Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: Performing Arts

  • Pilobolus

    The American dance group Pilobolus is currently touring the Netherlands, and last night we went to see their performance at the Arnhem Schouwburg. Stunning as always. Hard to believe that I first saw Pilobolus well over thirty years ago at the Sadlers Wells Theatre in London. Of course, many dancers in the troupe have come and gone since then, but the style and vision remain consistent: surprising, organic and striking.

    The programme that they are currently touring with includes five works, four of which are new to the Netherlands. One was actually a shadow play; we see the dancers momentarily at the beginning and at the end, but for the rest of the time the stage is filled by a giant screen on which the dancers behind create images of light and shadow. The fifth – the finale to the programme – is one that we have seen many times before, but which we never tire of seeing again: Day Two. It’s a real crowd-pleaser, and had last night’s audience giving a standing ovation. Well, almost all the audience: there were three ballet students behind us in row three, and one in front of me. I think they were a little taken aback at what they saw, and didn’t know quite how to react. They sat resolutely slumped in their seats at the end while the rest of the audience was on its feet and applauding wildly. We enjoyed it, and the three friends that we had persuaded to come along with us (one of whom had never been to a live dance performance before) were bowled over by what they had seen.

  • Steptoe And Son

    I grew up watching Steptoe and Son on the Beeb, sitting on the sofa alongside my parents. We all loved it. And last night, BBC4 showed another side behind the flickering images on the haunted fishtank – the lives of the actors involved in the comedy. The Curse of Steptoe was simply brilliant. David Herman sums it up for me.

  • Pennies From Heaven

    Recently I saw, to my delight, that the DVDs of the 1978 BBC TV series Pennies From Heaven were once again available. I immediately invested, via Amazon, and they duly arrived last week.
     
    I’ve spent the last three nights reliving the glories of Dennis Potter’s creation, which was given magnificent life by the cast of Bob Hoskins, Cheryl Campbell, Gemma Craven, Kenneth Colley, Freddie Jones, Hywel Bennett and many others.
     
    The story lasts over seven hours – something that probably wouldn’t be commissioned in these days of short attention spans – but is worth every moment.
    "It’s looking for the blue, innit, and the gold… The patch of blue sky and the bleeding gold dawn, and the light in somebody’s eyes."
    Close your eyes, stand on one leg, and count to ten, very, very slowly… Perfect in every way.
     
    Oh, and I can’t resist a bit of trivia: the exterior scenes of where Eileen comes to stay in London were shot in Bristol Gardens. The row of shops seen in the film are on one side of the street, and the house where Eileen stands in the window is on the other. The Royal George pub is at the bottom of the street. In Pennies From Heaven, the street is frequented by prostitutes, and I learned later that this was indeed the case in the 1930s when the drama was set.
     
    This was the street where I lived during the late 1970s. At the time, it was very run down. I, and my best friend, put in an offer to buy an old terraced house in the street from the council. Many of the houses had been squatted. We paid the enormous sum for us at the time of £55,000 for a practically derelict house. I hear that a house in the same street recently changed hands for £5 million. How times change, but of course, some things never do.

  • RIP, Madge

    Emily Perry has died at the age of 100. I remember her Madge Allsop with fondness.

  • Theatrical Experiences

    Alastair Appleton writes of his visit to see the National Theatre’s production of the hour we knew nothing of each other. He thought it was wonderful, and his enthusiasm makes me sad that I no longer live in London with those cultural experiences just outside my door. But only for a moment. I can now take a different kind of pleasure from a walk in the countryside. It’s just outside my door.

  • In Praise of Panto

    Aphra Behn pens a pæan of praise to that great British institution: the Christmas Panto. Quite right, too.

  • Panto Time Again

    One of the things I do miss, out here in the wilds of the Dutch countryside, is the traditional British Panto. It sounds as though Stephen Fry’s adaptation of Cinderella, now on at the Old Vic, is a real Christmas Cracker…
     
    That review, in today’s Observer, also covers a new production of David Edgar’s Nicholas Nickleby, which was a landmark 9-hour(!) stage production back in 1980. By coincidence, BBC Four has just started rebroadcasting the film of the original stage show, with Roger Rees as Nicholas, the amazing David Threlfall as Smike and the late, great Edward Petherbridge as Newman Noggs. Absolutely stunning.

  • RIP Ned

    Ned Sherrin has died. Over the years, his work (the groundbreaking TW3, Side by Side by Sondheim, etc.) has given me much pleasure. I met him once, many years ago, at his Chelsea flat – he was charm itself. He will be missed.

  • Henze’s Phaedra

    Here’s an interesting interview with Hans Werner Henze, talking about his life and his latest (and probably his last) opera, Phaedra. It makes me want to see it. I remember seeing an earlier opera of his, The Bassarids, in London in 1974, and being profoundly moved by it. 

  • The Hoax of Hatto

    Joyce Hatto was a pianist whose husband, William Barrington-Coupe, perpetrated an extensive hoax for years. It’s a riveting story. I’m only sorry that the Coupe name has been besmirched by such goings-on… Really, one should expect better… Havagesse, indeed! Harrumph! And yet, there’s something sad about it too.

  • Dennis Potter

    Dennis Potter was (IMHO) Britain’s greatest TV playwright. A short extract from his last interview, with Melvyn Bragg, recorded in March 1994 is available here. I have a recording of the complete interview, which always moves me to tears of both joy and sadness. Potter remained impish to the end, and the sight of him swigging morphine from his hip flask while explaining the elaborate joke that he was to play on the TV companies with his final broadcast work always makes me smile. A great human being.
     
    Update: here’s another extract from an interview with Potter – this time conducted by Alan Yentob. Not as good as with Bragg, but by god, the force that was Dennis Potter still shines through.

  • Pop-Up Music

    I’ve mentioned before that I have a weakness for Pop-Up books. This takes it one stage further. A brilliant piece of art made by Price James.
     
     

  • Copenhagen

    Tonight saw the last part of Jim Al-Khalili’s stunning three-part series on BBC Four on atomic physics. It was excellently done. But the main reason for this blog entry is that I happened to watch the film adaptation of Michael Frayn’s play Copenhagen beforehand. I’d not seen this before, and I am completely bowled over by it. It is, on the face of it, a simple three-hander; three actors playing the Danish atomic physicist, Niels Bohr, his wife, and the German atomic physicist Werner Heisenberg. It is based on a brief meeting between Bohr and Heisenberg in Copenhagen during 1941, and Frayn has used this simple fact to spin a marvelous exploration of human motivation and potential outcomes.
     
    The film adaptation is very well done, and the actors are top notch: Stephen Rea, Daniel Craig and Francesca Annis. Absolutely superb, and the implications of what might have happened in the meeting are mind-blowing. If you haven’t seen this film, go forth and do so at the earliest opportunity. Simply amazing. 

  • Joe Orton

    Today marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Joe Orton, killed by a series of hammer blows from his lover Kenneth Halliwell, who then promptly took an overdose. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has an excellent entry on Orton, penned by Michael Arditti, no mean slouch himself as an author. That link, by the way, will only work for this week, as the ODNB only allows permanent access to its entries for subscribers, so get it while it’s hot. Alternatively, if you want a longer biography, then pick up a copy of John Lahr’s excellent Prick Up Your Ears, or see the film of Alan Bennett’s adaptation of the book (also called Prick Up Your Ears).
     
    And on the subject of six degrees of separation, I met Elena Salvoni and her husband, Aldo, a couple of times when I dined at the L’Escargot restaurant in Soho many years ago. Elena was the formidable manageress of the restaurant at the time, and a great Soho character. The Salvonis were the immediate neighbours of Orton and Halliwell. As Lahr writes: "Orton was killed between two and four in the morning. The Salvonis, whose bedroom was adjacent and who were awake, heard no struggle or argument".

  • Tom Remembers George

    This is a nice tribute to the late, great, George Melly written by Tom Robinson. Go and read it. I remember the times he describes well, and people like George and Tom were beacons in the gloom.

  • The Passage Of Time

    We had a reminder of the passage of time last night. Martin was teaching a guest lesson at a local ballet school. He decided to use his choreography based on Madonna’s Vogue for the class. To his consternation, none of the class had ever seen the original video with the voguing style of dancing. One of the girls explained that she would have been four when it first appeared. To us, it seems like only yesterday, but it’s already 17 years ago… Ah well, it’s still a classic, both in the original, and in the version performed at the MTV music awards.
     
     
     
     

  • McKellen On Richard III

  • Edalat Square

    The one act opera Edalat Square has its premiere next Sunday. The story behind the opera is worth reading.
     
    (hat tip to Robert over at Links and Things for the pointer)

  • McKellen’s Lear

    Good article in today’s Observer on Sir Ian McKellen as he prepares to take on the role of King Lear this week. I’m sorry that the closest I’ll get to seeing it will be reading the reviews.

  • One For The Scrapbook

    A newspaper cutting to savour, perhaps?