A few questions for the Barbican surrounding Hamlet ticketing policy

The much-hyped production of Hamlet directed by Lyndsey Turner and featuring Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role went on general sale this morning. Sadly the process appears to be mismanaged at best, with hints of a cartel at worst.

That there are many more hopeful people than tickets is inevitable, and venues, festivals and promoters have struggled for years with the issue of how to disappoint people in the fairest way possible. The Barbican appear to have failed spectacularly.

This morning, before going on general sale, the website claimed that stalls seats were sold out for the entire run, with circle seats "nearly" sold out. This would seem to imply that large numbers had been sold to patrons, members, friends, and all the other various levels of membership for which punters pay a premium in order to enjoy benefits like early booking. This is entirely fair and absolutely standard across the industry. Presumably some tickets have also gone to sponsors and other partners. That isn't pleasant to think about, but a certain amount of back-scratching and palm-greasing (back-greasing?) needs to be done with sponsors in order to keep venues and productions viable. As long as the proportion of tickets going to sponsors isn't huge, this is also acceptable.

So far, so good, and when people logged on to find themselves in queue with upwards of 20,000 people ahead of them, they will have been disappointed but not necessarily surprised. The online booking system assigned places randomly in the queue to all those who were logged on before the booking window opened, which is completely fair. The queueing system was then torturously slow; I moved up 1300 place - a third of the way up the queue - in an hour and a half. Messy and frustrating, but nothing worse.

Then - perhaps inevitably - rumours started swirling around Twitter of alternative locations to purchase tickets. ATG (the Ambassador Theatre Group, of which the Barbican is not a member) was often cited. Sure enough, with a few seconds wait, I was offered 4 tickets for a total of £269 including a "booking fee" of £4 per ticket and a single "transaction fee" of £3 (quite what the difference between a booking and a transaction is escapes me, but I'll let it pass).

Fact time: booking via the Barbican website, tickets for Hamlet cost "£30-£62.50 plus £3 online booking fee". They also mention that "a limited number of Premium Seats are available" (their capitalisation).

Something else to mention: the Barbican advised punters on the best place to buy tickets:

Booking for #hamletbarbican today? Best option is online at http://t.co/9VrGPsUiQ1 You can also call us +44 (0) 20 7638 8891
— Barbican Centre (@BarbicanCentre) August 11, 2014

The ATG tickets available were all "Band A" - and stated explicitly that this was the top price £62.50 + £4 "booking fee" per ticket. They all appeared to be stalls tickets; let's not forget that the Barbican claimed that stalls were "sold out" before tickets even went on general sale. There was no way of choosing individual seats via ATG but anecdotally people on Twitter seemed to be getting hold of some very good tickets.

But the Barbican isn't a member of the Ambassadors Theatre Group. It's owned by the City of London Corporation. So presumably the Barbican have simply sold a load of tickets for a show for which they knew there would be extremely high demand, so that ATG could sell them on at a premium.

Worse is to come.

At around 1030 the reputable theatre website WhatsOnStage.com - always a good source for listings, reviews and debate - tweeted that they had some tickets for sale. I followed the link and sure enough, they had tickets for sale for all nights. Once again there was no facility for punters to choose seats. The price: "from £78" on weekdays, and "from £119" at weekends (no mention was made at this stage of booking or transaction fees).

£119 is a 90% increase on the Barbican's top ticket price.

Fact time again: the Barbican have introduced special anti-touting measures for this production - the lead ticket booker needs to show photo ID.

To reiterate: £119 is a 90% increase on the Barbican's top advertised ticket price.

I tweeted WOS about this and got the following reply:

@EoghanLondon To clarify, not 2x face value but have industry standard 25% bkg fee as per STAR guidelines. Book with Barbican to avoid fees.
— WhatsOnStage (@WhatsOnStage) August 11, 2014

So presumably WOS are selling these "Premium Seats" with a 25% markup on...well, the Barbican don't mention prices so let's assume £95.50 (incidentally, ATG were selling "Premium Seats" for £99.50 which would make sense if their markup is £4 again).

An aside: "STAR" mentioned by WOS are the Society of Ticket Agents and Retailers. They do indeed mention 25% as the maximum generally acceptable markup

To be clear, I don't have (much of) a problem with WOS or ATG; it would appear that they're playing within the rules of the system, even if a 25% markup on top of "Premium Seats" is pretty outrageous. They're businesses trying to make money. However, I do have a very big problem with the way the Barbican are dealing with this and the way they are allocating tickets for one of the most in-demand productions in recent years. To that end I have some questions for the Barbican:

• Did all Barbican members who attempted to buy stalls tickets get them successfully? [**update - see comments below - if I was a member I would be livid]
• Does the Barbican think it is hypocritical to introduce anti-touting measures whilst at the same time allowing tickets to be sold for 90% above the advertised top ticket price?
• Can the Barbican, and indeed other venues such as the Old Vic who operate a system of "Premium Seats" (their capitalisation) admit that this is nothing but a ruse to inflate prices, as there is nothing "premium" or special about them - they are simply standard top price tickets to which a substantial additional sum has been added, presumably to encourage punters that those "standard" top price tickets are better value than they would otherwise appear? (This is classic behavioural economics).
• What is the reciprocal arrangement between the Barbican and ATG [edit - see comments below]? Was the Barbican contractually obliged to sell what appears to be a substantial proportion of stalls seats to ATG, even though they could easily sell them out - probably several times over - themselves?
• Why did the Barbican advise that the "best" place to obtain tickets was from their own website, while it actually appears that ATG was a far quicker and more reliable method? When all stalls and most circle seats have been given to agents, does that mean the Barbican site is "best"?
• What does the Barbican stand to gain from selling off tickets to third party agents versus selling them via their own website? What is the point of going to the effort of a "fair" online ticketing system when agents can sell them however they want?
• Does the Barbican feel that the process has been well managed overall?

** A couple of updates: it seems that ATG and theatrepeople.com are "official ticketing partners". Presumably they bought their tickets from the Barbican more cheaply than at the full retail price. Meanwhile, WOS have an article which summarises the popularity of the show whilst tactfully not plugging their own £119 tickets.

***Update 2: after a 3-and-a-half hour wait in the queue I did get tickets, and for a Saturday to boot. The stalls and circle are indeed sold out being sold via agents only, but there is still decent availability at time of writing (1330 on Monday 11th) - it's a big venue with a long run! The queueing system provided by queue-it.net works fine, even if the wait is extremely long.

***Update 3: some very interesting comments below.

The daily supermarket tragedy

There's a pitiful scene which is played out every day in the Willesden Green Sainsbury's - and probably in thousands of supermarkets across the whole country.

About 8pm, a crowd of people starts forming around the bread aisle. They hover, blank faces, empty baskets, on edge and alert, fidgeting and shuffling. Tonight, perhaps, she is late. They seem more restless than usual. No words are spoken, but if they were, they would not be English.

Suddenly, a door swings open, a trolley comes into view, the crowd braces itself. She has arrived with the stale rolls and bagels which have not been sold and will be reduced to 20p for a pack of four. One by one they have the yellow sticker attached. She can't keep up. No sooner has the sticker been added, than the packs are snapped up by waiting hands and shovelled into the baskets.

It's a nice feeling, being able to grab a bargain at the end of the day. Products that would otherwise be a luxury come into range - free range chicken, perhaps tuna steaks, or some posh ham. But this isn't canny bargain-hunting. This is a subsistence economy. Baskets fill up with rolls and little else. One man has a basket full of bagels and two tubs of Basics yoghurt. Carbohydrate and protein. Enough to keep a family of eight alive for another day. And at a total cost of less than £2.

There's no need to try and imagine what food banks are like. You can see this pathetic scene, just a baby step above food banks, every evening in the supermarket. Where are they from? Judging from appearance probably Kurdish, Albanian or Romany but that's by-the-by. They're trying to keep their heads above water in Britain and sinking fast.

Morning magic

There's something magical about early mornings.

On a whim I decided to get up early this morning (Sunday) for a run. The alarm went off at 0545, and half an hour later I was cycling in the direction of Hampstead Heath, with the intention of catching the sunrise from Parliament Hill (or wherever there was a decent view).

I ended up locking my bike up on Hampstead Lane about halfway between the Spaniards Inn and Highgate Village. Trail running shoes on, Camelbak and helmet in my bag and away I went in no particular direction.

Although I attempted to track my progress via MapMyRun, the GPS on my phone failed and the app managed to discard everything it had recorded, so I don't know where I went although I criss-crossed my path all over the place.

 There was a mist rising off the ground - quite extraordinary.

 By 7am, the light was bright, but sunrise wasn't until 0712 (I had checked!)

 Above: looking out over London (you can just about see the Shard).

 The heath was almost deserted. I met the occasional dog walker and runner - and after about half 7 when the sun was up, it started to get busier. But for the most part around sunrise, I had the whole place to myself.

 The camera on my phone doesn't deal at all well with poor light, but these give a sense of how things were.

 This tree (below) was pretty spooky:

 I shared the space with plenty of foxes - and a rabbit:

 It was an extraordinary experience - pretty spiritual. I kept on saying "oh wow" to myself - and congratulating myself on the decision.

 And then, at around a quarter past seven...

  I could feel the spirit of Nina Simone in the air...

Here comes the sun, little darling
Here comes the sun, and I say...
It's alright...

 Above: yes along with the rabbits and foxes that is a lesser spotted circus.

 The mist/steam rising from the ponds was pretty magical.

 For some reason mainly that I didn't really care where I was going and kept changing direction randomly, it took me ages to find Parliament Hill. When I did, it was worth it...

 Above: running through the long wet grass meant that my feet were absolutely sodden.
Below: view from Parliament Hill

 Sadly, I could feel my knee problem which gave me problems about a year ago starting to twinge. When I went for a run in the Chilterns a couple of weeks ago (at Dunstable Downs; great place for a walk or run) the knee held firm but I had a problem for several days after in my foot, possibly a trapped nerve. The foot started to hurt again, so it was time to gingerly walk back to the bike.

 A fantastic, superlative, magical morning run. I can't recommend a morning start highly enough! As a reward for my endeavours, I was delighted to see THE BEST PLACE IN LONDON open at 0830: Louis' in Hampstead. I treated myself to a croissant and Danish pastry for breakfast and a box of cakes for later.

Content.

We were all so wrong

Nothing I say will be new or unique here.

But I wanted to admit that like so many other people, I was wrong.

I have a clear memory of that roller-coaster 24 hours on the 6th and 7th July 2005. I had a few weeks to waste, with a summer job lined up but nothing to do in the meantime. This was also a time when I was a casual party member of the Liberal Democrats - basically I shelled out ten quid and they spent about half that on stamps for letters asking me for more money. During my period of idleness I was bombarded with emails requesting help at a by-election in Cheadle, where Mark Hunter was up in a furious battle with the Tory candidate. With nothing better to do, I took a leap of faith and plunged into political campaigning for the first - and last, as it transpired - time. I had a fantastic few weeks, met loads of incredible people, tramped the streets with luminaries like (Lord) Tom McNally, heard loads of fascinating stories and ended up getting quite close to some very senior people in the party. It was a hoot.

One day when shoving a leaflet through a letterbox, a dog took exception and decided to have a good go at my knuckles, leaving me with a graze and plenty of paranoia about tetanus. So it came to pass that on the afternoon of 6 July, I watched the announcement in the waiting room of a Staffordshire A&E department. I remember the elation, the screams...and the call, in the nick of time, for Mr O'Neill to see the doctor please. (He took one look at my minor graze and laughed in my face).

I remember the following day too - it was a special one for us, for the then leader, Charles Kennedy, was to come and give a speech to rouse the troops. Sure enough, CK turned up first thing in the morning, but there were worried whispers and dark rumours spreading around the office of something terrible happening in London. CK was ushered into the kitchen with a portable radio - he needed to be able to hear the Prime Minister's speech on the bombings, so he could give his reaction.

Fast forward seven years and my excitement grew slowly and steadily. The Olympics have always represented something special to me - the pinnacle of sport, something pure and true, competing for the sake of competition, unsullied by anything else. But for the last few months, I was infected with a cancerous cynicism. The allocation of tickets I found tolerable - demand was always going to outstrip supply. The fact that I would have had to sign up for a new credit card in order to buy some, I did not find tolerable. I refused to apply for any on general principle, and started to be overwhelmed with a blanket of bitterness. But then the other stories about sponsors started to creep out. The Games Lanes - facilitating Coca-Cola execs to be whisked around London like royalty while real Londoners sat in tailbacks. The fact that you wouldn't be able to buy chips, because McDonald's said so. The fact that someone was going to be paid to go around covering up logos on the hand dryers in the toilets, because they weren't an official sponsor. The branding police. Horror story after horror story was leaked, and I felt a weary sense of depression about corporate inevitability.

Then there was the feeling of dread about the infrastructure. I'm well versed in the uselessness of the Jubilee Line, and with a fortnight to go there was a series of catastrophic failures. With London being swamped with extra people, there was no way the tubes would cope. London would choke up and fail, a mediocre town masquerading as a global city, like Atlanta in 1996. I looked forward to the Olympic Games not with anticipation but with apprehension. This was to be a sorry mess.

I decided to volunteer for a hefty chunk of the Games - not as a Games Maker but in my usual rather more mundane capacity which I'm immensely proud of. On the night of the Opening Ceremony I was on the streets of Bloomsbury - Tottenham Court Road was deserted. It was surreal. I went home feeling rather flat. But then I hadn't seen the Opening Ceremony.

I must admit that I've never bothered watching an Opening Ceremony before. I assumed it was just a glitzy pageant with lots of sequins, naff music, fireworks and jingoistic bollocks. I watched the ceremony on iPlayer the next morning and felt a rather unusual emotion. I've always been a proud Londoner. I'm a proud Australian. I'm a fiercely proud Irishman. But even though I was born in Hammersmith, there's something which I rarely feel but which Danny Boyle managed to ignite. I felt a sudden uprush, an explosion or pride in being British.

The Opening Ceremony was designed for British people. The sequences - particularly the TV montages - were full of injokes for Britons. Michael Fish, the Shipping Forecast, EastEnders, Soho sex shops, Great Ormond Street - all were referenced in at least a passing way. This was our Games, said Boyle, and it's for us. Some bits didn't work. The "digital love story" was naff and McCartney was cringeworthy.

But the best moment was Bond. It was understated and perfect. It was just so Bond. It wasn't Daniel Craig; it WAS Bond. You sensed that the curl of his lip at the footman was real, the swagger was just right. But the star of the show? The Queen, of course. Her "Good evening, Mr Bond" wasn't a line that had been rehearsed for a few minutes; it was a line that had 60 years of preparation. Our Queen is no Juliana of the Netherlands; it's the fact that she has been so invisible for the last six decades that made that line so wonderful.

As for the rest of the Games, everything has already been said. They were majestic, awe-inspiring, wonderful. I went to the table tennis and had a great time. I watched more Red Button in two weeks than in the previous two years put together. I screamed at the TV whilst watching handball and archery, weightlifting and gymnastics. I cheered on Mo and Bradley. I let out a broad grin for Usain. The Olympics did everything I'd hoped and more.

The BBC coverage was superb from start to finish. Michael Johnson was a star but my surprise hero of the games was the camp-as-Christmas, dry-as-Prosecco Ian Thorpe. Balding and Barker, Jackson and Boardman, they were all fantastic, and the multiple coverage just demonstrated how lucky we are to live in an age of such rapidly advancing technology.

But my cynicism was behind me, and I was happy to be wrong. The tube was fantastic (I even came through City Airport at rush hour midway through the first week, without a hitch). The branding police were happily low-profile. LOCOG were not the faceless, unsmiling bureaucrats we'd all imagined ruining our Games. Yes, there were hitches with the sponsors not bothering to turn up for the events (and shame on them all) but for the most part, these Games were utterly fantastic.

Best of all, the traditions. The Olympic Rings are surely one of the most powerful, evocative logos in the world. The lighting of the flame at the Temple of Hera and journey to the Cauldron. The symbolism of the Marathon. The Olympic spirit. The Olympics DO have a purity that is absent in so much of society these days, a complete antidote to the usual summers of Sky Sports screaming about football transfer rumours.

Like most of London today, I feel bereft. There's a huge black hole where before we had something to look forward to. But like my mum with her memories of Olympic Rings on her school exercise books in Gippsland in 1956, I will have memories to last me a lifetime, even if most of them will be from the TV. London, we put on the greatest festival on earth, and I'm so proud.

Sarashwathy Bavans, Wembley - review

I made my first trip up to Wembley this weekend since my walk-about three years ago. This time we went hunting for a meal out - some prior research seemed to point to a couple of potential places at the top end of the Ealing Road: the popular chain Chennai Dosa, Palm Beach, and the one we opted for, Sarashwathy Bavans. It's a Sri Lankan/South Indian restaurant which has a second branch in Tooting.

If you're the sort of person who's bothered by the decor of a restaurant then you're unlikely to be the sort of person considering a trek up to Wembley for a meal, but suffice to say it's basically a white-walled, strip-lit diner. Not first date material unless your date is in the top percentile of interestingness and/or open-mindedness.

On the Saturday evening we were there, several Asian families were dining, some with young kids; to our left seemed to be a large family party with about fifteen people, mostly guzzling dosas, which the restaurant professes to specialise in. We've ordered dosas the last few times we've been in South Indian places (although a mate and I ordered a couple of lovely spinach dishes recently for a home delivery from Kovalam on Willesden Lane) so this time decided to go for different options.

To start we went for idly (a light ground rice/lentil cake) and methu vadai (lentil doughnuts) which came with a selection of chutneys. The methu vadai, in particular, were delicious: a strong nutty flavour - possibly a mixture of cumin and mustard, but I couldn't be sure.

The wreckage of an idly with various chutnies in the background. Far left: salt lassi

Crucially, though, the waiter (who perhaps detected a little hesitation when we came to ordering) confidently asked "May I make a suggestion?" EXACTLY what I like to hear. He suggested reducing the quantity of idly and adding some "mushrooms 65". We had no idea what these were but were happy to place ourselves in the hands of the expert - wisely so: the mushrooms were excellent. Fried in a mixture of spices, they were very dry and packed some proper heat - mango chutney provided relief. Apologies for the appalling photography.

Mushrooms "65" hidden somewhere underneath the onion rings!

To follow we went for mutter paneer which was spectacular: cheese and peas in a subtle rich sauce. . Aloo jeera was really a side rather than a main - basically potatoes in cumin seed. Once again, when I asked for chapatis, the waiter swiftly suggested that we run with a combination of chapatis and parathas. The chapatis were excellent, the paratha a little greasy for my taste.

Mutter paneer: fantastic food, not-so-fantastic photography

Aloo jeera - potatoes in cumin seed

We shared an excellent gulab jamun for dessert and finished with masala tea.

Something hot, sweet and delectable...and Rachel.

All-in with drinks, the bill came to £30.50 minus service - fantastic value for one of the better meals I've had in London. I burst out laughing at the note on the bill, presumably for the chef, underneath our starters, which stated ***ALL VERY MILD PLS*** !

Overloaded with carbs and clutching the paneer and cinnamon bark which we'd picked up in Fruity Fresh on the Ealing Road, we stumbled back out, stuffed and happy. Highly recommended and worth the trip.

549 High Road, Wembley

HA0 2DJ

Autumn/winter theatre highlights & previews

There are plenty of shows worth getting your paws on over the autumn and well into next year. Here are a few that caught my eye.

To kick things off there are some heavyweight Shakespeare productions to look out for. You've just missed Sam Mendes's Richard III at the Old Vic which was excellent. Kevin Spacey was louche in the title role and there was a driving energy powering the whole production. There are  a couple of promising Hamlets: Martin Sheen et al at the Young Vic is the blockbuster (sold out, but more tickets go on sale on 27 September), but there is also a rather exciting proposition at the Barbican where Thomas Ostermeier and his Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz ensemble have a tempting modern interpretation. The Barbican are also behind Jonathan Holmes's take on The Tempest at St Giles's Cripplegate. It's part of the misnomered freeB festival: tickets are £21.

Looking further ahead, in the spring Filter and Sean Holmes return to the Lyric to present their take on A Midsummer Night's Dream. Potentially best of all is the Shakespeare project in the pipeline from dreamthinkspeak, The Rest Is Silence, as part of the World Shakespeare Festival. It kicks off in the Brighton Festival in May, before transferring to the Riverside Studios in London and Northern Stage in Gateshead the following month.

If you can get your hands on a ticket for the sold-out Roadkill at Theatre Royal Stratford East then grab one as reaction from Edinburgh last year was universally positive and it came away laden with awards.

One thing that depresses me is the predictability of opera programming at the moment. Yes, we're in the middle of a recession so less risks are to be expected, but there's a frustratingly familiar cocktail of Verdi, Mozart, Wagner, Donizetti and Tchaikovsky being put on by the main opera companies. A quick scan of the  next twelve months' programmes reveals a dearth of pretty mainstream opera composers like Monteverdi,  Britten, Handel and Strauss. On the other hand, highlights include ENO presenting the UK premiere of Adams's The Death of Klinghoffer which promises to be worth seeing. Also at ENO is Rameau's Castor and Pollux - a great bit of programming and one that shouldn't be ruined by being performed in English. Finally on the opera front, Rory Bremner translates Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld for Scottish Opera - might be worth a look - I was unaware that Bremner, a languages graduate, had already made translations of several other stage works. According to the Guardian this one is supposed to be pretty Bullingdonian, which is all good in my book...and the poster looks cool:

Ontroerend Goed's latest show Audience divided critics in Edinburgh but is surely still worth checking out, for better or for worse; it comes to the Soho Theatre in December. As with Internal, it seems that Audience will really screw with your mind as a viewer and the performers will get under your skin...but would we have it any other way? Devoted fans will certainly be going.

Looking further ahead, I've got tickets to Frantic Assembly's Lovesong at the Lyric; it'll be interesting to see how it compares to the other productions of theirs that I have seen, the lively Stockholm or disappointingly tepid Beautiful Burnout.

Michael Frayn's brilliant farce Noises Off comes to the Old Vic over Christmas. I saw it in the West End a few years ago and it remains a show with one of the best laugh-per-minute ratios I've ever seen. It's classic, old-school laughs and surely can't go wrong. I'm also off to see Playboy of the Western World at the same venue. Not to forget the Boom Boom Club at Old Vic Tunnels - can't wait!

Lundahl & Seitel wowed me with their immersive piece Rotating in a room of images at the 2009 One on one Festival at BAC. Their site-specific work In memory of W T Stead, performed at the offices of Steinway in 2009, returns in February. By all accounts it's similar to Rotating... insofar as there are headphones involved and it's a bit of a spatial exploration. There, however, the similarity ends: it's a live performance of a Bach fugue set to a sort of promenade performance in conjunction with Nomad, if that makes sense (it doesn't to me). Anyhow watch this space, it sounds very promising.

The National has Mike Leigh's Grief, a stage version of my childhood obsession Swallows & Amazons, and some Bible readings to celebrate the King James version's 400th anniversary; although the Bush Theatre have trumped them with a 24 hour epic, entitled Sixty six books. If you've got little ones, or if you can free your mind to being a toddler yourself, then take yourself off to a wonderful show all about innocence and a whole lot more. White - also at the Southbank - is one of the sweetest shows you'll see anywhere. As fascinating as the show itself is watching the expressions of pure wonder on your fellow audience members' two year old faces.

In chronological order:
Richard III - Old Vic - run finished - sold out
The Playboy of the Western World - Old Vic - until 26 November - £10-£49.50
Grief - National Theatre - until 28 February - £12-£32
The Tempest - St Giles's Cripplegate - 21 September-22 October - £21
Boom Boom Club - Old Vic Tunnels - 29 September-1 October - £19.50
Sixty six books - Bush Theatre - 10-29 October - various prices or £80 for 24 hour epic!
Castor and Pollux - ENO - 24 October-1 December - £19-£97.50
Roadkill - Theatre Royal Stratford East - 28 October-20 November - sold out (£18)
Hamlet - Young Vic - 28 October-21 January - £10-£29.50
Hamlet - Barbican - 30 November-4 December - £16-£42
Orpheus in the Underworld - Young Vic - 30 November-10 December - £22.50
Noises Off - Old Vic - 3 December-25 February - tickets tbc
Audience - Soho Theatre - 6 December-7 January - £10-£20
Swallows & Amazons - National Theatre - 15 December-14 January - £12-£42.50
White - Southbank - 17-31 December - £12
Lovesong - Lyric - 11-28 January - £12.50-£30
In memory of W T Stead - Steinway & Sons - February dates and tickets tbc
A Midsummer Night's Dream - Lyric - 9 February-17 March - £12.50-£30
The Death of Klinghoffer - ENO - 25 February-9 March - £19-£97.50
The Rest Is Silence - Brighton, Riverside Studios, Gateshead - May & June - tickets tbc

Ontroerend Goed's "Audience" to come to Soho Theatre

Fantastic news announced today - Ontroerend Goed's latest production, Audience, currently taking place in Edinburgh at St George's West, will do a London stint in December. If reviews are anything to go by, it promises to stay true to the Ontroerend Goed blueprint: challenging, genre-defying, and completely unique.

Tickets go on sale in a couple of weeks, apparently. Don't sleep...

Proud

These are crazy days we're living in. The whole country seems to be soul-searching and scratching their heads for ever more implausible theories for the reasons behind the riots. Almost all of them are utter BS.

I could witter on about critical mass and mob mentality and the fact that the rules of the game have changed so that nothing is seen as unacceptable any more and how "game" may indeed be the right word to describe the attitude of the participants and how all the whining about cuts and poverty and politics and the way the whole thing was caused by Twitter are way, way off the mark. But it would just be drivel adding to a swollen morass of existing drivel.

So I won't. I'll just say that London remains the best city in the world and we'll stay strong. Once I've finished work tonight at my day job I'll be on my way in to volunteer for London for a 12-hour stint. It's times like these when I can cast aside the inefficiencies, the frustrations, the annoyances and inconveniences, and just be proud to be part of London's Finest Family. It's times like these that make us realise why we signed up.

(Original at http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixel-eight/6024429000/)

***Update*** not often you see this (the first 15 seconds or so).

Impressionists and more at the National Gallery

It's easy to ignore the National Gallery. The front is now firmly guarded by human statues and reggae buskers, while the gallery itself seems too "obvious" to venture into. Nonsense: it's not world-famous without reason. And with late opening on Fridays, there's no excuse not to drop in for an hour or two after work.

Huge galleries can be intimidating - just the thought of going round dozens of rooms is tiring. I tend to stick to dipping in for an hour or so - catching a few of my favourite rooms and then heading off before it becomes more of a chore than an enjoyment. On my last visit I started with the Impressionists as I usually do, but then branched off into some earlier works. Here were some that really stuck out for me last time:

Monet - The Thames below Westminster: starting as I always do in the Impressionists' room, this one always gets me and I spent a while with it the other day. A smooth wash of sky and lack of colour evoke acrid smog brilliantly. Pale grey, yellow and beige are just so London all the way. The Thames is so iconic, so stolid, when it's portrayed like this it makes me proud to be a Londoner! A classic for all time.

Monet - The Japanese Bridge:  Tangles of lush green creepers dominate the work. A true Impressionist work: let your eyes drift slightly out of focus and be overwhelmed by the greens. This jpeg doesn't do it justice. The paint is smeared on roughly, almost aggressively; it's got a wild, jungle feel to it.

Eugene Delacroix - Christ on the Cross (1853): the worm's eye view is conventional enough, but the lighting, with Christ's face almost completely obscured by shadow, is startling. The pale skin tones suggest both the impending thunderstorm and Christ's vulnerability.

Constable - The Hay Wain: large, detailed pastoral scene from Constable's native Suffolk. This is so different from Monet's painting of London, but in a completely different way, this is majestically English.

Turner - The Fighting Temeraire, 1838: a grandiose but brilliantly portrayed sunset wrestles for attention with the main attraction - a warship being towed by a tug towards its doom. While the sunset catches he tug and highlights it, and an arrogant smear of rust coloured smoke points rudely at the warship, the Temeraire is pale, almost translucent: already nearly forgotten. Brilliant.

Turner - Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway (1844): an incredible work anticipating Impressionism. You can almost smell the smoke, be bowled back by wind and dust from the hurtling train. Nowadays inventions are confined mostly to new mobile apps; 150 years ago they were revolutionising transport for ever. What dull times we live in...

Guercino - Elijah fed by Ravens (1620): I'm pretty ignorant about Baroque art and I tend to get impatient with it, but this large piece is both dramatic and atmospheric. Elijah is presented as a figure of great power and wisdom.

Pissarro - The Boulevard Montmartre at night (1897): a reminder why Paris is the second greatest city in the world! Ignore the crowds looking at Seurat's overrated Bathers at Asnières and head for this one instead.

Cezanne - An old woman with a rosary (1896): this bleak work shows a world-weary woman - apparently a former nun - engrossed in her own decline. Her vulnerability and pathos are palpable.


There's an interesting-sounding exhibition of Norwegian and Swiss landscapes at the moment - admission free.

Willesden Green: on the up (1)

Willesden Green. It's not the sort of place that inspires emotions of hope, creativity and joy, right? And the truth is, that Willy G could easily be overlooked. But there are some gems to be found.

Walm Lane and the east end of Willesden High Road are starting to become a bit more gentrified, with a Costa and new Foxtons sprouting near the tube station (the latter, sadly, taking the place of the highly regarded Shish), and a couple of deli-cum cafes; all these have appeared in the last few months. This all suggests that the area is becoming a bit gentrified. Here are a selection of my favourite Willesden Green spots.

Nest: take the Sunday papers

Forget about Costa and head for Nest (Willesden Green station, Walm Lane) instead. It's a straightforward café beside the tube station, offering a standard array of paninis and sandwiches, full breakfasts (excellent), coffee, cakes and croissants, with large windows and comfortable sofas. No, not somewhere to make a trip to, but as a local café it's an excellent option: independent, rewarding and cheap to the point that you wonder where their profit margins are coming from - coffees are less than £2 and croissants £1, with a full English breakfast just £5.50. A solid Sunday papers option.

Another good place for a bite is Petra (19 Walm Lane).

Petra: best of the kebab options

Petra used to be known as Shawarma Express which was by far the best of the kebab options (although I never went to Shish). With a new name and, seemingly, new management, Petra is more expensive than it was in its previous incarnation but continues to offer good Lebanese food - ignore the Willesden Charcoal Grill down the road and come here instead. I tend to go fairly late when some things have sold out, but this isn't a kebaberie just for when you're drunk - they have tasty Lebanese options like sambousek.

There are loads of really good local food shops around - a mixture of long-established and new places. Two Middle Eastern supermarkets stand out. One is Al Thmarat (21a Walm Lane) - blink and you'll miss it; it's a tiny, cramped, shadowy place right next to Petra - the sort of Platform 9 3/4 place your eye slides past, but a treasure trove of pulses, spices, and jars of olives. Just up the road is Hamada (25a Walm Lane) - slightly larger and brighter, and a good spot to pick up some bread, baklava or a big bag of monosodium glutamate (no, really).

Hamada

Hamada has some meat options, but for a proper butcher try Khan Halal Butchers (1f Walm Lane) which has a solid array of beef, lamb and chicken, alongside some fresh vegetables. Forget about the two local Sainsbury's - even the larger one is pretty disappointing and more expensive than the local shops.

Khan Halal Butchers

More interesting still is Willesden Fisheries (1b Walm Lane). I keep forgetting to ask the guys who run it where they are from but my guess is possibly Mauritius, or maybe somewhere like Sudan. Anyhow, they have a great selection of fish - and it's different from most fishmongers in this country: there's no cod, haddock or sole - indeed there's hardly any flatfish at all - instead they have bass, bream, grey mullet and snapper, as well as African fish such as the river-dwelling tilapia.

Willesden Fisheries

Finally, round the corner next to Geezers barbers is a relatively new butcher - the Moura Meat Centre (10 Willesden High Road). This serves the local Portuguese community well (chorizo discussions were conducted in painfully slow English) but has some really interesting Portguese/Brazilian meat and sausage options. Well worth a look.

Moura Meat Centre

So while the Foxtons and Costa might suggest that Willesden Green might at last be starting to turn into a bland middle-class suburb, which can only be a good thing for house prices, let's hope that the more esoteric options stay in place. In the next few weeks watch this space for a little review of a few more local options.

What the area badly needs, though, is a decent pub: Angie's is fun but not for the faint-hearted, while the Queensbury is just a sterile yuppie cliche. Hopefully we'll see a better option appearing in coming months.