Long awaited, unsurpassable Godot

You might wonder how I could possibly state the above when I've never encountered Samuel Beckett's poleaxing masterpiece on stage before (Happy Days, on the other hand, I've seen four times with three different protagonists, all superb). Others can be different but not better. Certainly theatre critics who have seen multiple Godots claims James Macdonald's production is far and away the finest. I just know that I could never laugh more than at the double act of Lucian Msamati's Estragon and Ben Whishaw's Vladimir when it goes into semi vaudeville overdrive in Act Two - where there's something about Whishaw's 'this is becoming so...insignificant' that neardly made me fall off my seat - or be more gripped than by the strangeness of Tom Edden's sudden stirring into semi-gibberish speech as Lucky, waxing ever more resonant and apocalyptic (pictured below left before breaking the silence with Jonathan Slinger's equally good Pozzo  - the whole cast, boy messenger included, is superb).  I wondered where I'd seen that bug-eyed look before: Edden was the laugh-until-you-cry-funny waiter in One Man, Two Guvnors.

I was thinking 'tragi-comedy' throughout, and when I got back to read the text in my complete Beckett book, I found that was exactly how he'd defined it. The two excellent articles in the programme, by James Knowlson, Emeritus Professor of French at Reading University, and Fintan O'Toole, who should need no introduction, on cultural and political contexts many have denied, give us many reasons why this feels so real and yet dreamlike at the same time. Tight, ill-fitting boots, sleeping in a ditch, longing for the relative comfort of a hay-filled loft, charnel houses, brutality: Beckett had known or been made aware of them all as a Resistance agent of the Special Operations Executive in the Second World War, when he would have been shot if caught like so many of his colleagues. And the artistic references Knowlson pinpoints are startling.

His special genius is to mythologise all this, to hint at so much without hammering it home as too many contemporary playwrights do. His characters are not types, though - they're so recognisably human and individual. Whishaw's special, aerial charm and Msamati's more earthbound curmudgeonliness compliment each other to perfection. They leave enough space for you to come out of the theatre reflecting on the play's relationship to what you know and have experienced. There can be no higher compliment. 

True ensembles like this make nonsense of 'Best Actor' awards - Msamati and Whishaw need to share it, as do Thomas Coombes and Paapa Essiedu as the two one-act masters in the Death of England trilogy. It's been such a rich three-day sequence: this followed by the Bernstein double bill at the Royal Opera's Linbury Theatre and then a rigorous but also emotionally engaging production of Britten's The Turn of the Screw at English National Opera. But Godot was the ultimate revelation for me.

Production images by Manuel Harlan

Swimming and seals before Saoirse

I won't pretend I swam from the Forty Foot this time - no-one did, on the three days I returned to Dublin Bay with daily dipper Catherine; each time Sandycove itself was filled with what one regular called 'visitors',  refugees from the rougher headland so close.

This time I came with the sea socks and gloves I'd inherited via Cally (who loved it here but was this time enjoying warmer waters on Capri 'but without the kick' of the cold water - still not too bad in early October, but the accoutrements meant I could stay in for longer).

The second day was the sunniest. We met an old man with his faithful dog, who was crazymad for the water but had to wait while his master went for a swim, drying off being a problem. No tying up was necessary. The few amiable turnstones who putter around among the regular swimmers had multiplied into a colony more or less keeping to themselves, but unperturbed by my coming closer.

Egrets are especially abundant along the Bay, especially at Booterstown. But this lone one near the Forty Foot that day struck a poetic chord.

On the third day, having got my Zoom classes of the week out of the way, I decided to join Catherine and her distinguished friends for an afternoon matinee screening of The Outrun at Dun Laoghaire's multiplex. We took our swim first, and I walked to Sandycove from Dun Laoghaire DART station.  It was a darker day, but with the sea still fascinating in different lights as I passed the Casement statue

and rocks with cormorants on them, Howth in the distance

to Sandycove. I think there might be a seal in this pic from the previous day

but certainly they were around at even higher tide. The ocular proof is feeble, but palpable.

As I was swimming out of the cove to make it to the set of steps on the other side, I heard three women further out shrieking with laughter. Catherine later discovered that one had felt something under her. Seaweed? A dead body? A big fish? The two seals were playing and swimming around them. 

You'll know, if you've seen The Outrun already, how well this ties in with the film (the above image appears early on, when the protagonist narrator tells us about kelpies). Ronan's character Rona, based on the author of the book of the same title, Amy Liptrot, goes back to her native Orkney to try and recalibrate after major alcohol problems and London rehab. She returns first to her parents' farm, works as an RSPB volunteer and then after a brief relapse seeks an even more isolated island. Early on we see her marvelling at the seals, and at a group of women swimming (Liptrot apparently makes a cameo appearance among them), whom she watches shyly from the shore. 

But it's not until a decisive moment that she ventures into the water - on Christmas Day, I think - comes close to the seals, and the smiles and joy that have been so long withheld through the film's first two thirds immediately surface.

It seemed so serendipitous that all both Catherine and I feel about the necessity of our regular bathes tied in to this epiphany in the film. In a radio interview Ronan told the presenter how she had to act the trepidation of her character at cold-water immersion; she learned to swim as a child in the river Slaney.

I won't write more about the film except to say that while some have found it a bit too long, I think the length is necessary for us to be immersed in Rona's purgatory before the healing can truly begin. And of course Ronan, an actor so loved by the camera with her clairvoyant eyes and her perfect modulations of mood, registers everything. I couldn't fault it.

This has been an especially, or maybe I should just say typically, rich visit to Dublin. Central was J's first exhibition in the new Europa Experience Visitor Centre's gallery, 100 panels by as many artists expressing various aspects of Europe in the Heart of Ireland, curated by the wonderful people of the Hamilton Gallery in Sligo.

But everything else has been unforgettable, too: Irish National Opera's one-off concert performance of Berlioz's Béatrice et Bénédict at the National Concert Hall on Tuesday,  and Teaċ Daṁsa's Nobodaddy, genius inspiration of Michael Keegan-Dolan, preceded by the launch of the big Brian Maguire exhibition. La Grande Illusion, at the Hugh Lane Gallery a mere five minutes away. 

Irish arts firing on all fronts...

Death of England: two out of three, electrifying

With closing time tomorrow for the run, I'm feeling like an idiot now for not having splashed out the extra to see the third of the plays making up Death of England by Clint Dyer (who also directs) and Roy Williams. Closing Time brings together the two women so often evoked, and impersonated, by son of one and boyfriend of the other Delroy, and by the younger woman's brother Michael. I wish I'd read my colleague Aleks Sierz's review of the National Theatre original, since others this time round were a bit sniffy. Helen Hawkins five-starred Michael and Delroy at the superb newish @sohoplace - they deserve no less, so why have other reviewers stuck to four? All images here by Helen Murray.

The men respectively give their titles to the other two plays, and I was blown away by Paapa Essiedu's dynamic performance as the rent-collecting, Brexit-voting yet still somehow sympathetic Delroy some time back. Clearly Thomas Coombes as his white friend and son of a racist was going to equal the one-man phenomenon, so my friend Simon and I knew we had to see Michael too, catching it in the penultimate performance yesterday afternoon.

Everything about both experiences represents the very best in theatre: up-to-the-minute on the state of our country - not dead yet despite the collective title, which can be interpreted in any number of ways - taking you on a rollercoaster of highs and lows, demanding of the actors that they not only carry a whole dramatic personae with them but constantly engage with the audience in a way that's not uncomfortable for us, and using props, lighting and sound with brilliant, razor-sharp precision. 

Dripping sweat - we could see because at one point he came and sat in the aisle beside us, making direct address - Coombes gives such a performance that you can't imagine how he's kept it up during the nine-week run (ditto Essiedu, but of course we were seeing him much earlier in the run).  Perhaps this play had even more resonance for me because it's about (no spoiler) the sudden death of a father and how a young man deals with it, not least for the racism which surfaces during an England-Italy final in the Euros, dad's last stand, as it turns out. Delroy's crisis is the birth of his child, also very touching.

The use of essential props is astonishing, especially in Michael, where Delroy's ripped torso is represented by the use of an unwrapped Penguin bar (others have been given out, along with bananas, to some of the onlookers). That best magic in the theatre, where you both laugh and cry, comes when Michael returns from the pub to tell his mum and sister of dad's death. Mum's fixed look of disapproval is represented by a Medusa/Gorgon plate, Carly's pugnacity by a toy bulldog. This is genius, and there's risk in having Michael impersonate both the Jamaican accent of Delroy's mum Denise and the calm voice of the Indian restaurant proprietor who figures so significantly towards the end of the play. Even more regrets here at not seeing what Sharon Duncan-Brewster makes of the real Denise, along with the fabulous Erin Doherty as Carly.

Instant standing ovations were in order at the end of both plays (some 110 minutes long each). Coombes and Essiedu should win every Best Actor award going - but jointly.

Anyway, what did I do after Michael and a coffee with Simon but go home and watch the first two episodes of Sherwood Series Two. The second is not something to go to bed on - one of the most terrifying unfoldings I've seen in a TV drama. 

Part of the skill in James Graham's writing is how horror unfolds alongside normality and banality, with Skegness as part of the setting (though the extra twist seemed a bit Gothic). And the key performance here, though all are so good, is Monica Dolan's as a mother seeking revenge alongside the equally scary Stephen Dillane as her husband. I guess the worst must be over, so I'll carry on watching*. Even so, I'm sorry to have left behind the very funny froth that is The Perfect Couple. Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber are so good at getting unexpected laughs.

*Update - it's never an easy ride, but whereas Episode Two was horror,  Episode Four is tragedy, and very moving. 

More Berlioz on Zoom, and what happened next

Ten sessions in the most exhilarating company of Hector Berlioz weren't enough last term, but another ten this autumn would be stretching it a bit. So I decided to frame proceedings with two religious works on very different scales: Berlioz's Grande Messe des morts and Fauré's Requiem. After the first class we can then take the brighter Berlioz, pick up where we left off from the earlier Faust, his amazing Op. 1, to look at the new music in the Damnation, and then see what mark he left on Saint-Saëns. The one area where the master of the orchestra didn't spend much time (because there wasn't yet the French audience for it) was chamber music, so we can look at that side of things at last with Saint-Saëns, Franck and Fauré .

I've made a few further observations in the flyer, reproduced below, but this is to note that the course starts on Thursday week, and if you can't attend in person, I send out recordings. Next week will be rather packed, as I finish the summer Wagner course on Tuesday with the last of the Dutchman, which is absorbing us far more than I'd imagined. It is the true revolutionary opera for music drama as Tristan later was for harmonic language and an unbelievable leap forward from Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi, which just about sustained the single classes we spent on them. Click below to enlarge on the French details, and don't forget that Opera in Depth, which I've already flagged up, starts on Monday. Just heard that Oliver Mears and Wallis Giunta will join us for one of the Trouble in Tahiti/A Quiet Place afternoons, in the thick of rehearsing the Royal Opera's new Linbury Theatre production, so it's all shaping up nicely.

Bernstein and Smetana operas on Zoom

Little did I imagine when I discovered A Quiet Place in the last of ten revelatory (to me) Zoom classes on Bernstein that the opportunity to explore it in greater detail would arise so soon: Royal Opera artistic director Oliver Mears is directing it in the house's Linbury Theatre this October together with the one-act masterpiece to which it forms the unexpected sequel, Trouble in Tahiti. So we start the autumn Opera in Depth term with both. The above image is of Krysztof Warlikowski's Paris Opera production

I may not get the usual numbers of students, as neither these nor Smetana's Libuše are exactly popular choices. But in the 200th anniversary year of the great Czech, and having experienced more of his wonderful operas in lovely Litomyšl, it was high time to pay tribute to a very different magnum opus. Jiří Heřman's stunning Brno production seemed unsurpassable (pictured above; review here), but I was happy to hear this pageant opera in concert this year, conducted by the great Jakub Hrůša.  

Do join us, starting on Monday 30 September. If you can't attend in person, films can be sent. Full details below (click to enlarge).

'Another good one': more bathing in Dublin Bay

The quoted remark was made by Dublin's oldest bather - as far as anyone knew - after every daily dip up to his death at the age of 93. I heard it from two senior folk while changing for a swim in Sandycove. One of the beauties of these swimming locations is the friendliness and ease all around, and the fact that you meet all ages, sizes, shapes...a far cry from the time when the Forty Foot was men-only (nude bathing early in the morning), though the jumping from the rocks remains the same.

This was the Dublin fortnight in which I found the value of the immersion reaching an almost metaphysical level. It was a big thing for me since, apart from a trial run in the Estonia Resort Hotel's spa back in July, I hadn't really taken the plunge since the consequences of my big op a year ago: namely could I, should I, swim with a stoma? Reassurances didn't banish nagging doubts. And so on my first day back at the Forty Foot, trunks hoiked up over the bag, I stayed in very cold water for a short time, anxious about the aftermath though having already enjoyed the social scene before immersion.

But it was fine: no change needed (though I'd brought supplies), and time for a snack and a coffee just up the hill at an old furniture salesroom turned into a wacky cafe. 

It was important that I did this with my wonderful bathing pal in Dublin, Catherine Bunyan, a convert to daily sea swimming, and also with one of our recent guests, dear friend Ashley from Australia (on the left in the selfie she took above). Not every visitor would want to indulge in so-called 'wild swimming' - the wild bit about it, I'd say, would be the sea temperature - but both Ashley and our next arrival, Cally, were delighted to do so. Both swam around for longer than I did. 

The options at Sandycove are the Forty Foot itself - still no clarity on the naming, since the Fortieth Foot Brigade turns out NOT to have been stationed at the Martello Tower here, though the rumour may have stuck - or, if the sea is too turbulent, in the sheltered bay, where the white wall is lovely to lean against in full sun. Swim Two was another good one at the Forty Foot

and in fact Sandycove was more blustery, with a wind from the west. 

Do look at the names given to the jellyfish on the noticeboard. We actually met a friend of Catherine's here who'd been stung the previous week, but was happy to get back in the water.

The sun didn't properly materialise until my big day out with Cally (swimming below at a highish tide when the colour of the water shows that Joyce's 'snot-green' wasn't necessarily a negative).

We repeated part of the route on which I'd taken Ashley, walking from Dalkey Station to Coliemore Harbour, scene of my near-fatal swim out into the straits. Here are shots from two days - one blustery and sea-swelly but exhilarating, with seals swimming and fish to be caught, the other on a golden Saturday).

Then up to the panorama in Sorrento Point (wider view taken by Cally - you'd best click to enlarge),

in this case back round down Sorrento Road to catch the lobster festival in town (though not to eat there, since 3pm lunch called at the fabulous Andhra Bhavan), 

then on to Sandycove for the swim, enhanced by the pleasant company of two turnstones,

 and back to Dun Laoghaire for the DART back into town. That was livelier on the previous Saturday, when a zumba class taking place where the much-missed sea baths used to be enlivened the scene. Casement's statue (another bathing-place) beyond.

Sadly our excursion south to the coastal cottage of mutual friends Rosanna and Anthony found the sea too rough. But paddling proved good enough, especially on this lovely, deserted bay which may be sandy one year and shingly the next.

My last discovery has embedded the top image deep in my heart. Seapoint is closest, from home in central Dublin via the DART, and as time was limited I used the train - Catherine so often drives - to enjoy two last swims with her. 

The first day was grey but with fascinating lights, especially looking over to the Poolbeg Towers with cormorant-surmounted rocks (a small group of terns were further along),

 the second a dream late afternoon after a morning of rain. 

At last it was possible to swim with the sun on one's face, and to walk back to Seapoint DART station looking at the sun on the rocks and Howth magical behind. 

It's given rise to so many images, not just in the first chapter of Ulysses but also in another Irish masterpiece, Jamie O'Neill's At Swim, Two Boys. I haven't finished it yet; when I do, I hope I'll return to enlarge on its infinite richness here.