staged events, part the second

So, still buoyant from our happy time at the Gielgud theatre, we went a couple of weeks later to the Mad Max inspired Millenium Dome, now much more branding-consciously called the O2 Arena, essentially a yurt on steroids filled with American-themed steak-and-cocktail eateries, drinkeries and clubbings. With a stage of some sort attached. We were there to see Monkey: Journey to the West, a production of the ancient Chinese story of the Buddhist priest Tripitaka (or more properly,  Xuanzang) and the Monkey King, Sūn Wùkōng (or Qítiān Dàshèng, “Great Sage, Equal of Heaven”) and their journey to India to collect the famous three baskets of sacred scrolls (the actual tripitaka, which gave the priest his honorary name.)

The story has been a staple of Asian legend for hundreds of years, and was brought to my attention by the Japanese TV series made of it between 1978 and 1980. I didn’t get around to looking up the printed translation until about 4 years ago. A very fun read, so I was very pleased to hear of the new stage production here.

Especially pleased because of the creative team behind it: Chen Shi-zheng, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, very stylish gents all, in their fields. So off we went to the cultural Arena, or more precisely, to a second sub-tent ’round the back of the main über Petri dish. I have to say I was impressed. I think it was the first theatre performance I’ve seen where I thought I could sit through it all again straight away (over 2 hours plus intermission!)

There were subtitles to read (it was all performed in Mandarin, the cast being mostly, if not entirely Chinese), though not many, but with so much going on on stage that I was torn between keeping my eyes riveted to the antics and acrobatics and flicking them offstage to the projected text on either side.

The first half focussed on the birth and life of Monkey, and the eventual formation of Tripitaka’s expeditionary troupe, much the way the translation I read did. If you’re more familiar with the TV show this will come as a bit of a revelation, as it glossed over that bit in the intro, then got down to what happens after the intermission of the stage production, the battles with the monsters (which makes it perfect TV fodder – the Chinese original had 81 Monsters of the Week already written in!) Eventually the troupe makes it, despite all adversity, to the temple which is their destination, to pick up the scrolls and be blessed by Buddha. Yay!

Apparently they do travel back to China, sacred scrolls in hand, where Tripitaka spends the rest of his life translating, reciting, and teaching them, but that wasn’t covered in this production. Phew.

Excellent staging and all ’round production values, I thought, though I’m far from an expert. Two thumbs up.

That’s two wins from two performances! Just before xmas, we have cheap tickets to Spamalot. We’ll see if we can get the hat-trick. Wish us luck…

staged events

Well, we’ve braved the theatre twice in recent days, much to our surprise!

Neither of us are big fans of stuff on stage, but we found, in the cornucopia that is London, a couple of things to tickle our fancy.

Me personally, I find all that stagecraft guff a bit heavy on the “stagey”, and a bit light on the craft. Like the production of The Glass Menagerie we saw here in a West End theatre last year. The critics, amateur and pro alike were falling over themselves (maybe each other, I don’t know, I didn’t get that close) to laud its virtues, whatever, and however thin, they may have been. “Yawn”, I say, “yawn” again. Just not my scene. Plays? Emotional drama on stage? I see over-wrought waiters in tights (or whatever the costumes might be.) For emotion, give me the gritty close-ups of film (or real-life, even) any day.

If you’re going to entertain me, make me laugh, I say! Even bitterly, in recognition of human foibles and follies. Dazzle me with wordplay, thrill me with gymnastics, but don’t try to embroil me in the emotional intrigues of characters (people I don’t even know, or like!) because I’ll be yawning all the way to the tube-station.

So, back to the main story, first up we saw The wonderful Bill Bailey, who was already familiar from stage and screen – if you don’t know him there’s plenty to find on Youtube for a glimpse into his quirky and deconstructed world (“how many amoebas does it take to change a lightbulb?”*). There’s not much I can say about him that can’t be gleaned from the online recources, except that if you get a chance (and you’re into that sort of thing) go and see him. He’s my kind of funny.

More in the next instalment, coming soon…

*one – no, two- no, four! – no, eight…

Hmm, a Quote

From someone who knew a thing or two about the topic:

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

Benito Mussolini.

I don’t really feel the need to editorialise about this. It just struck me as funny, in a bitter, ironic way.

The Flavour of Mystery

It is a mysterious taste, as it turns out, because only about 700 people in all of Great Britain have actually tasted anything like it. Good, fresh food, that is (maybe a tiny exaggeration).

The mystery began, as you may remember, when we booked a meal at Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage HQ. The secret handshake survived the emailing, and as per instructions we walked with a map carefully memorised (but not eaten, lest it spoil the feast to come), and proceeded on foot down the darkening unsignposted country lane to the designated rendezvous point.

From there, with a group of fellow secret-handshakees, we were conveyed to the final destination by (relatively) unmarked stealth-tractor.

Out of the tractor and into the welcoming yurt (!) (arrayed with chilled Somerset apple brandy apéritifs and marvellous crab canapés) we hors d’oeuvred around the small cheery wood-burning stove warming the cool Devon evening. Then, suitably refreshed, we were welcomed to River Cottage proper. Once on the premises, we discovered, it was pretty much open slather. ‘Don’t disturb the Head Gardener, that’s his place over there, and don’t go into the room that’s been booked for the private function’ were our only real proscriptions. ‘Wander around the kitchen garden, visit the pigs, the geese (and they were delightfully friendly!), the ducks, the generator room, the kitchen, annoy the chefs, that’s what they’re here for!’ The place was ours. ‘Even look at the menu, if you want, before the meal starts!’ The veil of mystery had been whipped away to reveal…

We ate and drank (look here for some of the delicious beverages we imbibed) and yapped copiously in a converted barn, on two long trestles, about 15 to a side, couples across the table from one another, so every couple had four strangers to talk to. Once seated, there was a complimentary glass of English sparkling wine, and the head chef (Noni, Australian, gorgeous) made an appearance to commend the food to us, and tell us the names of the animals (and vegetables) that had given their lives that we might be sated. The bubbly, accompanied by a wild sea-bass ceviche (a bit bland for our taste) was, surprisingly, very good, and the names of the beasts, ‘pig’ and ‘lamb’, weren’t too off-puttingly personal.

— from James Rose – (?)

So to the food, should you be interested – I liked the pig’s liver pâté. It had a rustic granularity, and lightness, lent to it by breadcrumbs, but Linda thought it should have been smoother [it's pâté! pâté! (ed)] The fish soup was a winner. Hearty and fabulously full of stocky richness, well matched to the chorizo chunks swimming lustily back and forth across the bowl. The lamb was pretty damn good, but could have been, in an ideal world, a little bit more succulent (the poor little thing was sacrificed for us and was cooking for about 24 hours and still managed to be a teensy bit dry). The cheeses were a fine mix of assorted goat and cow varieties, with plenty of flavour, but all hard cheeses basically, some more variety in texture would have improved the plate hugely. Also, who knows how many hedgerows had to die to make that jelly? And so to the strawberry fool, what can you say? Fruity, sweet and creamy – quintessential dessert! [Linda didn't like it at all].

So yes the food was good – not the greatest we’ve had, but close to the best we’ve had in Britain; and the fine, fine staff made the evening top stuff (if ever you read this lovely people you were wonderful – human and informed and all the right things) but the secret to the whole affair was the throwing together of a bunch of strangers, adding lovely tucker and lots of yummy beverages et viola! A top time was had by nearly all. Linda even got to sing along to Big Yellow Taxi with a lovely Cornish lass. What more can you ask for from an evening?

River Cottage rocks!

And we must tell you about the Chicken Out campaign soon.

Out for the weekend

Woohoo! I have days off!

Now that the horror fillum Book of Blood has finished (and that’s a genre, not just a description – I think the director was going for Dario Argento mixed with Great Julienning Disasters Through History, ep.14) I have some time to enjoy the lovely English August. Currently hovering at 18-20C, during the day. Nearly warm enough for short sleeves!

So this weekend we’re off to Devon, spiritual home of the scone, I would assume. Debun, as one of the locals calls it. Maybe they all do. That’s two more research topics for this intrepid reporter. Stand by. The weather report is for mild and fine, until about the hour we arrive on the train at Axminster (I’m very keen to check out the local carpets – I intend to do some barefoot studies), at which point the rain is predicted to set in and keep us moistened for the weekend.

Our spirits will remain strong, however, as we are booked to dine at the River Cottage HQ eating establishment, professional home of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, champion of chickens and all-round good food guy. But more on that next time. Don’t even try to find the location of the restaurant on the website – it’s a closely guarded mystery, I think, and they send you instructions for the secret handshake in an encrypted email only after you’ve actually committed to the booking. Two months in advance. I could be corrected on certain details, maybe, but not without losing some of the fun from the story.

Are you alright?

No, that’s not what I think you’re thinking because we haven’t posted a blog entry in such a long time, it’s an idiosyncrasy of London speechifying I’d like to draw to your attention to. The customary pleasantry “How are you?” is more often than not replaced with the above in this town and it still never fails to disconcert me. ‘Why, do I look that bad/sick/badly dressed/deranged?’ I ask myself, and, confused, pause before answering. Which perplexes the poor person doing the asking (who isn’t slightly interested in any answer other than the standard “I’m ok”) and probably makes them wonder whether I am actually alright. Somehow this question and its companion “Are you ok?” (the correct answer for this one is “I’m alright” as far as I can work out) seems to proscribe never feeling better than ok, so I’ve now taken to answering with marvellouses and topses and wonderfuls, which takes everyone aback.

And I too was taken aback the other day when shopping for bedlinen. English people have the quaintest names for pillowslip sizes. Not content with standard pillow, European pillow, throw pillow, pillowsham and whatnot, they have many, many, more. Here are two of my favourites – the housewife pillow, which, as it turns out, is the same as a standard pillow (no frills for her) and the boudoir. Due to time constraints I didn’t find out what the boudoir was, but in the interests of thorough journalism I may be compelled to go shopping this weekend…

technofun

How cool is this machine?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAX_3Bgel7M
http://www.juliusvonbismarck.com/fulgurator/

Imagine the culture-jamming potential of projecting images of acne at the Oscars, for example! Not, however, that they’d let a device that looks like this within cooee of anywhere paranoid about security. A makeover to look more mainstream couldn’t be too hard.

I believe the inventor is patenting it as fast as humanly possible to try to stem the obvious possible misuses of it.

It’s kind of a shame it wasn’t invented when most people were shooting film, though.

The Searchers

No, this isn’t a blog about John Ford, John Wayne, or even Vera Miles.

This is a blog to appease the appetites of all those people who come to this blog looking for various flavours of pigeon.

In the last while we’ve had people search for “what do pigeons eat”, “fat pigeons”, “bad things about pigeons”, “good things about pigeons”, “how many pigeons are there in the world?”, “knitted pigeon”, “Starsky cardigan”, “mannikin bird”, “roast pigeon bangkok”, “all kind of pigeons”, “exotic pigeons”, “fat fluffy animals”, “woohoo pigeons”, and, mysteriously, “scoopy pigeon”.

Most of these I can understand, many are highly respectable searches, and some we probably even have useful information about in this blog. But “scoopy pigeon”? Is somebody getting tips and assembling recipes for a roadkill feast? Responsibly taking their pet pigeon for a walk in the park, plastic bag in hand? I don’t get it at all.

Pigeon searchers, this one’s for you.

Okonomiyaki

Thanks to a dinner party hosted by our friends Chris and Miwako, we discovered this top ‘new’ (it’s been around for 400 years apparently) food in Sydney. It’s Japanese of course and means something like ‘whatever you like’. Whatever you like is mixed with eggs and cabbage and various other things and then cooked, sort of like a big thick pancake, on a hotplate and decorated in the cutest way with saucy spirals (somehow I doubt that mayonnaise is a 400 year old Japanese staple but what do I know?) and bonito flakes that wave at you and look like they’re still alive. And now we have found our new regular restaurant in London – Abeno.

It’s not primarily for the food that we loved Abeno, although it was very good – it’s the theatre of the whole thing. You are at a table with your very own hotplate, you order from a menu with many, many choices on it, then the (very cute) waiter/chef/cleaner-upperer brings all the ingredients to the table, mixes them, cooks them on the hotplate and serves them to you. It’s all very top fun to watch and induced us to leave an extra big tip because the cuties were working so hard..

Kiso mix – mushroom, lotus root and cheese (!), and spicy naniwa – kimchee mostly. One side cooked…

Flip, lid on…

decorated and ready to eat

Surprisingly, the kiso mix was the better of the two (we really only ordered it for novelty) – in some strange alchemical way the mushrooms, cheese and lotus turned into a tangy, crunchy yumminess.

And the best thing of all – we drank sake from a box! The box was filled way past overflowing -like a sake waterfall – to indicate the host’s generosity apparently. The funnest drink experience ever. It took me ages to screw up the courage to actually drink from said box in case there was some special Japanese way of doing it, but after consultation with Jamesy we decided that there was really only one thing to do…

Kampai!

We had so much fun Jamesy even came up with a haiku:

London sake spring

okonomiyaki here

but first we must drink

QI

QI, which stands for Quite Interesting, is the best quiz show in the world, and probably the only one not to be copied in Australia. It was quite disturbing to discover that Good News Week and Spicks and Specks are both British in origin, and Australia even imports the same guests! QI is hosted by Stephen Fry, a national treasure, (and he’s podcasting now). You can download it (illegally) not that I’d ever condone that sort of thing. And for your amusement, here is a clip from same – the cutest and funniest bird in the world, the mannikin bird – it moonwalks to attract a mate.