Indoors and outdoors (weather permitting)
There's lots to see, even if I still can't work out how to dress
Considering the god-awful weather of the last few days it almost seems like a dream that last week I spent a dry and pleasant evening at the magical Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, enjoying their new production of Twelfth Night.
In case you, like me, mix up several of Shakespeare’s largely inconsequential comedies in your head (this one is alternatively titled What You Will, suggesting that even the writer accepted that it was nonsense), it’s the one where a pair of gorgeous twins, Viola and Sebastian, wash up separately after a shipwreck, each assuming the other has died, and (since Viola elects to dress as a man for her safety, which makes a depressing amount of sense) mistaken identity ensues.
It’s very, very silly, but it’s also great fun. Director Owen Horsley has inexplicably set it in a down-at-heel harbourside cafe, everyone’s primary antagonist, the parasitic kinsman of the wealthy Olivia, Sir Toby Belch (played by Michael Matus), is a very shabby drag queen, and you would cheerfully drown Matthew Spencer’s chinless twit Sir Andrew Aguecheek.
There are lots of ideas thrown at the stage, and nothing really ties up properly, but it sort of doesn’t matter. All the actors seem to be having a fantastic time, it’s very funny, and pretty much everyone is good - the wonderful Richard Cant is a prissy but convincingly wounded Malvolio - but in this production, it’s all about the women.
Viola, played by Evelyn Miller, is adorable, with a sweet combination of youthful goofiness and inherent grace, but it’s really Olivia’s show. Anna Francolini is both hilarious and touching as the mourning sister endlessly assailed by unwanted attention from the Duke Orsino (Raphael Bushay, not entirely owning what also isn’t actually a very good role), then blindsided by love for a boy, Cesario, who is only pretending to be a boy.
Her appearance, having fallen in love with Cesario/Viola, in the guise of a nightclub singer, is a hoot. We had a great time, fuelled by massive G&Ts from the Open Air Theatre’s lovely bar. The queue for the ladies looks terrible but always moves at a clip. If it’s not still bloody raining, it really is a rather gorgeous night out. The show is on until June 8.
I really wanted to love the Judy Chicago: Revelations show at the Serpentine, which opens today and runs to September 1. Chicago is a pioneer of feminist art (she’s now 84, with the obligatory purple hair), having come to prominence in the late 1960s for the radical act of making art from a woman’s perspective, and also making the link between women’s oppression and the degradation of the planet.
The colourful paintings and works on paper here, many of them drawing on ideas of goddess worship and women’s history, are kind of lovely, but overall I found the exhibition a bit disappointing. The best work is referred to, with film documentation or preparatory sketches, rather than present (oh, how I would have loved the colour explosion of a Butterfly performance out in Kensington Gardens!), and some of the ‘if women ruled the world’ stuff feels rooted in ideas that seem clankingly lacking in nuance now.
But that particular work is at least a participatory project, allowing for different voices. Chicago’s participatory, multidisciplinary works are, for me, her most exciting. The Birth Project, for example, which celebrates and honours various aspects of the birth process, from the horribly painful to the transcendental, with graphic but beautiful images rendered in quilting and embroidery.
She collaborated with 150 needleworkers to create the panels (of which there are not nearly enough here), and it’s fascinating to watch interviews with some of them talking about the impact of the work on them and their families. “It sat in my bedroom for a while, while I thought about it, and my husband used to take wide trips around it as though it was going to be catching” is one memorable recollection. She goes on to say that he eventually got on board, to the point that he wouldn’t stop telling people about it.
Ditto the film that explores every place setting in Chicago’s seminal work The Dinner Party, a triangular ceremonial banquet set to accommodate 39 women across history, mostly from Western civilisation, with 999 more names inscribed in gold on the ‘Heritage Floor’ contained by the three sides (“I thought it was just a nice biblical number but I do want to remind you that each name stands for thousands of women whose achievements have been lost to history,” she says. Word).
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Again, Chicago collaborated with ceramicists, needleworkers and other skilled craftswomen to create the work, with each setting carefully conceived to be appropriate to its subject, from Eleanor of Aquitaine to the composer Ethel Smyth, Sojourner Truth to Virginia Woolf. In the film (shown alongside the original designs for the place settings), Chicago intricately unpacks the chosen imagery and the techniques used.
It’s absolutely mesmerising. Unfortunately all it does is make you really want to see The Dinner Party. Which is at the Brooklyn Museum.
Another show that hints at further greatness, but is rather more satisfying in its own right is Fragile Beauty, Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection at the V&A. It’s a mammoth exhibition, of personally chosen highlights from the couple’s collection, which is certainly one of the highest quality photography collections in the world (they only buy the best possible prints, so the blacks in your Irving Penn monochromes, for example, are the blackest blacks you’ve ever seen).
It has several, disparately themed rooms (fashion; stars of stage, screen and studio; reportage; the American scene; desire - this is mainly hot pictures of the male form, which I’m not cross about) containing more than 300 images representing 140 photographers including Robert Mapplethorpe, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, William Eggleston, Diane Arbus, Ryan McGinley, Sally Mann, Zanele Muholi, Carrie Mae Weems, Tyler Mitchell, Trevor Paglen, An-My Lê, Horst P. Horst, Irving Penn and Herb Ritts.
From great backstage picture by Bruce Davidson of the Supremes preparing for a show, to Boris Yaro’s shocking snap of a kitchen worker keening over the body of Bobby Kennedy, lying like a waxwork on the floor; from Candy Darling photographed by Peter Hujar on her deathbed, looking for all the world like a movie star of the Golden Age, to Mickalene Thomas’s Lovely Six Foota, a cool and confrontingly fabulous portrait of a tall Black woman in a heavily adorned interior - if you like photography, there is likely something for you in this show.
The wall texts are interesting and informative about each photographer and their work; it strikes me as a really good and enjoyable overview for a teenager - or anyone really - with a budding interest in the form.
I also popped in this week to Claridges Art Space, which you access by going in the back entrance to the cafe on Brooks Mews, and straight down the stairs. They’ve just opened Double Exposure, an intriguing show that juxtaposes the photography of Mary McCartney and David Bailey - the first time he’s shown with another photographer in London.
It works. Both are masters of economy, with a playful side, and their work is surprisingly complementary. The images of women that both make (often for fashion brands, but not always) are quite sexy, but with a sense of fun that I can get behind.
Bailey’s brilliant photograph of Jean Shrimpton with face paint by David Hockney, from 1963, is definitely new to me, and quite a few of McCartney’s pictures, including a really great portrait of Harry Styles, haven’t been seen in public before.
The Styles one has him balanced on a barrier in a lecture theatre at the Royal Academy Schools, straight as a die, and the tension in that poised stillness is fantastic. It’s worth dropping in; it’s on until July 19.
This week
I’m keen to get down to Studio Voltaire in Clapham, to see their show bringing together Beryl Cook and Tom of Finland.
I think it’s a genius combination - both had a sense of humour and liked to depict people enjoying themselves freely, Cook with a focus on large, brassy women and Finland (?) on pert-buttocked, tightly/barely clad, sculpted gay men. I’ve always liked both artists’ work, for the sheer pleasure of it. The show’s on until August 25.
Studio Voltaire is a non-profit that champions emerging and under-represented artists. It doesn’t get quite enough attention outside of the art world press, but it’s really worth a visit. It’s a five minute walk from Clapham Common station; dead easy.
I’m also intrigued by some of the live programme that’s developing at the new West London venue Ladbroke Hall. That really is way off my usual stomping ground, since I’m a Lewisham girl and it’s beyond Shepherd’s Bush (bloody miles away, in other words) but I went there recently for an excellent meal at their restaurant Pollini, which does an extremely good value set lunch (£24!) and they seem to have hit upon a bit of a winner with their Friday jazz nights.
Tomorrow they have British jazz vocalist Clare Teal performing, and coming up, the likes of the Dany Noel Cuban Project, Camille Bertault, and the Rachael Cohen Quartet. There are occasional classical recitals too (Julian Trevelyan is playing their gorgeous Steinway piano next Wednesday), and the venue is also home to Carpenter’s Workshop Gallery, which specialises in high-end design. Bonkers furniture, fabulously impractical ceramics, that kind of thing. Check it out if you’re even vaguely local.
Though tbh tomorrow I’m slightly more likely to go and see Furiosa: a Mad Max Saga, because I kind of think that if it’s great, it’ll be amazing, and if it’s awful it’ll be awesome. It’s released tomorrow, and it has Anya Taylor-Joy in it, who always gives the impression of being very slightly mad, which definitely works in this context.
I probably should have realised sooner that the tickets for Bluets at the Royal Court would sell really fast. An adaptation of Maggie Nelson’s book (which I haven’t read), which explores love, sex, heartbreak and grief across 240 prose poems, it sounds like either a transcendent experience or my absolute worst nightmare.
Hard to say, but people I trust love the book, and the show has Ben Whishaw in it, still one of the most magnetic stage performers I’ve ever seen, alongside Emma D’Arcy from House of the Dragon (unrecognisable, if you’re a fan), and Kayla Meikle.
The show has its official opening night on Friday and once the reviews come out, if they’re positive, it’ll be essentially impossible to get a ticket so I would suggest risking it and just getting one of the few that are left. It runs to June 29.
Also opening this week is the new season at Opera Holland Park, kicking off with Tosca, which I have never seen. Reviews for Stephen Barlow’s 2008 production, which is returning to OHP for the centenary of Puccini’s death, were pretty knockout, praising his setting (1968, an Italy in the grip of political violence and upheaval) and the performance of the South African soprano Amanda Echalaz, who returns to the role for this revival.
I struggle sometimes with opera - I have a tendency to get a bit bogged down in how implausible and insane some of the plots are, which I find distracting - but I genuinely can’t wait to see this one.
I really like Opera Holland Park. It is where I saw the first opera that absolutely blew me away (La Traviata a few years back, directed by the theatre director Rodula Gaitanou, a production which still brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it), it’s so nice and friendly and feels like a treat.
There’s also a wide range of ticket prices, starting with £15 rush tickets for under 30s, and going up in very reasonable increments - Tosca (which is a tragedy, in case you weren’t sure) is on until June 22. Bring a jumper though, it’s in a very beautifully designed temporary auditorium that is open to the sides, so if the weather goes on like this you may need one.
Book now
A few years ago my sister and I went to a gig in the tiny Dalston venue The Jago, to see the South African cellist Abel Selaocoe. We had very little idea of what to expect, and it was incredible. Selaocoe (whose name is pronounced Se-lau-chei) combines Western classical music-making with that of his own country, pushing his instrument to its limits by using it both as a stringed and percussive body.
I’m pretty sure the gig was a noisenight, a series of crowdfunded shows that bring world-class classical musicians to independent venues - and a new audience. His next one, on June 2 with his ensemble Chesaba (Selaocoe, multi-instrumentalist Sidiki Dembélé and string musician Alan Keary), is at Electric Brixton, formerly The Fridge (back in my day, etc), and you will NOT regret going, honestly, electric is the word.
I’m so pleased that the National Theatre’s Death of England trilogy is coming back, this time into the West End at sohoplace. These three incendiary plays, by Roy Williams and Clint Dyer, look at contemporary Britain through the lens of race with both black and white protagonists telling their sides of the same ongoing, propulsive story.
I only saw the first two, both of which are one-man monologues, but missed the two-hander Death of England: Closing Time, which flips to the female perspective (it had some really bad post-pandemic luck and definitely wasn’t seen by enough people). I am so thrilled to be able to see the trilogy now in its entirety.
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Paapa Essiedu, Thomas Coombes, Erin Doherty and Sharon Duncan-Brewster make up the cast of the three shows, and they start on July 15, running all summer. Do go, it’s going to be a bit of an event.
Further ahead
I keep coming across the American comic Zainab Johnson on social media, and I like her a lot (she also plays Aleesha in the Amazon comedy Upload, which is really fun and occasionally quite alarming).
One of thirteen children brought up in a devout Muslim family in Harlem, she’s got a lot to be funny about. She’s making her UK debut at Soho Theatre from November 18-23, and I think she’s going to be really big.
In her actual lifetime as well, unlike poor old Vincent van Gogh, who never sold a painting while he was alive and whose work now is among the most popular in the world. I would suggest booking ahead for the National Gallery’s major autumn show Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers, which is going to be a bit of a greatest hits and starts on September 14. They’re calling it a once-in-a-century show, which is probably fair, if only because of the logistical nightmare of borrowing a bunch of iconic works that other galleries usually rely on to keep up their own visitor numbers. Book now, I reckon.
One last thing to say, and well done if you’ve got this far, which is that this Thursday bulletin will soon be going into preview; in other words, only some of it will be visible to free subscribers, from I think June 6. The Monday posts will always remain entirely free.
If you are able, I hope that you will consider a paid subscription, but I’m conscious that not everyone can do that, and I appreciate you being here however you engage with The London Culture Edit. If you’re enjoying it, I’d be super-grateful (how do we feel about that hyphen? I’m not sure) if you shared it. Thank you!
Come to the Charleston Festival this weekend and see me chat to designer Thomas Heatherwick (Friday) about humanising buildings, and potters Florian Gadsby and Rose Schmits (Monday) about all things clay. Hope to see you there.