The sun's out!

Allow me to encourage you into darkened rooms

Tavares Strachan’s tribute to Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line on the Hayward Gallery terrace, part of his exhibition There is Light Somewhere

Can you believe it? I thought that one weekend in May was all we were going to get this year. I love London all the time, but especially in the sun, when everyone is a bit more relaxed (drunk), everything seems a bit prettier and you can actually look up without getting your mascara driven into your eyes by the rain.

Speaking of looking up, I like The Garden, the current outdoor billboards exhibition by Siân Davey outside the Photographers Gallery on Ramillies Street. The images, blown up huge and elevating this once rather dingy little thoroughfare off Oxford Street, are taken from her book about the glorious wildflower paradise she has made of her once-neglected garden. She created it with her son, Luke, at his suggestion, gathering stories from people they met over the garden wall as they worked.

The walls of Ramillies Street are now a rolling photography exhibition space, and it’s a good reminder to always raise your eyes in London (once you’ve quickly established that the next ten steps are free of smeary obstacles), because she’s full of unexpected beauty.

What’s on right now

I was actually quite enjoying Bluets, at the Royal Court until June 29, for a while, until quite suddenly I really, really wanted it to end. Margaret Perry’s choppy adaptation of Maggie Nelson’s novel tells the story of a deeply intense love affair, refracted through the colour blue. The book is made up of 240 prose poems; the play, if that’s the right word for it, requires three actors, dressed more or less identically, to share sentences, speaking into microphones and switching endlessly between props, which they use to create images on the screens behind them. 

It’s mildly entertaining until suddenly, a good 30 minutes before the end, that’s quite enough of that, thanks very much. More frustratingly, it doesn’t play even slightly to the strengths of the three exceptional actors onstage - Emma D’Arcy, Kayla Meikle and Ben Whishaw are all outrageously charismatic, with tons of stage presence, something that this production, which traps them behind a forest of mic stands, prop tables and other whimsical faffery, almost perversely wants to suppress. 

Reduced, by the hacked up script and the relentless switching of clothes and objects, to technicians rather than actors, they do their absolute best but it looks as much of an ordeal to do as it is to sit to the end of. 

I saw Kathy & Stella Solve a Murder!, about two friends trying to make a go of their true crime podcast when a famous person’s head turns up in the post, and it was exactly as silly as it sounds, which I was definitely up for on Friday night, but the two buckets of white wine I drank while watching it also definitely helped. 

I can absolutely see why it did well in Edinburgh - it’s a fun, energetic story about friendship, very clever in places (one particularly hilarious moment when Stella sings an Adele-ish number about the validation of strangers online while caressing her laptop caused my friend to nearly lose his mind) and gets loads tighter in the second half. The first half needs a bit of work, I think, it’s a bit baggy.

Bronté Barbé as Kathy and Rebekah Hinds as Stella in Kathy & Stella Solve a Murder! Photo: Pamela Raith Photography

Is there such a thing as MurderCon? It only occurred to me after the show that there probably isn’t, it’s so worryingly feasible. This is a good night out, if you like silly musicals, but I was a bit baffled as to why one of the major roles (not Kathy, played by Bronté Barbé, or Stella - Rebekah Hinds - both of whom can really bring it) was played by someone who didn’t appear to have the technical range to sing the required, quite big songs. Very odd. Perhaps the actor had a sore throat. That’s on until September 14.

What to say about the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition? It’s the same as it always is; massive, packed with stuff, some of which is good and some of which you wonder whether it’s been smuggled in without the organisers noticing.

This isn’t a vintage year, but it’s always quite fun to go in there with your little book of works, and find that most of the things you actually like and would genuinely consider giving house room to are either not for sale or somewhere in the region of 40 grand. At least I’ve got ‘good’ taste, I suppose, if that’s what that means.