Not so wunderbar

Call Off The Search.

2012-01-04T12:11:00.001Z

Bored with the ‘Hat Game’? Tired of ‘Mafia’? Too old for ‘Spin The Bottle’?

Well, worry not, because Brede McDermott and I have invented the perfect parlour game. It needs no dice, boards, playing pieces or chips. No gambling is involved. It will not make people cry like ‘Psychiatrist’ or drunk like ‘I’ve Never’.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am proud to introduce to you your new favourite game, ‘The Mirror Crack’d’.

NOTE FROM THE CREATORS:

If you are unfamiliar with the work of Agatha Christie, spoilers may lie ahead.

--- SPOILER EXCLUSION ZONE ---

Welcome back, the rest of you. Right. Here are the very simple rules of the game.

YOU WILL NEED:

2 players, a timekeeper, and some onlookers.

PLAYER ONE is Marina Gregg (Elizabeth Taylor, Claire Bloom, Lindsay Duncan)

PLAYER TWO is Heather Badcock (Maureen Bennett, Judy Cornwell, Caroline Quentin)

GAMEPLAY:

PLAYER TWO must engage PLAYER ONE in conversation for fifteen seconds, during which PLAYER ONE is not allowed to speak. PLAYER TWO must talk about being a huge fan of PLAYER ONE, but can otherwise say whatever he or she likes, in whatever accent(s) he or she chooses. PLAYER ONE must make appropriate ‘being talked to by a fan’ faces, and maintain eye contact.

At any point of his or her choice after the fifteen seconds, PLAYER TWO must mention the words ‘German Measles’. The moment the words ‘German Measles’ have been said, PLAYER ONE must immediately look away from PLAYER TWO, and stare at a fixed point in the distance for fifteen seconds. PLAYER ONE must at this point have a completely neutral expression- no smile, no laughing, no anger, no regret. His or her gaze must remain fixed. The neutrality of PLAYER ONE’s expression will be adjudicated by the ONLOOKERS, and the fifteen seconds timed by the TIMEKEEPER. During this time PLAYER TWO can continue speaking, saying whatever he or she wishes.

If PLAYER ONE maintains the fixed neutral expression for fifteen seconds, the mirror is crack’d, and PLAYER ONE gains a point, and vengeance. If PLAYER ONE’s expression flickers (for example by laughing) then PLAYER TWO doesn’t drink the poisoned cocktail and gets to stay alive (and also a point).

There are possible extra rules, but I will spare you those for now. They mainly involve poisoned hay fever remedies.

Anyway. Try it. It is the best game ever.

Happy New Year.

For Jer

2011-11-26T11:19:00.000Z

Jer’s gone.
It’s only just struck me, that.
You’re Jerome now.
A Sunday name, full of reverence
And solemn-faced respect.

Just as I hadn’t called you ‘Jerome’
For I don’t know how long
Before that sod flicked you away-
Now, I can’t remember
The last time I said ‘Jer’.

Well, fuck that backwards,
If you’ll pardon the profanity
(NB: I know you will).
I want the joy back. And so
If I can’t talk to you,

Can’t have any new memories,
Then god knows
I intend to reclaim the ones I have.
Not the catheter ones,
Not the funeral ones,

Not the monochrome year,
The year you’ve missed,
(Although you’d be proud,
So proud, of your resolute, steely girl)
But all that went before.

From this moment I swear
That thinking of you will be fun.
I reject the twinge. I deny the wobble.
Everything of you is laughter.
Sleep well, Jerome. Hello again, Jer.

18 November 2011

None of the above.

2011-09-24T13:00:00.003+01:00

I have had a very auspicious week. On Thursday, Facebook chose something I’d posted as one of its TOP NEWS STORIES for the last 15 minutes! I think Facebook’s rebranding as a rolling news channel is really going to propel it to a new level, although they may need to rethink their editorial policy if they’re going to lead with the remark I overheard at Willesden Green Tube Station.

Then, as if that weren’t exciting enough, the Mayor of London contacted me PERSONALLY because he is interested in what I think! This is incredibly touching, and feels as if it’s a recognition of a sort. I’m not hugely active in politics, but I do like to spout an opinion or two from time to time, and the idea that Boris wants me- me!- to help him decide on what policies to do is flattering and humbling.

Boris’ mailshot took the form of a questionnaire. I was very careful to answer as honestly as possible, because I could tell he was genuinely interested in my opinion- that’s why the page was headed ‘Tell Boris what you think!’ in a chirpy font. So, when section 1, ‘Local Issues’ asked ‘If there was one thing you could change in your local area, what would that be?’ I replied ‘A different mayor’. This was also the answer to ‘How would you improve transport in London?’ and I was beginning to think that I might have to write it in every single little blue box. But then Boris- perhaps thinking of the recent riots that took place in as many as four small pockets of London- took to asking me about crime. ‘Which area of crime do you think needs more attention?’ There wasn’t a little box for ‘a better understanding of the social and economic causes which lead young people to disengage from society’ so I just ticked ‘other’.

These questions had all been fairly generic so far, so I was pleased to see that Boris was keen to find out what I thought of a specific policy. ‘Since being elected’ he asked ‘Boris Johnson has quadrupled London’s rape crisis provision. Do you support his efforts to increase support for victims of rape?’

This was a real thinker. Like all humans, I am a massive fan of rape, and there’s nothing I hate more than seeing support for its victims increased. It was incredibly brave of Boris to risk asking for feedback on something where opinions were likely to be so polarised, when he could have asked about less controversial topics such as the 55% rise in bus fares in the three years since he came to power.

The next section, ‘Cost of Living’ pointed out that there was a huge increase in Council Tax under Livingstone, before asking what the mayor could do to help with the cost of living. Unaccountably, ‘stop raising the price of public transport year on year by loads more than the rate of inflation’ wasn’t an option, so I went back to the tried and tested and wrote ‘resign’. The next question showed a penetrating understanding of what is most important to Londoners in the current recession, with jobs being lost and services cut. ‘Boris stopped the production of Ken Livingstone’s propaganda sheet ‘The Londoner’ which cost London tax payers £3.1 million per year. Do you agree with this cost saving decision?’

Well, I hate propaganda, and I’m glad to see that Boris is so strongly against it, too. Unfortunately I never saw a copy of Ken Livingstone’s propaganda sheet ‘The Londoner’, so I’m unable to judge whether my c35p a year was being well spent.

For some reason I was feeling quite depressed and angry by this point, and my answer ‘Jump in the Thames’ to the question ‘what do you think the Mayor could do to make planning your finances easier?’ may have been a little churlish. I could hardly concentrate on the questions that followed, about the Olympics, and by the time I was asked how I’d voted before and how I would vote in future I was barely able to summon the strength to write ‘not for you’.

I can’t wait for my letter back from Boris, telling me how he’s going to be putting my suggestions into effect. Meanwhile, I’m going to have a very exciting weekend, courtesy of Ken Livingstone. You won’t believe this, but he’s emailed me- me!- to tell me that he’s announcing an important new policy on Monday, and, get this, if I click on the link he’ll tell me about it FIRST! At first I thought I must have misunderstood, but when I read again it was very clear: ‘If you want to be the first to know click here to sign up to receive a text before anyone else!’

I mean, that is huge. It’s like when Emma Willis tells you who’s nominated who, the night before the main show. I’ll tell you, if I’d clicked on that link I’d be swaggering around the streets of Cricklewood bursting with pride at the knowledge that I’d been told one of Ken’s flagship policies 48 whole hours before he released it to the press. I don’t quite know what I’d have been signing up to by clicking the link, but I bet it will have been awesome.

Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone have always been known for the maturity and dignity with which they carry themselves, and I can’t wait for what is bound to be an elevated and sophisticated mayoral campaign. These first shots are very promising; wouldn’t it have been awful if they’d treated us like we were really, really, really stupid?

Madeleines? They're the little cakes, right?

2011-09-15T01:37:00.004+01:00

I remember the moment I first realised that I couldn’t remember. I was talking to a friend about ‘Guys and Dolls’, a musical I adore. I think I might actually have said ‘I know every note of that score’.

Then I suddenly remembered, to my surprise, that I didn’t just know it, I’d performed it. In 1994 I played Benny Southstreet in a student production. Just so you know, Benny is the part to play if you enjoy fun and laziness. He has about twelve lines, every one of which is a belter. He sings solo, prominently, in three of the show’s best numbers- ‘Fugue for Tinhorns’, ‘The Oldest Established’ and the title song. There’s a bit of dancing- never my strong point- but hell, if you’re the klutz with twelve lines, nobody’s going to care if you look ungainly. If you’re rubbish, nobody will notice. If you’re good, they’ll notice.

I really, really enjoyed playing that part, all those years ago. But when- probably about three years later- I was quacking on about how much I loved the show, I was pulled up short. I had literally no recollection of having been in it. Not the rehearsals, not the performances, nothing. Something which had- presumably- filled my brain for- presumably- a few weeks, had slipped out of my mind and memory, never to return.

Tonight, watching a TV programme about Jamie Oliver taking his wonderful Fifteen franchise to Melbourne, the same weird realisation hit me. There were some shots of Sydney. Now, facebook tells me that I was in Sydney two years ago today. Intellectually I know that to be the case. There’s a stamp in my passport. I can just about picture Circular Quay, and the view of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House. But I have no visceral recollection of what it was like to be on the other side of the world. ‘What’s Australia like?’ you could ask me. ‘I don’t know’, I’d have to reply. I remember that I danced around my hotel room listening to Little Boots. I remember reading the football section of the sports news and thinking that it focused on people like Cahill and Schwarzer, Aussies in the Prem. I remember seeing Cate Blanchett in 'Streetcar', but that's just a 'watching a play' memory, not a 'being in Sydney' one. Those are my memories of having had the privilege of visiting the actual other side of the actual world.

And that’s the thing. I’m not an amnesiac*. Some things in life remain in glorious technicolour. There are countless, unimportant experiences in my life that I could recount to you in tedious detail. But how odd that some of the biggest- running a marathon, sitting by my father’s bedside in his dying days, being in love, going to the other side of the world, most of my undergraduate life- should be things that I only remember as a series of facts, things I remember because I know they happened rather than because I can recall how they felt.

I can tell you -without even having to furrow my brow- who was relegated from League Division Two in 1982 (Cardiff City, Wrexham and Orient, since you ask, and Orient weren’t known as Leyton Orient then, so there). My boundless memory for the little things remains intact. The big things- they’re in 2D. And I suspect I’m not the only one.

*hilariously, I had to google ‘amnesiac’ just to check it meant what I thought it did. Shush.

The Man Who Wasn't There

2011-08-28T04:48:00.002+01:00

Some names in the following have been changed (I’ve always wanted to say that). You’ll see why; and you’ll see why that sentence resonates, too. Some people who read this will know the real names of the people I’m talking about; I ask those people not to reveal them. I have no desire to ‘out’ anyone and any reply that does so will be immediately deleted.

Other than the names, every word of what follows is true.

It’s ironic that I should find myself writing this so soon after my comments on the characterisation of the internet, in ‘Two Boys’, because this real-life story is a companion-piece to that work. It starts (or, my part in it starts) in early 2002, when, as a slightly late adopter, I started posting on the Popbitch website. I’d been reading it without posting for a while (‘lurking’, in internet parlance) but one day I spotted something inaccurate and unfair about an actor I’d worked with, and logged in to put it right. Then I stuck around.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve spent a fair deal of time on messageboards, and have made a good many close friends as a result. They all sprang from Popbitch; in the early noughties, when PB became too lacking in genuine information, too desultory, and above all too spiteful, various former posters set up other discussion boards for those as were interested. Unlike PB, there was no need to have any ‘gossip’ if you wanted to post- conversations would ramble on nicely in any direction. More than anything else, it was an early form of social networking; the kind of thing you’d put on Facebook or Twitter is very similar to the kind of thing people discuss on this kind of board (not a chatroom; never call it a chatroom, because that’s a totally different thing. On a messageboard you can get easily immersed in an interesting conversation, it’s not just people shouting LOL! at each other. Or not always).

One of the people who migrated over to one of these offshoot boards was a poster whose username was MitheredMark. Although we hadn’t met, he’d been at Cambridge (several years after me) and this kind of common ground is meat-and-drink to online interaction. At this point, a friend of mine was dating someone who would have been MitheredMark’s contemporary at Cambridge, and I remember asking her if she remembered him, sketching in the not-very-many details I had about him. She couldn’t remember any such person, and I thought no more of it; there are a lot of students at any big university, after all.

But, as regular readers will know (another thing I’ve always wanted to say) online communities have a habit of becoming offline ones. A large group of friends (made up, as such groups often are, of various smaller ones) developed from the messageboard via post work drinks or mass-meetups. When you’re in your twenties and early thirties, it’s great to get to the end of the working day and write ‘Anyone fancy a pint after work?’ in the knowledge that as many as fifteen or twenty people- some of them already friends, some of them new ones- might reply in the affirmative.

And so, inevitably, I met MitheredMark in person. When asked for his name, he gave an eye-roll and deadpanned ‘Er, Mark’, making anyone who had asked feel a little stupid for having done so. He could be a little spiky, but he was witty, warm, generous, and immensely entertaining company; we became good friends.

Or rather, we became part of a wider, hugely supportive group of good friends. These are people who came to my sister’s wedding, and some of whom married each other. I ran the marathon in memory of one of them, with another. I’ve been on holiday several times with people from the board, alongside other friends to whom I’ve introduced them. At the height of our mild hedonism, before things like marriages and babies intervened, it wouldn’t be unusual for there to be post-work drinks three or four times a week, often- for god knows what reason- in the Phoenix on Charing Cross Road.

And Mark, who was now dating Andrew, another poster from the messageboard, would often be there. He had led a fascinating life- after Cambridge, he had studied journalism, as well as having a brief career as an actor, which he had abandoned despite being represented by one of the most prestigious agents in London. He’d also written, under a pseudonym, a couple of romantic novels. Given that he was 23 when we met, only two years out of university, this was an impressive CV.

But there was always an air of mystery about Mark, always a few things that were unexplained. Despite being a regular guest at various other people’s houses, invitations to the flat he eventually shared with Andrew were very few and far between. On one occasion I was chatting to the writer and performer John Finnemore, a friend of mine who, it struck me, must have been an exact contemporary of Mark’s at Cambridge. John didn’t remember him, an oddity which I recounted the next time I saw Mark. He was furious and, hilariously, even looked a little scared. ‘Don’t you EVER talk to John Finnemore about me again’ he said. Those of you who know, or who are, John Finnemore will agree that he is an unlikely casting for ‘terror-inducing nemesis’ but there was nothing I could do bar chalking it up on the list of ‘things about Mark I might never understand’.

During this period, roughly from 2004-2008, Mark was at the top of the list of my closest friends. If any social occasion were being arranged, he’d be one of the first names on the teamsheet. But after he split up with Andrew, a couple of slightly disturbing things started to happen. Firstly, a friend of mine checked the British Library listings for the titles of the two romantic novels Mark had written. They weren’t there, nor were they in the complete catalogue of the publisher he claimed had released them. On another occasion, he was invited by another friend to her work Valentine’s Party. He left early, in tears, after a cigarette break; while out on the balcony, two women had come up to him and homophobically abused him. My friend, rightly furious that such a thing should have happened to her guest, went straight to security and asked to see the CCTV tapes of the night before. And what they showed was Mark, alone on the balcony, calmly having a cigarette then walking back in. Other, smaller lies became noted; people just put it down to Mark being a little baroque when drunk. And if it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it. I’m terribly sorry for the previous sentence.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was when Mark split up with a chap he’d been dating. The dumpee was a smashing, gentle fella; everyone wondered why Mark had ended the relationship so abruptly. Then, shockingly, Mark told us why. I’m not going to spell out the reason he gave, but if it had been true then it would have been a matter for the police.

Of course, it wasn’t. When challenged by various different people, Mark told a variety of different stories, depending on who he was speaking to, so it soon became apparent that this was the deal-breaking lie. There was no big falling-out; I certainly never took the decision that Mark was someone I didn’t want to hang out with. But at the same time, he wasn’t the first person I dialled when I fancied meeting someone for a pint. Gradually, the friendship ground to a halt. I regretted this; he’s a clever, funny, warm, interesting man. But I’d been told more than enough things which weren’t true.

And that’s where it would have ended, were it not for a random tweet. I was aware that Mark and Andrew were back together, but hadn’t seen either of them for a while, when I saw on Twitter that Andrew had been promoted at work. I was pleased about this, so I had a look on his timeline to see how it had come about. And there it was: Andrew making a reference to ‘him indoors’ and someone else replying using a name I’d never heard before.

You’ve probably twigged by now. ‘Mark’ didn’t exist. Both his first name and his surname were entirely different to the name we knew him by. A quick google revealed that the person who had been my friend for eight years was a completely fictional creation. His family, his employers, the state, knew him under one identity; and the rest of us, under another. A lot of mysteries were solved by this, to be fair. Suddenly it was apparent why, whenever anyone called him at work, the operator wouldn’t have a clue who we were asking for. When he was headhunted we'd wondered what his new job was, and assumed it was another lie; in fact, the job was true but the name wasn’t. He’d swanked about using a credit card belonging to an ex; in hindsight, that was probably his own card.

I can understand using a different name when you meet people for the first time; I’ve even done it myself. What I can’t understand is continuing the subterfuge when you find yourself going to people’s weddings, meeting their families, becoming a part of people’s lives. In many ways, this final lie isn’t a big deal, compared with some of the others. ‘You thought I was called XY, in fact I’m called AB’ isn’t much of a betrayal in the grand scheme of things. But my god, it must have taken a lot of work. For year after year after year, Mark and Andrew kept the lie alive. Mark answered to a name he knew wasn’t his, from the mouths of his friends, thousands of times. He set up a facebook page under a false identity, accrued a hundred or so friends, commented on their posts. Even when he was drunk as a lord, somewhere he managed to maintain the deception. And that’s what is so odd, so hard to process.

I wrote much of the first part of this post a couple of months ago, when I’d just discovered the whole bizarre story. Then I thought better of posting it; I didn’t want to stir up a hornet’s nest. But, in the way of these things, there was no great drama. Mark and Andrew styled it out, replying to the various ‘What the FUCK?’ emails and tweets and texts with anodyne, ‘you don’t know the full story’ responses, followed by silence. Actually, I’m not wildly interested in knowing the full story, because I’d have no reason to believe a word of it. But, a few weeks down the line, it feels like such an extraordinary thing to have happened as to merit these few words. I had a friend. We hung out for the best part of a decade. We grew apart. Then I found out that he’d never been there in the first place.

Archiving.

2011-08-24T16:41:00.003+01:00

A snippet of me singing 'Marry Me a Little' at Julia and Joel's wedding. Hosted here for storage purposes, etc etc.

Credit where it's due:

2011-07-07T11:36:00.001+01:00

'Beached' to go ahead as planned clicky

Where exactly that credit *is* due, we may never know; but hurrah for the right ending.

What Opera North could have said.

2011-07-04T18:46:00.007+01:00

Another day, another twitterstorm- this time around the unlikely epicentre of one of our most forward-looking opera companies, caught in a row which pits prejudice against pragmatism.

I have a lot of sympathy for Opera North's near-impossible position. Lee Hall's article in the Guardian about the circumstances surrounding the cancellation of 'Beached', the community opera for which he had written the libretto (pulled because a local school was unhappy that its protagonist was gay), was so eloquent, so passionate and so palpably right that there wasn't a lot they could say in response. And, there's no doubt that once the local school had withdrawn its pupils from the production, it was pretty much dead in the water.

But neither of the company's public pronouncements is, I'm afraid, good enough. The first attempted to be anodyne- to paraphrase, it was essentially 'Lee's work is wonderful but in order to avoid offending people...' etc. The second was feistier, placing the blame more or less where it belongs, on the school and the LEA. But here's what a lot of people, gay and (like Lee Hall, or the friend I was discussing the issue with earlier, who pointed out much of what follows) straight, might have wanted them to say.

'Opera North is very disappointed in the decision made by the school to withdraw its pupils from our production, which has come so late as to make the scheduled run impossible. While respecting the concerns of parents and teachers, the company cannot agree with their decision.

We remain committed to producing this opera, and will not allow a dated narrative of shame around homosexuality to prevent us from presenting works of art which feature gay characters. It is not harmful to children for them to be informed that homosexuality exists; it is a simple fact of life. We would welcome the chance to collaborate with any community and school in our catchment area who would like to work with us on mounting a production of 'Beached' as it is currently scripted, and greatly regret that it cannot be in Bridlington.'

Just that. Standing by their librettist, rather than washing their hands of him. Criticising those whose prejudice had forced them to cancel the production, rather than trying to appease them. Would that have been so difficult?

Neither had a wooden horse.

2011-07-01T15:31:00.004+01:00

Last week, someone I’ve never met taught me how to make a gif. I needed to know how so I could enter a competition on Twitter, the prize for which was two tickets to Nico Muhly’s new opera ‘Two Boys’ at ENO. Having failed to win the competition, I bought tickets for Wednesday’s performance instead, and went along with two friends. I know one of them from an opera website, and met the other via a messageboard.

So, when Muhly talks about the ‘generation that grew up with the internet’ I know what he means. I’m a few years older than he is, though, so I was a young adult rather than a teenager when it began to transform our lives. Like many people my age, I had an embarrassing initial skepticism when it came to the ‘information superhighway’. With all the confidence of the man who turned down the Beatles, I dismissed it as a fad.

Now, of course, I’m a convert. A massive convert- to the extent that I have to yank the plug out of the router when I have work to do. I spend a vast amount of time online. I’ve made many, many friends via messageboards and social networks- and they’re not just words on a screen. I’ve been on holidays with friends I’ve made in cyberspace; some of them were at my sister’s wedding. And when my dad was dying- a time much on my mind at the moment, as it would have been his 75th birthday yesterday- the net was a vital lifeline. For the last three months of dad’s life, my sister and I de-camped to my parents’ house in rural Norfolk, to help with his care. Without a computer, it would have been much harder to feel connected to my life in London; without a computer, the long nights staying awake to watch at dad’s bedside would have been very lonely indeed.

I mention all this because the internet gets a bad rap, both in the press and in the arts. We’re all familiar with the tenuous, frothing ‘CHILD WITH FACEBOOK ACCOUNT GETS MURDERED’ style of news story. And when people started dramatising the worldwide web- in films such as Hackers and The Net, or plays such as Closer, the narrative was always the same. The online world was dark, scary. People used it to keep track on you, or to pretend to be someone else. Trust no-one, was the message; the cake is a lie.

My initial problem with ‘Two Boys’, pretty much the first opera to engage with a phenomenon which has been dominant in our lives for the best part of two decades, is that it followed this narrative, the idea that as soon as we type an address into a browser we are putting ourselves at risk. The plot, based on a true story, hinges on assumed/false identity; there are whole choral sections based on the premise that Everyone On The Internet Is There To Have Weird Sex. Well, yes, there’s a lot of sex, weird and otherwise, on the net. But there’s a lot of other stuff, too. It’s not just the place some people go when they want to get off- it’s where everyone goes to do everything. In fact, the opera eventually does embrace this idea, although perhaps not as much as it should.

Thus, the plot strand in ‘Two Boys’ which bugged me the most was the journey of Susan Bickley’s character, the CIO of an attempted murder case in which a 16 year old boy has stabbed a younger friend. She starts from a position of near-total innocence- the fact that online people can pretend to be somebody else, or that cyberspace can be a venue for bullying, or that young people are not only sexualized but fluent in the language and the darker corners of sexuality, seems to be news to her, and shocking news, at that. Surely, a senior police officer would be more savvy? The twist that the plot takes at the end really seems to take a hell of a long time to occur to her; I wish I’d come to the piece not knowing it, so I could gauge how much of a surprise it was. I think it was a major misstep in ENO’s publicity not to keep it under wraps, and I’d love to know what it would be like to work it out for oneself.

As far as Craig Lucas’ libretto is concerned, that’s my only gripe. Some of the reviews have been quite snippy about his contribution, but I thought that the storytelling and the release of information were beautifully timed, and some of the exchanges- particularly the early chatroom conversations between central character Brian and his online friend Rebecca- were genuinely dramatically riveting in a way operatic dialogues tend not to be. There’s no sitting back and letting the experience wash over you- you have to be alert, to concentrate, and the work is all the better for it. That, I think, is Lucas’ achievement, because Muhly’s music is more problematic.

The opening is a wonderful nod to some of the opera’s influences- an ominous ostinato in the strings which sounds exactly, but exactly, like the opening title music of a Hollywood thriller. It’s almost impossible to hear it without imagining a camera sweeping around a police station, names of the stars appearing in the bottom right of the screen, before settling on a desk where, say, Sigourney Weaver is poring over some case files. It’s a terrific start. But Muhly’s musical language seems limited, its rhythm unvarying. There has been much talk of how his composition is ‘post minimalist’ but it sounds pretty much like minimalism to me. More worryingly, it lacks the energy, the forward motion of the best minimalist composers; the opera feels as if every page is headed ‘andante, mf’. This musical lethargy has an unfortunate effect on the word-setting- there’s nothing conversational, no parlando. Even simple conversational exchanges seem to have every syllable set to minims rather than quavers, so that the dramatic tension indicated by Lucas’ libretto is dissipated. There’s a lack of theatricality, of dramatic set pieces arising from, rather than set to, music. These aren’t incompatible with the minimalist language- put it this way, when John Adams has Mme Mao enter the stage, he knows he has to do something huge. Conversely, the dramatic climax of Muhly’s opera- the stabbing on which the whole evening hangs- utterly lacks musical tension or any kind of sense of climax. It’s left entirely to the performers to generate the necessary shock which, since both of Muhly’s two protagonists are excellent singing actors, they do. But I bet they wish they had the music to help them. When a story this disturbing reaches its conclusion, the last thing you want of the music is that it be unobtrusive.

This is not to say, however, that as a musician Muhly isn’t richly gifted and, by his lights, inventive. Purely as music the score is constantly interesting, and he knows how to write for singers, particularly choral singers. The closest the evening comes to the kind of music-drama swagger one would expect from a composer with Muhly’s wunderkind status is in the work of the chorus, portraying the internet itself. The moment Brian opens his laptop to unleash a sussuration of voices, all seeking someone to talk to, is genuinely thrilling, hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck stuff. The concertato writing, when the various people Brian has met online (none of them who they seem to be) is also richly satisfying musically and dramatically. And, just at times, the dramatic situation rouses Muhly’s music out of its inertia into something more vital, most notably in the last exchange between Brian and Rebecca, or the scene where Brian receives the detailed instructions which lead to the stabbing. The final chorus, too, notable in its ambiguity and its refusal to offer pat answers, is as intriguing and serious of intent and disturbing as the evening deserves.

I don’t want to come down too hard on Muhly- he is palpably a major, serious talent, to be cherished and to be nurtured. But ‘Two Boys’ isn’t quite there yet, and may need revisiting before it’s unleashed at the Met (the running time should definitely be reduced: this is a 90 minute opera currently stretching to 120, and boasting an utterly superfluous interval). Despite my caveats about this work, I’d still buy a ticket for anything with Muhly’s name on it.

The production, by Bartlett Sher, is sensational- scenes flow seamlessly into each other, the versatile, functional set and brilliantly-executed video projections create the world of the opera, both online and off, with glittering simplicity. Sher has also assembled a fine cast of singing-actors, too. Bickley is a known quantity, of course, and is as good as you’d expect in the elusive, underdrawn character of the cop. Despite some neat scenes with her mother, aimed at sketching out Anne’s backstory and inner life, you never really get a sense of who this woman is. She’s at her best in the scenes interrogating Nicky Spence’s Brian, as opposed to the rather generalized arias in which she expresses confusion and concern. Spence’s performance is terrific, giving life to a character who is difficult to understand. Brian’s innocence can be ascribed, I suppose, to his youth (although he seems a little too obedient to anyone who asks him to wap his cock out on webcam, whether it’s potential girlfriend or scary CIA supervillain) but his gullibility matches that of Bickley’s character at times. Vocally and dramatically Spence rises to the challenge of a young man on the edge, and his lyric tenor easily encompasses vocal writing that sometimes calls for a certain amount of heldenheft. And I can’t really tell you why without spoilering, but Joseph Beesley, as the other boy of the opera’s title, is extraordinary both as singer and actor. Everyone, though, in this large cast does a grand job. I’ve not seen a more universally convincingly acted opera production in a long time.

Disgracefully, until last year, I had never seen the premiere run of a new opera. Now I’ve seen three, and of those three ‘Two Boys’ is easily the most interesting and the work I’d most happily return to. ‘Prima Donna’ we can regretfully discount. But the comparison with ‘Anna Nicole’ is an interesting one. Turnage’s music has all the canny theatricality that Muhly’s lacks; but ‘Anna Nicole’ doesn’t ask any questions; it reminds us, none too subtly, of things we already know. ‘Two Boys’ is more elusive, more serious-minded, more ambiguous- and as a result we care much more about its damaged central characters, however loosely sketched, than we do about the tragic Ms. Smith. Lucas, Muhly, Sher and their singers have created a flawed but important work, a work which tries and almost succeeds in addressing pressing contemporary concerns, holding an operatic mirror up to society in a way which doesn’t happen nearly enough. For that, they should be commended, and for that, ‘Two Boys’ demands to be seen.

Final Cardiff post- post Cardiff final.

2011-06-19T19:59:00.001+01:00

Bondarenko won the song prize- does that mean he’s more or less likely to win tonight? I note he hasn’t cut his hair, so he is obviously not keen to sleep with my flatmate. WOW! J Di-Do is on pundit duty, that’s a coup and she’ll have interesting things to say, so long as she isn’t too hung up on being nice- she might be too generous an individual for this job, although I suppose this five won’t need any special pleading. Cabell is the other pundit, and I’m not going to say anything rotten about what her career says about the quality of the competition’s winners (I’ve never got her, I’m afraid).

A quick run down of the judges (Old! Old! Old! Marilyn Horne is a little white haired old lady and that is just WRONG) reveals that the mystery Russian is a conductor, which makes him even more mysterious, because I’ve never heard of him. Kiri weighs in with some stretched-to-the-limit sporting metaphors and then we get a rundown of the finalists (for once, Petrova is represented by her best rather than worst moment). In fact, the rundown makes me want them all to win, apart from Raval, who I like but don’t really see as a finalist. Her Josie interview reveals, again, a thoroughly energetic and likeable woman.

Ah. Now then. She’s starting with ‘D’Amor sull’ali rosee’ which is interesting in light of the fact it was sung wonderfully in the final heat by the absent Crocetto. Raval’s voice is too thin for the recit, I’m afraid- ‘pressa e la mia difesa’ is really too wimpy. Still, her quiet singing is her strength so perhaps the aria itself will fare better. She launches the aria with a couple of little wobbles- nerves, no doubt. Frockwatch: she’s wearing a Violetta Act One special in a disconcerting shade of ketchup. Her breathing has settled down now, and she pulls out a nice legato, but this is the wrong voice for this music. The second arching phrase on ‘le pene’ (ie the one that isn’t the top C, I don’t have a score to hand) is absolutely gorgeous- it’s the reason she’s chosen the aria- but I can’t help thinking she would have done better to open with something a little less spinto. Ends it beautifully- she really is shimmering when she sings soft and high. She doesn’t essay a ‘Tu Vedrai’, which is probably for the best. Joyce says nice things without actually praising the performance. Oh, now, this is ridiculous- ‘Sola, perduta, abbandonata’? Really? I don’t see how this will be a good fit for her at all, apart from the fact that she’s a decent actor. She KNOWS this isn’t right, too, if the way she’s forcing the first phrase is anything to go by- pushing the voice into sounding bigger than it is? As predicted, the acting is excellent but what a dumb, dumb choice. She should be wowing us with Gheorghiu rep, not underwhelming with Tebaldi stuff. She throws in a bit of parlando on ‘tutta e finita’ which may have been necessity rather than choice. She gets through the aria all right but why stretch the voice to the limit in this way? She’s finishing with ‘Beim Schlafengehen’, which ought to be a better fit, but unfortunately seems still to be stuck in forcing mode- it’s overwrought, lacking the legato she showed in the Verdi and surprisingly unlovely. The ‘Und die seele’ section really shows her voice at its least impressive I’m afraid. She could have come out, sung Liu and ‘September’ and Pamina and ravished us. Instead she’s doing everything she can to force out tone, to the extent that in some phrases, here as in the Puccini, the breath control is compromised. Disappointing. I wonder if Hagegard is disappointed too- he sure ain’t clapping. Cabell calls her ‘confident’, ‘refreshing’ and ‘impeccably trained’. Petroc asks Joyce a question which suggests that he agrees that her rep choices were strange, and she gives a diplomatic answer about ‘hearing her future’ and it being a big sing.

Petrova is up next and starts with The Tsar’s Bride, and this is very good stuff indeed. She’s much more connected to this aria than in either of the ones we saw in her heat, no hint of that placid complacency which is bothersome for Dalila or the Princesse. She finds some smashing chest tones for the end, which she’ll need now for Ulrica- another potentially excellent choice. Yep, this is terrific and she’s transformed dramatically from the other night. I can see her shortish top causing her problems in future though (I am talking about vocal range, not a skimpy garment, for clarification). I’ll stop banging on about rep soon, I promise, but Raval should take note of what can be achieved with an aria which is securely, safely and solidly in the voice. That really was terrific. Cabell calls her a star in the making and advises caution around big Verdi, which is fair enough. She’s ending with ‘Voi lo Sapete’, which is owned in my personal pantheon by Obratszova, Troyanos and Suliotis, although I suspect she’ll be more lyric and less desperate than any of those three. And so it proves- the start of the aria has that almost reflective quality which marred her Dalila. This is excellent vocalism but Santuzza is on the edge and we don’t really get that from Petrova’s performance, which ends rather abruptly on ‘io son dannata’. Now then, this should be interesting; she’s not at her best when singing in French or being sexy, so of course we’re getting the Habanera. This really can’t afford to be as formidable as some of her other performances. The ‘pas aujourd-hui, c’est certain’, delivered with a beaming smile, is adorable, not dangerous; she’s too nice for Carmen. The aria itself is delivered with a slight frown and, as predicted, no real sense of seduction. Her French is… Russian. She’s sung wonderfully but the other three competitors must be thinking that this competition is winnable. Petroc asks another loded question- this time about ‘sunshine and the world of Carmen’. I think Petrova is a little disappointed, judging by her Josinterview.

DING DING DING! PUNDIT BINGO! Joyce just referred to ‘singing on the interest, not the capital’.

Now we have Lee, who I suspect will win if she brings her best form. ‘If I win this competition, I will be flying like a bird, because I will be in a dream’. Bless her. She’s starting with ‘Tornami a Vagheggiar’- odd to do something so very much easier than the arias she sang in her heat, I wonder if she’ll firework it up? Oooch, dodgy start- thin and pitchy. It improves, but she’s nowhere near the standard she set as Zerbinetta and Mme Mao. We get some pin-sharp sparkly stuff at the end, but she’s not done herself justice I’d say. Joyce felt it lacked playfulness, and Joyce is right. Ophelia’s mad scene now, which has the quite low bar of ‘can she do it better than Marlis Petersen’? Second aria syndrome- this is much, much better. She’s got a lot of ground to make up though- I’d say the Handel was weaker than anything Petrova sang. Hagegard appears to be asleep in a cutaway to the judges’ table, and who can blame him? Newsflash: the music of Amboise Thomas is, in the main, dull, and if she was going to insist on singing him, she should have gone for ‘Je Suis Titania’. But really, she could have rocked the place with ‘O Zittre Nicht’ or the Proch variations or Olympia’s aria or ‘Quando rapito’ or just ANYTHING would have been a better choice. She’s singing it prettily but not flawlessly enough to justify its presence, and went badly sharp at the end- another casualty of pushing. She was much, much better in the heat and I think has probably blown her chances tonight.

So, that would mean it boils down to Nafornita v Bondarenko, and the scoreboard on that one is currently running at Moldova 0 Ukraine 1. Bondarenko, wearing my M&S blue linen shirt, discusses his chances of winning with a suddenly flirty Josie. He’s starting with ‘Rivolgete’ which, even though Cosi is on some days my favourite opera, I’ve always found a bit of a slog. Much more dramatic and comic possibilities in ‘Donne mie’, surely? Still, this plays to a lot of Bondarenko’s strength and he attacks it with the confidence of someone who already has one prize under his belt. He’s undoubtedly a very exciting prospect but even this vocally unimpeachable and charmingly acted performance doesn’t quite have the thrill of a prizewinner about it. Now, however, he’s setting himself a challenge- Posa’s death. And it’s beautiful- the long breathed lines wonderfully controlled and with a legato which would be the envy of many more experienced and established singers- shame we didn’t get ‘Per Me Giunto’ as well. He ends it terrifically, giving a look to the heavens and a great gulp of air as a neat solution to the dilemma of a death scene in concert. Champagne aria now, aka the aria which nobody ever, ever sounds good singing. I suppose it’s a calling card- ‘cast me as Don Giovanni’ please- but he sounds every bit as out of breath as everyone who has ever sung this. An odd choice. Twitter is nonetheless calling it for Bondarenko, and we all know that Twitter is always right, hem hem. He ends, perhaps, inevitably, with Tschaikovsky, and it’s quite gorgeous. I think he might win, you know- although my spies in the hall tell me that he has audibility issues, but sounds better downstairs, and downstairs is, of course, where the judges sit.

Nafornita is going to start with ‘Regnava nel Silenzio’, which is spooky as I nearly sort of mentioned it earlier (although I doubt we’ll get the cabaletta). Slightly pitchy start but she’s into her stride by the second phrase. She sings it well, but she’s yet another singer who was better in the heats- there’s nothing as special as the frisson (pun intended) she brought to Juliette’s aria. Cool, we ARE getting ‘Quando rapito’. And it’s absolutely terrific, as the stadium-style cheers from the house reflect. That puts her in touching distance of Bondarenko, I’d say- it depends on her other arias. The first of which is Rusalka, so my tear ducts are in danger. She starts it beautifully, but as I said with regard to Leese in heat 1, it’s all about THAT phrase, which Leese didn’t quite nail. Nafornita does, however, in all its aching beauty. This is singing of very, very high quality indeed. We are ending- wry smile- with Je Veux Vivre. I have heard enough of this aria but there’s no doubt that Nafornita sings it well. Some people are kvetching about the Lucia, but I think her choice of rep has been very clever in both rounds. This is lovely, vibrant, expressive singing. I suspect, though, that Bondarenko has it by a nose.

Good GOD, Joyce di Donato failed to get past the audition stage. In the year that Guang Yang won. Just ponder on that for a moment while we wait for the result.

Audience prize comes first, nicely rechristened the Joan Sutherland audience prize. Bondarenko for this too? But no, it’s Nafornita, which judging from the response in the hall should have been easy to predict- and maybe it’s because people thought she should have won her heat? And- well, that’s a turn-up- she wins the main prize too, to the obvious astonishment of Bondarenko, who is the Arsenal or Chelsea of this competition- talk of trebles followed by disappointment. He wasn't as good in the final as in his heat, which is reflected in the reversed result, which might also have reflected the audibility thing.

I’d have given it to him*, but she’s a worthy winner nonetheless, of what has been a variable but largely excellent competition. But, you know what? Nobody sang Largo al Factotum.

*the prize, I mean. I'm not my flatmate.

If you can't blog the heat...

2011-06-19T17:11:00.002+01:00

So, Heat 4 happened on Thursday and was broadcast on Friday, so as I watched it seemed a bit silly to 'liveblog'- especially as the result AND the identity of the finalists had been spoilered for me courtesy of Twitter. I'm looking at YOU, BBC Wales viewers- Grr and Tsk. So, just an overview for this heat, ahead of tonight's final.

Enzo Romano, representing Uruguay, came up with a pretty horrible Non Piu Andrai (friendoftheblog dame gwyneth described, brilliantly, his characterisation as 'redoubtable octogenarian gay jew') but redeemed himself with a much better account of Bottom's Dream- a real case of 'second aria' syndrome.

Ireland's Maire Flavin continued the trend of wonderful mezzos, certainly the most successful vocal category in this competition- there hasn't been a dud yet. She's not the most vivid performer but the voice itself is beyond. She managed to nail the Komponist without screeching, too, which is rarer than it should be. Like her a lot.

Leah Crocetto ought to be in the final and it's mental that she isn't. Despite an unfortunate resemblance to Mutya from the Sugababes (just me? Ok then) she sailed through a difficult programme- the Trov Leonora is a real challenge for a young singer, especially the Act 4 aria which only justifies its existence if it's jaw-droppingly lovely, which this nearly, very nearly, was. I'd say she is a far more exciting prospect than another, ahem, young American soprano who is routinely greeted as the second coming.

Davide Bartolucci, representing Italy, wins the 'most ethnically suitable name' award but isn't really memorable for much else. Baritones are the anti-mezzo in this competition, I think; the standard is always lowish, with the odd exception. He did some Handel and some Mozart and they were ok. Not much more that I can say, which is maybe telling.

And then, a star. Hye Jung Lee is a coloratura soprano who is for once worthy of the name- it's all spot-on and she really sings rather than chirp. We get some of Zerbinetta (cutting arias short has been a bete noire of previous Cardiff coverage, which the BBC had hitherto managed to avoid here) and then, thrillingly, Madame Mao, which she absolutely nails. I wonder if this role will become a calling card/millstone for South East Asian sopranos the way Aida did for black ones (No). Still, this is the best rendition of this aria I've heard, although it strikes me I've only heard two other singers do it. So, there's a publicity quote for her- 'Better than Trudy Ellen Craney and Judith Howarth'- notsowunderbar).

So, the finalists (it's just starting as I type) are Raval, Petrova, Bondarenko, Nafornita and Lee. Crocetto should be there instead of Raval, and I'd give an Hon Mensh to Miss Germany, Miss Australia, Mr Romania and Miss Ireland. Lee will win, but I'd like Bondarenko to. There's just a chance, too, that if Narfornita really catches fire, she could do it. Onward!

It Just. Got. Interesting.

2011-06-16T20:59:00.001+01:00

So, here we go with heat three, my second Cardiff dollop of the day. Hopes for tonight centre mainly around singers opting for appropriate repertory- some of last night’s choices were a little dumb, really.

We kick off with Susanne Braunsteffer, a German soprano who will be singing In Questa Reggia followed by Grossmachtige Prinzessin.

I joke, of course. (I wonder if anyone has ever sung both? Nobody springs to mind, except maybe the bonkers Deutekom). Susanne trained with Mirella Freni and doesn’t think opera is elitist. Out comes the mobile, as with the Bulgarian woman the other night. This time it’s Samsung rather than iphone and husband rather than child, but this is turning into a theme.

She’s starting with ‘Come Scoglio’ which my operatic autism (operautism?) reminds me is a portentous choice- previous winners Matilla, Harteros and Scherbachenko all sang it. And this is a lovely, lovely voice, judging by the recit. Slightly mushy Italian but a lovely tone, warm and gleaming simultaneously. This lady could be proper world class, I think. The aria’s a minefield though, of course, but my fingers are crossed for her here. She gets through the fiendish section on ‘affetto’ pretty well, bar an attempt at the C which even my opera-hating flatmate could tell was, quote, ‘a bit ropey’. But she reminds me a little of Persson, and of Gritton, and that’s pretty benchmark-y for Fiordiligi these days. She rises to the challenge of the triplets at the end, although there’s a little bit of a screech in the last phrase. Mark Padmore finds her confident and controlled.

Oh for god’s sake, ANOTHER Vespri Bolero. Sick of this now, 3 times in 3 nights. But she’s singing it very well indeed, and I’d go so far to say that this is the best actual instrument we’ve heard all week so far, better even than Petrova’s, although Braunsteffer’s technique is much ropier than the Russian’s. Elin Manahan Thomas isn’t blown away by her, I’d say, although she’s using complimentary language. Padmore seems more impressed, especially by Come Scog.

An Aussie mezzo, Helen Sharman, is next, and she’ll be doing Una Voce Poco Fa, followed no doubt by bloody Merce bloody Dilette bloody Amiche. Josie- who the flatmate tells me is from Newport, he really is a mine of information- offers her some Welsh cakes. She’s starting with Sta nell’Ircana from Alcina, an odd choice when Bramo di Trionfar is in the same opera and is ace. She’s good, you can tell straight away. The standard of tonight’s heat is already oceans away from last night’s. I like her black and red frock; flatmate thinks she looks like Evil Spiderman from Spiderman III. Make of that what you will. It’s nice to hear some clean, proper coloratura after the crimes against it in heat two, and Sharman’s voice is rich and true- a little reminiscent of Murray but fuller in its sound. Thomas finds her ‘grounded’ and ‘secure’- she’s clearly here to perform the Mary King function of technical merit, while Padmore is there for artistic impression. You know, like in the ice dancing. She’s following it with ‘Una Voce’, also overdone in competitions but I suppose I can see why. Oddly, she’s hardened her tone for the virginal Rosina- it was warmer and more feminine for the warrior Ruggiero. She’s singing it very well indeed, mind, although both singers tonight have been a little generalized where facial expression and selling the arias have been concerned. She negotiates the ‘…ma’ in the ‘io sono docile’ section without the usual frenzied mugging, for which relief much thanks. She’s firing off the fioratura (I fancied a change of word) with accurate ease, and it would be tough to choose between these first two singers. Padmore finds her musical and intelligent and rightly observes that what was lacking from the Rossini was charm. Thomas thought she was nicely masculine in the Handel and more feminine for Rosina, so she and I will have to have a fight at some point.

John Pierce now, Welsh tenor. Wales have never had a home win in this competition (although arguably they should have- Terfel I think is marginally more of a star than Hvoro) and this year their hopes are pinned on this likeable, gentle fella who is what Alexander McCall Smith might call ‘traditionally sized’. He’s starting with the Nemorino aria, which I last heard being massacred by Joe McElderry on that ITV abomination that shall remain nameless (channel hopping rather than watching, I should stress. I’m not a masochist.)

Wales is going to have to wait at least two more years. Pierce is perfectly pleasant but unspecial. He phrases nicely and has a decent legato but neither his voice nor his face have much, um, face. Massenet next- ‘Fuyez, douce image’, and, in the tradition of second arias, it’s much more successful. He launches the aria itself quite beautifully, but there’s not much to say about this chap; he’s fine, which is fine. He’ll be a useful lyric tenor for WNO and ENO, but don’t hold your breath for his Scala debut. Promisingly, however, when he opens the choke and let rip, he’s at his best, pointing perhaps to some heavier stuff later in his career where sheer beauty of tone would be less important. Thomas likes his legato but says the louder stuff didn’t do it for her. It’s like she’s set out deliberately to make me look stupid. He’s ever such a sweetheart in his interview with Josie, you just want to give him a hug.

Now, after some technical advice from Mary, it’s Moldovan soprano Valentina Nafornita, following in the Moldovan soprano footsteps of Cebotari and um, um, um. She gives Josie a pirouette lesson. And hurrah for her, she’s starting with ‘Gluck, das mir verblieb’ which I think is an excellent competition choice- not everyone does it, and if you have a good legato and a tonally attractive voice it can be the most beautiful thing in the world. Nafornita is no Fleming (out on her own in this aria, I’d say, although that might make some people cross) but she’s a vivid communicator. The legato is ok, and the voice, while not radiant, is pretty. This is another very polished performance on an evening which is really showing up the last heat. I still couldn’t pick a winner, although I don’t think it will be Pierce. Bad news for England though, in that I’d rank all three women tonight above Raval, who I think J liked more than I did. Now here’s Gounod’s Juliette again, although it is at least the poison scene rather than the waltz. This is the aria that Gheorghiu pulled out of at the Met before pulling out of Juliette at the Met, which is utterly baffling because it is utterly and totally written for her voice. Nafornita, from the same neck of the woods if not the same country, is doing a grand job of this too and this performance may edge her in front, a couple of tentative high notes aside. (three minutes later) I was too busy listening to type- this is the performance of the night, and the crowd knows it- great big cheers even though she’s up against Their Boy. And she’s only 24! Crikey. She’s HUGELY promising. Petroc and Elin are blown away- Elin says it was ‘amazing’, ‘special’ and ‘a privilege to hear her’. It won’t do Valentina any harm that she is model-gorgeous and elegantly slim. Padmore finds her top notes ‘extraordinarily gorgeous’ and ‘thrilling’ so the panel seem decided on who’s going to win tonight.

Tonight’s last singer is Ukranian Andrei Bondarenko, who has central European hair. Inevitably, opera wasn’t his first love, he wanted to be a jazz saxophonist. So that’s a rock drummer, a basketballer, a couple of dancers… these poor opera singers. WHY DO THEY GET FORCED INTO THE OPERATIC SLAVE TRADE AGAINST THEIR WILL? I know I bang on about this, but it’s so fucking patronising to the singers and the audience. ‘Don’t worry, he’s not a freak, he likes jazz! Don’t be frightened, she’s normal, she listens to rap!’ Fuck. Off.

Bondarenko’s good, but it’s all a bit ‘after the Lord Mayor’s Show’ in the light of the previous performance. He’s an animated performer, good looking (flatmate: ‘he’d get it, if he cut his hair’) and possibly the most truthful actor of the competition so far. It’s a good voice, too- he’s singing ‘Vedro mentr’io sospiro’ and putting last night’s Mr China to shame. In fact, four of tonight’s five singers would have won last night. He’s following the Mozart with tonight’s second dose of Korngold, the aria which was so popular with baritones in 2009- and even the first phrase shows him to be better than any of them. This is a gorgeous, secure voice and unlike some of this year’s other male competitors he’s absolutely ready for the international stage. Best baritone so far, and unlucky to be in this heat with Nafornita who will surely win. He gets better and better throughout the Korngold and ends it quite ravishingly, to cheers from the house. He’s finishing with le Maschere- I’m slightly surprised he gets a third aria after two long’uns. Oh lawd help us, it’s a character number- stuttering, to be precise. Maybe he thought it would be zeitgeisty after the King’s Speech. He’s doing it very well, he really is a smashing actor, but it seems odd to end his set being all buffo and erase the memory of his glorious Korngold. But who knew- he’s actually being funny. He’s making me laugh. Remember the date- June 16th 2011, the night an opera singer was actually funny. On purpose. Crowd goes wild, and rightly. He needs to be in the final if he doesn’t win tonight.

So, here we go. This has been an excellent heat- and STOP PRESS Bondarenko wins, despite the panel’s prediction of Nafornita. They should both sing again on Sunday. Hon menshes to Miss Germany and Miss Oz, but I suspect we’ve seen the last of them.

What’s exciting, though, is that unless tomorrow’s heat is exceptional we’ve seen the winner tonight, one way or another.

Tonight, on a Very Special Not So Wunderbar...

2011-06-16T16:59:00.005+01:00

Something a little different for heat 2 of Cardiff. Those of you who frequent opera websites (and hello, both of you!) will have come across the 'IM conversation' approach to opera criticism- two people, watching and listening to the same thing, and chatting away about it before your astonished eyes. Since my friend J (not his real name, his real name is longer) and I had both missed last night's heat, I thought it might be fun for us to harness the power of iplayer, Sky Plus and the internet to bring you our thoughts on the- mildly disappointing, as it turned out- second heat of this year's competition.

I should point out that J's real name isn't 'Dame Gwyneth Jones' either, although that is the name under which his posts appear below. However, it might be fun to read or sing his observations in the voice of that redoubtable soprano, so do feel free to do so if it pleases you.

"me: First observation: They seem to have borrowed their title music from 'Eggheads' or similar.

damegwynethjones: Yes, and Petroc is doing his best impression of the gravelly voiced Americn who does the film trailer voiceovers.

me: They should have swirling 360 degree cameras like on X Factor. Oh look, they do. The judges look so OLD.

damegwynethjones: Kiri, especially, seems to be teetering on the edge of suddenly turning into an old lady. Who is that judge who doesn't get any kind of descriptive tag? Sort of Russian sounding name, with no indiction of what his mandate is.

me: OK, Meeta Raval from England is first. She is down with the kids, follows urban artists, and wants to collaborate with Tinie Tempah. Sigh.

damegwynethjones: Oh God. At least she has some sort of personality and a natural manner.

me: Yep. 'Signore Ascolta' first. (I have to do this descriptive stuff for my PUBLIC, you understand) Hmm. A bit metallic, no? Not sure I like her vibrato.

damegwynethjones: Nice-ish dress. Wouldn't have advised lace for her though. Touch metallic yes, but I basically like it. Natural and free.

me: She's lovely with the quieter stuff, but it gets that 'balloon plastic' sound under pressure. Does that make sense or have I come down with synasthaesia? The end was beautiful.

damegwynethjones: Generous phrasing, lack of inhibition -not usual in one so young. Not completely following the balloon plastic thing tbh.

me: Haha, I'm not surprised. I think I know what I mean but I don't see why anyone else should... What about this then? Walton's Troilus and Cressida must be a new one for this competition. Someone's had a word on rep, I think, after all the endless 'Je Veux Vivres' last time.

damegwynethjones: Yes, but she isn't the only one singing it this year! She does remind me of De Niese up top, which isn't really a compliment.

me: She's singing this very well though, in general, I think. Pouring out lots of tone, to use critical cliche #1.What she is not going to do, however, is win. You're right, the top is iffy. She's good and passionate though.

damegwynethjones: I really like her, I think. Complete command of her voice, good musician, seems like she could probably act. Final high note was lovely.

me: She can act all right. This Vespri aria has every drop of the individuality it was missing in the first heat. She's very immediate.

damegwynethjones: Exactly, good word. Just a bit closed in the lower top (stupid expression but you know what I mean), otherwise, attractive and fab.

me: I'm not entirely in love with the actual voice itself, but she uses it wonderfully.

damegwynethjones: Top E on the cards?

me: Yeah, I reckon she will. She has a glint in her eye.

damegwynethjones: Innit!

me: So much for theories...

damegwynethjones: Oh well. Kiri liked it.

me: So, if you were Tinie Tempah, which aria would you want to urbanly remix with her?

damegwynethjones: Oh the Verdi fo' shizzle.

me: She has personality to burn, judging by her chat with Josie. Mary thinks she's singing heavier rep than she should be.

damegwynethjones: Maybe, but I didn't hear anything too worrying. Top does def need to open up though, that's true.

me: MYSTERY RUSSIAN JUDGE SIGHTED!

damegwynethjones: Do you think they even know who he is?

me: Maybe he just strolled in confidently. Wang Lifu next, Chinese baritone, and the first singer so far this year to make me really sit up and take notice just on the rehearsal clip- it sounds like a GORGEOUS voice.

damegwynethjones: Remember Guang Yang?

me: He's her PUPIL. She can't be teaching, she's only twelve.

damegwynethjones: He's goood!

me: This guy is having intonation problems in a RECIT, which doesn't bode well.
He's got that Rad thing where his vibrato takes him off pitch. Smashing basic voice though.

damegwynethjones: Much better than his teacher, anyway. I think he'll calm down.

me: (note: 'Rad' is being used here as an abbreviation for 'Radvanovsky'. I am not trying to be as down with the kids as Meeta Raval. Dude.) He reminds me of- and how obscure can you get?- Jorma Hynninen.

damegwynethjones: Um, ok. I'm rapidly going off him actually. It's like it's all vibrato and no core.

me: I sang this (count's aria from Figaro) at a school concert when I was 17. I held the F at the end far too long, because I could.

damegwynethjones: A born diva, clearly. This tempo for the Mahler is a piss take, no?

me: I kind of tune out when Mahler comes on. He gets in trouble at the top, doesn't he? A couple of actual shouts.

damegwynethjones: Yes. It's all rather over-weighted.

me: There's talent there but I'm not sure he's ready for competition at this level yet.

damegwynethjones: No Mary. I agree. I think he's on the wrong track technically I'm afraid. It should all be easier.

me: Haha, are you going to call me Mary King every time I get pompous and categorical? Because I warn you, I'm going to do that a LOT. He's very emotionally connected to this boring dirge, I mean masterpiece of the orchestral lied, isn't he? Interpretatively good but all kinds of problems with the actual, you know, singing.

damegwynethjones: He's got the whole Birgit 'lean back and drop your jaw' thing. Slightly different result though.

me: Mary agrees with me AGAIN, by the way.

damegwynethjones: I take that song at least twice as fast, btw. So does Hampson, fwiw.

me: Advice for singers from Mary King. Do you do yoga before you go on stage? Mary thinks you should. AVOID ALCOHOL, she says. I'm sure we can all relate to that. Canada now, soprano Sasha Djihanian. She has ‘a passion for belly dancing’ and is ‘not afraid of fun’. I hate all those people who are afraid of fun. Sounds as if she's going to do Da Tempeste from Giulio Cesare by Danielle de Niese.

damegwynethjones: Gorgeous dress!

me: It is yellow, fashion fans. Why do this aria if you can't do coloratura?

damegwynethjones: Where is the Bollywood dance routine? She needs something to distract from the singing, as you say.

me: Nice stage presence. But all these noodles are * stern face* NOT. GOOD. ENOUGH.

damegwynethjones: I cannot believe she is one of the 20 best singers under 30, even in Canada. Better than Bulgaria but come on- not anything like the standard expected.

me: I think Miss Bulgaria did a better job than this. She has been both sharp and flat and not one run has come out cleanly.

damegwynethjones: I think Bulgaria's coloratura was better, but for me the basic production of this girl is healthier. Dreadful rep choice, may yet do something nice and lyrical quite well.

me: Well, we'll find out- here's Ach ich Fuhl's. Yep, this is much more the kind of thing she should be singing.

damegwynethjones: Better. Still exposing some weaknesses though.

me: It's just as hard in a different way, isn't it? * pundit face* And there she goes, totally ploughing the one small piece of coloratura in the whole thing. STEP AWAY FROM THE SEMIQUAVERS.

damegwynethjones: Coloratura comes down to facility, IMO, so I never really take it into account as a measure of a singer's technique or a piece's difficulty. So I'd say this aria is harder than the Cleopatra.

me: She redeemed herself at the end, which was lovely. But no, not really good enough. Still, she's gorgeous and moves well, so she'll be singing Abigaille at the Met before you know it /parterre

damegwynethjones: Yep. She'll be depriving Matos, Meade AND Hong of gainful employment.

me: Josie's right to call her expressive- everyone so far has been right inside the music. Nobody's sung it all that well, though.

damegwynethjones: What is Mary on about??

me: Too much gesture, apparently. I kind of know what she means. David Pountney's saying Miss Canada does a sort of 'ta-da!' at the end of each coloratura passage, which bugged me too.

damegwynethjones: No, I meant where she said the coloratura was good and suited her!

me: Bloody hell, I missed that. Now then. Einspringer time. Olga Kindler from Switzerland, replacing someone who fell ill. Olga is VERY Swiss, judging by her interview with Josie. Fuck me, she's doing Aida. Ah, I see. She's Ukrainian really. Swukranian.

damegwynethjones: Potentially very exciting...Finally some Wagner!

me: Dich Teure Halle is one of the three or so bits of Wagner I allow.

damegwynethjones: Because Gundula did it?

me: Well, Gundula helps. But mainly because I like the end. I note you haven't mentioned the frock, which it might be kindest to ignore.

damegwynethjones: Too distracted by the poodle hair-do.

me: Are you old enough to remember Crystal Tipps?

damegwynethjones: Doesn't ring any bells...

me: http://crystaltipps.tripod.com/ctippstn.jpg

damegwynethjones: Spitting image!

me:She sang that very very well but not very nicely, I'd say. I think Aida is going to suit her better. Tone was a bit squally for Elisabeth.

damegwynethjones: Again, stuff to work on, not terribly exceptional a talent.

me: Beginning of 'Ritorna Vincitor' is exciting though. Chest voice!

damegwynethjones: Got her chest out for the lads there...

me: The top is IDENTICAL to Freni in heavier rep. Although Freni was over 50. OH MY GOD TRAIN CRASH OCTAVE DROP

damegwynethjones: I think this may be the same girl I heard ruin some songs in the Lieder round on R3 today. This is the best thing she has done. OMG yes!

me: Very good recovery though- she's produced some of her best singing since that calamity.

damegwynethjones: WTF was that? I'm not sure she's quite exactly like Freni, up top or anywhere else... she has got better though, you're right.

me: It's that slight leaning in to the top notes from below which was a trick of Freni's Aida/Tatyana/Elisabetta She's had to drop an octave again, poor girl.

damegwynethjones: Don't understand why. Poor thing. She didn't sound like she was in trouble. Mary will blame rep choice, yes?

me: She will. Maybe someone will say something about singing on the interest, not the capital. Josie did well there- asked about the flub then kindly reassured her. I can't really see her pulling that octave trick in, say, Naples and escaping with her life.

damegwynethjones: Ha! No. I think a wobbly hot mess up there would be preferable.

me: So- singer 5 to win, whoever he or she might be?

damegwynethjones: I think Meeta could win the round.

me: Now a summary of round one. BBC- please stop playing us Petrova cocking up the end of 'Acerba Volutta'. Thanks.

damegwynethjones: They're obsessed with the one duff note in her whole programme!

me: Marcela Gonzalez from Chile. Who loves basketball.

damegwynethjones: Rubbish coloratura in the rehearsal clip.

me: Bloody hell, is she doing 'Bel Raggio'?

damegwynethjones: Any top Es in this one?

me: After the first couple of phrases I kind of hope not.

damegwynethjones: Oh God she's really not up to it is she.

me: Nowhere close. She should be singing maybe Lauretta.

damegwynethjones: G&S might work.

me: She has a spread on her voice which shouldn't happen until the farewell Bolenas in 2040.

damegwynethjones: Quite. And it happes on the e on the stave, which is a dreadful sign.

me: Ha, I wonder if anyone has ever done 'Coppia Iniqua' in a competition. That would be sort of cool. (Not this lady though, pls)

damegwynethjones: Yes it would. I wonder if Leah Crocetto could be persuaded at this late stage.

me: Miss Chile's actually not bad at some of the runs, it's the Scotto-in-trouble high notes that are her downfall.

damegwynethjones: Yes, they were better than the preview indicated.

me: BZZZT! JE VEUX VIVRE KLAXON. I'm thinking of banning this aria when I'm Prime Minister.

damegwynethjones: It's exactly the same skills set as the Rossini, which makes it a doubly bad choice.

me: She's making a better fist of this, actually.

damegwynethjones: Meeta has to win.

me: Yep, but possibly not get to the final. Don't think she's as good as Vasile, for example.

damegwynethjones: Maybe. There is something about her that I really liked though.

me: Miss Chile's Gounod is much, much better than her Rossini. What a mental choice that was. Also, we should mention her looks, for she is muchly pretty.

damegwynethjones: Yes, but still not good enough. Pretty though, as you say.

me: Ah- she's dropped one of her arias and pulled out of the song prize. None of this should be happening at 24. Disturbingly, according to her post-match interview with Josie, she thinks it went really well.

damegwynethjones: Hakan [ED’S NOTE: Hagegard, one of the judges] is being a bit cryptic.

me: Look at that tubby elderly man who was the beautiful boy in the Bergman film of Zauberflote. Sigh. Time. The recap just makes it absolutely clear that Raval should win, doesn't it?

damegwynethjones: Yes. The others all had significant problems

me: And lo, she wins, despite the balloon plastic vibrato. Ha, I love her holding up the crystal bowl like it was the FA Cup.

damegwynethjones: I do think she's really good, and deserves success. Disarmingly free of any sort of artifice. Would be ever so nice if she did slow down the career and fix the transition to the top. Don't suppose she will though..."

Back to just me for heat three tonight, as J/Dame Gwyneth will be singing for a living when it's on. I'll hope to be able to update tonight, it's just a question of persuading the flatmate to allow 90 minutes of opera onto our telly, on the eve of his birthday... wish me luck.

Contains spoilers. Also singing.

2011-06-14T21:00:00.003+01:00

Crikey, is it that time again? I had so much fun splurging stream-of-consciousness stuff about BBC Singer of the World 2009 that I can barely contain my excitement at getting to do it again. You lucky, lucky people.

Now, who was paying attention two years ago? You will remember that a very exciting Russian soprano called Ekaterina Scherbachenko won, largely off the back of a near-definitive account of – what else?- the Onegin letter scene. You’ll also remember an exciting Ukranian counter-tenor who was tipped for big things.

In the intervening two years I’ve heard precisely nothing of either of them, but let’s not start the evening on a pessimistic note. After all, Cardiff’s first ever winner- one Karita Mattila- is still going strong some 28 years after her triumph, and singers such as Bryn Terfel, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Franz Hawlata, Katerina Karneus and Anja Harteros present compelling evidence that this is a pretty good waiting room for stars of the future. I am of course two years older than I was in 2009- maybe you are too- and I will therefore be two years more horrified by 24 year olds than I was then.

Some other things you may remember from last time: not particularly probing interviews with Josie D’Arby in which all the contestants passionately claim never to have intended to be an opera singer; too much Fiesco from the basses, too much Juliette from the sopranos, too much everything from the baritones, not enough Strauss from anyone. Mary King will prove to be spot on in everything she says, and if they have been brave enough to invite back Tom Randle as one of the Shearer/Hansen/ Lawrenson figures, he will be hilariously, grumpily candid. Oh, and despite the fact that, there having been precisely no pre-publicity and so this will be pretty much the most self-selecting audience ever, the TV presentation will proceed from the assumption that its audience’s knowledge of opera stretches about as far as ‘I like that one from the car ad’. Expect to have fiendishly complex concepts like ‘soprano’ and ‘aria’ explained at length.

So, are you sitting comfortably? Then let’s begin.

What? What? SECOND round? When was the first? I am frantically checking the TV Guide but this is definitely the first broadcast, apart from a preview programme on Saturday*. Grr. Also- only 20 singers? Has Cardiff downsized?

With Petroc Trelawny are Mary King and Jonathan Lemalu, whose name I now know how to pronounce. Ah- and a friend of mine is currently working with the first contestant, and tells me very good things, so that’s exciting. Anna Leese is a soprano from New Zealand who we see throwing a rugby ball to Josie. Rugby is one of Anna’s passions (because opera singers aren’t allowed to like music) so Josie asks her to do a haka, which Anna politely refuses on grounds of cultural sensitivity. A quick rehearsal clip of Rusalka is promising, and it’s with the Song to the Moon that she will start. This aria is so closely connected for me with my father’s last stage play (which I was in) that I will probably cry. Fair warning. Very good start from Leese, the tone quality itself is lovely, although this aria is all about *that* phrase, of course…

…which she slightly muffs. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s a bit careful, not rapturous, doesn’t transport. The top of her voice is less interesting than the middle, by the sound of things. The big melody goes better second time, but I’m not quite sold on this voice. It’s good, well-schooled, nice-sounding singing, and I don’t mean that as faint praise. It just doesn’t have whatever is needed to go straight to the heart. ‘Donde lieta usci’ now, and she has noticeably lightened her voice for Mimi, which scores points with me. This is lovely, much more successful than the Rusalka, but still unmoving, although I suppose it’s quite tough to do that in concert. She’s sung Musetta, apparently, which I think might suit her better temperamentally.

Oooh, she’s finishing with the ‘Vespri’ Bolero. That’s a ballsy choice. Once again, though, what we get is correct singing from a nice voice, and not a great deal else. There’s no playfulness, the coloratura is sung because that’s what’s in the score rather than to express anything (and is, alas, a little laboured). Leese is a very proficient singer, but in the last analysis not enough of a communicator for me.

Mary King thought Mimi was Leese’s best performance, which proves that I am right and know everything. Up next is Vazgen Ghazaryan, a bass from Armenia. We meet him playing the bongos with Josie, because he really wants to be a rock drummer. Josie underlines this by asking him to sing a bit of Bohemian Rhapsody.

He’s starting with Mefistofele. Good lad, that’s an unhackneyed choice among the Fiescos and Filippos. He’s immediately got more personality than Leese, but a less interesting voice. It’s lightish for a bass, lacking in resonance, and he gets in real trouble at the bottom. He’s almost the opposite of Leese- lacking in voice, he’s selling the number on charisma. He’s not going to win, though. And I have a horrible feeling we may have one of those ‘characterful’ Leperellos or Basilios on the way. Good, we don’t- not yet, anyway, we’re getting ‘Aleko’ instead. And the old ethnic entitlement kicks in- he’s a much better singer in Russian than in Italian. Even the tone quality is suddenly richer. Boring aria though, innit? A couple of husky, gritty throat moments which I suspect were more audible on telly than in the hall. He also runs out of breath at the end, but cannily disguises it as emotion. That was a fine performance, though, all told. Now we have Banquo’s aria, which I heard belted out wonderfully by Raymond Aceto in the Covent Garden HD Macbeth last night. Again, the voice is much more resonant than in the Boito, so perhaps we were dealing with nerves, or Ghazaryan was overdoing the diabolical. This is his most generalized performance in acting terms, and he’s no Aceto as yet, but this is decent singing. Decent, though; not exciting. Lemalu likes his rep choice, and I agree. Mary felt that he didn’t jump the footlights, which is interesting; perhaps he was more animated in close-up than from the back of the stalls.

Oleysa Petrova next, a Russian mezzo, so she has the memory of the Elenas and the Irinas and the Olgas to conjure with. She doesn’t have to play props with Josie, or say that she didn’t want to be a singer, so that’s nice. And she’ll be singing in six languages, the big show off. Wow, and ‘Mon coeur’ to kick off. My mother, who used to sing this as a student, tells me that the top of this aria doesn’t feel as high to sing as it sounds (it’s only a G or something anyway, isn’t it?) so it may be a cunning choice- something which sounds more impressive than it is difficult.

Heh, you knew exactly what she was going to sound like, right? She sounds just exactly like a Russian mezzo. Rich, lush, vibratoey. It’s a smashing sound, although for a seduction this isn’t very, well, sexy. If you didn’t know the aria you’d think it was maybe nostalgia for the old homestead, or perhaps a lullaby. It’s lovely, lovely singing though. And now a bit of the Joan Crawfords, or at least I hope so- we’re getting the Princess of Stock Cube from ‘Adriana’. So Petrova’s going for the full ‘you remember Obratzsova, right? You know Borodina’s Russian?’ This is terrific vocally as well, but, again, a little more placid than one might like. Polite verismo is a kind of oxymoron and this is crying out for a good old dollop of vulgarity. She’ll have wanted the end to go better, the top didn’t quite do what she wanted it to. Nonetheless, she’s tonight’s clear winner so far. Mary and Jonathan are almost speechless with admiration. Backstage interview with Josie reveals an immensely likeable, bubbly personality. Mary is keen to point out to the TV audience that Petrova’s is a huge voice.

Maria Radoeva now, from Bulgaria, who balances singing with motherhood, is honest enough to admit that she was very young to become a mother, and shows us a pic of an adorable toddler (on a rather spiffily new iphone 4- it’s lucrative this opera lark). She appears to be singing ‘Agitata da due venti’, the brave, crazy woman, and in its first mis-step of the evening the band launches it very flabbily. She’s exciting though, this one (although surely she can’t have intended to sing the huge intervals in the second phrase to ‘da-da-da’?). Touch of the Pendatchanskas in her tone quality and her fearlessness. It’s such a pig of a sing, though. Mary isn’t sure she pulled it off, and I know what she means. Musetta now, which should be fun. WHOA THERE LADY YOU ARE SHARP (only for the very first phrase though, as it turns out). She has plenty of what was missing from Petrova’s Dalila- I can kind of see how she ended up pregnant, if you know what I mean. This aria is such a winner. If you can remotely sing and remotely act, you’ll knock it out of the park, as she proceeds to do, moments of suspect intonation aside. She finishes with the Alleluia from Exultate Jubilate, which is ok. Not great, not bad, and Petrova won’t be quaking in her boots. The coloratura is much cleaner than in the Vivaldi- perhaps she should have done them the other way round (or, in the case of the Viv, not at all?). It turns out that I am AWESOME at whistling the Vivaldi aria though, so I’m grateful to her for that.

Serban Vasile from Romania now. He’s a baritone, so 2009 suggests he will overact Largo al Factotum and then do some Korngold. Josie calls on her RADA training (she won the Gold Award, too) to give him an acting masterclass. He’s starting with ‘Rivolgete’, the alternative Guglielmo aria. Actually, all of the programmes tonight have been pretty imaginative, perhaps too much so in Radoeva’s case. This fella is a little blustery, Shimell-like. Well, I don’t mean blustery, really, because that sounds too critical, but that kind of vibrato. You know what I mean. He’s nicely responsive to the libretto, which I suppose is where all the acting talk with Josie came from. The boys are the actors tonight, and the girls have the voices. He’s finishing with Onegin, thus flouting the Code of The Baritones by avoiding mugging his way through the Rossini. I am very grateful for this. Tchaikovsky suits his tone better than Mozart, and I’d be very happy to see and hear him in this part. He looks right, acts it well and finds a nice legato which wasn’t really there for the Mozart. There’s nothing he can do about tonight’s result, though; I’ll eat my hat if it’s not Petrova. Mary thinks he’s a good casting for Onegin as well, which confirms my position as Emperor Of Punditry.

Petroc is pretty blatantly calling it for Petrova, but Mary and Jonathan have words of praise for some of the other singers, especially Vasile. Both pundits agree that tonight is mezzo night.

Which it proves to be. She’ll be in the final, too.

I’m out doing young people things tomorrow, so will have to catch up on iplayer on Thursday. Possess your souls in patience until then.

By the way, despite my light-hearted grumbles, the BBC’s coverage seems greatly improved this year. Then they go and spoil it all by closing the show with a re-run of the end of the Cilea, so very obviously the winner’s weakest moment. Sigh.

*don't know why they called it the second round, it was clearly the first

Cancer status: Sodded

2011-05-01T17:23:00.003+01:00

I'm still on a massive high after last night's magnificent benefit gig, and this is where the Oscar-style thanks come in. I've never been an Exec Producer before- I felt as if it was incumbent on me to swan around saying unhelpful things like 'Can we change this floor?'.

Firstly, if anyone can think of a better line-up than Kevin Eldon, Stephen Merchant, Justin Edwards, Adam Buxton, Shappi Khorsandi, David Armand and Mitchell and Webb, all held together by the incomparable compere Lucy Porter, I'd like to hear it. We were so lucky to get them; every act stormed. The fact that so many wonderful friends were in the audience no doubt helped with that, but that lot would have made the most grimly humourless of fun-haters bark with laughter.

And somehow, somehow, we managed to keep the surprise celebrity guests under wraps. The squeals of delight when Miranda Hart came on were only matched by what a friend of mine described as the 'Beatlemania' when Dermot O'Leary took to the stage. It was huge fun to be part of that final sketch, in my cameo appearance as Lady Gaga's blood-spattered murderer. Hint to anyone needing to write a gala-ending sketch is to ask the brilliant Toby Davies to write it with you.

All the volunteers and helpers on the day- from the Bloomsbury staff to the people our producers recruited- were cheerful and excited and wonderfully efficient. The tech finished EARLY- who ever heard of such a thing? Dan Cooper and Fran McNicoll made the best possible runners-for-a-day-slash-programme-sellers, (we only had a programme in the first place courtesy of the bargaining and design skills of Michelle Tuft and Joel Morris) Tracey Littlebury, Rob Swift and Ben Sneddon shook a mean bucket, and Francis O'Dea secured one of London's most glamorous and prestigious venues for aftershow drinks.

Above all, the calmly hyperefficient Beth Gorman, the unflappable Annelie Powell, and the huge-hearted and tireless Julia Raeside, who were undoubtedly the best producers this side of Bialystock and Bloom.

Jerome was an extraordinary man, and only an extraordinary evening would have done justice to him. Thanks to a load of kind, generous people giving up their time and talent, that's exactly what came to pass. The overwhelming sensation of the night was the goodness of people, whether performing for nowt, operating lights or sound, or digging into their pockets. We raised about a grand from programmes and donations, to add to twelve and a half raised on the marathon, a further 12 and counting from the auction, and over ten grand in ticket sales. The numbers make my head spin.

And any evening which includes wandering into a Green Room and discovering David Mitchell, Dermot O'Leary and Miranda Hart tucking into Domino's Pizza while discussing Angela Rippon has to be a good one, right?

What I did for most of sunday.

2011-04-19T10:19:00.007+01:00

There are two main problems when it comes to writing about the marathon.

Firstly, I don't really remember it, not in detail. Moments stand out- such as when friends were standing by the road, which is more immensely useful than you could imagine- but the rest is more or less a blur. Cheering, sunshine, trying to find the blue lines on the road which represent the shortest route. Children holding out their hands for a high five. Idly reading the back of other runners' vests and realising that the common factor that has brought together all the 'fun' runners is tragedy. Grabbing water, grabbing carb gel, grabbing vaseline (of which more later). Hungrily looking out for the red and white balloons in the distance which mark another mile completed, and resenting them hugely when they turn out to be a 5k marker. The showers and the sweet relief they offered. The memories are impressionistic, and for huge swathes of the route they're absent.

Secondly, a lot of personal reportage is based on thought processes. When writing about a holiday, for example, there are moments when one takes a mental snapshot of an experience; maybe even starts to write the eventual sentence in one's head. There's none of that phrasemaking on a marathon- the internal monologue is tedious beyond belief, the very definition of 'single minded'. 'Come on' it goes, and 'I can do this'. And 'keep going'. And not much else. Sometimes it goes 'I can't do this' and has to be quashed. Then there are the calculations- 'When I crossed the start line the clock said 0:27, now it says 3:38, so I've been running for three hours eleven minutes, which is 191 minutes, and I've done about 18 miles, so that's... 18 into 191...Oooh, carb gel. Come on. Keep going'.

But nonetheless, I feel the need to record the experience. I'd never run a marathon before after all, and dear god I never will again. Plus, I can use this blog as a record of my split times, so I don't have to keep the official marathon page open for the rest of my life.

BEFORE THE START

In Robert, Katie, Charlie and James, my co-runner Julia and I had the best of overnight hosts, and the best of spag bol and garlic bread (carb loading is fun). We even had a small glass of red wine, but don't tell anyone. The Thorogoods live on the road which leads from Maze Hill station to the park, so come Sunday morning there was a steady stream of passers-by going past the front window, all clutching the official red plastic bags for storing kit, and all looking intimidatingly lithe and fit. Terrifyingly soon after waking up (I hadn't slept brilliantly) it was time to head to the start.

...which felt more like a festival than anything else. Crowds of people milling around seemingly aimlessly, a tannoy (manned by a maddeningly chirpy Geordie, whose palpable desire to be Ant and Dec served only to underline how good they are at their job), signs and banners and trucks. There were a few more people stretching than at the average festival, and more vests, and more of a smell of embrocation, but the queues for the portaloos had that authentic Glastonbury touch.

Utterly terrified at this point, I nearly lost it in a flurry of tears when a man in a yellow vest walked past me. He looked like the archetypal closing-time bruiser- you'd cross the street to avoid him even in broad daylight. But on his vest was a photo of a toddler, on his arm was a tattoo of the same toddler, and the logo on the vest was that of the Child Bereavement Charity. On Saturday I was saddened by a tweet from a journalist I used to admire, who said something along the lines of marathon runners being attention seekers, and the charities they run for a 'figleaf' for their own self aggrandisement; I've noticed a few similarly sneering references to marathon runners in the press in the last few weeks. I'd like to put all the oh-so-ironic, 'edgy' journos who came up with this sparkling piece of snidery into a room with the man in the yellow vest.

Once the bag was stowed on the luggage truck (bye bye possessions! See you on the Mall, with any luck!) there really was nothing for it but to head to the start line itself. A couple of nurofen plus (ibuprofen to guard against joint inflammation, codeine because why not) a couple of bites of banana, and then onto the path with the other 30000-odd people to await the hooter.

And wait, and wait. The start itself is hugely anticlimactic. We were pretty much the last people over the line (the clock, as previously mentioned, read 0:27) and half an hour is a long time when you're more frightened than you've ever been. I felt a little sorry for the tannoy man at this point- finding something interesting to say about 30000 people when you've only got a name on a vest to go on is quite a tall order. There now follows an apology for diehard users of the imperial system; the marathon split times are measured in metric. For reference, 5k is more or less 3 miles.

0-5k. 5k time: 33.32 Total time: 33.32

This is the fun bit. The first half mile flies by on wings of 'Oh my god, I'm running the actual marathon'. The people lining the roadsides are a novelty, every child's hand is highfived as you run past. I was determined to take it slowly- the cautionary tales I'd heard all focused on people who went off too fast and had nothing left by mile 16. I was helped in this task by my choice of music. For some reason I decided almost immediately after I got the place that I would listen to the whole of Cosi Fan Tutte followed by the whole of Aida, and that I would listen to versions I'd never heard before. That's how I ended up running 16 miles accompanied by the Barenboim/Erato Cosi, which has some lovely singing in it, but is so slow and ponderous in its tempi that it is the perfect metronome for someone aiming at about an eleven minute mile. Metronomic is the word, by the way; you get into a rhythm. My rhythm was so insistent that I ran each of the first twelve miles in almost exactly eleven minutes, dead on. For those of you who don't run (ie me, six months ago) I'd found in training that ten minute miles were a decent average, and that I could do nine if I really pushed myself, so eleven seemed nice and easy.

Easy was the word, really, for the first ten miles or so. Surprisingly, wonderfully easy. I kept thinking 'Enjoy this. Enjoy it being easy. It'll get hard.'

It got hard.

5k-10k. 5k time: 33.37. Total time: 1.07.09

But not yet. This part of the route was also hugely enjoyable. It still felt easy, and the approach back to Greenwich provided the first sense of a milestone achieved- hurrah, I have got back where I started! I also got into the habit of indicating how many miles I'd completed with my fingers as I crossed each mile line. I have no idea why.

Realisation number one- you need things to look forward to. From about mile three I was egging myself on with the thought that Robert, Katie and family would be waiting with a load of my other friends at around the 6 mile mark. This was an unbelievably helpful thought, providing a distraction for the three miles before I passed them, and a pleasing memory for the miles thereafter. Patrick Wilde and Pete Shaw, compadres from the last two Edinburgh Festivals, were (unexpectedly) waiting about half a mile further on, so the return to Greenwich was a highlight.

Operafans: if you run 6 miles at about 11 min/mile on a hot day, Kurt Streit will be singing 'Un'aura amorosa' as you cross the six mile line.

10-15k. 5k time: 34.30. Total time: 1.41.49

Can't remember. Deptford, Rotherhithe, Canada Water. Jelly babies, water, vaseline.

15-20k. 5k time: 36.27. Total time: 2:18:16

I had a brilliant idea during this section. I was by now very conscious that the sun was beating down and I was very unprotected, especially on the shoulders. In what I now accept may have been my slightly addled brain, I came to the conclusion that the vaseline being handed out by begloved police officers and ambulance staff would make an effective sunblock, so I slathered it all over. I now accept that will have made it much worse and I might as well have rubbed butter on myself.

This was the beginning of the dark times. Getting to Tower Bridge was exciting (as was seeing my friend Francis at the pub on the corner, pint in hand, bellowing my name and blowing kisses as I passed) but crossing it was hard, even with the presence of another friend, Nic Holdridge, who took some photos as I crossed in which my smiling face belies the feeling of unease that was beginning to grow. I knew I couldn't stop; on all previous training runs if I ever stopped to walk I was unable to run again. On the other hand, it was searingly hot, my legs were getting very heavy, my mile times were creeping up, and the idea of another 14 miles was unthinkable. Even Mozart didn't help: I never want to hear 'Il Cor Vi Dono' again.

Everyone tells you that coming off Tower Bridge is the hard bit. All you want to do is turn left and head into town- but you have ten miles of fannying around the Isle of Dogs before you're allowed to do that. On the other side of the road are the runners with 22 miles under their belts. There's just a thin barrier between you. It is cruel, so cruel, to see them. I genuinely considered ducking under the barrier and somehow losing my timing chip. Only the thought of the shame and humiliation that would have followed stopped me; if the race were less well marshalled I would have done it like a shot. I don't like remembering this part, St Katharine's Dock and Wapping. This was the existential crisis, the moment when I knew for a fact I couldn't do it.

HALF WAY. TIME: 2.26.19

The realisation that I had run a slower half than either of my training halves was a blow. Can't do it. Not going to break five and a half hours. Going to have to walk the second half. Going to finish in six, six and a half, seven hours. Going to finish in more than eight hours so I won't even get an official time. Everyone will laugh at me. Everyone thought it was a joke idea for me to run the marathon. They were right.

25k. 5k time: 39.18. Total time: 2.57.34

My body saved me. Three and a half painful miles after Tower Bridge, in the Canary Wharf underpass, my legs stopped running and started walking without having received any such instruction from my brain. I am convinced that if I had insisted on continuing to run I would have collapsed by mile 20. At this point, however, I didn't realise this and spent a good half mile feeling angry and ashamed. I was walking- that meant I was a failure. Charlie Morgan Jones, the lovely lighting designer of the show I did last summer, was waiting by the road with a big smile and a wave. It was lovely to see him, but I just felt embarrassed that he'd seen me not running.

25-30k. 5k time: 40.50. Total time: 3.38.24

The word 'bargaining' came into my head. I'd heard it used by Paula Radcliffe at a nike event I'd attended a few days before. Then I heard the voice of my unoffical coach and running mentor Cat Armstrong, equally clearly in my mind's ear. 'Run a mile, walk a mile' she was saying. Suddenly it was possible again: I'd walk to mile 16, run to 17, walk to 18 and so on. Suddenly I only had five miles of running left! Cosi gave way to Aida (Mancini, Fillipeschi, Simionato/Gui) at exactly three hours, and exactly sixteen miles, meaning that even after a mile of walking I was now averaging eleven and a quarter minutes per mile.

30-35k. 5k time: 43.45. Total time: 4.22.09

Two obsessive thoughts in rotation now. The exciting one: I'm going to do it. I'm definitely going to do it. The urgent one: And I need to do it in under 5 and a half. I will be gutted if I don't do it in under 5 and a half. Memories of Canary Wharf- spotting Jerome's face on the back of a Tshirt and realising I'd found his brother in law Ollie. Jogging to catch up with Ollie, thinking how unfair it was I was having to run to catch him when this was a 'walking' mile. Having a nice stroll together from miles 19-20. The big screen by Canary Wharf station (I didn't spot myself because I refused to wave- that struck me as gauche and fun-runnery, and by now I was all about the Blue Steel determined look). 35k reached in Cabot Square, a place I spend a lot of time doing my corporate work. Picking up speed as I passed the office of one of my major corporate clients in case anyone I'd worked with was watching.

35-40k. 5k time: 41.43. Total time: 5.03.42

Euphoria and exhaustion. The 'walk a mile, run a mile' plan getting harder now, because running even one mile is unbearable. More friends passed- Stephen in Limehouse, nearly reducing me to tears as he shouted 'you're doing really well'. Then a whole clump of friends by mile 24 in Blackfriars (annoyed again- they were on a walking mile when I'd much rather have been running past them- although, pleasingly, there were fewer than I'd expected because I was making better time than THEY expected). At this point I remembered one of the worst training runs. I'd taken the tube to Westminster, hoping to run home via the South Bank, a run of about nine miles. I managed one before I had to stop at Blackfriars Bridge, so intense was the pain in my feet. This was in late February, about seven weeks ago. The idea that I was now closing in on mile 25 was incredible to me.

And then, as I walked round the corner by Big Ben and headed into Parliament Square, my sister and my niece and my mum and my brother in law. My sister, tearily bellowing 'WE LOVE YOU! WE LOVE YOU!'. Nearly lost it. Ipod losing battery and Aida coming to an end (I'd loaded it in the wrong order, too, so the chronology of the opera had been annoying me ever since Wapping- where I'd finally passed the 22 mile marker on the good side.)

Big sign. 800 METRES TO GO. Shuffle now playing Alisha's Attic, of all things. Everyone else is running. Surely I can run 800 metres? Nope. There's a 600 metre marker, I'll run it from there. 'I Am, I Feel/I sometimes think that you forget that/ I Am, I Feel'. Still not running. Walk past 400 metre marker and just beyond it, there it is. The 26 mile marker. 385 yards to go. Indicate 26 miles with my hands- both palms splayed, twice, then one palm and an upraised finger. I start to run. Alisha's Attic gives way to Alizee. Not a shuffle, then, alphabetical order. The absurdity of completing a marathon while listening to the justly forgotten Europop classic 'Moi, Lolita'. Arms aloft as I cross the line, so my runner number is visible in the photo. I've run the marathon. I've run the marathon. I never, ever believed I could. It's the dark secret that's terrified me for six months- the knowledge that I wasn't going to complete it, that I'd collapse or die or just give up. But I didn't.

26.2 MILES. TOTAL TIME: 5.21.15 MILE AVERAGE: 12 mins 15 seconds

I collect my medal and my goodie bag and walk towards the luggage trucks. Just as I'm thinking 'How funny, I thought I'd cry', I am suddenly overtaken by huge wracking sobs. My throat is so dry they make me cough.

I blame Phidippides.

2011-04-16T10:37:00.001+01:00

There are three things in life for which nobody is ever prepared. One, of course, is death. The second is University finals.

The third is running the fucking marathon tomorrow.

Gulp.

If Only We Could Know!

2011-03-30T15:30:00.002+01:00

Well, this post was due to be a travelogue-type deal about my (flying) visit to Moscow, which I'm sure those of you who have read my travel 'writing' before will have anticipated as eagerly as turkeys look forward to December 20th. Unfortunately, the one and only opportunity I had for tourism has just been curtailed by some pretty central-casting Russian weather. I struggled halfway from my hotel to Red Square but eventually had to accept that what I was in was a blizzard, and that I was so covered with snow that I was in danger of Aled Jones or Peter Auty singing about me. Now I've made it back to the hotel, of course, the sky is almost sarcastically clear, but I ain't risking it again.

The hotel has provided one moment of amusement, though. In the information/map magazine provided, there are the usual depressing escort ads (Why do some hotels do this? Why? Actually, the answer to that might be even more depressing). In among them was one agency promising 'friendly, sophisticated girls' alongside a photograph of... Girls Aloud. Davina McCall didn't say anything about *that* on Popstars, did she? 'You could live the dream! Your picture could be misleadingly used on an ad for Russian Hookers...'

But that's all I've got, I'm afraid. Tonight was my only chance of breaking the hotel-training room- airport cycle and the snow wasn't having it, so I am unable to discover the magic that so appealed to Olga, Masha and Irina in the greatest play of the 20th century (you may disagree, but I am factually correct and you are wrong).

Actually, since we're on Chekhov, I have a small recommendation to make. I recently watched the 1975 US TV production of 'The Seagull' and it was a revelation. I've written before about a regrettable tendency in British performances of Chekhov for the sets, costumes and performances to be beige. What this production captures so vividly is that unhappiness can be as ENERGETIC as it is torpid. Nobody languishes in this production, and it's all the better for it. Blythe Danner (yep, Gwyn's mum) is the best Nina I've ever seen, and Frank Langella is just extraordinary as Konstantin. A jolt, too, to see how beautiful he was as a young man, when one is used to seeing him as craggy ol' Dick Nixon. But the whole cast (Lee Grant, a heroine of the McCarthy hearings who refused to testify and was blacklisted is ideally mercurial as Arkadina; Olympia 'Anna Madrigal' Dukakis is a wonderful tragicomic Polina) oozes quality. I can't recommend it highly enough.

So, in summary- I went to Moscow and it made me think about a DVD.

Judging Anna, MkII

2011-03-01T23:56:00.010Z

One of the most disingenuous- and most pompous- of critical clichés is the 'I really wanted to like it' review, which usually means 'I was looking forward to hating it and hurrah, I did'.

But now I have to write one of my own, although there's no disingenuousness in my saying that I really, really wanted to like 'Anna Nicole'. And although I didn't hate it, I certainly didn't like it anywhere near as much as I wanted to.

That makes me sad partly (mainly?) because I don't want to be allied with the people who wanted it to fail. The mere existence of the work illustrates what is, for me, one of the most important of artistic principles- that great art can be made out of any subject, that any story can be made worth the telling. We can all give our examples (perhaps the most famous being that Godot is a play in which nothing happens, twice). So I have no sympathy at all with those who believe that dramatising Anna Nicole Smith's life is a Vulgar Desecration Of Our Holy Lyric Art, and in fact I think in the main that they are philistine snobs who are going to have a heart attack if anyone ever tells them about 'Lulu' (that's the opera, btw, although they probably wouldn't like the other Lulu much either).

Plus, I admire everyone involved. Mark-Anthony Turnage wrote 'The Silver Tassie', so his place in my personal pantheon is safe. Richard Thomas wrote the wonderful 'Jerry Springer', so ditto. The production is slick, smooth and clever, the cast unimpeachable. But, the thing is, I just didn't care. Two people die in this opera, a fact which was more affecting in the programme synopsis than it was on stage, and that, kids, is a problem.

The problem lies largely, I think, with Thomas' contribution. It's all very meta, very ironic, commenting on and contextualising every event rather than just letting it happen. We're never simply told a story- we're told we're being told a story, and then, we're told what it meant. But, crucially, we already know the story and we already know its implications. Nobody left the ROH tonight thinking 'Good God, I had no idea women were objectified in our society!' or 'Wow, being famous for being famous sure has a potential downside!' and it was the opera's lack of anything new or insightful to say about the sad, inevitable decline of its heroine which was its major disappointment. The only thing which could have saved the story from its familiarity would have been a hefty emotional kick- after all, we know what's going to happen to Gilda and Mimi, too- but the libretto opts for cool detachment from the start, never a good mood to set if you're looking for withers to be wrung. No decision has been made as to whether the heroine is amoral or admirable, whether we're supposed to root for her or judge her. There's not even any real ambiguity about her portrayal- just some fairly brutal, unearned gear changes between 'isn't she empty?' and 'isn't she tragic?'.

And while it's funny at times, it's not funny enough. Sondheim's set the bar pretty high for lyricists, and that means we all know that merely rhyming is not enough, especially if you can spot what's coming. When a group of women at a cosmetic surgery sing, crowbarishly, about being 'restless' we're not going to coo with delight when the rhyme turns out to be 'breastless', to give just one example. Thomas overuses the arch anti-lyric, too. 'We're lapdancers/We dance in laps' or 'It's a red carpet/It's a carpet/ That's red'. That kind of gag works once, if you're lucky, and there are a few too many iterations of it here. In defence of the jokes, though, some of them hit the spot dead on, quite an achievement when the surtitles blow every punchline twenty seconds before it's delivered.

Musically things were better. Without access to a score I've only heard once, I'm not going to attempt the kind of musicological analysis other people will do much better. What I will say is that, as in 'Greek' and 'The Silver Tassie', Turnage is brilliant at creating a musical language which defines the world his characters live in, and which defines them. There are definite personalites to the scoring of each character; Anna's melodic language is different from her mother's; her husband's different from her lawyer's. This ought to go without saying, but it's rare enough in even the most celebrated of operas to merit a mention.

What these singers were doing in it is perhaps another matter. Don't get me wrong- there wasn't a performance among them that was less than excellent, but why we needed a Minnie, an Ariadne as Anna, and an Onegin as the lawyer is beyond me. None of the MT professionals I know would have any problems singing this score. Don't get me wrong, part the second- I'm not suggesting, as others have, that this is a musical. It's just that it seems rather perverse to have cast such opulent voices and then given them not much to sing. As my friend John mischievously pointed out, the role of Anna Nicole would not stretch Danielle de Niese; it's not as big a sing as Despina. Eva Maria Westbroek was as terrific as everyone has told you, but it must have felt a bit like a night off. Gerald Finley, too, was vocally and dramatically underused in the musically and theatrically slim part of the Svengali-like lawyer. As the octogenarian husband, Alan Oke had a great deal of fun, although his healthy voice was at odds with his frail physicality (has anyone suggested it for Placido...? Hem hem).

There's nothing bad about Anna Nicole. But it's not as good as it could have been, not as good as we needed it to be. I don't see much life for it beyond this run. If opera is to remain as robust and contemporary as theatre and not dwindle into a succession of glorious museum pieces, issues such as celebrity, the morality of media voyeurism, addiction, feminism and social mobility are exactly the kind of things it should be grappling with. 'Anna Nicole' had the potential to do all that, and while it's not the shabby little shocker some people gleefully predicted, it's a missed opportunity. Slick, professional, interesting and intelligent, it nonetheless ends up taking aim at a very stationary target, and hitting it flabbily.

In which I am a guidice, ad Anna.

2011-02-05T17:55:00.004Z

If you’ve ever heard me talk about opera (and let’s face it, you probably haven’t, unless you have) then you’ll know I have two major blind spots. Two great wodges of the operatic repertory remain more or less closed to me, despite my admittedly half-hearted attempts to the contrary. One is the works of Richard Wagner, a situation about which the Wagner-is-holy brigade get very shocked and lecture-y, and the other is bel canto.

The bel-canto aficionados don’t lecture; they just look wistfully disappointed when I tell them that I’ve never really got it. Like the most dyed-in-the-wool philistine, I have to explain using egregious, overused phrases like ‘it all sounds the same’ and ‘dramatically inert’.

I saw Anna Bolena at the Liceu last night (I’m in Barcelona, which helped with that) and although I haven’t been converted- sorry Greg, sorry John- I do come a little closer to seeing what the point might be. It’s not an opera I’ll joyfully come back to (that overture- I mean, seriously?) but it certainly has its moments, and I don’t just mean *that* one.

It helps, of course, if you have artists of the calibre the Liceu can offer. Edita Gruberova, still singing at the age of four hundred and sixty eight after a career spanning five centuries, is nothing more nor less than a force of nature. Her voice has always been more beautiful live than it was on record, and she made some transcendent sounds, especially in ‘Al dolce guidami’, which was met by a football stadium roar and an ovation lasting a good ten minutes. They like their Gruberova in Barca. Her voice is in miraculous condition (she is, in fact, 64). The middle is wirier, and she never had much at the bottom anyway, but the top still gleams and soothes and rings out as required. The highest of the high notes are something of a triumph of will these days, but she still has them. It’s a larger, more powerful voice than you might remember, too, by which I mean it’s a larger and more powerful voice than I remembered. A friend of mine described later Gruberova as ‘vilely mannered’ and I can see what he means- that whole trick of arriving on a note a few beats before the rest of the voice does (and yeah, that’s the technical term, so sue me) but the effect is breathtakingly lovely. Never an exciting actor, she nonetheless does by and large the right things (and cut quite a dash in her red hunting coat and leather pants- we’ll draw a gentlemanly veil over the fact that Anne Boleyn was 35 when she died, unfortunate given that Gruberova’s first costume, a regal frock-and-sash affair, made her look like a more recent Queen of England, which is to say the current one, as she looks now.) Reading this paragraph back I feel like I haven’t done her justice, been too picky; she knows how this music goes, she’s one of the reigning queens of this rep, and it was a privilege to be in the same room as she sang it.

Elina Garanca comes in for a hard time in certain quarters, because she has the effrontery to be tall and slim and beautiful, and is therefore apparently somehow responsible for the looksist dumbing-down of opera. REAL singers are the size of a battleship and would never stoop to something so base as a record contract, seems to be the implication. It’s odd, because a lot of the same people insist that opera should be about voice, voice and voice, and in this Ms Garanca has been as lavishly endowed as she was aesthetically. It’s a rich, full, even, big and beautiful sound from the bottom to the top. It sounds, again, like faint praise, but I haven’t heard such secure singing for a long time. Giovanna suits her slightly chilly stage presence, although she was able to access something a little more emotional and desperate in the duet with Anna and the plea to Enrico. That duet for the two women was comfortably the highlight of the evening, along with the first part of the mad scene as mentioned earlier (there was nothing wrong with ‘Coppia Iniqua’, nothing at all, bar a smidgen of an iota of a suspicion of tiredness from Gruberova). Garanca will make a hit in this role at the opening of the Met season next October, and this in a house which has arguably proved a little resistant to her. I would hope and imagine that David McVicar will give her something a little more interesting to do than the ‘stand there and look worried. Now, kneel’ that this production asked of her. One charming little extra- Garanca is the first opera singer I have ever seen corpse. During a particularly filigree cadenza from Gruberova in one of the Act 1 concertati, an audience member let out a strange, guttural groan. Garanca’s chin sank to her chest- always a dead giveaway- and she remained in that position, keeping as still as she dared, until she actually had to turn upstage to compose herself.

Josep Bros started a little nasally, and his voice isn’t an immediately beautiful one, but like Gruberova he was singing his music on his patch and the technical confidence he brought to the role was very welcome. In fact, it struck me that on my last two opera visits I had seen Guleghina, Licitra, Carosi and Cornetti, and one of last night’s great pleasures was the (for me, recently) novel experience of seeing a cast of singers in roles that were eminently suited to them, and which they were comfortably able to sing. On the interest, as they say, not the capital. Having sad that, Carlo Colombara has gone in my file of competent but dullish basses. It’s a big file. He didn’t do anything wrong (bar a slightly underpowered, husky first scene with Garanca) but he didn’t really do anything exciting either. The conductor, Andriy Yurkevich, made sure that the endless tonic-dominant cadences tootled away as rumtitumishly as necessary (what? I said right at the start I don’t like bel canto).

All in all, a very good night at the opera. It could have been worse. I will admit that before I took my seat I was worried about my antipathy to the genre, about Gruberova’s age, about the people I otherwise trust who had told me that Garanca was dullsville. I was especially worried when the curtain rose to reveal a bunch of dancers dressed as ravens. These ravens were clearly a favourite touch of director Rafel Duran (beware research: he’d obviously read about the legend of the ravens at the tower) and they popped in and out, pointlessly, throughout the evening, inevitably turning into Anna’s angels of death at the end. Duran introduced a few of these odd nods towards regie (Enrico and Giovanna’s Act 1 duet took place in front of a video backdrop of some koi carp, and no, I have no idea) in what was otherwise a fairly routine, stand-and-deliver kind of production. I have two things to say to this director. One is can we please have a moratorium on the whole ‘in this society everything is watched on cctv’ thing? Every production of Hamlet I’ve seen in the last ten years has used it. It’s become a kind of shorthand for a dictatorship and sure enough, there was the CCTV room downstage right, with a bored looking extra studying some footage of people who, the pinsharp clarity of digital video revealed, were clearly singing opera at each other. The other thing I would like to say to him is ‘Dogs on stage? Never a good idea’.

I really don’t want to gloat, but I have to stop now as I’m off to watch a match at the Nou Camp. Gruberova, Garanca, and the Nou Camp in one 24 hour period. Who am I kidding? I’m going to be gloating for MONTHS.

Ha'porth of tar, ship, etc.

2011-02-02T03:02:00.002Z

Here's how it happens.

You start with the best of intentions. Christmas- with all its excesses- has been and gone, you've had all the wassail of New Year... That's why I always insist on a 'dry January'. I like the discipline of it. I don't do it for health, or for losing weight, or even for smugness. I live an indulgent enough life- it's good to exert a bit of will power, even if only for a month.

The problem is, wagon day. The day that the first drink happens. After a month, it tends to hit one like a juggernaut. I am rather, perversely, proud of the tolerance for alcohol I've built up over my 37 years. Every Feb 1st, though, I become a mewling, drunk-on-one-pint heap. Every Feb 1st, I do something stupid.

This year's is a doozy. Other Feb 1st achievements have included retaking-up-smoking after a month's easy abstinence (and, as a result, finding myself painfully wedgied on a London street), groping- and, alas, I mean groping a dear friend on a crowded tube train, and... well. Too many to mention.

This year's, though, is a doozy. I think it was the successful achievement of my tax return- submitted yesterday, pre-back-off-the-wagon, which led me into this mess. 'I've submitted my tax return' went my thoughts. Because my thoughts are evil, they continued with 'I've been good about money. I should spend some money'.

A couple of years ago, some lovely friends of mine responded to my craving for New York by buying me some Virgin Atlantic vouchers. That way, I could book a flight whenever I found myself at a loose end; I was free to plan my holiday around my availability.

I have a small amount of available income at the moment (well, I don't any more, as you're about to see). Because it's Feb 1- wagon day- I thought it would be a great idea to do for myself what my pals did for me, so I bought myself some Virgin vouchers. That's still just about acceptable- I can more or less afford a wee break in New York, and it's probably a good idea to buy the flight now, so I can use it to cheer myself up when I'm a little skinter. So, I did. I bought some Virgin vouchers, to use at, literally, my leisure. Wow... have I actually been sensible? Have I used my Feb 1 blurriness to do something reckless but wise, brave in its impulsiveness?

Well, no. Not so much. It didn't stop there. I went on to choose a weekend, and buy a ticket for the Met opera and for a Broadway show. I went through all the pages and pages and pages of online booking for both. It was only when they were both safely purchased that I realised I had, in my off-the-wagon giddiness, booked my New York theatre and opera tickets for a weekend when I absolutely, totally, unequivocally have to be in London. Maybe the most important weekend of my whole entire year.

So what I guess I'm saying is- does anyone want to see Orfeo ed Euridice at the Met on 29 April? Or How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying on May 1? Because I need to sell my tickets.

What I'm also saying is that I should probably stay away from my laptop on wagon day. Sigh.

Probably shouldn't. Will though.

2010-12-12T00:43:00.019Z

Here's the tweet:

'Piers Morgan: Breaking News- I'm now a twit! Official!'

Here's the joke we did about it, as broadcast:

'Just a 'twit', Piers? I think you're being a little gentle on yourself there'

Here's something I saw when I was daft enough to google the show:

'Cynical, useless, stupid, lazy dog-shit. Piers Morgan said he was "a twit", and you seriously think it's acceptable to make a joke out of how closely that word resembles "twat"? Write some material! '

Thing is, I don't think we did do the 'it sounds like twat' joke. Do you? I can see a joke about the mildness of the word 'twit'. I can see an implication that Morgan might use a more insulting word to describe himself. It's not a woofer- there have been better jokes in history- but I quite like the way it leaves the audience to join the dots. It's undoubtedly a 'fill in your own punchline' joke, an ellipsis.

What I can't see is a joke about how closely 'twit' resembles 'twat'. That's pure projection.

Of course, it could be said that I'm overreacting to one misinterpretation of one joke in one episode of one show. But it's actually a spot-on example of one of the ways this wonderful, horrific internet works. People who don't like the things you say, for whatever reason, will happily ascribe to you all kinds of motives and motivations which they may utterly believe, but will nonetheless be light years from the truth- so that, for example, a gag which scrupulously avoids a particular word ends up being accused of the precise opposite.

I didn't write the gag in question, in case you think I'm being personal and precious, but the horrid thing about doing stuff on the telly is that sometimes people will think your work is 'useless', and 'stupid', and 'dog-shit', and they'll be entitled to their opinion. As an adult you have to deal with that, even though it makes you want to wail like a kid.

I love the show I'm working on at the moment, I think it's really rather good- but I have to be grown-up enough to accept that some people will love it and some will hate it. Indeed, I *know* that some people love it and some hate it. And that's fine.

But it's not fine to be called lazy and cynical, because I'm not, and nor are any of the people I'm working with. So, you know, say it's not funny if you like. Say it's useless dogshit. But I think you have to stop there. You can't call us corrupt. And if you do, make sure that the gag you find so unacceptable is the gag that was actually being made.

Slight Return

2010-11-29T16:28:00.004Z

Well, not slight I hope, but as a son of Britpop I couldn't resist a bit of a Bluetones quote. Hello! Anyone still here?

I didn't mean for the post about Jerome to be the last for nearly three months- it's just that it was very tricky to think what to say next. I wasn't maintaining a respectful silence or anything pi like that, but at the same time I didn't want to follow my tribute to my pal by posting, oh I don't know, something about getting annoyed by a Haribo ad the following week. That's not to say that Haribo ads aren't intensely annoying; they are.

Anyway, I've also been hella busy. People in North West London are now no doubt beginning to get used to the sight of the red faced panting man in the too-small vest pounding the streets of Cricklewood and West Hampstead. When Jer was ill, my pal Julia and I decided that- whatever happened to him- we'd raise some money for cancer research by running the London Marathon. It was one of those grand gestures that's easy to make but which sends your stomach doing flipflops when it comes to fruition. I think part of me didn't believe we'd get a place- that honour would be satisfied by having made the offer.

But. A place was forthcoming, and now I have to run a fucking marathon. I don't know if anyone's told you, but it's TWENTY SIX AND A BIT MILES. All the way from Greenwich to Buck House, and not even the direct way. Just so IMPRACTICAL. Apparently short cuts are frowned upon though, so I've had to start training.

My initial, still-a-bit-in-denial plan was to start training in the New Year and live high on the hog until Christmas. However, the quizzical reactions of some friends (where 'quizzical reactions' means 'saying don't be so bloody stupid' and 'some friends' means 'literally everyone') convinced me that I'd better start taking it all a bit more seriously. Yes, Jade Goody managed 21 miles on no training and having had a curry the night before; however, this is not useful knowledge and can people please stop telling me it.

So, the Virgin Marathon Official Beginner's Plan it was. My first reaction on reading it was 'Oh, the first run is only ten minutes, that should be fine'. My second was OH MY GOD THEY EXPECT ME TO RUN SIX DAYS A WEEK FOR TWENTY FOUR WEEKS ARE THEY MAD?

I'm five weeks in now and although I haven't managed all thirty training runs (I make it *counts on fingers* twenty-five)it's getting marginally easier. What made it much, much easier was running in proper running shoes. For the first four weeks of training I was banging around in an old pair of Evisu plimsolls- pretty, but not really up to the job where things like one's ankles and shins are concerned. When I finally shelled out proper money for some proper shoes (after the exquisitely embarrassing torture that is 'gait analysis') the difference was extraordinary- like lying on a featherbed after having previously slept on something made of sandpaper and vinegar. Distressing thigh/underpant interface, leading to inner thighs the colour of pepto-bismol and a proper John Wayne swagger, was dealt with by the purchase of some lycra running tights. These have the added bonus of making me feel a bit like a pervert every time I put them on.

And I'm getting to know the 'hood I've lived in for ten years. I had literally no idea that just past the gym and off the main road was a magic little pathway through a gorgeous cemetery (I like cemeteries) which suddenly, magically opens out onto Fortune Green. Sadly, I have to do a lot of my running after work, which means after dark. The pretty pathway becomes a little more sinister at night, when I become acutely aware that I'm running through an unlit cemetery wearing a brand new ipod. For any muggers, murderers or rapists who may be reading, I'd just like to point out that I'm over six foot and gradually getting fitter, so there's only a 90 per cent chance that you'd get away scot free with your mugging or whatever.

All courting of danger aside, I couldn't yet say I'm enjoying the training. But I'm doing it. I even did it when I was away working in Spain sans running kit- there I was, running on the spot in my jamas in a Spanish hotel room. It was actually one of my more enjoyable 'runs'- I was able to read a modern novel and listen to Das Lied Von Der Erde. I'd like you all to picture that, if you will. And, of course, it's nice that there's, ever so slowly. less of me than usual. Apparently it's the 'core weight' that is last to go, so I'm slimming down nicely (I have HIPS! and RIBS!) everywhere on my body bar my stomach, which is now hanging off my newly lithe frame like an obscene water balloon. I'm told even that will eventually diminish (and that the fat will turn to muscle quicker if I eat protein within 20 mins of running; I'm getting through a lot of boiled eggs) so there are plenty of consolations.

At the moment, though, it's pure solipsism. I'm doing it because of my dad, and because of Jer; but when I'm slogging through a cemetery in freezing rain, hoping I'm not about to be mugged, with my every muscle screaming 'Why are you doing this to me? I am for wine and sofas!' it's not, embarrassing to say, the thought of my lost loved ones that keeps me going. It's the thought of that day in April, specifically mid-afternoon onwards, when I will be taking as many tube journeys as I can so that everyone sees me wrapped in tinfoil sporting a medal. And it's the thought that for ever after I will be able to drop, ever so casually, into conversation the thrilling phrase 'when I ran the marathon...'

If, that is, I succeed in running the marathon. Watch this space.

Oh, and point any extra pennies in the direction of www.justgiving.com/sodcancer

You'll Follow Me Back With The Sun In Your Eyes.

2010-09-07T16:56:00.002+01:00

I've watched the World Cup in some strange places. In Scottish pubs, full of people proudly wearing the team colours of anyone-but-England; backstage in theatres, desperately hoping that the penalty shootout will be completed before I actually have to go on stage; even in Kingston-Upon-Thames. This year I watched the scrappy, ill-tempered affair between Holland and Spain on a tiny bedside screen in the Royal Marsden Hospital, and it's this year's final which I will remember more vividly than any that has gone before or that is to come.

As I left the Marsden that night, an unwanted thought crept into my brain. Would my dear friend, the man who I'd been visiting, be around for the next World Cup final? I dismissed it as a craven, weedy, disloyal thought. It didn't for a second cross my mind that I had just seen him for the last time, but I had. The magnificent Jerome O'Donohoe died on Friday morning, at the obscene, devastating, laughable age of 37.

I first met Jerome a few days after my 30th birthday, which is to say a couple of months after his own. It wasn't a good time for me. My father was already ill with the disease which was to take his life; the same bastard that has snatched Jer's as well. I remember in particular a night at a little Sam Smith's pub in St Giles', which has a small conservatory running alongside it. My phone rang, which in those days only meant bad news. My mother told me of dad's latest symptoms, treatments, ailments. We were both becoming aware of the fact that this was a battle dad was not going to win, and I strode up and down the conservatory becoming more and more agitated and scared. I had no idea how to return to the pub table and behave normally once the call was over; fortunately I didn't need to. The moment I hung up the phone, Jerome came to where I was standing, gave me a wordless but infinitely comforting hug, and gently led me back to where the others were sitting. He didn't try and say anything, didn't feign concern; he just helped, supported and understood. What will give you the measure of the man is that this was just the second time we had met. Essentially, he didn't know me from Adam. But he recognised exactly what was needed and quietly, unflashily, generously and selflessly provided it.

The problem with writing about the death of someone wonderful (apart from the practical problem of typing through the mist) is that all the things one wants to say have become obituary clichés. Everything that made Jerome so special sounds like something from a Hallmark sympathy card. But it's all true. He DID have the biggest, warmest heart. When I conjure his image, he IS always smiling or laughing. He DID possess, to an extraordinary degree, that elusive quality, the gift of friendship. He really HAS left behind him a gap so vast that nobody who knew and loved him will ever adequately be able to find ways of filling it.

And, so you know I'm not just mouthing platitudes, I can give you chapter and verse for everything. His big heart and extraordinary generosity, for example. I eventually learned not to express enthusiasm for anything he owned, because he'd be as likely as not to give it to you. My house is full of bits of kit, books, even a five disc Eddie Izzard box set, which Jerome just handed over and said 'it's yours. I didn't need it anyway'. As for the smile and the laughter, one of the incidental pleasure/pain aspects of his passing is that whenever the sound of his voice pops unbidden into my head, it's never morose or grumpy sounding. Try it, if you knew him- listen out in your head for his voice. See? A cheerful inflection, a sense of mischief. Only ever seconds away from a joke. And as for the gift of friendship, well. Jerome knew everyone, and to meet him was pretty much to become his friend. So many of my friends became his; so many of his became mine. Because he was interested in people, because he loved people, because he was truly a social animal, he was also the most cohesive kind of social glue. He is utterly irreplaceable; I can only imagine how that irreplaceability must feel to his adored and adoring wife Geri, and to his close and loving family.

In the last dazed few days since he left us, one image comes again and again into my brain. It is Jerome and me dancing around a chintzy living room with two other friends and my housemate of the time. I'd been doing a rep season at the theatre in Pitlochry, miles and miles from home. Jerome came to visit, sharing the long drive with our friend Julia. He saw the show I was in (bellowing out a standing ovation amid a crowd of politely clapping highland pensioners) and then joined me and some of the cast in the after-hours bar near the theatre. There was a song out at the time, an anthemic little number by one of those bands that shifts units by the bucketload but which nobody ever actually confesses to liking. One by one, my housemate, my colleague Fran (who was subsequently to become a close friend of the O'Donohoes- that gift again) Jerome, Julia and I all confessed to having a soft spot for the song. Come chucking-out time we were yelling it antisocially in the quiet streets. When we got back to my digs, Jerome did some business with a mac and some wires and the telly and there was the song, playing through the TV speakers. It took him seconds, and in 2004 the idea that we could talk about a song one minute and have it playing through the TV the next seemed like the most thrilling magic. But that was Jerome, and that is how I will always remember him. On holiday, at parties, at the pub, at weddings, in conversation- he'd come in to the room and suddenly, from somewhere, there'd be music.

Ten Things About The Edinburgh Fringe 2010.

2010-08-31T23:18:00.003+01:00

1: A capella groups get quite old quite quickly. The all-female groups are drippy. The all-male groups are smug. Get a piano.

2: There is no competition between a twenty-minute walk and a five quid cab ride.

3: The EUSA shop needs to order more Double Cheese and Onion Ginster sandwiches.

4: My flatmate is not after all the most obsessive kitchen-tidier alive.

5: Acrylic wigs smell if you sweat in them.

6: You're pretty much guaranteed a good show at the Trav, but innit pricey?

7: Not everyone who you think is a lesbian is a lesbian.

8: One of this year's Footlights is a way more committed flyerer than any of the others.

9: A wooden platform will bear a combined weight of around 25 stone for just over a month. After that it's touch and go.

10: Even at the advanced age of 37, it's still the best fun it's possible to have in August.

Bad internet. Naughty internet.

2010-07-31T11:21:00.002+01:00

During a break in rehearsals (www.jumpthemusical, you know you want to) yesterday, I embarked on my customary five minute tour of internet inspection. It goes something like this: email,to find out who's been spamming me and to receive countless facebook notifications; facebook, to re-read the notifications my email has just shown me; and then, just for the hell of it, twitter.

Yesterday two names seemed to appear more often than is usual. One, you will probably be unsurprised to hear, was Clare Balding. The other, less predictably, was Gethin Jones. Let's take the latter first.

Initially I wondered why several tweets on my feed seemed to be making reference to the easy-on-the-eye, otherwise uncontroversial Blue Petering health-shop pusher. You might be, too- it was, as it turned out, a minor twitstorm- but it illustrated rather perfectly how the flawless wonder that is the internet can sometimes be so depressingly abused by the flawed wonder that is people.

Here's how the mini-kerfuffle happened. Someone tweeted that Jones was 'no Alastair Stewart', a reference to the former presenter of a programme he now fronts. Jones was somehow made aware of this- perhaps he searched his own name, perhaps someone told him about the tweet- and decided to reply. His reply was 'No shit, sherlock. YOU get the degree for stating the obvious, well done "numbnuts"'

As a reply it isn't Wildean, and I'm bothered by the inverted commas, but it seems like a fairly commonplace exchange. Someone unfavourably compared Jones to his predecessor, Jones responded with mild irritation.

But in doing so he broke one of the internet's most unpleasant unwritten rules. The potshots, you see, only work one way. His flash of anodyne annoyance became a 'hissy fit'. People started tweeting him to say how 'pathetic','Z list' or 'self important' he was, or to affect to mistake him for Steve Jones of T4. In other words, an unremarkable exchange between two people who annoyed each other became, for some, an excuse to hurl abuse at a man who had dared to commit the double offence of (a) being on television and (b) responding in kind to someone who had slagged him off.

People who aren't in the public eye- 'real' people, if we're being tabloidy about it- get to stand behind a wall and say BUM to whoever they like. But if anyone even a smidge famous says 'Don't you say BUM to me! Bum YOU, more like!' that is a pathetic 'hissy fit'. I'm fairly sure, by which I mean certain, that there's a stinking double standard going on there.

I think it would have been wiser of Jones not to reply, and nobody ever claimed the moral high ground with the word 'numbnuts'. But I also think it was understandable- human- that he did reply. And the pearl-clutching over the fact that he may have found the tweet through 'self-searching' is particularly, hypocritically, daft. Have you never put your name into google? I know I have, and so has pretty much everyone I know. Twitter, of course, has a link to search for '@' replies so people can see what tweeters they don't follow have said to or about them. It's human nature occasionally to get curious about what might be being said about oneself, and it doesn't make Jones a preening idiot for wanting to know.

The way twitter reacts to behaviour its users consider unacceptable is now an established social media phenomenon. Stories such as AA Gill's vile playground sneering at Clare Balding (see, you thought I'd forgotten), the man who was prosecuted for making a terrorism joke on the site, the horrid article in the Express about the survivors of Dunblane or (ahem) Jan Moir on Stephen Gately, develop a momentum of their own and quickly reach a tipping point (or twipping point, as someone will doubtless one day christen it). As a way of gently reminding more established forms of media that we won't necessarily accept what we might be fed, it's invaluable. It would be a shame if that precious right-to-reply were allowed to degenerate into throwing random snowballs at people, and running to teacher when they throw one back.

Hello, blog.

2010-07-23T21:08:00.002+01:00

And hello anyone who's reading. I'm busy doing acting at the moment which is why I've been so scandalously lax in updating this. I presume you're all watching That Mitchell And Webb Look, are you? Good good. If you're not, there are still four more episodes to go. Phew.

I'll be back with something more interesting when I'm less tired and, indeed, more interesting.

I couldn't help but wonder...

2010-05-29T13:08:00.005+01:00

I've never been a 'Sex And The City' fan. I don't know if you're surprised by this, although I do know that if you're a film critic you're likely to be. The fact that 'Sex And The City 2' is apparently not a great film (and, let's face it, it sounds AWFUL) has given scribblers everywhere the opportunity for a good old bit of gaybashing-by-proxy.

It's something that started back in the days of the TV series. Someone noticed that the man who brought Candace Bushnell's book to the screen, Darren Starr, was gay, as was the exec producer, Michael Patrick King. At that point, someone made the not-unreasonable observation that the female characters in 'Sex And The City' sometimes talked and behaved in a way more usually seen in gay men. So far so tame.

But that tame little theory grew and grew. People- and not just people, columnists too- started to say things like 'Of course, the series is actually about gay men' which developed into 'Those characters aren't really women' and soon it became pretty much accepted that SJP and co were nothing but powerless pawns in a twisted gay game of 'hate the woman'. That opinion reached a very queasy nadir in the reviews of the film this week.

Several friends have posted a review from a Seattle newspaper on facebook; it's one of those things that has gone viral. And yes, it makes the case against the film quite brilliantly. But sitting right in the middle, there it is- the irrelevant mention of the sexual orientation of some of the producers. The film, says Lindy West, is 'a home video of gay men playing with giant Barbie dolls'. It's not an offensive remark, per se- but it is an unnecessary swipe, isn't it? I wonder how far I'd get if I described, say, the film 2012 as 'Jews playing with Action Men'?

Leave it to the good old Evening Standard, however, to go from the allusive to the flat-out offensive. Andrew O'Hagan starts by referring to 'Carrie Bradshaw and her gaggle of gay impersonators', thus reaffirming the idea that these characters, created by Candace Bushnell and exec produced by Sarah Jessica Parker, are nothing but projection on the part of some benders. Am I being oversensitive? Well, how about the description of Kim Cattrall's character, Samantha? As a preface to discussing her venality, vulgarity, and narcissism, O'Hagan chooses to sum her up as 'Stonewall on Ice'. Never mind that this is a meaningless piece of phrasemaking ('on ice', Andrew? Talk me through that) its implications are stinking; she's a deeply unpleasant character, as can be summed up by the word 'Stonewall'. You tell me if that is in any way acceptable. You explain to me how that isn't the rankest prejudice.

I'm sure that 'Sex in the City 2' is an egregious piece of film making (the scene where burqa'd women reveal they're wearing designer clobber underneath sounds particularly jawdropping) and of course many gay men have been involved in its creation. Millions more will go to see it. But I still don't think that justifies the journey our tame little theory has taken from 'it's by gays' to 'they're all gays' to 'oh, she's just vile. You know, pure Stonewall'.

Anyway, you'll have to excuse me. I'm off to dress dolls up in Louboutins for reasons hidden in my woman-hating pysche.

Daughters, Reclaimed.

2010-04-27T18:58:00.000+01:00

I don’t write much about TV round here, and certainly never anything approaching a review, for obvious reasons; a bit too close to home, and not very collegial. But having lamented the decline in quality of TV drama in a letter to the paper the other week, it would seem churlish not to hang out the bunting when something excellent and important is made.

‘Five Daughters’ set itself the extremely delicate task of dramatizing the events leading up to, and including, the murder of five women in Ipswich in December 2006. You remember, the prostitute murders- because of course, that’s how the story was told to us at the time. Indeed, when some reports dropped the p word, in favour of calling the women ‘sex workers’, columnists such as Richard Littlejohn fulminated against namby-pamby liberals and political correctness gone mad. These women were prosititutes, he insisted, and should be referred to as such. Have a look on YouTube for Stewart Lee’s magnificent response to that article; I won’t spoil it for you, but if ever I write a line even half as good as ‘One wonders what lengths Richard Littlejohn will go to in his quest for the accurate naming of dead women’ I’ll be a happy man.

Anyway, you probably, like me, remember vague details. There was the blonde on the train, caught on CCTV. There was the dark haired one, the youngest, who lived at home. One of them was pregnant. One had an unusual first name. And they were all drug addicts, of course.

The huge achievement of ‘Five Daughters’ is to take these half-remembered half-truths and gently to question and correct them, while at the same time showing us where the women came from, what made them tick, how they ended up standing on dark streets in the freezing cold in the knowledge that a killer was on the loose. To separate them from each other, and the one tragic fact they have in common. A note about the dramatization of the kerb-crawling scenes- they are unflinchingly unglamorous. Never mind Billie Piper swanning around in beautiful dockside penthouses, we’re all used to a certain shabby chic being applied even to images of street prostitution. The halo of sensual streetlighting, the sexily dressed girl in the impossibly high heels leaning into the car, a seductive smile playing on her lips… ‘Five Daughters’ shows us shivering, frightened women in parkas and fleeces, on quiet, empty, soulless streets, steeling themselves as the headlights creep towards them then muttering the word ‘business’ through the open window. It brings home the fact that, even when there isn’t a serial killer behind the wheel, the best possible outcome- the best- is that the sex will be quick and the man, kind.

But, in talking about that aspect of the series, I’ve fallen into the same trap as the media did at the time of the murders. This isn’t a drama about prositution, it’s a drama about desperation. The desperation that leads the women to the streets; the desperation of their families, both to communicate and to protect; the desperation of their friends when calls go unanswered for first hours and then days; the desperation of the police and outreach workers to fight the killers, both human and chemical. I watched the first two episodes constantly on the verge of tears (I’m being very previous publishing this today- the third episode is on this evening and may be terrible rubbish for all I know. I somehow doubt it though.).

The film-making and the screenwriting are excellent, then; but the quality of the acting is mindblowing. A glance at the cast list raised hopes- Sarah Lancashire, Juliet Aubrey, Anton Lesser, Martin Compston, Ian Hart, Jaime Winstone, Natalie Press, Eva Birthistle, Sean Harris. But scene after scene crowds into my memory, insisting on a mention. Lancashire helplessly demanding that she be allowed to collect her absent daughter’s methadone prescription, then begging, then accepting exhausted defeat. Press, as Paula Clennell, heartbreaking in her brave, guilty disappointment when her mother cancels a planned visit on a flimsy pretext. Aubrey, unbearably stoic, almost matter of fact, as she prepares to view the body of her murdered daughter, and then breaking down, her face collapsing in on itself. Aubrey also played her part in one of the most remarkable scenes I’ve seen on TV for years. We had seen Anneli Alderton (Aubrey was playing her mother, Maire) on the verge of making a new life for herself. Released from prison after serving a sentence for drug offences, she had a plan to become a mobile hairdresser. Maire and son Tom noted with relief that there was no sign of ‘blonde Anneli’. Then Anneli’s best friend Gemma disappeared, sending her into a spiral of fear, guilt, and self loathing. In the scene I refer to above, she turned up at Maire’s house out of the blue and gave her the kind of needy hug a child gives to a parent she knows she is about to hurt. Disappearing into the bathroom, she returned to her mother’s kitchen with hair dyed an aggressive, steely blonde, scraped back in challenge. Her eye make up was a declaration of war and, chillingly, she had reverted from her normal lower-middle class accent into a heightened, combative rude-girl backchat. Aubrey and Winstone were just phenomenal in this scene, the mother trying to assert her authority over a child she knows she has somehow lost, and the daughter using bravado and aggression as a mask for terror. Winstone gave a masterclass in playing the subtext, and Aubrey’s resigned but devastated expression as she emerged from behind a cupboard door to see the front door open and her daughter gone will stay with me for a long time. The wonderful, encouraging thing about all these outstanding performances is that they were achieved with restraint, with a kind of direct truthfulness borne of underplaying. After twenty-five years of exposure to the high-decibel histrionics of EastEnders and the like, it was a welcome illustration of the power of acting rather than the self-indulgence of ACTING.

The first two episodes will be available on iplayer, to viewers in the UK, and the third airs on BBC1 at 9pm tonight. Unsurprisingly, I urge you to watch, not just for its excellence but for what it has achieved. Steven Wright and the tabloids between them turned these five human beings into dead prostitutes. This dignified, honest, honourable, annihilating drama turns them back again.

It might be worth having a little look at the lyrics.

2010-04-13T12:49:00.006+01:00

CHANGE. HOPE. FAMILIES. DECENT HARD-WORKING TAXPAYERS. CHANGE.

In the light of that 'message', being fridgemagneted and madlibbed by all three of the major parties in the run-up to the election, the choice of Keane's 'Everybody's Changing' for the launch of the Tory manifesto must have seemed like a brilliant idea. Firstly, it's totally cutting edge (it was released as recently as 2004!) plus, also, CHANGE. Everybody's changing, see? Like, changing their vote to David and his team of DECENT, HARDWORKING, FAMILY TAXPAYERS for CHANGE?

It's a shame, of course, that nobody asked Keane- whose drummer has already expressed his horror via twitter. But, if the Tories have paid their PRS money, they can play whatever they like. What's a real shame is that they didn't bother to work out that songs have lyrics as well as titles.

'You say you wander your own land
But when I think about it
I don't see how you can'

Not bad so far, I suppose. Bit BNP-ish, I suppose- 'CAN WE EVEN CALL BRITAIN OUR ROYAL LAND ANY MORE?' and all that, but otherwise neutral enough. Oh- maybe they're talking about right to roam, though? Let's see what's next.

'You're aching, you're breaking
And I can see the pain in your eyes
Since everybody's changing
And I don't know why. '

Great start to this verse, for Honest Dave and co. The country is Broken Britain- it's aching, breaking, and in pain. For a bonus, there's almost an echo of the great Billy Ray Cyrus, too. And look- Everybody's Changing! There we have it. CHANGE! HOPE!

Oh, I've just seen the last line of the verse. Surely the Tories ought to know WHY Everybody's Changing? I do hope they're not confused. Well, only one way to find out:

'So little time
Try to understand that I'm
Trying to make a move just to stay in the game
I try to stay awake and remember my name
But everybody's changing
And I don't feel the same. '

New, tough choices for a Brighter Britain. Or a description of someone having a nervous breakdown?

I can't think of a better example of the poverty of our national debate than the party which is likeliest to form the next government co-opting a song on the basis of two words, and not even thinking to check what else it said. Soundbites, kids. That's all we're going to get.

Possible reason for the departure of the sheep

2010-03-15T01:26:00.002Z

Everyone with a blog, from time to time, does the 'weird search terms that brought people here' post. This is mine.

I wonder what the person searching for 'lil bow peep big cock' made of what he or she (let's face it: he) found?

And, more worryingly, I wonder why google pointed here?

As everyone's mother said, if you can't say... ahh, you know the rest.

2010-03-09T21:48:00.005Z

Ten years ago, almost to the day, I performed in the press night of a production that wasn’t very good. This wouldn’t necessarily have been a problem, except that the production was at the Old Vic so people took quite a lot of notice of how not very good it was. The ladies and gentlemen of the press, in particular, used some of the English language’s most potent words for ‘not very good’ in their reviews.

That’s the first time I’ve said in any public space that it wasn’t very good, that production. And in fact, in the intervening ten years the only person involved that I’ve seen publicly acknowledge its failings was its director, once in an article and once in a book (he blamed us). People wouldn’t have been very interested in my opinion, it must be admitted. ‘ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER WITH TWELVE LINES SLAMS BADLY-PACED PRODUCTION OF PROBLEMATIC SHAKESPEARE PLAY’ isn’t a headline which would have sold many papers, even in 2000. I suppose I could have stood on the Cut handing out flyers, but it was a particularly cold spring and I’ve noticed that a lot of drivers aren’t very careful how they take that corner.

I wouldn’t have done, of course. In fact, at the time, I didn’t want to be reminded that it wasn’t very good. The very small audiences in the very big theatre (after the interval the audiences tended to get smaller, which tended to make the theatre seem bigger) were doing that nicely enough. I liked the director, I liked nearly all of my colleagues, I was acting- well, saying twelve lines, anyway- at the Old Vic. Those friends of mine who came to see the show and subsequently wanted to expound at length on how it hadn’t been the best 225 minutes of their lives received pretty short shrift from me; that was the one thing that had been rammed home to me forcibly enough by that point. That, and that going to bed at 5am doesn’t always make for great matinees.

That’s why I was surprised and a little disappointed to hear about the Samuel Ramey kerfuffle. For those of you who don’t know, Ramey is one of the greatest operatic basses around, is by all accounts a thorough good egg gentleman type, and is coming to the end of a deservedly glittering career. He’s also playing a small part in ATTILA, the Met’s first ever production of a rarely-heard Verdi opera.

He thinks it’s a ‘fiasco’, and that the director paid insufficient attention to the concerns of the cast. We know this because he said so- this is where the story takes a bit of a twist- in the comments section of a review of the production on the website of a Dallas newspaper. Disclaimer- we can’t be entirely sure that this comment was left by Mr Ramey, although better-informed people than I am have insisted that it was, so let us for the sake of argument assume that it was.

There is of course nothing at all wrong with a performer expressing disappointment in a production, or in a director. A dear friend of mine was in a film a few years ago which was a great deal less good than he had hoped, a fact which he, ahem, occasionally mentions. And the substance of Ramey’s objection- a lack of attention from the director- is not too controversial either. If the phrase ‘I just haven’t been given any direction’ were banned from the language, coffee and lunch breaks in rehearsal rooms across the world would fall uneasily silent. No, what makes this particular situation noteworthy is that ATTILA didn’t close ten years ago, and is not a film which is done, dusted and distributed; it’s live and it’s still running.

I’m not about to tell someone as distinguished as Samuel Ramey (or indeed anyone) what he can and can’t say, so let’s leave aside the rights and wrongs of that for a moment. What has been noticeable, and dispiriting, in following the story online is his adoption as a kind of Mr-Valiant-For-Truth by people who hated the production, as if this kind of behaviour were an admirable blow struck for artistic integrity. By all accounts, the production stinks. But for that to be said in public by someone who is still appearing in it may strike you as unprofessional, vain and petulant (it may strike you that way; I couldn’t possibly say). You may think it would have been worth waiting three or so weeks until the production had closed, out of respect for an audience who has paid a lot of money and wants to believe that everyone in the cast is straining every sinew in the cause of an artistic event to which they are totally committed (I’m not going to say whether I think that or not). You may even think that somewhere in that cast, among the chorus, perhaps, or the extras, is someone in the same position as I was ten years ago; someone who is aware of the failings of the production but nonetheless has had enough of hearing about them, someone who might feel let down that his or her highest-profile colleague has added to the noise. Getting ready to go on stage in a production you know to be bad is a disconcerting and weird experience, as I know only too well. You may think- it’s a free country- that every other member of the ATTILA company has had that experience made more disconcerting and yet weirder by the senior pro.

It’s one of the more annoying facts of life as a performer that expressing any opinion in public beyond the bland and anodyne is usually met with derision by our dear friends from the fourth estate. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve read some journalist sneering at an actor or singer for daring to have an opinion about politics or current affairs. There’s the Private Eye column ‘Luvvies’, for the moments when actors have trouble describing the difficult-to-describe process by which a performance comes into being (or even when they don’t; a recent edition featured Robert Downey Jr expressing the hope that Arthur Conan Doyle would have smiled upon the film of ‘Sherlock Holmes’ Downey was appearing in- what a wanker, eh, readers?). And the Guardian’s dolt-in-residence recently followed a slagging of Melvyn Bragg’s v/o of a historical documentary by saying that ‘at least it was voiced by someone who knows what he’s talking about rather than an actor’, a comment which caused some consternation among the actors I know who, unlike Lord Bragg, have history degrees. It’s a shame that when, for once, a performer is being near-universally praised for speaking up, it’s for doing something which so threatens to break the unspoken contract he has with the audiences who have yet to see his performance, and the colleagues with whom he will be giving it.

The First Thing We Do Is Kill All The Tenors

2010-02-16T00:16:00.002Z

So, I know all the reasons not to like Michael Moore, but I think there are a lot of things to admire about him too. In amongst the vanity, the sometimes-misleading agitprop, and the harrassing of receptionists and security guards, I do think there is someone who largely thinks the right things and says them loudly and insistently.

But there was one image right at the beginning of his fascinating and entertaining new film 'Capitalism: A Love Story' that really pissed me off. The film opens with an old newsreel about the fall of the Roman Empire, intercutting the images of togas and corruption with images of fatcattery, war and poverty in our own age. And there, among the latter, in the film's first minute, is an image of the Metropolitan Opera House. Enron, Katrina, subprime, the Goldman bailout, and the Met. Just as I was deciding that it was maybe not a deliberate attempt to connect an art form with the excesses and injustices of the free market, Moore removed all possible doubt with some footage of a spiffed-up audience in an opera house under a discussion about the gap between the world's richest and its poorest.

Now, I know that opera is expensive and it's undeniable and regrettable that the audiences of most major opera houses are made up largely of the rich and the very rich. But it is disingenuous in the extreme to try and put even any of the blame for the world's injustices on the arts. It's the same as the tired, spurious old right wing argument that money for the arts means less money for schools and hospitals; it is surely the role of a government in a civilised country to make sure there is room for both. But Moore prefers the cheap populism of saying 'look, an opera house. That's why you're poor.'

Yes, of course I'm partial as an opera lover. But I can't stand ballet, and believe equally passionately in its importance to public cultural life. Besides, if Moore really wanted to use a cultural icon to illustrate sharp practice, greed and an obscenely-paid powerful elite, he could surely have used the Hollywood sign as a much more relevant example. I wonder why he didn't?

Lemon juice out of stock: replacement, jif lemon cleaner

2010-01-26T20:04:00.002Z

In the manner of an online supermarket failing to fill an order, I find that I am sadly fresh out of things to say about Der Rosenkavelier, despite having previously promised/threatened to post about it. However, I did come home from Turandot the following night and write screeds and screeds about it, so have that instead.

The Opera Gods are very clear on the matter. If you have a chance to go see live opera, whatever your misgivings, you should go. I nearly disobeyed this immutable law this evening- I was comfy in my hotel room, there were a few movies I fancied seeing, I wasn't keen on the idea of standing room and I wasn't panting to see, or especially to hear, Guleghina. But even a bad night at the opera is illuminating; and this wasn't one.

I should start with a few disclaimers. Firstly, every time I go to the Met this particular Brit's heart starts thumping before I even leave the subway at Columbus Circle. I have very fond memories of learning about opera at Covent Garden, but the Met is something else. The building, the atmosphere, the historical significance- I don't know what it is, but I'm pretty sure it's my favourite place on earth. This may lead to a rose-tinted view of things. Also, given that I earn some of my modest crust as an actor, I'm naturally predisposed to be on Team Performer. God knows I have heard some singers perform roles they had no business attempting, but if someone is wholeheartedly giving their all in the service of their art, even if the results are underwhelming there's a kind of honesty there I respond to. Finally, I don't get to see live opera as much as I'd like, for reasons of simple economics. A seat in the Covent Garden equivalent of Family Circle costs about as much as a Dress Circle seat at the Met and alas, I don't have that kind of monetary clout. So going to the opera is rare enough to make me determined to enjoy myself. All this means that I may be a little more lenient on some of the drawbacks of tonight's performance than others might. Was it a golden age performance? Well, no. But Nilsson and Bjorling and Corelli and Tebaldi are dead, alas- and we still want to be able to see Turandot, don't we?

See is the operative word. Most of you will know that the Met's Turandot is a triumph for Zeffirelli the designer. It looks wonderful, and the reveal in the second act is a genuine coup de theatre. Zeffirelli the director fares less well. I had to surpress a giggle during 'Gira la Cote' because the production's intentions were so clear. 'Look! Tumblers! A dragon! I know it's only the chorus but DON'T BE BORED'! Even allowing for the fact that this production is on its umpteenth revival, there were some real clunkers in the staging of the first act. 'Lasciatemi passare' sang Calaf, to three people who were in no way blocking his path, and with his back to them. The poor old Prince of Persia took a pointlessly long back-and-forth route to his death (admittedly, this kind of illogicality had been present in Act 3 of the previous night's Rosenkavelier- is Sophie in the damn room or isn't she? And if she is, why does everyone insist on going the long way round and using the door?). What was frustrating is that all this extraneous stuff was so unnecessary, as the dramatic structure of that first act is so tight. The storytelling is brisk- the curtain rises, the chorus sets the scene, Timur falls, reunion, Prince of Persia, Signore Ascolta, gong. Jenufa is just about the only opera I can think of which gets through its exposition with so little fuss.

Musically this was probably the most successful act. There may be a better opera house chorus in the world than the Met's; if so I should like to hear it. As far as the principals go, Maija Kovalevska did a grand job on 'Signore, Ascolta' but it was pretty rather than moving. Interestingly, she was much, much more successful in Act 3. This was a Liu who was much more comfortable in defiance and action than in passive pleading. The voice is better suited to the heavier stuff late on, as well. Where the first aria was professional, technically strong, and all those other underwhelming words, the voice became more interesting the more was asked of it. 'Tu che di gel' had precisely the right mix of steel and melt, and reminded me of Gallardo-Domas back when she was, you know, still good. She brought the best out of Hao Jiang Tian's Timur, as well. In the first act he had been acceptable, workmanlike; after Liu's death he was genuinely moving.

I've been unlucky with tenors at the Met. The first time I went, in 2006, I saw Walter Fraccaro as an instantly forgettable Cavaradossi. Then, back in April, Mario Berti oscillated so wildly between the brilliant and the filthy that it seemed he was cramming the ups and downs of an entire career into one Trovatore. What I got tonight from Salvatore Licitra was my first Met taste of tenorial vocal glamour- something in the tone which excites and relaxes simultaneously. He doesn't use the voice with as much artistry as is ideal- nothing much happens below mezzo forte, and his phrasing can be a little rustic. Actually, the one time he dipped the volume below 7 something rather interesting happened. His challenge to Turandot on 'Il mio nome non sai' felt intimate, something for her ears only, a seduction. I've not seen that before, and it works. 'Nessun Dorma' was delivered with a swagger- this is the aria you're here for, he was saying, and listen to how well I pull it off. Relatively well, is the answer- came off that C pretty darn quick, didn't we, Sal? Still, on tonight's evidence, if he's not a great singer, he's nonetheless a good one. If I could offer him one word of advice, however, it would be to be less wimpish about his gong-work. The music isn't really asking for a careful underarm tap.

He wasn't the only tenor on display, of course (although Bernard Fitch as Altoum wasn't on display to me- his throne isn't visible from Fam Circ standing, and neither, annoyingly, is Turandot's first appearance), since we also have two thirds of the Ping Pongs. Zef the designer has a lot of fun with these three, and their bold colour scheme in among the pastels is another of the design elements that really works. Vocally, the highest praise I can give Joshua Hopkins, Tony Stevenson and Eduardo Valdes is that they bore comparison to the dream team on that odd Karajan recording- Araiza, Hornik and Zednik (yeah, the Niks rule). For once I could see the point of their scene at the top of act two, a section which reminds us that this opera was written a quarter of the way through the twentieth century. It almost feels more like a musical theatre number than an operatic trio- Sondheimish, even, and I mean that as a compliment to both composers.

That's the whole cast, isn't it? Oh no, I missed one. The uncharitable would say that Maria Guleghina has no business singing Turandot at this point; the overly generous would point to the fact that she got through it with no glaring mishaps. On the positive side the voice, although nobody could claim it to be in anything near its prime, has retained its impressive size. But then, 'never mind the rest, it's so BIG' is a credo that has got better men than I am in trouble, in, ah, all sorts of contexts, so we can't just leave it at that. There are some parts where, if not ideal, a little vocal insecurity can at least be dramatic. Tosca, say, or Norma are in extremis, so we can excuse a wobble or a shriek as a character point. But Turandot when we first meet her is powerful, triumphant, impermeable, and the singing of 'In questa reggia' and the riddles should reflect that. Guleghina sounded like what she was, which was a soprano carefully navigating her way through a role which isn't in her voice any more. There's little point in the climax of 'In questa reggia' if the top C arrives late, squalls, and then is abandoned as soon as is respectable. In Act Two she was cranking out the decibels, but the tone was centreless; and when she tried something more caressing, it was touch and go as to whether it would work. At the top of the register, the vibrato has widened and spread into what is undeniably a wobble, and a big one at that- one of those 'which note, precisely, are you singing?' wobbles which always spells trouble. On the plus side, she fared a great deal better in the less demanding music that makes up most of Act 3, especially an almost gorgeous 'Del Primo Pianto', and she made some interesting dramatic choices, at least from the far distance of standing room. In the 'figlia del cielo' section - where that mp3 clip of the other night's performance had revealed her to be drowning- she evinced a real, believable vulnerability. By the way, Andris Nelsons had seemingly learned his lesson there, and he hurried it along at a significantly faster tempo than before; in fact, he didn't put much of a foot wrong all night. But to return to Guleghina, between the generous and the uncharitable lies a middle ground, summed up in a couple of questions. Can she sing Turandot? Yes, just about. Should she? Probably not.

See? There's always plenty to say about a night, any night, at the opera. I'm glad I listened to the Opera Gods- I'd have missed, ooh, about two-thirds of a treat, otherwise.

I've never been to Brooklyn and I'd like to see what's good*

2010-01-15T20:15:00.005Z

It strikes me that what I usually do when in This New York is write long, rambling blog posts about it. Well, I'm a creature of tradition, so here goes.

I have said before that there is no real point in describing flights, since you've been on one (unless you're *you* or *you*) and you know what it's like. But there were a couple of distinguishing features to this one. The first is that I was sitting in front of a real life sitcom character. Not an actor, one of those stock comic types who only appears in 25 minute segments with an ad break. She had an accent which made your average Miss Adelaide sound subtly underplayed, and she moaned about literally everything. We were a little late taking off and- having kvetched about everything from the location of her seat to the size of those little red blankets to the fact she had to stow her hand luggage in the overhead locker- she announced to the plane at large 'an extra hour I could have stayed in bed this morning. It's a scandal. A SCANDAL'. At this point her husband uttered the only word I heard him speak the entire time which was- I swear- 'Oy'. Just before we took off, the stewardess announced that there were a few seats available in Premium Economy on a first come, first served basis. The moment the seatbelt light was switched off Sitcomella got up and ran, actually ran, down the aisle in order to have first pick. This was impressive, given the hip troubles she has been undergoing and which we had already heard about in forensic detail.

The other aspect of the flight which bears repetition is the film 'Bandslam'. I chose it because I couldn't handle anything heavier, and it's adorable- smart, sweet and funny. It struck me as the kind of film Juno was intending to be, if less ambitious. The gags were easy and witty, without that Juno tendency to broadcast 'you didn't expect me to use THAT word, did you? I am clever and witty and ironic you see'. It also has LIsa Kudrow in it, and there is a rule round these parts that anything with Lisa Kudrow in it is good. It made me cry, but you won't because you're not as much of a wuss as I am.

So I got to JFK, and I got to my hotel which is cheap but unremarkable, in a cheap, unremarkable neighbourhood between Chelsea and Midtown. Johnnie, a university friend who lives a few blocks away, had very kindly agreed to meet up for a welcome drink, which became a welcome (in both senses) Cuban food blowout. She and I gassed for a couple of hours, ate a metric fuckton of food, and then I rolled home.

Yesterday was, as is now traditional, big walk time- this time along the High Line, through to Union Square, and then meandering around the Village before heading to Lower Broadway and the idology office for lunch and remedial computer help. A quick breather at the hotel and then into the sleazy gay underworld. Well, not really. Actually a rather nice russian-themed bar on 51st where Greg drank vodka and I drank beer. The website claimed that, since the bar was in the theater district (which it isn't quite) one might see Alan Cumming or Cyndi Lauper popping in for a drink, or Liza or Chaka dropping by to play the piano. Astonishingly, none of these things came to pass. After a couple of drinks and stuff the 'Jon eats far too much food' aspect of all my holidays took a Mexican turn with some Mole enchilladas (chocolatey sauce rather than adorably blind vermin). We topped off the evening by meandering down to Lincoln Center, where we watched a little of the night's performance of 'Stiffelio' on the foyer screens and since we didn't know the story (despite Greg having seen it just three nights before- early Verdi is like that) decided to make it up, a heady concoction involving priests in fancy dress, a burning cathedral, a Halloween party, and Sibelius.

Today was Brooklyn. Brooklyn without a map. Brooklyn without a map is lostmaking. I got off at a subway stop, walked down some nice treelined streets (I have since worked out that I was most likely in Prospect Heights) to a large arch, which subsequent research tells me is the Soldiers and Sailors arch. So, you know, well done soldiers and sailors.

Prospect Park is gorgeous, all undulating and Capability Brownish. And smaller than Central Park, which for someone who is both lazy and mapless is something of a blessing. I eventually navigated myself to a Subway stop and headed to the Bridge for some pizza (Grimaldi's, which I can announce makes the second best pizzas in New York) and then a nice high up walk back into Manhattan, during which I composed much of this post in my head, like some kind of latter-day blogging Wordsworth.

And tonight it's off to the Met, for the best Rosenkavalier cast that the year 2000 had to offer (I shouldn't be snarky- I'm expecting them to be pretty damn good ten years on). Needless to say, I shall be reporting on this in full. Whether you like it or not.

Favourite overheard comments so far:

(Man on phone, outside St Paul's Church, Fulton Street) 'All I'm saying is you gotta bring some of that fuckin' Macadamia Nut Brandy, man'

(Man in overalls outside my hotel, talking to other man in overalls) 'So he like humped my dog, and since then my dog is all, like, y'know?'

*If you read my previous NY blog posts back in April you'll know the drill by now. If you didn't, well, that isn't my fault, is it?

An Annual Audit

2009-12-30T01:56:00.006Z

And other things which begin with a letter A. This is going to be tremendously self-indulgent so look away now.

Things which have been good about 2009:

1- How unexpected everything was. This applies to suddenly writing a play, randomly visiting a lot of the world without ever intending to, doing well with some jokes, Scott Mills The Musical, Edelpanto, starting a blog, people actually reading it, usw. I would have expected a lot of same old for this year, and it threw a lot of excitement my way. And, of course, Fulham being wonderfully unuseless all year.

2- Pals. Pals getting married, pals having kids (well, I am in my earlymidtolate30s, so I guess that would been inevitable) but also, and almost mainly, the new pals. There's the one in Ameriky, there's the one who came to London with mud on his boots drinking Malibu, there's the semi-Scottish bass, there's the one who does writing who I've known for a couple of years but who became more of a pal, there's his excellent award-winning missus, there's the SMTM pals... I have done well for pals (overusing the word now, but it's one I like) this year. Plus the old faithfuls, of course, who should feel in no way denigrated by that description. I am unusually lucky when it comes to friendship.

3- Sky Plus. I am one of those hypocrites who despises the Murdoch Empire, but nonetheless adores coming home from the pub to find that the magic box made of science has recorded 30 Rock without my even remembering it was on. NB: if James Murdoch and David Cameron plot between them to take away the BBC, as seems likely, I will belatedly discover some principles and throw it away, possibly in some kind of ceremony.

4- The discovery that in amongst all the random numptyness on the internet there is still a lot of wit, honesty and righteous decency . I discovered SYB this year, and Enemies of Reason, and all manner of good things said by sensible people. It just goes to show you can't be too careful (ooh, thanks too to David, for taking a good pub idea and making an unexpected number of people spread the word).

5- The fact that I had four things which were good. I bet I could think of more, too, but it's late and I'm tired.

Bad things about 2009:

1- Let's not. It's Christmas, still, nearly. What with bombings and executions and Horne and Corden's sketch show and climate change and climate change deniers and expenses and banking and and and and it's probably depressing enough. And come the spring, George Osborne is going to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Now I'm really depressed.

On the plus side, though, I have been bought a food processor. So, whatever happens, 2010 will be a bonanza of soups and stews.

Happy New Year, kids. May this last year of a weird decade bring you everything you dream of, unless you dream of rubbish things.

I did a pome.

2009-12-27T01:31:00.002Z

This is a poem I wrote for my sister, about my niece.

"My Niece, September

Today is Hope’s birthday. A pleasing phrase;
One of many which will show up over the years.
‘Can you see Hope?’ ‘Hope makes me smile’
How can hope be gone, or one lose hope

When Hope is in the world? Now we know
What’s in a name. In the darkest corner
Of Pandora’s Box, after the darkest times
There lurked the solution, the happiness-hit.

‘Hope, ta-da!’ as the man said. From the first
That sparky little girl made herself known,
Her personality felt. A birth canal? Don’t be wet.
Coming through the hipbone, that’s a challenge.

And so she entered the world in a manner
Perhaps more complicated (I can use euphemisms:
I’m not her mother) than most, and yet
Utterly characteristic. ‘This is how I do things

And if something seems difficult, that’s the cue
To keep hammering away until crowned
With glorious, hard-won success’. Some Ratcliffe granite
Seaming through the languid Taylorness.

Months earlier, three had become four, and now
Four and a bump became four and a bit, then
Slowly, quickly, wonderfully, five. A person
Grown from scratch, as a dock-leaf for grief-

Not to take it away, but to soothe it, assuage,
And with her newness to make the old less raw.
We laugh with someone discovering laughter
We dress a cut knee with a promise the pain will end.

There is another noun, my beautiful girl,
That folk have turned into a name; like yours
It is a sound to describe something to feel, and you
Possess and exude its name as utterly as your own;

The embodiment, not just of Hope,
But of Joy."

December 2009

Esprit d'escalier

2009-12-03T15:50:00.003Z

What he (sharp suit, university education) said:

'I don't mind immigration if it's people who want to contribute, what bothers me are all these asylum seekers sitting around on benefits not even trying to work'

What I said:

'Well, asylum seekers aren't allowed to work'

What I should have said:

'Why not get even the vaguest bit informed before you presume to hold forth on something so important, you greedy, complacent, willfully ignorant fucking moron?'

Don Taylor, 30 June 1936- 11 November 2003

2009-11-11T00:28:00.003Z

My dad died six years ago today. If you click on this link, or this one or this one you can find out a bit more about him.

I wanted to write something a bit more personal at this point, but now I come to it I'd much rather let him speak for himself. When Dad was dying, he wrote a series of poems for my mum to read after he was dead- aimed, I suppose, at consolation, or as a continuation of their forty-seven year conversation and delight in each others' minds. Indeed, one of the poems encouraged her not to visit his grave after he was dead, but instead to read his work, so she could 'look into his living imagination'.

That imagination still lives, and dad would be delighted to know how much of his work is still being performed around the world. Every few months or so I meet someone who performed in 'The Roses of Eyam' at school or with their local amateur group; and Katie Mitchell's championing of his translations of Greek plays have led to more productions of those translations than he, or we, could ever have dreamed of.

When I want to look into his living imagination, I come back time and time again to one of those poems he wrote after the oncologist's sentence had been pronounced. It's called Roses.

'There is a rose garden at the end of the world.
The Old English roses are marvellously scented.
I shall sit there on long summer evenings,
Drinking white wine, and breathing in the perfume,
Marvellously contented.

When the shadows close on you too,
I shall be waiting, if anywhere, in the Rose Garden
Drinking good white burgundy,
At peace with what I have been and done.'

As I said at the funeral six short, long years ago- enjoy your peace, lovely daddy. You have deserved it.

Silence broken, by a bloody great plug.

2009-11-09T23:39:00.002Z

Well, why not?

You have a week to listen to this lovely programme on the iplayer- Robert Webb talking about his favourite pieces of poetry and prose. He's a great companion in this kind of thing and his choices are fascinating.

In the name of full disclosure, I might mention that I did some of the reading out.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00npwhj

On resisting temptation.

2009-10-23T00:15:00.001+01:00

Like you, I watched tonight's 'Question Time', and I'm sure that you, like me, were particularly struck by what a singularly weird f

Nah, better not. Not twice in the one week.

Why There Is Nothing 'Natural' About Jan Moir's Weird Face

2009-10-16T13:12:00.001+01:00

“The sight of Jan Moir’s weird face in today’s Daily Mail was deeply shocking. It wasn’t just that another hate-filled, frothing journobot was as ugly outside as in.

Through the recent travails and sad deaths of Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger and others, fans know to expect the expected of low-rank journalists- that the moment someone a bit famous drops off the twig, a weird face like Jan’s will start flapping on about how there’s more to it than meets the eye and making prurient , twitchy, offensive speculations dressed up as moral weariness.

Now look- don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against Jan Moir’s weird face. Some of my best friends are Jan Moir’s weird face, although I wouldn’t let it adopt children as they might be bullied. But let us be absolutely clear about this. Normal faces don’t wake up in the morning looking like that. Whatever happened between Jan Moir and her weird face is anyone’s guess. But it strikes a blow against the happy-ever-after myth of loathsome gutter journalism spewed by people with weird faces.”

Bit of a low blow on my part, huh? After all, the poor woman can’t help the way she looks (which, by the way, is HORRIBLE). But if the horrible, upsetting death of a 33 year old man can be poked and pried into in order to further a slimy, bigoted agenda, I don’t see why I shouldn’t point out that the person doing the sliming has a horrible, upsetting face. Moir and her like argue that celebrities forfeit some of their right to privacy when, through their courting of publicity, they ask for our attention. Well, by the same token, Moir has forfeited her right to me not commenting on her weird face by putting a picture of it on the internet. Oh, and by indulging in net-curtain gossiping about someone who never did her (or, so far as we know, anyone) a moment’s harm, before his young body is even cold.

And in many ways, she got off lightly. I could have concentrated on the even more spectacular ugliness of her soul.

A shaming, but honest, admission.

2009-10-11T03:59:00.003+01:00

A wonderful Hamlet. A Zerbinetta absolutely nailing it. Bernadette Peters singing Sondheim. Pele passing to to Maradona who passes to George Best who volleys in from 40 yards to win the league for Fulham. A sketch written by Fry, Laurie, Peter Cook, the Pythons and Victoria Wood, and performed by Eric Morecambe and Ronnie Barker.

I have this evening realised- and this is speaking as someone who finds dance basically weird and pointless- that I'd trade any or all of the above for a really, really well-executed tap number.

Dilatoriness.

2009-09-18T05:33:00.002+01:00

If that's not a word, it should be. Anyway, this is by nature of a guilt post. I can't stand the type of blogger who castigates himself for not posting- it seems to imply that hundreds of people are desperately waiting for the next effusion- but I am about to become one of them. There is so much to say about Hong Kong and Sydney that every time I sit down to start to write it, I begin to whimper slightly. I will say two things to you, however, as a placeholder for any future time when I might feel a little more verbose.

1) If ever you get a chance to see Cate Blanchett on stage, for god's sake go.
2) Typhoons aren't as exciting as they sound.

Answer four questions then sign of backside*

2009-09-12T00:31:00.005+01:00

While there may be no such thing as a free lunch, I am here to tell you that should you roll up to the Sakura Lounge at Narita Airport Terminal Two, there is such a thing as a free breakfast, and very welcome it is too. Bacon! Sausages! (well, mini frankfurters, but I ain't going to quibble) Boiled potato! There were all kinds of soups and salads, too, and a gleaming sushi selection, but I reverted to type; I am English after all. If you show me bacon in the morning, I will eat it. Fresh orange juice, coke, mineral water- even Kirin on tap (they had cans of Kirin in the meeting room where I ran the workshop yesterday, too. This is a civilised country).

It's rather cruel to be getting on another plane so soon after an 11 hour flight (although that sped by, to be honest, thanks to the opera channel on the inflight audio- the Gheorghiu/Alagna Trov, the Mackerras Cosi, which I had last heard at Fran and Steve's wedding, and a stupendous Glyndebourne Fidelio which I shall be buying when I get home. Plus some comedy. British Airways still carries That Mitchell and Webb Sound, which is nice, and it's very comforting to hear James read out one's name when one is 36000 feet above Irkutsk. Don't know why he did, though, as there was none of my material in the episode. Stop complaining, Jon. There was a TV sitcom I watched, too, in which Gus showed up. At the start of a journey I was very apprehensive about, it was strangely reassuring to have these little reminders of home crop up. So I recommend that you all encourage your friends to get themselves included in in-flight entertainment).

Stunning traveller's insight number one- cor, isn't the old Soviet Union big? I mean, I knew that, I've seen it on maps, but nothing quite prepares you for the physical reality of entering its airspace a couple of hours into the flight, after looking down to see Sweden and Finland, and then staying above the ex-USSR for the next nine hours, almost until the descent begins into Japan, only ending when one passes briefly over Mongolia from Siberia, before skirting China. I never saw myself as an international traveller; for the likes of me there is a surreal quality to looking at the inflight map screen and finding out that I'm above Ulan Bator.

Yes, after almost exactly 48 hours, it's sayonara Tokyo. I can't presume to give an impression of the place, except perhaps that it was nowhere near as scary and alien as I had neurotically expected. There's no getting round it- I don't like being a foreigner. Not being able to speak the language unnerves me, as does not knowing customs or etiquette (all my online research left me throughly confused, for example, about the ins and outs of bowing. I ended up doing embarrassed semi-nods at pretty much everyone I spoke to, in the manner of a demented yet reticent woodpecker). But everyone really was as friendly and as helpful as they tell you, and I wish I'd got to see more of the place beyond the hotel room and meeting room, both in the same building, in which I spent the bulk of my time. Other highlights- well, the only other lights, actually- were a quick stroll into Roppongi with Warwick, who very kindly gave up a couple of hours to take me to a gaijin bar and a yakatori restaurant (chicken seven ways. All on sticks and that. The wasabi one was nice. Watch out Jay Rayner) and a Quattro Formaggi in 'la Trattoria'. Yes, yes, I know, but before you start throwing things at me I have decided that in my life I am going to eat pizza on every continent, although Antarctica may be a stretch. Anyway, Europe and the US had better look to their laurels, because my Tokyo pizza was good, good eatin'. It's so rare to get just the right amount of gorgonzola, don't you find? In my experience you have to go all the way to Japan.

It's funny, surrounded by so much that is different and exciting, what odd little details stick in the mind. In Japan, you stand on the left on an escalator. I may be more understanding next time my way is blocked on the Tube. Hey up, these banalities will have to wait for now- they're calling my flight. Hong Kong awaits, which I know you'll be looking forward to. If I keep up this level of insight I will be doubtless logging on in a couple of days to tell you how it's sort of British and yet Chinese there, and that the buildings are quite high. Watch this space.

*Quite a funny sign at Immigration, referring to the embarkation forms. But that's the only Engrish you're going to get, because it's cheap, really, isn't it? Lord knows my Japanese is nothing to write home about.

Yes, it's still about that.

2009-08-20T18:17:00.001+01:00

Now then, where were we? Obviously I’m on a train again (I’m not going to tell you where, location fans. I feel like I’ve overindulged you lately) and I ought really to finish this megablog about the show before it passes into prehistory. There are a few more people you need to know about first, though.

Scott (played the Hoff/ the Crap DJ): A question I have been asked quite a lot in the last three weeks is the inevitable ‘What’s Scott Mills like then?’ And nobody looks the slightest bit surprised when I say that he’s a really lovely bloke. This is a man who is able to get my 70 year old mother listening to Radio 1 (she thinks he’s ‘an excellent broadcaster’). I was dead impressed when I went into the studio a couple of times, too. He makes it look pretty effortless. The Pinot Grigio gags, by the way, have a certain basis in fact. I thought I had a good line in inhaling bottles of wine, but I look like a slowcoach next to Mills. I’d challenge him to a wine-off, but I don’t like losing.

Beccy (played KylieWhileyMyleene): What have I done I’ve only met actual Beccy. Listeners to the show will know that Beccy is really, really funny. She reminds me of David M in the way she’ll cut right to the chase whenever someone says anything illogical or unlikely, and get comic capital out of pointing it out. Essentially, the one-liner is her forte. She’s also really good value in a game of ‘would you rather’ and is the first person I know who has ever priced herself out of the market with the ‘tramp’ question (and if you don’t know what that means, you don’t want to). Has a scald on her arm in the shape of pepperoni, and seems to be under the impression that all listeners to the Scott Mills show are from the West Country.

Rob/ Emlyn/ Lyndsey/Sam: Our Radio 1 angels. Emlyn (the real TOTDS) wrote the show and was its chief cheerleader- his enthusiasm for it kept us all going, and he has an uncanny ability to say ‘does anyone want a drink’ at JUST the right time. Rob- or Linda, as he now prefers to be known after his discovery of the ‘Broadway’s Leading Ladies’ DVD- couldn’t be less like his counterpart in the show, although he does have the same surname. Lyndsey mainly spent her time with actors saying ‘where are my keys/ tickets/ Pleasance passes/ contract/ money’ which can’t have been much fun but somehow resisted the temptation to slap anyone upside the head. Sam the internet guy took more photos than anyone ever has in the world ever, and managed somehow to upload them before they were even taken. He also made a very convincing, um, photographer in the Brits scene. R1 in general was incredibly supportive of the show, and it made such a difference to know they were right behind/ alongside us. There was no divide, I suppose is what I’m saying, between ‘radio show people’ and ‘people off of the musical’- we were all in it together, which was what made it all so ace.

Patrick/ Ollie/ Roshni/ JP/ Nick/ Robin: Ok, I know this is turning into a tedious Oscar speech now, but hey, nobody asked you to read it. Patrick, our director, made it into a proper show. We’d have got away with something endearingly chaotic, but Patrick insisted that we come up with something as tight and as slick as possible, which I think made a real difference when it came to audience expectations. He created a smashing atmosphere in rehearsal too- surprisingly few directors seem to realise, as Patrick does, that you’re allowed to like your actors and tell them that you think they’re good. Ollie, Patrick’s assistant, is possessed of enough charm, enthusiasm and charisma to persuade a bunch of cynical actors to do a Peter Brook-style workshop with sticks, without ending up wearing one. Roshni, our company stage manager, managed somehow to co-ordinate the whole show, set, props, costume and all, on a budget of tuppence ha’penny and a diet of fags and whisky. The woman is a legend. She fell asleep at one point during the overnight, and immediately sat up- in a moment of silence when nobody had called for her- and said ‘NO, SORRY’. You have to love that. John, the production manager, and Nick the LD seem to have smiled their way through the whole job. And Robin, on sound, put up with us blocking his radio mikes with our sweat, which, if you think about it, is pretty disgusting.

So that, at some length, is the gang. Now, you left us having just finished the all-nighter. We went off to get varying degrees of sleep (the R1 team had three hours of Drivetime to do, remember, the poor sods) before reconvening, white with anticipation, at the Pleasance that evening. To say that we were nervous would be to say that Chris Moyles is carrying a few extra pounds. Pacing was the order of the day, along with that kind of half-conversation you have on first nights where you say to each other ‘IT’S GOING TO BE FUN, ISN’T IT? YES. YES IT’S GOING TO BE A LOT OF FUN’ while trying to ignore the fact that you both have crazed eyes. The turnaround from the previous show was pretty smooth (apart from one actor having lost a crucial item of costume, and, what’s worse, attempting to lie about it. Pond scum. Yes, it was me. Shut up.) and, shatteringly quickly, it was time for the actual punters to come in. All 300 of them. This is where we began to visualize 300 angry, tired drunks who had queued for four hours to get their tickets. This is where we realized that the opening number went on for seven minutes and Scott, the man they had come to see, wasn’t even in it. This is where we began to get REALLY scared.

I might tell you what happened next, sometime.

Dramatis Personae

2009-08-18T16:20:00.001+01:00

As promised, then, a few words about these people I keep insisting are such smashers.

Them what was on stage (in order of appearance):

Kathy (PR4L): You know her voice because everyone does, and at first it’s strange to hear it coming from a person rather than from the Today programme. She is a ukelele-toting, tiara’d streak of elegance with a singing voice as beautiful as her speaking one, and a devilish quick sense of humour. Kathy’s enthusiasm for the whole project was always a boost and my word she can make people laugh. It’s also fun to get her to say rude words. Formed an unholy alliance with Andrew.

Laurie (played Beccy): The best thing ever to come out of Belgium and yes, I am including waffles in that. We were gutted to miss her burlesque performance (although it was sold out, which is of course the best possible reason) because playing Beccy required her to be sweet and musical theatre-ish (which she did as if to the manner born) whereas I’m pretty sure our Ms Hagen would be great at the darker, more decadent side of performance. Taught me the running man, for which I will be forever grateful. Can inflect the simple word ‘Babes’ in at least 48 different ways. Formed an unholy alliance with Andrew.

Simon (Dep musical director, cameo as ‘man on intercom’ in the opening number): Baptism of fire. Simon agreed to come in and play for the times that Des was unavailable and, due to various unforeseen circumstances, ended up as our de facto MD. I have never before attended a music rehearsal where the cast had to teach the MD the songs, but Simon showed himself to be a quick and, fortunately for us, patient learner, and when it came to notes, an even better teacher. He got a great tight sound out of his small band, too (also comprising Dominic on bass and Andy on drums). Didn’t to my knowledge form an unholy alliance with Andrew but the signs were there that he would have done, given time.

Joe (played Scott): I’ve mentioned him a couple of times before, so you’ll know about him. Joe joined us as a fresh-faced, eager drama student, and left us three weeks later as a seasoned pro with a shattered liver. So, as mentors, you’ll see that we could hardly have done a better job. He reminds me of myself when I was his age, (back in the Pleistocene epic) in many ways, chiefly in his refusal to sing the end of any given song as written if there’s a gala high note to be had. But beyond his performance, which as you’ve seen was great, he handled the pressure and the madness of the whole project- which must have been twice as intense for him as for anyone except Scott- with real maturity, modesty and grace. So probably not that much like the younger me, after all. Formed an unholy alliance with Andrew.

David (played TOTDS): The straight man who is always in gay plays. We tried to insist that this one didn’t belong on his impressive gay theatre CV, but round about the first rehearsal of R.A.D.I.O it became apparent that that wasn’t fooling anyone. David came to our show straight from his wedding (that’s a pun, kids) and having lived abroad for a while, so he must have been pretty dazed by the whole thing. Being the great galumpher that I am, I was very envious of his physical precision on stage, and I think his performance is one of the highlights of the video version, as that kind of precision translates so well to camera. Fans of the song ‘We’re Not Allowed’ will be interested to learn that David used this very laptop to perform one of the taboos mentioned in the lyric, while we were ON THE TRAIN to Edinburgh.

Andrew (played Chris Moyles/ Andy Parfitt/ a Stepsesque cowboy): As I thought to myself what to say about Andrew, I found myself smiling. He’s that kind of person. He is responsible for christening me ‘Jennifer’ (it’s a long story, but basically think Dreamgirls) a name which I haven’t answered to since I was teaching English to a girl from Hong Kong who couldn’t quite manage ‘Jonathan’. He appointed himself as ASM to our stage manager, the estimable Roshni (with whom he formed an unholy alliance, and of whom more later) and worked his butt off helping to marshal the scene changes while retrieving the necessary props that his colleagues (ok, ok, me) had left in eccentric places in the wings. Had less to do in the show than some of the rest of us, a fact he occasionally mentioned, but you wouldn’t know to watch it, because everything he did was so memorable. I suspect he may have a slight tendency towards corpsing.

Guy (played Rob the boss): Current holder of ‘Wales’ nicest man’, a title he has held every year since his birth, Guy is one of those sickening people who you can’t imagine ever hearing a bad word about. Like, ever. Anyone who laughs at jokes like Guy does- the laugh sort of takes over his whole upper body- is always going to be popular with them as makes jokes, which is to say most of us. Irritatingly, he is of course also very funny in his own right. He’s getting married in a few weeks time, and his fiancée is a very lucky woman- except, you’ve guessed it, she’s irritatingly lovely too. Guy is a bit of a worrier, but in social and professional terms he has nothing to worry about, the lovely talented jammy bastard.

Bloody hell, that’s about a million words and I haven’t even started on the crew and the Radio 1 brigade yet. In fact I haven’t even finished on the cast- I’ve missed Scott and Beccy. But once more I’m on a train nearing its destination (my mum’s place in Norfolk, persistent location fans) so that, along with the madness of the performances and my fun on radio wun*, will have to wait for another time. This is turning from a few blog posts into a fucking novel, but I want to get it all down while it’s in my head. So, y’know, tough.

*it’s to make it clear that it rhymes, ok?

You've got to put me on the S. T. A. G. E...

2009-08-17T18:56:00.005+01:00

I’m on a train- currently at Peterborough, location fans- and trying to fathom exactly how I can put the last three weeks or so into words. It’s fairly safe to say that I’ve had an unforgettable time.

It began, like all good stories do, with a mysterious phone call. My friend Des, who I’ve known since Cambridge, called me as I was on another train- heading, coincidentally enough, up to Edinburgh for Fran and Steve’s wedding. He left a voicemail which was very crackly and difficult to understand. All I heard was ‘potential job… first two weeks of August… paid…’ and then an email address to which I was told to send my CV. The address, however, was a BBC one, which was encouraging, so I emailed my Spotlight link over and waited to see what would happen.

The next day I was in Jenners buying a tie for the wedding (crimson and black, neckwear fans) when my phone rang again and Des greeted me with the immortal line ‘Welcome to Scott Mills The Musical’.

Of course, to an accomplished and professional actor like me the work starts way before the rehearsal room, so as soon as I received my script I set to rehearsing my characters- sports correspondent Chappers and ubercool NZ type Zane Lowe. I was already familiar with Chappers from the 606 phone-in, and since we both like football I figured I’d probably pretty much nailed that character already. For Zane I decided to do an insufferably generic antipodean accent and shout a lot. An invaluable insight into the creative process for you all, there.

In all seriousness, it was one of those jobs where you know from the first hour of the first day that you’re going to have an incredible time. Although in my case my major contribution to the first hour was to inadvertently out myself during a cast bonding game when I was forced to answer the question ‘When was your last girlfriend’ with the reply ’18 years ago’. This did not, needless to say, cause too many ructions. As far as the percentage of gay men involved, ‘Scott Mills The Musical’ was not exactly the Woodsboro Baptist Church. But a lot of other worries were resolved in those first few days.

The worries I’d had before starting rehearsal had been based largely on the unfamiliar; I was worried that a competition winner rather than a ‘pro’ was playing Scott, and I was worried that the stars from R1 might be a little grand or distant. Well, you know how that turned out. Joe, the competition winner concerned, is an absolute star, a pro to his fingertips and a smashing fella with it, and as for Scott, Beccy and co they could hardly have been friendlier or thrown themselves into things more. On about the third rehearsal they came to, when Beccy had belted out ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ and Scott had watched us perform a (very wobbly, at that point) stage lift on Joe before immediately and cheerfully agreeing to take part himself in the very same health-and-safety nightmare*, I realised that 'grand and distant' was pretty much the antithesis of the people we were working with.

So, those worries evaporated immediately. But as we began to realise that we had potentially a rather good show on our hands, they were replaced by others. Would people take us seriously or just turn up for a shambolic bunfight? What kind of audience would we get at half ten at night during the Fringe (the expected answer was ‘drunk’, mainly) and were the critics gleefully sharpening their knives in anticipation of our arrival? And, most worrying of all, how the hell were we going to survive a 12 hour overnight tech rehearsal?

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend teching overnight but I have to say it was much worse in anticipation than in reality. We all went a little delirious at one point- everything was suddenly funny- and once we discovered that it was possible to lie very comfortably on the empty benches in the auditorium the energy levels may have dipped a little. But it was yet another testament to the incredible people who made up the cast, crew and creative team of this show that it was easily the smoothest and best-natured tech I’ve ever been involved in. That’s not to say, of course, that when 7am rolled around, and I’d been up for god knows how many hours, and it was time to start a dress rehearsal, I didn’t want to kill myself and maybe whoever invented radio, the fringe, and Scotland. I didn’t kill any of those people though, I danced around a bit instead. After the dress I was lying prone on the stage trying not to actually die when I noticed in my peripheral vision that Scott was talking on his phone. This is not an unusual occurrence so I thought no more of it until he came over to where my remains were lying.

‘It’s fake Chappers! Say hello, fake Chappers!’ said Scott.

Drawing together every last ounce of my energy to be polite to whoever Scott was speaking to, I summoned up a cheery ‘Hello!’.

‘No’, said Scott, ‘Say it like you do in the musical’

I think that’s when I realised I was on air. I hope I’d have been a little less dumb if I’d had more sleep, but that’s the story of how I made my radio 1 debut getting it all wrong.

Heading towards King’s Cross now so I’d better break off for now. In subsequent posts I’ll have a crack at describing the sheer terror that struck us all on the opening night, and the extraordinary audience response that turned that terror into euphoria. And I’ll probably talk about our cameos from Costa and Outen and Kay, and about how I met actual Chappers, and about how I went on the show with a little more sleep and played ‘Oh, What’s Occurring’ and and and and…

But be warned. I’ve hardly even started on how ace the cast and crew were, so I’ll mainly be banging on about them. People of a misanthropic disposition may want to throw their computers out of the window at this point.

*note to insurers etc: this is phrasemaking. It was totally safe.

Contains spoilers.

2009-08-02T22:18:00.003+01:00

'Wow, amazing'

That, in a world exclusive, is my first line in 'Scott Mills The Musical'. I promise I will write more about this in due course, as it's one of the more surreal jobs of my career. But after a hectic first week, with an even hecticer second to come (only 2 weeks of rehearsal, ladies and gentlemen, followed by a double all-nighter of a tech) I am spending my Sunday evening motionless on a sofa rather than slaving over a hot keyboard.

Plus, it's probably all a bit anodyne anyway. Who- despite my suggestion a couple of weeks ago that happy blogging should be encouraged- actually wants to read that everyone involved is smashing, the show is shaping up to be really quite a lot of fun, and that I'm having a whale of a time? But that's the case, I'm afraid. I've been lucky in always being in casts of nice people, I've come across very few utter frights in my career. But this mob is especially lovely and- the part of Scott himself having been cast by a 'Search for a Scott' competition- the Radio 1 listeners have unearthed someone in young Joe who I think is going to be a bit of a star.

But there is, of course, one lurking thought in the background of all this positivity. As any actor knows, if you get a week into rehearsal and you don't know who the company wanker is- it's you.

More on comedians and journalists.

2009-07-29T21:05:00.006+01:00

Did you see this article in the Guardian the other day?

One Brian Logan has taken it upon himself to wade into the murky waters of what is or isn't offensive from the mouth of a comedian. And guess what- he's utterly fucked it up. I mean, spectacularly. It seems he interviewed both Richard Herring and Brendan Burns, among others, on the topic- one which, I would imagine, has exercised anyone who ever dared to write a joke- then filleted their replies, and misrepresented their responses into lowest common denominator soundbites which gave the impression that they were at best thick and at worst actual racists.

Herring- here, and Burns here have made their cases in response, and very eloquently too. Read what they had to say, compare it back to the original article, and make your own decision.

My only contribution to matters (apart from saying in passing that a sidebar took a pretty unnecessary swipe at the show I work on) is to mention that I have been greatly enjoying quoting Brian Logan for years. It all dates back to the time when he reviewed Rob and David's 2001 Edinburgh show, 'The Mitchell and Webb Clones' and began with the immortal line (ok, I'm paraphrasing, but Bri doesn't seem to have a problem with that) 'Human cloning is a very serious issue, but you wouldn't think it to watch this show'. The critic- the COMEDY critic- was, apparently, shocked that they'd decided to concentrate on, you know, jokes. I probably would have forgotten all about this, but swipe me down if he didn't repeat the same trick a while later when reviewing Victoria Wood's one woman show at the Albert Hall. This time, his hackles rose when (again I paraphrase; you know the deal) Wood talked about her hysterectomy in the second half, and despite what a harrowing experience it must have been, seemed only to concentrate on the funny side of it.

Now, never mind that this is the rankest idiocy, ('stabbing a police chief is actually a very serious crime, but Puccini only seems to care about making it into an opera') and let's even be charitable enough to forgive him for utterly missing the point not once, but twice. The reason I dredge up these ancient reviews is to ask the question 'What right has someone who doesn't seem to understand the basics, to impugn the motives of anyone?' I wouldn't trust the man to tell me how to breathe in and out, never mind to guide anyone's thinking on what is actually quite a complicated and sensitive issue, which deserves so much better than the cheap sensationalism of Logan's article. The irony is, of course, that Herring and Burns treat the issue with a great deal more intelligence, and purity of purpose, than their accuser.

I saw Goody Herring with the devil. I saw Goody Burns with the devil*

*That's a reference to The Crucible, Brian love. It's a play.

'Her head was as dry as a whisky's finesse'

2009-07-25T13:58:00.003+01:00

A strange thing, the subconscious, I'm sure we'll agree. Who knows what was going on in my head when my alarm woke me the other morning? All we can know for sure is that when it did, I exclaimed the above sentence to my hotel room. If it helps, I would classify the tone of voice I delivered it in as 'outraged'.

And another thing, right...

2009-07-15T00:57:00.002+01:00

Bloggers, I reckon, are a reactive bunch, and I'm no different. Most posts seem to fall into three categories:

1- I went to a thing and this is what it was like
2- Here's something I think is funny
3- You know what grinds my gears?

I'm in a good mood this evening. I had nice drinks with a good friend for his birthday, another good friend has had a beautiful baby, I am excited about heading to one of my favourite cities on the planet for the wedding of two more good friends. It's probably quite dull to read, but bring on the 'everything is smashing' blog post, I say.

Although, reading back, I doubt I'll do another.

I promise, promise, promise that this isn't an opera thing*

2009-07-10T02:36:00.002+01:00

Nonetheless, though, I couldn't love a person who didn't love this.

She's not the greatest of all actors, but she is nonetheless giving it some. And I will always love that. And there's an E flat.

clicky

*it is a bit

I mean, I'm not saying I'm not, or anything...

2009-07-05T15:45:00.002+01:00

Yeah, so I didn't go to Pride. I make that the 36th consecutive year.

Trafalgar Trav/ Squillo Square.

2009-06-30T23:13:00.003+01:00

I'll apologise for those poor quality puns later, and I hope you'll understand why.

So, earlier today, I was having a friendly disagreement about tennis via the internet. Not one of those adrenalin-fuelled 'I can't go to bed, someone on the internet is WRONG' deals, just a lazy, easy-going difference of opinion. A pal of mine was saying that the reason he dislikes tennis is the way this country goes mental for a fortnight, paints its face with a union flag (or, nowadays, a saltire) and screams about whatever Brit just about makes it into week 2. His point was that this was a lot of people who aren't interested in tennis for the rest of the year, and it was a good one. My point, which was better, was that tennis is ace and why shouldn't they have a fortnight of fun?

Anyway, as I sat in Trafalgar Square (yeah, you're beginning to get the puns now, hey? They're no worse than 'Henman Hill' anyway) I began to think about this. There is no doubt that the vast majority of the ten thousand people who sat in the sun, glugging Sauv Blanc, snacking on identical M&S or Waitrose party food, and watching Fleming, Calleja and Hampson in 'La Traviata' (final bit of pun slips into place) weren't all that interested in opera.

But, like the Henmaniacs, they were interested enough to give up an evening to sit and look at some people doing fab things on a screen. I'm ambivalent about the Traf Square audience- they talk too much, mainly- but as a fan of a minority interest I do get a thrill when so many people turn up for what I'm constantly told is something rarified and inaccessible. It's worth remembering, today of all days (more later) that 'high art', whatever that means, ought not to be anything to do with wealth, class, or age. I was encouraged by the mass media when I was a kid to know all kinds of songs off by heart. They were mainly by Stock, Aitken and Waterman, and I still know them off by heart. I also, thanks to some records my grandad left me in his will, was encouraged in a different way to listen to something called opera, and with the obsessiveness of the pre-adolescent learned all that stuff off by heart too. In those days, I couldn't really see a difference: I just loved what I loved. Now I still love the throwaway music of my youth, and the throwaway music I listen to now in my (*ahem*) early middle youth- but I know what's better. Look, on the tube home there was a nice girl opposite me who had just seen 'We Will Rock You'. She was bubbling about it. I don't mind the songs of Queen, as it goes. But I know that if she knew Traviata as well as she knew Bohemian Rhapsody she would have had a better night in the Square than at the Dominion. Does that make me elitist, patronising? So I'm told. I have a sneaking suspicion that my conviction that everything should be for everybody makes me the exact opposite.

So, Mrs Lincoln, the performance? Well. I should start by saying how wonderful Calleja and Hampson were, both as singers and actors (to my surprise, in the case of the former, as I'd heard he was a stick. He isn't. On a big screen the intensity of his facial expressions more than complement the extraordinary sound of his voice. It's been said, and it's not fair, but i'll say it too- he reminds me of Bj*****g). So yes, they were great. And Park-from-Cardiff was good, and Anina looked like David in his Mrs Danvers drag, which was unfortunate, but was good also. Yada. You want to know about herself, and I want to tell you.

A lot has been said about Renee Fleming, and I'm ~~not~~ about to add to it. Is she the greatest Violetta there has ever been? No. But she GOES for it. There is not a moment in which she isn't thoroughly committed, vocally and dramatically, to portraying the character as best she can. Now, I come to opera from an actor's perspective, I know. And the thing about some singers is that they don't. And that will always, always, annoy me. La F wants to play the part, and wants to sing it gorgeously at the same time, and goes all out to do so. Give me that over a canary any time.

I liked her in act one, a few silent-movie moments aside. I had been led to believe that she was going to blues the whole thing up, and she really really didn't. Stylistically it wasn't great, but it sounded like what she is- one of the most purely vocally gifted singers in the world. Even the scoopy moments seemed less egregious when you could see her- she wasn't just doing something vocally vulgar, she was interpreting the character by her lights.

In Act Two, her dramatic limitations became noticeable, and her vocal ones faded. An actor I once worked with told me that certain performers will never make it because, and I quote, 'they don't go to the dark'. Fleming acted up a storm in Act II, but her eyes were always looking at sunshine. It made me realise why I love this act the best, and why I love my favourite interpreters of it: their voices (ie Callas) or their eyes (ie Cotrubas) should tell you that to give up Alfredo is to look into the abyss. RF gave us beauty, sadness, melancholy- and that's ok, but it ain't enough.

Where she scored for me was in Act III. The letter is fine. Hammy, but opera hammy. Certainly not the disaster other folk would have you believe. 'Addio del Passato' was gorgeous, if again generalised. 'Parigi, Oh Cara/o' was ace- she and Calleja played it to and about each other, rather than cheek to cheek and staring at the conductor. But what I really loved about this Violetta was her raging against the dying of the light. I guess one of the stylistic annoyances people have mentioned is her propensity to go into a big Leontyne chest note at the drop of a hat, but by GOD it worked in 'Gran Dio, Morir si Giovane'. It's a rare Violetta who can get you with that bit, and she more than did with the rage and despair she got into the voice. Interestingly, the following 'Se una pudica vergine' section, where you would have expected her to have scored big time with lovely lyric floating, was- well, lovely, but left me dry eyed.

I've written too much now, but I wanted to make it clear that we probably shouldn't moan about Renee. There's such a voice there- SUCH a voice- and an artist who is giving her best in the service of the work, which if it sounds like faint praise shouldn't, because she is so often accused of the opposite. And we should treasure and look after Calleja, because he is major. And Hampson is Hampson, and that's also cause for celebration. And- one last shot on Traviata- in the 1850s they had to put in a dull chorus/ballet about matadors or something to keep the crowd interested. In 2009, we want it to go away so we can get the story back. That interests me. We have bitten the bullet and cut Shakespeare, after all- do we really have to sit through any more half-hearted skirt swishing or campy matadors? Cut it.

So, yeah, I enjoyed the tennis and I enjoyed the opera. So did a lot of other people, here and there, and that can only, basically, be good news.

---------------------------------

There's no arch, flippant way to segue to this, so I won't bother. Today would have been my father's 73rd birthday. If you would like to find out how ace he was, you can do so here.

Happy, happy birthday, daddy. I love you. I miss you more than language has the ability or the need to express.

On hitting and missing.

2009-06-27T15:57:00.003+01:00

Well, I'm on a train with magical free wifi, so I might as well use it. It's rather unreliable though, so don't be surprised if I suddenly

Heh, did you see what I did there? I done a joke. And of course some other jokes that I done are being broadcast on tv at the moment, to what is a so far a satisfyingly positive response. Of course I hold in my mind the excellent advice my late father gave me- 'never take any notice of the bastards, even if they praise you'- but for this particular series I was interested in what the critical response might be, since David and I had written a sketch about it (from a table idea from, I think, Toby- but I may be wrong about this). Anyway, most previewers and reviewers neatly avoided the trap-for-heffalumps which was 'Behind the scenes- Hit and Miss' (the only one who fell squarely in was of course the doltish Sam Wollaston of the Guardian, who is beginning to approach pathological hatred for R and D. Did one of them push him off his bike or something?).

It was fun to write and the boys clearly had fun performing it, but on reflection we missed one trick. It strikes me that the response to any sketch show from Python to Horne and Corden is so subjective that it's kind of pointless to opine that one liked or disliked any particular sketch. Take Sir Digby- there are as many people who can't stand those sketches as there are people clamouring for one every week. If one hadn't seen the show, to read all the reviews, not to mention the internet scuttlebutt, would leave one unbelievably confused about what was and wasn't funny.

So, yeah, reviewing sketch comedy is so very subjective as to be a waste of time. Got that, critics? Off you pop, then.

Plugitty Plug

2009-06-18T19:58:00.002+01:00

From tonight's episode, at 9.30pm.

Fysga Bennau

2009-06-15T11:31:00.002+01:00

Google translator tells me that this is the Welsh for 'loose ends', but then google translator, as the Armstrongs will tell you, can be unreliable. 'Do a lot of people in France have music academies attached to their houses?'

Anyway, having spent so long on the Cardiff heats I thought I ought really to dot the tees and cross the eyes. So- I didn't see the song prize, but Martinik won it. I'm glad about this, I like him. As even the stupidest person alive could have guessed, young Luca won the audience prize, despite being one of two singers (Nakamura being the other) who didn't quite cut it in the final. Martinik did a good job, but it became clear that this was a two horse race between Mynenko (a bit of (dull music, nicely sung) Broschi, the Serse aria which belongs to judge Ann Murray, and Tanti Affetti) and Scherbachenko (a good but not stunning Jewel Song, a heartrending and beautiful 'Signore Ascolta', and a rip-roaring 'No Word From Tom' (hurray!- oh, and while I'm at it, Nakamura did Cacilie, so finally, finally we had some Strauss). I would have been happy had either won- and Scherbachenko did, which on balance was probably right.

Now then, if you want to hear Mynenko sing the queen of the night to a disco beat, pop over to parterre where you can do exactly that. It's not a recording which does much to disspell the idea that all counter-tenors are gay*.

And yes, I know you now have permission to shoot me. So shoot me.

*usual disclaimer- apart from Andreas Scholl

Diffcar (anag)

2009-06-12T21:04:00.001+01:00

I hope we get some Strauss tonight. Ridiculous that there hasn’t been any. Other surprises- no Rusalka, no Lauretta, no Violetta, no Cherubino…

Mary King again, with Hazel/Rebecca. I suppose I’ll have to chance my arm tonight and predict my final five while the judges are deliberating. Well, Nakamura will be there, and Scherbachenko, and probably the Ukranian male soprano, which leaves two more places to be fought for by Park, Lucic, Martinik and tonight’s five.

First up tonight we have New Zealand bass Wade Kernot. He restores vintage cars. This is more interesting than singing. Everyone loves vintage cars, right? Sigh. Reminiscent of Jon Favreau (the actor, not the speechwriter). Kicks off with Madamina. His Italian isn’t great but he brings a lot of character to it and- heavens- actually gets laughs. Voice sounds ok, but it’s hard to tell in this, which I would categorise as a personality aria rather than a voice aria (categories: writer’s own). However, he fills out the ‘maestosa’ stuff nicely. Now he’s going to do something serious, apparently, which this year means Fiesco. Much more of a true bass than last night’s winner, nice rich dark chocolate sound- and the first of our three Fieschi really to nail the last note. Very good start. Mary will love him, she loves a bass. But no- both King and Evans think he’s better up top, and he’s forcing a register break. Can’t say I felt that.

Helen Kearns- Irish Soprano. Talks about singing, and hey, it’s interesting. Josie please note. Another coloratura, another Regnava, so she’ll be in direct competition with Ivanova, who as promised I haven’t stopped banging on about. But no- she’s a lyric, not a coloratura soprano, richer and maybe more varied of voice than Ivanova. Not as agile, though, nor as pure of tone, but still this is very very good and hey, there’s room for both in the world, if not in the final. She’s good enough to win tonight on this evidence, but then so was the kiwi bass. If I’m honest she finds a lot more in this aria than Ivanova did, but isn’t as reliably lovely of tone or precise of noodle. Does some nice things at the end. Now for some Stravinsky- the Rossignol. Question- why hasn’t someone done ‘No Word From Tom’? In fact, why isn’t she doing it now? Because this is lovely, lovely singing of a number I’ve always found a little arch and annoying. Yeah, she’s better than Wade.

Giordano Luca- Italian Tenor- youngest competitor at 21. Born 1988. Are you kidding me? Che Gelida Manina, of course, and very nice it is too. Sappy and youthful. A larger gentleman, his gestures remind one of another slightly overweight Italian tenor of recent memory- one doesn’t imagine him to be an electrifying actor. But this is lovely swoopy romantic Puccini singing, even if he doesn’t quite bloom up top as he ought to. Can’t resist forcing a bit on ‘la speranza’ so no doubt he’ll be singing Radames next year and things will go all Villazon. Follows it with a gorgeous, light but impassioned version of the Lombardi aria. He’s going to win tonight. Finishes with a pretty unimpeachable ‘Pourquoi me reveiller’ and this is a part I would love to see him play, if I were the type of person who went to see people play Werther- and not yet. There are bags of potential here.

And now a new country. Ha, Andorra. Well, he’ll put 10 men behind the ball and commit little niggling fouls behind the ref’s back. Mark Canturri, a baritone. He’s starting with Gounod’s R&J, because although I missed the memo there’s a new law that everyone must sing it all the time everywhere. It’s ok, nothing special. I am beginning to get slight singer fatigue, to be honest, it’s all becoming a bit of a blur. He’s neither the best baritone in the competition (IS there a best baritone in the competition?) nor the worst. Next is Deh vieni alla finestra, which is better than the Hungarian chap’s (but then so was my father’s funeral) while not being particularly special. He sounds a little ragged up top, if we’re being hyper-picky. And finally- oh, please. Korngold twice and no Strauss? I suppose it was the responsibility of the sopranos to give us a bit of RS but it seems a little mad that we’re getting Tote Stadt for a second time when we haven’t had any Ariadne. He sings this nicely enough, but he’s faceless. Ends it beautifully.

So, the last of 25- Dora Rodrigues, Portuguese Soprano. No doubt she’ll do Mein Elemer, Da Geht er Hin, and Es gibt ein Reich, just to make me look stupid. Nice and bubbly in interview. Donde lieta usci. Don’t like the first phrase- sounds careful and music boxy. Nope, Luca’s won this, and this before Dora has got to the word ‘fior’. She’s a polished enough singer, and emotes nicely, but the tone isn’t quite to my taste. Has an odd tendency to coy, pecky little staccati, as if she were a particularly 15-year-old Butterfly. Giuditta next, which should give her a chance to show what kind of stage animal she is. Ah, sideways glances and eyebrows, is the answer, like someone who has had the word sexy described to them by an inarticulate person. Other than that, she’s good. There’s nothing wrong with this, just doesn’t blow me away, that’s all. And in fact that’s something of a theme of this evening, and why Luca will win it- other than his performance it’s all been a little safely unspectacular. I’ll look out for Kearns though, she’s got something.

So, time to put my neck on the line. The finalists will be Luca, Nakamura, Mynenko, Scherbachenko and Ivanova. If not Ivanova, Lucic or Martinik or, at a pinch, Kearns, or a pincher, Park.

Now lets see if I’m right *bites nails*

1) Luca wins
2) Finalists are the five heat winners. So I am going to give myself 4 and a half out of 5, and now I’m going to have my dinner.

I won’t be around for the song prize tomorrow night, as I shall be out doing young person things, or the final, as I shall also be doing young person things. So you’ll have to fend for yourselves from here on in.

And if you see me blogging on opera again in the next month or so, you have permission to shoot me.

I went for an audition there in 1995 but it went badly because I dried

2009-06-11T20:52:00.002+01:00

(I'm running out of Cardiff-themed clues. Tonight's title has the virtue of being true, if not that of being interesting)

Night the fourth. Tonight’s heat is of course very much of a curtain raiser for the first episode in the new series of THAT MITCHELL AND WEBB LOOK on BBC2 at 10pm. And there is tonight’s plug dealt with. I’ll stop doing that now.

Mary King is back, which is good news on the evidence of previous nights. And look- Gerald Finley. There’s real star-gathering clout.

So Catherine Teare kicks us off- Aussie mezzo. Let’s hear from Josie how she actually wanted to be a lion tamer or a psychic juggler or something. No- crikey- maybe she actually wanted to be a singer. She’s starting with ‘Dopo Notte’ which is nowhere near the quality of Stephany’s from the other night, technically or tonally. She’s also come as Christine Baranski, for some reason. This is not an attractive voice- plummy at the bottom, shrill at the top. The voice is much, much better suited to ‘Im Treibhaus’. This is clearly her rep, and it’s demonstrating something of a theme in Cardiff this year- people singing stuff they think they ought to rather than stuff that suits them. She really oughtn’t to have gone anywhere near the Handel. But even the improvement in the Wagner doesn’t hide what for me is an unspectacular voice. I suspect she has a lot of Siebels and Lolas and Mercedeseseseses ahead of her- well, and Lene and Erda and all that stuff, especially as her post-show interview reveals that she has a touching and gibberingly bonkers admiration for Wagner.

Javier Arrey- Chilean Baritone- like the Russian soprano the other night, Javier doesn’t get a chat with Josie before we hear him sing. He’s starting with Rodrigo’s death scene from Don Carlo, but I’m sure we’ll hear him roaming the streets of Seville before too long, telling us about his cucagnas. This isn’t good, in the same ballpark as the Hungarian who gave us this aria last night, before we gave it back. Arrey is similarly choppy, similarly undistinguished of tone, and on a couple of phrases suffers from a big old attack of smoker’s breath. Ahime! he says as he dies, Monteverdianly. A Dvorak psalm reveals only that his voice isn’t any lovelier when it’s less forced. Sorry, son. Stick to- I’m trying to think up a lazy cultural stereotype for Chile- um, stick to being somewhere where planeloads of Uruguayan rugby players crash land and eat each other. That’ll do. He finishes with ‘Vedro, mentr’io sospiro’, which is better tonally, but still dullish- until a bunch of triplets which end up more like twins. Ha ha ha indeed.

Help, what’s going on? King and Finley love him. Really, really don’t get that. At all.

Blimey, the welsh contestant is 22. I didn’t know people were allowed to be 22 any more. Natalya Romaniw, late of Guildhall, about to head to Glyndebourne as a cover. ‘Padre, Germani, Addio’ a nice unhackneyed choice to start. Does a good job with what is, if I’m honest, not the greatest recit accompag Mozart ever wrote. She’s technically strong (at least during the recit), and is feeling the words without overdoing it. I prefer a richer voice than this in Mozart, though- she’s a little thin of tone for my taste, and purely beautiful moments are few and far between. Well, actually, there aren’t really any. There are a couple of moments, too, when it feels as if the sound isn’t the one she intends to make which shows that HA HA PEOPLE IN THEIR THIRTIES ARE BETTER. Sorry about that. Tuning is a little awry towards the end, too. I don’t want to harp on about the age thing, but she just doesn’t sound ready to me. She follows this up with yet another Gounod Juliette. Better, and again nicely animated, but still thin of tone- more like Deanna Durbin or Jeanette McDonald, or someone like that, that 30s Hollywood soubrette flutter. A few unlovely shrieks at the end, and then a bit of a write-off at the finish.

Mary King has turned into Elizabeth Watts, who ought to have washed her hair if she knew she was going to be on telly. That’s the only criticism of la Watts you’ll hear from me, however, as I love her to bits. Finley is enrolled in a different charm school from Tom Randle- he manages to avoid praising Romaniw without slagging her off either. Backstage, the singer herself isn’t happy, which is honest of her and I guess encouraging.

Now the American entrant, Vira Slywotsky, who is going to be singing ‘Non mi dir’ by the sound of the rehearsal clip. She’s full of personality. Fuller, turns out, than of voice- they’ve cut straight from her charming Josie into the middle of ‘Non mi dir’ and it’s an unlovely sound. Am I grumpy tonight, then? I thought I was last night, but tonight here we are at singer 4 and I haven’t heard anyone I like. Slywotsky isn’t entirely comfortable with pitch, the tone quality is acid, the coloratura a little like that famous Elinor Ross clip, and although she’s bringing her personality to bear on the aria and really, really selling it, someone needs to tell her she’s playing Donna Anna, not Mame. Not good at all, and it’s sad because on the basis of her interview I really wanted to like her. Plus all the best Donna Annas are American anyway. Oh, a segue has presented itself, and it’s Steber-based- Vira’s giving us some Vanessa now, and it’s much, much better. Reminiscent, actually of Steber, in a way the Mozart never, ever came close to being. She used to be an actor apparently (didn’t we all? Mustn’t get bitter…) and it shows in this selection. The tone still curdles unpleasantly under pressure, though. She’s met Sondheim. Bitch.

We finish with Czech Bass Jan Martinik, and he’s better be good because otherwise nobody wins. He is apparently seventeen feet tall. Fiesco again. Nice enough, but not for me up to the same standard as the Croatian who sang the same aria last night. The voice seems to me a little light for Verdi at this stage- there are plenty of phrases which, if you strolled into a room and heard them out of context, you would assume were coming from a baritone. And lo, it comes to pass that the end of the aria reveals that his weakness is at the bottom of the voice. Now we’re getting ‘Vecchia Zimarra’. I’m a sucker for a correctly aged Boheme, so he gets points right away for this. The lightness helps, here, of course, and he makes a lovely job of it- catching just the right sense of melancholy in the chromaticisms (a musicologist writes). He should probably win based on that alone, since it’s the only entirely successful performance of any single piece all evening. He’s finishing with Rachmaninov’s Aleko, a work I of course know from nave to chops. Again, lovely singing, again very very baritonal. He gets oceans of emotion into it, too- or rather, this being Rach, rides along on what’s there. If I were a judge (and I am, I’m Giacomo Aragall, I reckon) he’d win tonight, but would be pipped to the final by Ivanova from night one, and no, I’m not going to stop going on about her.

The judging gap is filled by Josie talking to lovely Rebecca Evans, who is standing in a trench, or teeny. In fact, she looks unsettlingly like Hazel Blears. Finley and King go for Martinik, so I hope that whole Chile thing was a blip.

Hurrah, Martinik wins. Now I must dash, as I have various things to do before 10pm, when I shall be settling down in front of BBC2, and so will you.

FA Cup Finalists 2008

2009-06-10T22:38:00.004+01:00

A smashing day in the studio today. People who like Elizabeth Gaskell, or people who like the Radio 4 Classic Serial, will be in for a right old treat in August. That's all I can say at this point but watch this space.

And while we're plugging, there's episode 1 of series 3 of That Show I Work On tomorrow at 10pm.

But, those of you who are clever will have parsed the title of this post. So here are my reactions to tonight's heat.

Tomislav Lucic- Croatian Bass- Another looker. Is careful to tell us how he didn’t want to be an opera singer- that’s actually getting annoying now. Starts with Fiesco, and shows up the Argentinian from the other night by having as mellifluous a sound, but getting real intensity into it. Follows it up with Madamina, which is a wee bit earnest to start with but develops into a very characterful performance with a nice vein of sleaze to it. Yep, like him.

Izabela Matula- Polish Soprano- Wanted to be a dancer. Sigh. Starts with Pamina, which is brave, I reckon. Horrible green dress but lovely lyric soprano. Ooops, makes a hash of the first high arching phrase on ‘Ewig hin der liebe gluck’, and is a bit worried and careful thereafter. Pulls something out of the bag for the end but I think the damage may have been done earlier. This is what I meant by ‘brave’- ‘Ach ich fuhls’ is one of those pieces of simple beauty which has to be basically perfect. Follows it up with ‘Herodiade’. Nice enough but still a little careful; good legato line and pleasant basic tone but doesn’t excite either vocally or interpretatively.

Csaba Szegedi- Hungarian Baritone- Does a cheeky adjustment of his bow tie in the little ident, doing all but wink. Figaro is the only role he has ever sung with an orchestra, which would suggest we are to be treated to ‘Largo al Factotum’ for the third time in three nights. Josie tells us that he’s actually a very good salsa dancer so gets him to demonstrate. Has anyone told her that they’re here to FUCKING SING?

You. Will. Not. Believe. This. There is now a little film insert of people who have sung ‘Largo al Factotum’ over the years. Just in case we haven’t heard it enough. This seems like a good time to switch over to the football. I’ll watch the rest later.

So, back to Szegedi. You can guess what he’s singing. He chooses to start offstage, like the South African guy did last night, and, also like him, comes on and overdoes it. Lots of twinkling and smiling but equally quite a bit of subpar singing. He almost sounds out of breath. His Italian is a little Budapestish. Hmm, no. The voice itself is charmless, and all his bells and whistles can’t hide that. And a DOUBLE falsetto in the ‘Figaro, Figaro’ bit, which ought really to be a red card. Perhaps I’m grumpy tonight, reading back what I’ve written about these first three singers, but I really think the standard is significantly lower than the previous two nights. Things don’t improve with ‘Deh Vieni alla Finestra’, which is equally overdone, equally charmless, and (I’m about to use a proper grown up opera word for the first time ever, so pay attention) a little pitchy. Rodrigo’s death scene was better because he stopped ‘performing’ and engaged emotionally with what he was singing. Still not a fan of the voice, mind.

Someone didn’t tell Tom Randle the rules- he’s the first expert summariser to dare some genuine criticism of a singer- he kind of gives Szegedi both barrels.

Now then, excitement. We have a counter tenor. Yuriy Mynenko, from Ukraine. Starting with Va Tacito, which is a pleasing (although on reflection, unsurprising) choice. Lovely bit of horn playing. This chap has charisma- first of the night that you actually sit and watch, as well as listening to. Technically very good. Not the most refulgent counter tenor but an interesting tone quality. Very musical, lovely legato, elegant ornamentation, smack in tune. We like. I’d say at this point it was between him and the Croatian bass, which is appropriate since England have just won as I watch this and both Croatia and Ukraine are in England’s group. There. Opera AND football. Anyway, back to the Handel- this is really very very good indeed. The hall likes him, too. He’ll need some fireworks to get through though, I recOH MY GOD HE’S DOING PARTO PARTO. I have never heard a man sing this before. And it is BRILLIANT. Beautifully phrased and more impassioned than I can remember this aria in a long time. If he nails the tricky stuff at the end he’ll bring the house down. Which he does, and he does. Wonderful. Randle compares him to Troyanos and Horne, and it’s a comparison which comes close to holding up.

Claire Meghnagi- Israeli Soprano. Father a cantor. Immensely likeable in interview. Starts with ‘Deh, vieni’, another one of those simple arias which has to somehow engender rapture. She’s bright, responsive, charming. The tempo of the aria is a little rushed for my taste, which makes it hard for her to engender the right kind of magic. She has a good go at it though. Like Mynenko, she phrases beautifully, and the tone quality is lovely, too. The first ‘incoronar’ is nearly lovely, but goes a little awry. She finishes the aria very nicely but there’s no moonlight. Yay, we’re getting some Poulenc! Mamelles de Tiresias, to be precise. Hurray for Miss Israel. This gives her personality full rein and she lets rip- she’s more imaginative and daring vocally than she was as Susanna. She’s really projecting the character, too, you wouldn’t need sub or sur or any other kind of titles. I’d still give tonight to the counter-tenor, although it does emphasise the whole apples v oranges aspect of this kind of competition. Probably let herself down with some serious squall on high towards the end, too.

King and Randle reckon it’ll be our male soprano, too- and good, because it is. Would be nice to see the bass in the final, but I suspect that he’d be pipped by both of the winners of the first two nights. This is fun!

It's Shirley Bassey, isn't it?

2009-06-09T19:20:00.008+01:00

Watching TV after a hard day of rewriting about three jokes, it suddenly struck me that I had sky plussed the first heat of 'Cardiff Singer of the World' last night. I became mildly obsessed with this competition in my adolescence, in its bi-annual appearances. I remember (ok, this is where you decide I'm weird) that I read a nice article in the Guardian once about how they all had fun and went out drinking together between concerts, really just a puff piece, and for some reason I covered said article in sticky backed plastic and blu tac'd it to the wall next to my bed. Perhaps everyone's quite weird at 14, but really, it's no wonder I used to get beaten up, is it?

So, anyway, I love CSOTW, and thought I'd write a bit about it on here. I'm aware that this is turning into more and more of an opera blog, which was never the intention. There are other people who do that much, much better than me, for one thing. But, what can you do? The football season is over, I haven't got anything to plug (that's Thursday, when That Mitchell And Webb Look returns to your screens with more material of mine than ever before. Oh look, I did have something to plug) and none of my neighbours have played Afroman loudly late at night for a few weeks. We have a new floor in the hall- should I tell you about that? Besides, BBC4's coverage of Cardiff is a great way to get into opera. Just don't laminate anything.

When I was rambling on about Cosi and Trov, I was frustrated that I couldn't remember half the things I'd thought at the time. So tonight, watching last night's heat, I just typed as I watched. It may not be coherent but it's immediate. Or something. And now tonight's heat is starting. Balls. I'm falling behind. Anyway- last night's mob.

Josie D’Arby doing backstage interviews- wtf? Still, she was an unexpected addition to ‘Look Around You’ and she was great in that, so I’ll keep an open mind.

Etienne Dupuy- Canadian Baritone- words that cause the heart to flutter with adolescent memories of Gino Quilico *reverie*- This one is full of personality, lovely voice but nothing to make me sit up and take notice. I’m kind of allergic to Papageno, though, especially out of context. Oh look, he’s finishing with Largo al Factotum. I’m so pleased. Slightly odd Beatlemania screaming from the audience at the end.

Dana Bramane- Latvian Soprano- apparently inspired to be a singer by hearing Whitney Houston aged nine, which makes me feel old. She doesn’t think she’s going to win, likeably enough. Sounds nice in the rehearsal clip of ‘Donde lieta usci’ which is her opener. Oooh yes, I like her. Very Slavic sound, but of the light, bright, forward, Vishnevskaya- type, rather than the ‘please stop clouting me with your vibrato and go and sort out that samovar’ type, which can get wearing. Cor, it’s ‘Mi Tradi’ next, which is brave, and unexpected. Very nice it was too, although she chucked in a vulgar high note at the end. I liked her a lot, though, and she’s certainly first in the field of two at the moment. Mary King’s talking about a register break, which I didn’t hear, but hey, I’m not a voice teacher.

Fernando Javier Rado- Argentinian bass- cuteish (‘opera cute’ to borrow a savagely accurate phrase from someone else) He’s doing Philip II, which is a brave choice when you’re like twelve*. I suspect, by the way, that age will be a running theme in these notes. This is the first Cardiff where I’ve been conscious of being older than the singers. But in this case it’s relevant- he’s singing beautifully but all we’re getting facially and vocally is ‘I think this man is probably sad’. Followed by ‘Non piu andrai’, which was finely sung but again dullish. So, if he swiped his card, he’d see for voice: ten, for oomph, three.

More high pitched screaming for him from what seems to be an almost entirely female audience. What do gays do in Wales, then? Rugby maybe. Oh, and there was that one in Steps.

Wow, Kurt Moll’s on the panel. And Gwyneth Jones. Cool.

Emiliya Ivanova- stunningly beautiful Bulgarian soprano. Coloratura by the sound of the rehearsal clip. Initially wanted to be a pop star- hmm. She’s doing ‘Lucia’- Regnava nel Silenzio. If you can carry this off, love, you’ll probably earn more of a crust than most Bulgarian pop singers. Oh, and sack your stylist. Now, this is lovely singing. She can act, too. Easy winner so far, you’d be happy with this in a major house. Although I have to go to sleep for a moment now because it’s Donizetti. Seriously, so far ahead of the rest it’s not funny. Confirms this with a lovely version of Juliette’s Waltz Song. Would be lovely to hear her sing something, you know, interesting.

Eri Nakamura- Japanese Soprano. Josie D’Arby is completely redundant, by the way. She just asks them one by one ‘how did you decide to become an opera singer’, and then grabs them as they come off to ask ‘How did that go?’ since she patently has no idea. More Donizetti.- the Don Pasquale aria. Overdoing the soubrettish laughs- looks and sounds sinister. Good though- plenty of personality, strong technique. The voice doesn’t do as much for me as Ivanova’s does, although I have a sneaking suspicion she’s going to pip this as she’s more extrovert. And now more Juliette- but ‘Dieu, quell frisson’ this time. No doubt she’s impressive, but I don’t actually like the tone quality. And she went a little sharp on the last note. Pick pick pick. She’s super-dramatic facially and gesticulatively though, which will go down very well live. King and Neal Davies are big fans.

Josie D’Arby- ‘this is a bit like the Olympics, isn’t it?’. Now she’s talking to Connie Fisher, who is telling us that eyes are more important than voice. Chew on that, parterre.

Nakamura wins. There’s still hope for Ivanova, though, as the finalists aren’t necessarily the heat-winners. Hope she gets through. Now for tonight’s lot. I'll put all the subsequent heats in as comments, so people don't have to wade through them. And so I can decide not to bother if I feel like not bothering.

*Oh gawd help us, he's 23.

Three score and ten divided by two plus one less a day.

2009-05-30T14:03:00.003+01:00

Woo. And yay, also. Birthday time has started. Having a small party tonight, but last night was the swish bit. Dinner at the Ivy (I know!) followed by Cosi Fan Tutte at ENO.

I'd never been to the Ivy before, but it certainly lives up to its billing. I hadn't realised it was such a lovely room, especially on a magnificently sunny afternoon/early evening such as yesterday's. I opted for Bang Bang Chicken followed by nettle and potato gnocchi, a kind of fusion cuisine menu I shall now christen 'Ithailian'. And they were very good, and that is my restaurant review. Oh no, I should mention the tomatoes. They were really small. Like, tiny. Size of blueberries, and they burst in the mouth in exactly the same satisfying way. So, my conclusion on the Ivy is that it's a pretty room where the tomatoes are really small.

My mother once devastatingly described a lot of Chekhov productions as having 'oatmeal sets and oatmeal costumes' and the same might apply to the new production of Cosi at ENO. It really is very very taupe indeed- sets, frocks, everything. The grand gesture of the set is its video wall- the chaps are watched by the bustling patrons of the 'Caffe Amadeo' (yeah, boom boom) in the first scene, then we get a nice big bay of Naples for most of the rest of the show. It adds much needed colour to the stage picture, and otherwise is used in a way which is sometimes charming (the gradual approach and departure of the boat either side of 'Soave sia il vento') and sometimes irritatingly tricksy (the filmed conductor and orchestra for the whole of the final scene raised a laugh but got pretty old pretty quick). Unfortunately, the video wall seemed to be the limit of the director's imagination. This was an achingly straightforward production. The three men raised glasses DS centre at the end of 'Una bella serenata', like they always do. The men stood to attention in the midst of the chorus during 'Bella vita militar', like they always do. Dorabella draped herself on furniture during 'Smanie implaccabili' and eyed up Guglielmo during 'Come Scoglio', as per. And if it took slightly longer for Fiordiligi to sink to her knees during 'Per Pieta' than usual, we all knew it was coming. I really can't think of a single piece of business that I haven't seen before, let alone an actual insight.

But the unforgivable element of this Cosi was that it was sexless. Neither 'Il core vi dono' nor 'Fra gli amplessi' generated any heat at all, despite by and large all the right things happening musically. The capitulation of the sisters needs all the help it can get- all those references to 'I can't believe it's only been a day and now we're getting married' don't make life any easier- but if you get no sense that they might actually fancy their Albanians, it just gets something close to silly. And then there's the ending. We all know that we like to get post-Freudian about the end of Cosi. There have been the traditional 'everyone gets married to their orginal partners and that's FINE thank you very much' productions, the 'let's stay with our second half partners because the duets suggest that'll be hotter' productions, and- most often, in my experience- the 'let's make everything dead ambiguous and have some exchanged glances or even do a strange kind of slo-mo minuet' productions. This one just dodged the whole thing. None of the four 'lovers' had any contact with the others as the finale was sung, in a straight line, facing out front, and then everyone rushed off excitedly, in different directions, as if they'd just finished the Marriage of Figaro, or Falstaff. A cop-out.

Musically, things fared a lot, lot better. The band sounded great under the direction of Stefan Klingele, who started very well, had a bit of a dip with a prosaic 'Soave' and a too-slow rendition of Dorabella's aria, and didn't subsequently put a foot wrong. He whipped up the end of Act One into something really a bit exciting. As for the singers- well, let's get one thing straight. I bloody love Susan Gritton. The tone quality is so consistently beautiful, her musicianship is exemplary, and there's just a glamour about her singing, as there is with all the best voices. If I were being picky I might say that the bottom of the voice isn't quite rich enough for Fiordiligi, and there were a couple of unfortunate phlegmy moments in an otherwise glorious 'Per Pieta'- but that would be very picky. Her singing in 'Fra gli amplessi' had me holding my breath, in that 'please let this never stop' kind of way that you really, really can't complain about.

As one of my companions of the night said, Gritton's voice is so beautiful in the flesh that it was really a little unfair to put Fiona Murphy as Dorabella next to her. Tall, flashing eyed, and with cascades of dark hair, she was reminiscent of Agnes Baltsa from where I was sitting- but while the face was more beautiful, the voice was a good deal less so. She sang very well- better in aria and duet than in ensemble- but the instrument itself isn't really all that. She has that glinty, slightly wiry sound familiar from singers such as Ann Murray or Delores Ziegler, and I guess I like a little more sofa-cushion in my Mozart mezzo sound. Sophie Bevan did a grand job as Despina. The lack of imagination in the production demanded no more of her than 'standard pert' which she pulled off well and to which she added some neat and polished singing. She was desperately unfunny as the doctor and the lawyer, of course, but then no Despina ever in the history of opera has pulled that one off.

Crikey, Liam Bonner's tall. It wasn't solely for this reason, though, that he was the most memorable of the men. This was a charismatic, cheeky, confident performance, very securely sung, and managing a real sense of rapport with the audience. Alone among the singers he managed to generate a few genuine laughs from time to time, which was welcome- and impressive, given the archness of the translation. 'Look, I'm rhyming' was the overall impression, and after ten minutes one wanted to sit the translator down with the Big Book Of How You're Not As Clever As You Think You Are. Thomas Glenn, the Ferrando, had a deal less presence than Bonner and at first I found his singing unpleasantly weedy. However, things began to change after one of the most purely beautiful renditions of 'Un'aura amorosa' I have ever heard, and he had a good stab at 'Tradito, schernito' and his part of the duet with Gritton. For once, it was a voice that I wouldn't have minded hearing in 'Ah, lo veggio', although of course that didn't happen. Steven Page is an old pro, isn't he? I mean that in the most laudatory sense possible. He didn't miss a trick vocally or dramatically, although he suffered from the fact that this production didn't have the first clue who Alfonso was or what he might have been for.

To wade into an ongoing debate, I think the odd bit of score-tearing, or someone writing 'ARIA' on a blackboard, or whatever, would have been welcome. What we got last night was some good acting and some excellent music making, in a production which was cautious, routine, and lazy. And for a masterpiece like Cosi, that ain't good enough.

Right. Off to get my hair cut and thence to my birthday party. Ah, the suffering of late-middle-youth.

The Power Of Music*

2009-05-28T23:50:00.002+01:00

I just popped out to the shop, at ten to midnight. The street was deserted, and the air was warm and heavy and sweet in that early summer way (bear with me, I'm desperately trying to avoid the cliché that is 'balmy').

The only sound was the loud music playing from the top flat of one of the buildings opposite, which was Sinead O'Connor singing 'Nothing Compares To You'. The whole set-up was so lovely that I stood and listened for a minute or so.

As I came back from the shop, I turned into my street thinking about that magical moment of stillness. Coming out of the same flat, even louder than the O'Connor had been, was 'Because I Got High' by Afroman. I was less inclined to stop and listen and think about stillness.

This is why people earn lots of money for film soundtracks.

*I was going to entitle this post 'Musik ist eine heilige Kunst' but even I am not that poncy.

One should always have something sensational to read in the train

2009-05-28T01:24:00.002+01:00

I have recently received a couple of emails about things I have posted on here, which is both pleasing and disconcerting. It is of course tremendous to discover that even anyone is reading, but at the same time it's... odd.

*writes and deletes pages and pages of solipsistic, overwritten introspection*

*re-reads above sentence*

*goes to bed*

*ceases to write arch, faux-self-deprecating remarks in asterisks*

*re-reads*

*just gives up*

See what I mean?

'a whole layer of tennisy nuances'

2009-05-18T19:14:00.001+01:00

I wrote that phrase on another website earlier today.

It's not something I would ever have imagined myself saying.

Late night age terror.

2009-05-11T00:03:00.002+01:00

Oh my dear lord. I've just realised that 1791-1756= 35.

Which means that in three weeks time, I shall be older than Mozart ever managed to be. And I'm not going to look up his birth or death day, because I might already have overshot him.

I've dealt with the rites of passage as they come. It starts with tennis players, moves on through Olympians to football (thank God for Mark Schwarzer, the only Fulham first team player who has had the decency to be born before I was) and then you find yourself moving into compromises like politicians.

But Mozart, that's a bad one. Obviously he was writing operas at 11, and all that kind of thing, so he had the advantage of an early start, but I don't think my few telly sketches and my critically-acclaimed Horatio in the Highlands really look that good when set against, you know, The Marriage Of Figaro. I haven't felt this pointless since Schubert (33) and Jesus (also 33, maybe).

I'm going to hold on to dear, dear Shakespeare, who gave us all hope by hanging in there until he was 52. And ignore the fact that by my age he'd already written Hamlet.

Well, at least they got his name right.

2009-05-09T19:00:00.003+01:00

Killing time in Hammersmith before the Fulham game today (yes, we did, thank you for asking) I wandered into Books, Etc and spotted an unauthorised biography of Sacha Baron-Cohen. Now, he and I were in a couple of shows together back in the rah rah rah days of the alma mater, so I picked up the book and had a flick through the Cambridge chapter.

I think it might be the worst researched book ever. There's a quote from 'Footlights archivist Harvey Porter' (that'll be Dr Harry Porter, then) a reference to Sacha having performed in the 'annual Footlights review' (that's 'revue', and he didn't) and it's also observed that he received a 2:1 in his degree, but had he worked harder he would have been capable of getting a '1:1'. A score draw, presumably. Three points on your coupon.

But the footnotes are the real treat. The degree result gets a footnote to itself, explaining that it means an Upper Second, and that degrees at Cambridge are scored 'not from A to F, but rather from 1-9'. Now, I knew a lot of people who didn't work very hard, but I can't say as I knew anyone who got a Ninth. Best of all is Dan Mazer's description of Sacha as a 'cultural polyglot' - which is explained as 'Cambridge-speak for well-rounded'.

What a load of old bollocks, which is Cambridge-speak for testicles.

Laugh of the day

2009-04-28T22:20:00.002+01:00

courtesy of the BBC's appalling drama series about a small village choir. Two characters talking about a funeral to be held at the tiny local church.

'Deluxe coffin, full sung Requiem Mass- I'm thinking Verdi'

Are you? Are you REALLY?

The post with the host

2009-04-24T17:04:00.002+01:00

Some recordings of me singing stuff, for whenever I need to point people in such a direction, can be found Here

I should point out that I'm hosting this stuff for professional reasons rather than to say 'LOOK! I DID A SONG!' So sorry to anyone who's actually read that, it's just a way of giving myself a permanent reminder of the URL. I am using the internet as the equivalent of a note on my fridge.

Never got half my wishes... *

2009-04-23T22:09:00.004+01:00

Well, look at that. There's just about time for one more tiny update on Cinderfella in the Big Apple.

Not much time though, since I've only got about 15 minutes before they call my flight. Fortunately today was spent largely doing things by mistake, so this'll be a knockabout, Keystone Kops kind of travelogue rather than the overwritten purple prose you have doubtless come to expect.

I'll tell you what was NOT a mistake- going to Gray's Papaya for hot dogs. Shamefully, I did this because of the rightly forgotten Matthew Perry/Salma Hayek vehicle 'Fools Rush In' (in which it turns out that fools rush in) which must have taken a hefty kickback from the Gray's people as the plot turns, as so often in romantic comedies, on a Fed-Exed hot dog. Blimey, but they're good though. So good, in fact, that I searched around the village for a second branch because I wanted another go on them without the staff laughing and calling me fatty. I didn't find the other branch, but I found the Stonewall Inn, which probably says something about something. I took a photo of the outside like a good little boy and then headed uptown to explore the park.

Rather further uptown than I hoped. My friend Alice was once visiting me and I told her to get the Thameslink from King's Cross. Unfortunately I forgot to mention that there are stopping trains, and trains that whizz off to St Alban's with nary a backward glance. I discovered this when she sent me a text saying 'Help- I think I'm being kidnapped by a train'.

Well, the subway kidnapped me today. I decided not to get off at 59th, because I thought I'd have an amble down from the middle of the park. This plan changed when the next stop on the inexorably thundering train was 125th. So I got to have a look at Harlem, strolling to the northern end of the park via a road which appeared to be called Adam Clayton Boulevard. Bono must be furious.

Once in the park, my famed sense of direction kicked in and I walked round in circles a few times before giving in and taking the subway back down to 86th, and walking down to fifth avenue from there. There was a lake, there was a big fountain that they ran round in 'Friends', it was sunny, it was pretty, I took some photos. You should know by now that descriptions really aren't my thing (for example, there are five windows on the frontage of the Met, not the four I raved about) so I recommend you just look at some pictures of Central Park and imagine a tubby balding man getting lost in it; you'll pretty much be on my page.

And now I've got to get on an aeroplane. Bye bye NY- you have given me several very compelling reasons to return.

*if you don't recognise this reference blah blah blah etc etc

Little Bo Peep loses, files for grounds*

2009-04-23T04:28:00.003+01:00

Half eleven (although my body clock would tell you that it's quarter past four, or perhaps ten to seven) and I'm back at my nice brown desk in my nice brown room at the hotel. I have no doubt that there's a clamour- a clamour, I tell you- for me to provide the second instalment of my epic, two-instalment, adventures in Manhattan.

Tuesday was work day, so I went there and did that. Afterwards there was just about enough time to head back, get changed, iron a shirt (yes! I ironed! I am beyond proud of myself) before heading uptown to the Met. I'll share my opinions about the opera itself later on in this post, so as to give those of you who don't give a flying fuck about it the chance to avoid them, but in all conscience I have to say a little about the experience of the Met itself.

I get the same frisson of excitement approaching the place as I did going to Wembley Stadium as a kid, before they knocked it down and replaced it with a high-tech garden centre. The design of the Met is so daring and so (duh) theatrical that approaching the building is as exciting as anything that goes on inside it. It rises out of the plaza, all square and seemingly two-dimensional; you wouldn't be surprised to find that it was a massive piece of flattage being held up by a couple of french braces. Well, you would, but you know what I mean. Four gigantic arched windows stretch from pavement to roof, meaning that the Chagall murals and the ludicrously lush, camp staircase are on plain view as you approach it. And- Covent Garden take note- decent seats are affordable. I paid more than I'd planned to- 80 dollars- but I was in the Orchestra Stalls, which will usually set you back a good 200 notes on Bow Street. Then there was the opera, which although not a performance for the ages had some pretty wonderful stuff in it. More, as I said, later. One thing I must mention before I move on to other things- as I walked onto the subway platform with the rest of the crowd after the show, the saxophonist busker launched into a jazzed-up version of the most famous aria from the opera and that, kids, is fucking classy.

I got off the subway at 14th Street and walked 'home' down 6th, because I was determined that it would not defeat me with its sneakiness. I took a brief detour into the Village- heading down Christopher Street and returning to 6th via Gay St (snigger) and Waverly Place, just because it has a reputation for being gayish and I wanted to, oh, I don't know, be in a gay bit. My dinner companion of this evening, being somewhat on the gay side himself, informs me that I was walking through OldGay; it's more about gyms in Chelsea and hairless plastic people these days, depressingly predictably enough. But I didn't know that then so I smiled benevolently at the tribe as I passed and ambled back to the hotel.

I was woken up this morning by my conviction that it was either lunchtime or midnight, and before too long was pounding the streets, touristly. Well, I say before too long- a couple of hours and some room service Eggs Benedict had passed before I actually made it out of the room. I went to Century 21, I bought shoes, and then suddenly realised that if I didn't sleep more or less instantly I would probably die or something. So I had a two hour nap on a Wednesday afternoon, in the city that doesn't sleep. I am either an iconoclast, or old. By the time I had surfaced it was time to meet up with G, whose name I am censoring because he writes a quite widely-read blog and people on the internet are weird. He was every bit as charming and funny in person as his writing would lead one to believe. We went to a nice relaxed gay bar in the East Village, where he drank beer Americanly and I did so Britishly, and we talked about opera and plays and politics and tried to watch/ignore the couple at the table opposite who were competing in the annual Manhattan 'Get A Room' contest. There was straddling. Then we headed back west and I stuffed myself full of lovely lovely carbs and fat, in the guise of Italian food. A smashing evening.

People who aren't interested in opera stop reading now; move along, move along, nothing to see here.

---

How lovely of you both to have stayed. So, Trovatore at the Met...

I have to start- and will probably finish- with Dolora Zajick. She wasn't initially down to be singing Azucena last night but my god I'm glad she was. A huge voice, stupidly big and secure with it, and chest tones you could cook ribs on or slaughter kittens with or whatever ridiculous simile does it for you. I was expecting some heavy-duty vocalism, but nothing like that. I was also expecting her to be a big blank as an actor, which in a way she is; she's never going to glue you to the seat with a sudden emotional insight- but she is undeniably a stage animal. She possesses that intangible charisma that forces you to watch her. Even on her first entrance, in the crowd scene that segues into the Anvil Chorus, I spotted her at once. It was fitting that her character should end the opera. She owned it.

Now, I've got this far without mentioning that old Caruso thing about Trovatore needing the four best singers in the world, but really it's impossible to write about this opera without even glancing at it. Firstly- has it ever really happened? Maybe a 1970s night with Price or Caballe, Cossotto or Verrett, Domingo, and Milnes or Cappuccilli. Well, actually, looking at that list, definitely one of those nights. But at that time you'd have been happy with, oh I don't know, Tucci, Quivar, Bonisolli and McNeil, wouldn't you? (Maybe you wouldn't. When did you get so fucking fussy, huh?)

The point is, it rarely if ever happens. Last night it's arguable that one singer, Zajick, was the gold standard in her part. And we maybe had the best 1.5 singers in the world, because I thought Zelko Lucic was pretty special, too. A proper Verdi baritone. I love Hampson and Hvoro and Mattei and all the lyric baritones who do a good job of pretending, but it's a long time since I heard a singer with such vocal qualification to sing a part like Di Luna. Apparently he's variable and the top of his voice is unreliable. I'm glad to have heard him on one of his good nights.

Ok, so now for the moaning. A performance of Trovatore isn't going to blow you away if, in the second scene, you find yourself struck by how much nicer Inez's voice is than Leonora's. I'd heard of but never heard last night's Leonora, Hasmik Papian, and I can't say I'll be rushing to hear her again. Now look, it's good that there are committed, decent, honest professionals, and bar the odd unfortunate note she didn't do much that was actually wrong... but her voice doesn't make a very nice noise- at all- which I reckon is a bit of a drawback for, y'know, an opera singer.

As I write this, my itunes shuffle has thrown up Jussi Bjorling singing 'Di Quella Pira'. Bad luck, Marco Berti. He's sort of tubby and doesn't act much, but you come to expect that of tenors, no? By the end of the evening he was coming up with some singing which came close to being thrilling. But at the start he sounded uncommitted, and with the best will in the world his voice is just too ungainly for some of the more lyric moments in the role. The lead into 'Ah si ben mio' put me in mind (literally put me in mind, this isn't phrasemaking) of those ballet-dancing hippos in Fantasia. And if you ain't lyric enough, you'd better blow me away with 'Di Quella Pira', which he didn't do, meaty though it was. I don't have perfect pitch, but I'm pretty sure he took a B not a C, if it matters. It was high and it was exciting but it didn't have that top C ping. That's a technical term.

I'm not going to talk about the conducting, because it was bollocks and I don't like to be cruel. The production was decent, but without the sudden special touches of insight that make McVicar such a special director, although maybe you just can't do that in Trov. When I expounded my new-minted theory that Manrico is a dick (he really IS a dick, going on about how heroic he is and then cursing Leonora for, um, saving his life) it was pointed out to me that they're all pretty unpleasant people who behave in bizarre ways. There's nobody in there you'd want a pint with. Except maybe Inez. Anyway, McVicar didn't manage to negotiate some of the idiocies of the libretto (the Count asking Manrico who he is when he already knows, for example, or the moment when Leonora takes the poison 'I HAVE TAKEN POISON BECAUSE I HAVE TRICKED THE COUNT AND HE IS GOING TO SPARE MY LOVER BUT I'LL BE DEAD SO WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THAT?' I think he's standing right next to you, you silly cow, so stop singing so loud) and added one of his own- for the entire scene where Zajick constantly sings about how she longs only for death, she was standing up and wandering about. Try lying down love, it'll be easier. But there were some nice details, some good stage pictures, and the usual and welcome McVicar shirtless types, so I shouldn't moan too much.

In fact, I shouldn't moan too much just generally. It was a treat, more than a treat, to hear Zajick, I'm going to look out for Lucic, Berti had his moments and even Papian perked up towards the end. Plus, did I mention how much I love that building?

In summary then- I went to the Met and it was nice.

*if you don't get this reference there is an ace song you don't know, which like the last such reference, is a song named after a Manhattan street. You have to remember I am HUGELY intelligent and cultured.

Lawyers in worsted/ ad men in suede sightings so far: none*

2009-04-20T23:57:00.003+01:00

So, I appear to be in New York. This came as nearly as much of a surprise to me as it may have done to you, given that a week ago I had no idea I'd be coming here. The actual day's work I'm here for is tomorrow from 9-5; the rest, till Thursday, is just lotus eating.

I know it's hardly the most ground-breaking observation, but it really does freak me out a little that I woke up this morning in Cricklewood and now I'm sitting in SoHo (that second capital letter is very important here; otherwise it just sounds as if I popped on the Piccadilly Line). It's another hotel room blog post- I am joining you from the comfort of the Soho Grand, where they've given me something called a Superior Queen. Too many jokes... suffice to say that this refers to the size of the bed, rather than the desk clerk or, indeed, your correspondent. The hotel is as advertised- boutiquey and chicey. Lots of muted browns, in the manner of such places. Nicer than the holiday inn was. Can I stop now? I'm not very good at describing hotels.

Nor shall I bother describing the flight. You've been on one, you know what they're like. I watched Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep pretending to be angry Catholics, and then all but the last ten minutes of 'Changeling'. I look forward to finding out how it ends, perhaps on my flight home. I'm going to stick my neck out and say I reckon the kid probably doesn't come back. More acting for Ange, that way, and why not? She's ever so good at it.

Once landed at JFK I made what I now realise was a tactical error. 'What a great idea!' I thought to myself, 'a shuttle service door to door at a fraction of the cost of a cab! I don't mind sharing with these lovely strangers if it means I get to do something so inexpensive and convenient!

Hmm. From all the waiting around as the driver awaited orders on precisely who to pick up, I fondly imagined that they were allocating shared cars to people heading in the same direction. Two and a half hours later as I was decanted at my hotel, I had been disabused of this notion. I'm sure the East Fifties are lovely but driving endlessly round them dropping people off at hotel after hotel isn't my idea of fun, particularly when my destination is the Lower West Side. It strikes me that the bridge we came in on, Queensboro bridge, must also be known as the 59th St Bridge, which means it has a place in my internal jukebox, but sadly when we crossed it I was neither looking for fun nor feeling groovy. (Another couple of turnings and we were in Ethan Mordden land- the apartment at the centre of the 'Buddies' books is on East 53rd between second and third, known in the 80s, at least to Mordden, as 'Hustler Alley'. I didn't see any hustlers but perhaps I wasn't looking hard enough).

The rest of the journey passed in increased irritation as I was forced to listen to the monotone ramblings of the world's most bored teenager. She'd modelled her voice on the dead-eyed estuary style perfected by the novelist and businesswoman Katie Jordan Andre Price, and she was keen to let the other passengers know (a) that she'd been to Manhattan like loads of times and (b) nothing in the world had ever impressed her, ever. 'Thass Chrysler with the spike. Thass Empire State. Empire State's ok.' She was talking to a Welsh lady whose trip to New York was a late replacement for a trip to Thailand. 'I didn't fancy it after all the violence. But New York was the obvious option really. It's the same as Bangkok really, for shoppping'.

Finally, though, once I'd escaped, and also checked in at the office for details of tomorrow, I was free to fall back in love with the place. The weather didn't make this easy- vicious wind and driving rain, so much that the umbrella the hotel had thoughtfully provided committed suicide, with a great sense of theatre, as I approached Times Square- but I realised what New York possesses in spades, which is so vital to being a great city; it has familiarity. I've been here once before, for two weeks, three years ago, but it felt like mine. I knew exactly where I was going, no maps necessary, as I retraced the first walk I ever took in Manhattan, from lower Broadway to Times Square. Now, admittedly this walk is pretty much a straight line, but it was the remembered detail that was pleasing. I ambled into Barnes and Noble on Union Square as if on automatic pilot, and navigated from DVDs to CDs and upstairs to fiction on some remnant of (not massively useful in my day to day life, it must be said) memory. Even more pleasingly, I avoided the trap that the city presents the unwary traveller, the bit where Sixth Avenue pretends to be Broadway** and you can end up in all sorts of trouble if you're not VERY CAREFUL. Finally, at Times Square, the weather defeated me, and I hopped onto the subway for the last part of my journey, to the Met- where I bought a ticket for tomorrow night's 'Trovatore' for rather more than I had intended to pay. Still, I've just had an email from the BBC telling me that I overshot my commission for Mitchell and Webb, so I shall allow the jokes to pay for the opera.

What haven't I mentioned? I haven't mentioned the other part of my history with New York. It was on my last visit here that the most intense relationship of my life began to fall apart (he wasn't with me- it all happened by text). I mentioned a flair for drama; the text which, in retrospect, started it all beeped into my phone when I was visiting Ground Zero. Now, I'm not enough of a solipsist to, well, you know. But I bet it's the *second* worst. So, it remains to be seen how much of my feeling for this incredible place is coloured by my feeling for that strange time in my life. I don't know. But I'm off to Lombardi's now for the best pizza in the world, so I can't say that it's bothering me over much.

* If you don't get this reference, then there's a really good song you don't know.

** I did however suffer the exact same confusion at the Spring Street/6th Ave subway stop as I did last time I was here, and set off in the exact same wrong direction. I have decided that I don't like 6th Avenue: it's sly and it tries to confuse people.

As promised

2009-04-17T18:39:00.002+01:00

The extraordinary and disturbing moment from a performance of La Traviata when an audience member decided to, um, join in...

Linked from the wonderful Handelmania podcast.

Christmas comes in March.

2009-03-24T01:04:00.002Z

I have recently discovered podcasts. I know, I know, I'm at the cutting edge of 2004.

Anyway, I discovered a magnificent podcast called 'Handelmania' wherein a New Yorker called Charlie Handelman shares his extraordinary collection of rare and cherishable opera recordings. Wait, wait, come back...

He also has a wonderful collection of weirdnesses and curios. Once I've found it online, I shall without a doubt post a link to an mp3 of the performance of 'La Traviata' where suddenly and from nowhere a woman in the audience let rip with a guttural and terrifying primal scream. Apparently she then ran out of the auditorium, and nobody to this day knows who she was or why she did it. Theories abound; some say she was trying to sabotage the performance because she had had an abortive affair with its conductor, others say that she had undergone dental surgery that day and looked down to see her blouse covered in blood. Whatever the truth, it is an extraordinary and slightly scary thing.

I'm going to link to my other favourite moment from the Handelmania podcast, with apologies/thanks to the blogger who hosts it (one of many, for all I know-the first google result when you search for 'o holy night terrible singing congregation' is a blog called fredmckinnon.com). I know nothing of fredmckinnon or his dotcom, other than the fact it hosts this which, I promise, you must hear. All the way through. Once.

Well, it's late, and this is depressing.

2009-03-17T01:19:00.004Z

I have been wandering round the 'groups' page of facebook and I came across this excellent group which is quite rightly objecting to one of the nastiest examples of tubthumping and pagefilling I've seen in a long while.

In summary- some of the children who survived the Dunblane shooting have bebo and facebook pages which talk about drinking or having sex, and the Sunday Express wants us to be very, very angry about this.

Just to reiterate- because I still can't quite believe this story was published- some people who were six when someone came into their school and killed a number of children and teachers are now young adults, and have made comments on the internet about how they like to get drunk from time to time. I can't quite believe that the woman who wrote this article, one Paula Murray, didn't have a moment as she filed her copy where she thought 'This is a bit rum, actually. There's no story here. And maybe calling it 'an insult to those who died' is hijacking something tragic in order to bully some teenagers whose only 'crime' is to do some things that teenagers do. Should I submit this? Might it have an effect on my immortal soul?'

Then she sent in the article.

It seems to me that there are an awful lot of self-appointed moral arbiters knocking around who need a brief refresher on what might or might not be immoral.

I am a child.

2009-03-07T12:08:00.002Z

I am a child because I was reading this and burst into uncontrollable giggles.

Can you guess why? Hint: it has to do with Ted and Ivan's course, which as you will see sadly had to be cancelled.

Why correct inflection is important

2009-03-01T11:44:00.003Z

Always nice to start the day with a big, unexpected laugh, and that is just what I've done, courtesy of an actor on 'The Archers' who slightly misinflected the line

'If you ever want a job in the future, let me know'

No such misinflections (seamless. It's a SEAMLESS link) are to be found in The Death of Grass, which runs from Monday to Friday on Radio 4 at 1045 and 1945 and will also be available on Listen Again on the BBC website. It's an adaptation of John Christopher's 1950s sci fi novel, which stars That Comedian as the narrator, with some other people in it who you probably know, and, in a couple of cases, are.

Jennifer Beals was right- being IS believing.

2009-02-21T23:49:00.002Z

Ok, so I don't usually do youtube links, what with being a writer and all... but tonight I am more than happy to make an exception.

I mean, it's for charity and everything, and it's a BBC link, and it's not every day one of your dearest friends enters a celebrity dance competition, puts on a wig and leotard, does Flashdance, and knocks it out of the park.

I am so, so proud of him- and for those who missed it, here is the great Robert Webb on Comic Relief

Being careful

2009-02-20T14:34:00.002Z

Well, my little campaign against websites which encourage stupid people to say stupid things seems to be going pretty well. Put the phrase 'it just goes to show you can't be too careful' into google and most of the front page matches are from people fighting the good fight.

I think I'll give it a few weeks before I pension it off and replace it with another, equally banal and meaningless phrase. I quite like 'Chance would be a fine thing' although someone has suggested 'There's nothing that I can add to that'.

Any suggestions?

Exciting blogging news from the blogosphere where all the blogs are!

2009-02-14T00:12:00.003Z

The very excellent Toby Davies also seems to have a blog, which you can find here.

It looks identical to this one, which just goes to show you can't be too careful.

How to destroy an unexpected, bonus, ten minute lie-in:

2009-02-12T08:18:00.001Z

spend it counting to 600.

I don't even know what a madeleine tastes like.

2009-02-11T20:46:00.002Z

Nostalgia has me firmly in its grip tonight, as I find myself back in the same hotel in which I first started this blog all those hours- can it really be nearly 48?- ago. Rather disconcertingly, the room the nice Crowne Plaza people have put me in tonight is absolutely identical to the one I was in t'other night, and I arrived on the same train, and Masterchef is on the telly now as then, but not everything is the same. Oh no. Everything in the room is identical but the other way round. Some people would have no trouble with that, I'm sure, and would use the evidence of their eyes to navigate the room, but I was a little too gung-ho and now have a nastily smashed shin from a coffee table being where no coffee table had any right to be (in this case, opposite the identical coffee table on the exact other side of the room).

That's not what I'm here to say, though. What I'm here to say is that the woman at the checkout at Boots in Baker Street, as she rang up my purchase tonight, turned to her colleague and said, without even slightly lowering her voice, 'Lemsip? For FUCK'S sake.'

'Do an observation'

2009-02-10T08:25:00.003Z

I had a typically insomniac night. Hotels do that.

At one point, I woke up conscious of a vague tinny sound which, as I woke up more, revealed itself to be singing. After yet more waking up, I realised that my ipod had somehow switched itself on and what I could hear was the sound of music playing through headphones. It was pretty clear what kind of music it was- a tenor singing something quite lush and germanic, possibly Richard Strauss. Pleased with my powers of observation, I got out of bed and located the ipod to turn it off.

Have you ever noticed how when you think an ipod from the other side of a hotel room is playing a tenor singing something lush and germanic, possibly Richard Strauss, because you hear it through the headphones in the middle of the night, and you get up out of bed to locate it and turn it off, it's actually Alison Moyet singing Alfie?

If I ever do any stand-up, I think this will be my opener.

Not such an early adopter, either.

2009-02-10T05:22:00.000Z

So, I accidentally spent yesterday reading blogs. The whole day, I mean. It started with one of those hungover whims when an email led me to a facebook page which led me to a blog which led me to another blog until I realised that I'd spent the whole day reading blogs.

That is definitely the most times I have written the word 'blog' in one sentence. Anyway, I thought 'I should get myself one of those' and then I remembered that I already had one. A couple of years ago, I registered a google/blogger identity in order to be able to post on a gay opera webzine (I'm sure most of us have posted on a gay opera webzine at some point or another) and created what appear to be two seperate blogs under the same identity. One of these is called, quite simply, 'mememe', which although I suspect is a searingly accurate title for what is to come, does seem a little indulgent.

So we'll opt for this one instead, whose name refers poncily to my poncy blogger username, which I ought really to change to my own actual name, I suppose. And I must work out how to show people how to find their way here. And what to put.

So. Yes. A blog. My blog. Look!

This is not a good start.

2009-02-09T21:37:00.003Z

Owing to a confusion over international time zones, I seem to have scheduled my first ever blog post to be published in nine hours time.

Which could well mean that, to all intents and purposes, this is my first ever blog post.

But I can't repeat all the things that I put in the other one because, well, I mean it just stands to reason, doesn't it? I'm in a hotel. I'm about to order a courgette and tomato tart from room service. I'm in my pyjamas and my feet are a little cold.

There. That seems to be sufficiently portentous and detailed to be going on with. You should look out for that other one though, if it ever appears. It was REALLY good*. But you'll find that out for yourselves in a few hours' time. Not that there are any of you.

* tbc