics who'd trashed The Reader ('Oh how satisfying it was to know that we lived amongst people who enjoy such moral certainties!'), it was a most enjoyable session. On the BBC's change in attitude towards drama (specifically, stage drama) over the years: 'Basically, journalists distrust fiction because they don't believe what we do that, by lying, you get to the truth more easily.' TV's 'fundamentally transient and transitory nature' distinguishes it from, say, the stage. On how/why all good plays are political on some level: 'The way in which what is happening makes us who we are.'

Wednesday and Thursday: in Paris, attending the Orchestre de Paris concert with a battery of Chinese artists: conductor Long Yu, cellist Jian Wang, composer Qigang Chen, and the army of (beautiful young female) soloists required for the latter's masterpiece 'Iris devoilee'. I'd got to know the work very well from recording but it was the first time I heard it live. A very full Salle Pleyel which greeted the artists with a thundering ovation at the end. A quick but efficient walking tour of the Marais (emphatically my favourite neighbourhood in Paris) and lots and lots of scrumptious food. Of which more later.

Friday: Aurelien Bury's uncategorisable, and totally triumphant theatre piece 'Les sept planches de la Ruse' at the Barbican. Simply stunning. My only regret being that I couldn't get more friends to see it as there was only one more performance left. It was obvious on Friday that, despite the mixed reviews (the critics really didn't get it this time! I'll write more about it later if possible) word of mouth had clearly got around already that this was a show not to be missed. I walked out of the theatre thinking how there was not a single wrong note in the entire production in any way, and our friend YY couldn't stop smiling with pride at the fabulous performers from her hometown, Dalian.

Saturday: 2 hours of rigourous Yoga with the incomparable Jaqui. I'd enquired last week about the possbility of joining an extra class of hers mid-week to ensure that I'm securely Yoga-ed through the week, and she brings me good news. A rare theatre/concert-free Saturday means the opportunity to catch up with laundry, grocery shopping, reading (at the moment, Alan Booth, 'Looking for the Lost') etc.

Sunday: more glorious sunshine! Full-table Middle-eastern breakfast courtesy of Waitrose (I'm quite convinced that I could live on nothing but hummous and olives for a long time - mind you, would have to be top-quality hummous and olives at that). There are many ways to spend a perfectly civilised Sunday afternoon, one of them being going to a 3pm piano recital at Festival Hall by our friend Stephen Hough. Only the best of artists could put together such a thoughtful and inspiring programme (Bach/Courot - Faure - Franck - Copland - Chopin), bound together by the themes of 'counterpoint' and 'Paris'. He said more with the brief but exquisite Faure Imprompu No.5 than some pianists could with an entire year's concerts, and the Chopin B minor sonata was delivered with such a combination of total assurance, technical virtuosity and thorough understanding of the poetry, it actually got me interested in Chopin all over again (not an easy conversion, after all those childhood hours I spent practising the same bloody Etudes, primarily to get all the right notes).

Life is good.

(slightly belated) best of 2008 - theatre

Having spent some 200 evenings at one cultural event or another, I thought it was worth making a list of highlights. And I'll expand accordingly where I feel there's more than one deserving candidate in each category.

The 'big four' subsidised venues (National Theatre, Donmar Warehouse, Almeida Theatre, Royal Court) continued to churn out tons of good work, and I also had some wonderful experiences in the commerical sector through careful picking, usually chosen because of the director (6 Characters at Gielgud, The Norman Conquests at Old Vic - see below).

New play: Two David Hare plays bookended our 2008 diary, and I personally preferred The Vertical Hour to Gethsemane. Neither was flawless, but TVH managed to consummate the marriage of compelling dialogues and effective dramatic structure with a much more gratifying result. One of my favourite directors, Robert Lepage, returned with the epic 7-hour Lipsynch to the Barbican (9 hours as billed, if you count the intervals too). Again, it had its weaker moments, but you come out at the end of it feeling revitalised and grateful for having been part of it.

Classics: our respective Chekov and Ibsen appetites were satisfied by Ivanov (perfect start to the Donmar in West End season) and Rosmersholm (Almeida - Helen Mcrory particularly notable). Even more memorable, however, was the fabulous Alan Ayckbourn introduction in the shape of The Norman Conquests at the Old Vic - Table Manners being simply one of the funniest things I have ever seen on stage anywhere.

Acting: Simon Russell Beale was the Actor of the Year (again), hands down. We now automatically book anything that he's in, knowing that he'll somehow transform even the most problematic script (and this rarely happens, as he's reliable with his choices, too) into a sublime experience. One to watch is Bertie Carvel, who was outstanding in The Pride at Royal Court Upstairs. Also notable were the entire Steppenwolf ensemble in Osage County (there's still time to catch one of the final performances, if you're in London), and the comedic nuance that Maria Tyzack managed to convey with every single one of her lines in The Chalk Garden (Donmar Warehouse).