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Oh dear oh dear not a blog since April!
I'm back at last, back to the land of coppery sunsets - here's one captured over my back-garden last week, as the waves of heat drifted up from the Sahara...
Sunset, Walthamstow
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Sunset, the Forbidden City
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If there are any of you still out there, I'm so sorry to have let the more-or-less monthly bulletins lapse. I think last time I promised a message from China - and indeed that was the plan - I just hadn't realised that in taking myself off to Far Cathay I was stepping into a Great Politico-Corporate Dispute. This blog is written on a Google "platform". Now some of you may understand what a digital "platform" is - I don't and I beg you not to try to explain it - but the Google corporation, in an argument with the Beijing government over who controls what, has withdrawn all Google-related services from the Chinese mainland. So blogging was out, as was indeed any traffic on the TYA e-mail and also any on my personal e-mail account, which has a gmail address.
With help from a brilliant graduate student called Eric at the Shanghai Theatre Academy I was able to set up a temporary "QQ" email account, so contact with home was not entirely severed. But normal bloggery was out of the question - but in fact I was so ridiculously busy all the time I was there, any reportage would likely have been flustered and brief. Life continued to be flustered on my return, first from the demands of Miss Wilson and the Battle of Waterloo, and then of a compensatory BA trip to the South of France.
But now the treadmill has STOPPED, and will stay creaking on its spindle for the next couple of months, since - alas! - the New York University summer course I had thought I was going to lead in Manhattan has been cancelled. But Summer in the City this last week has meant London, never mind swirling dust on the Lower East Side - sweltering sidewalks, warnings of melting tarmac, of trains being slowed for fear the rails might buckle, free bottles of water at the railway stations. After treading the sultry streets of Shanghai, after inhaling the fumes of Beijing traffic, after baking in the mid-day market at Aix, I'm grateful for the fitful breezes whipping ripples across Reservoir Number Five, the poetically-named watery expanse beyond my east London garden fence. There's so much to report - the Incident of the Shanghai Lion, the Terrifying Toilet of Tianjin, swimming with the Ghost of the Chairman, and not least the Summer Solstice cha-cha-cha, which even yet is the talk of the bars in Provence...
But before all that, a pause to acknowledge the passing of Richard Johnson. One of my favourite actors - a proper, proper Leading Man - the best Mark Anthony of them all, a great producer and director, a brilliant tutor, and wonderful wit and raconteur. His wry account of the - absolutely true - story of his turning down the role of James Bond in "Dr No" was always to be treasured, along with tales of his Hollywood days, adventures with the likes of Richard Harris and Frank Sinatra. Richard had become a pal in recent years - he spent some time leading one of the companies of RADA actors we put on the Cunard Queen Mary 2 - and so it was good to read in the Guardian obituary that his very last movie, which I watched as his guest at last year's London Film Festival, is to go on release later this year. Starring Richard and Gemma Jones, it's called RADIATOR and is a lyrical and moving true story set in Cumbria. Look out for it - it's a treat, and there's a link to the trailer at the end of this entry. Richard's funeral was last week, and there is to be a celebration of his remarkable life and work at the end of July, which if course will be reported here. God bless, Richard, miss you lots - especially the phone-calls starting "Listen old boy, I've had an idea - now this one's a cracker..."
Richard in Lear-mode at his 85th birthday party.
I got to know Richard because he was on RADA's governing Council during my time as VP, so it's fitting to note some Academy events before I move on to Traveller's Tales.
The RADA Festival has been in full swing these last couple of weeks - I caught Rob Mountford's brilliant journey through VAGABONDS, Andrew Bone's latest engaging foray into film-making, CREMORIES, Tara Hugo's stunning Philip Glass recital, and the long-awaited musical IN GAY COMPANY. This is the work of the late Fred Silver, long championed by the indefatigable and hugely talented Tom Wakeley.
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Kelly Burke
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Gary Tushaw
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Tom, along with our TV superstar choreographer Darren Royston, gave it a sparkling presentation, featuring a spruce, smart company with two bright stars from my time, Kelly Burke and Gary Tushaw. There are useful links about all of these further down the page.
And before we leave Gower St, another reminder that the great London theatre schools like RADA and RCSSD don't just train actors - also this week saw the Costume and Set Design exhibition, displaying absolutely top-level work. It was all exemplary, but I was especially taken by Maria Bracher's zestful, eye-catching costumes. She's off into the movie industry - look out for that name as the credits role.
Now - to roll back a few weeks, to another creative campus. In the month of May, had you been in China and had you wandered by the Shanghai Theatre Academy (which is to be found in the leafy streets of the old French Concession) you could have come across a poster featuring a picture of a fine and shaggy lion.
Amongst the Chinese characters beneath the image you might have noticed my name in European letters. This was advertising two workshops and a lecture I'd been booked to give for the students - not about lions, about directing British comedy. I still don't know why the lion. I caught a distant echo of Snug the Joiner, and made sure the students at my sessions were fully clear that I was "no lion fell, nor else no lion's dam". I noted the look of polite but deepening puzzlement spreading from my interpreter to my listeners, and moved swiftly on.
This visit related to a project back in 2010, when I directed Shanghai Academy students in a Mandarin translation of Alan Ayckbourn's TAKING STEPS. Now my colleagues at STA, Professor Sun and Dr Shen Liang, are minded to establish an academic study of Sir Alan's work, to stimulate more translations of his plays and books. Widely admired and feted though his plays are in Europe and the English-speaking world, as far as is known the 2010 "Taking Steps" remains the only officially-sanctioned production ever to have happened on the Chinese mainland. It's very early days, but it would be very exciting and intriguing were this to change. The unerring Ayckbourn commentary on the mores of middle-class England may seem far removed from the worlds of the Bund, Beijing Opera and Olympic drummers, but as the economy of this huge nation grows, so grows its middle class...We shall see - there's more about this in a minute.
And so north to Beijing. I spent two weeks with the Communications Department of the University of Beijing, also known as Peking University, also known as PKU. I worked on a project helping to build the English communications skills of graduate students training in international arts management, and on moves to further links between PKU and the UK arts world. I also attended a conference on arts management in Tianjin, and spoke at another in Beijing on cross-cultural links, giving a paper called "Is Comedy International?" So it was all a bit busy. But there was fun to be had, and the Head of the Department - my old friend and colleague Professor Lin Yi - made sure that I and the other Western visitors were properly looked after by her wonderfully friendly and efficient team, all of whom speak excellent English.
My principal "minder"was XiXi - a ball of high-voltage energy who had spent her teenage years in Canada, and is doing her MFA in Beijing. Extraordinary organising skills, a swift and sharp intelligence - and above all a relentless sense of humour - are going to make her one day a manager to be reckoned with. She's considering going on to do her PhD in London. If she does, stand back...
As a pampered academic guest one hardly gets a truly objective overview, but my overall impression, given the five years since I last spent time there, and in the tiny fraction of this huge country I visited, is of more general prosperity, and of even more confidence. During my seven weeks in Shanghai in 2010 one repeatedly came across areas of real, distressing poverty. This time less so - of course, there's still poverty, but there are thousands of small businesses, looking busy and smart. It's a nation coming to a peak of economic power - comparable perhaps to Britain in the days of Empire - and of course one hears horrendous tales of worker exploitation out there in the vast factories feeding the shops on Western high streets. This blog has no aspirations to economic or political analysis, one can only convey subjective feelings as a visitor - all I can say is if London felt like a world capital in the 19th century, and New York a dominant super-city for much of the 20th, then Beijing gives a sense of starting to enjoy its turn...
Here are some pictures of both Shanghai and Beijing. Everyone talks about the pollution, and yes you're aware of fumes in the air - but they're working on it. For instance, in neither city are there petrol or diesel motor-bikes - just hundreds of electric scooters - which can be a bit alarming at night, as to save power they don't use their lights - and in Shanghai drive blithely along the pavements!
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Evening rush-hour, Beijing
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Morning Tai-chi, Shanghai
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Downtown Shanghai
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People's Park, Shanghai
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Summer Palace view, Beijing
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The people in the People's Park picture are looking for new spouses - either for themselves or their offspring - hence the notices attached to the open umbrellas. The accommodation crisis is such in Shanghai that the only way many people can move on from the parental home is by finding a partner who already has their own place - and the market-place where marriage deals are done is the Park! Here's a picture of negotiations under way:
Anyway, I also visited a third city, Tianjin - but I'll save the story of that visit for my next post, which I promise will follow shortly. I'll let the Tale of the Disturbing Bathroom hang tantalisingly in the air, along with Events in the Western Hills, while I return to the topic of Ayckbourn in China. Now, a very famous Chinese comedy actor, Chen Peisi, has expressed interest in including translations of Sir Alan's works in seasons to be presented in Beijing by his DaDao (Theatre of Comedy) company. Since I'm the only director - so far - to have directed an Ayckbourn comedy in the Mandarin language, I was invited to have dinner with Mr and Mrs Chen, along with the creative team for their current theatre project, and then to sit in on rehearsals. The play is called "Stage", and is a back-stage comedy involving a performance of Beijing opera, so a number of the actors were Chinese opera specialists. I'll write a bit more about the Chinese opera scene next time - it's tricky stuff for Westerners to latch on to, but watching the work up close you can see the demands it makes on its performers, and understand why the full training takes ten years. What fascinated me about the rehearsal I watched was the collaborative way all the actors worked, each member of the company welcoming comments from their colleagues, carefully and thoughtfully trying out suggested changes. This was comedy being constructed in a caring, thoughtful context. It was Professor Sun from Shanghai Theatre Academy who linked me up with Mr Chen, and a lot depends now on whether the Shanghai plans for new translations come to fruition. I've linked up all the interested parties - including of course, Sir Alan and his agents - and I'll report developments as and when they occur. Here's a picture recording my happy visit to the DaDao rehearsals - Mr and Mrs Chen are on my (stage) right.
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Photo: Xi Dai
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If you happen to be in Beijing on July 16th, that's when STAGE opens, so please go along. If on the other hand you're in Scarborough at any time up until September 26, Sir Alan's production of his CONFUSIONS opens there this Thursday at the Stephen Joseph Theatre.
By the way, many thanks to those of you who came along to MISS WILSON'S WATERLOO at the Finborough - the feed-back was excellent. Many people commented on the unusually high standard of presentation - thanks to some sterling work from assistant director Marcus Bazely we were able to enhance the reading with some neat lighting and recordings of Benedict Cruft's original violin score. Who knows, you may yet get further chances to witness Martin Wimbush's stirring Duke, and Karen Archer's brilliant virtuosity in creating as sharp a Regency courtesan as you could hope to meet, and one capable of giving startling impressions of each of her many rivals for the old philanderer's attention!
LINKS:
RICHARD JOHNSON and GEMMA JONES in RADIATOR
RADA -
JUST BEFORE YOU LEAVE
You might like to enjoy a choice, very brief example of a master Shakespearian at work. Here's Richard Johnson's contribution to the RADA audio compilation "When Love Speaks":
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