The monastery

We had an amazing breakfast this morning, which was lucky because the beds in our hotel rooms were not great. I don’t quite know why mainland Europeans seem to think that two single beds pushed together, sliding about on the floor, with silly little thin duvets on the top, constitute anything worth sleeping on! Fiona pulled her duvet off the bed and slept on the floor!

But the breakfast... Oh, the joy of a European breakfast with its crusty baguettes, freshly-baked pastries, racks of preserves, curious plates of meat and cheese, and amazing herb-crusted baked tomatoes. We ate keenly, and without control!

A post-prandial constitutional took us back into the old town, to see, by day, what had made us so happy by night. The sky was deep blue, and the moon, which had been enormous and low in the sky as we turned in yesterday, was still visible. 

The city was just waking up. We’re told it’s a very socialist part of Belgium, but that it’s also quite catholic, so none of the shops were open, apart from the odd bakery or tabac. There were a few confused-looking people milling around who, one assumes, had been drinking through the night. We were stopped by an Irish fella who told us that he DID have a house to go back to, but wasn’t sure which direction it was in. He then quizzed us about Brexit and seemed very confused when we said that neither of us had voted for it.

The rest of the day was spent in a monastery in the middle of Leuven, where Fiona was doing two sets of material from her album, Postcards. She’s found a way to interpret the tracks by using loops and samples, which means she can perform them live. Each one of her postcards is inspired by another place in the world. Moscow, Brighton, Antwerp, Denton, Dallas, Paris... they’re amazingly trance-like, and, in places, somewhat soporific. I drifted off into a rather glorious dream-world during one number!

It was a little strange to be in a room filled to the brim with images of Jesus. Neither of us are friends with that particular chap and Fiona was forced to perform right underneath a crucifix, complete with the big fella screaming in agony. Nice.

There was an extended break between sets, which gave us time to chill in the cloisters and I had a lovely nap by a lavender bush. I’m not sure there’s a monastery in the world which doesn’t have lavender in it. Or mead.

Fiona’s second set went down a storm. It was standing room only, and many of the people who had seen her first set returned. She played beautifully.

I was particularly proud when she apologised to the audience for Brexit: “I promise you that no musician voted for it.” Her voice cracked with emotion as she said the words, and I felt her pain. In fact, my eyes began to prickle with the shame. In a post-Brexit world, will Fiona and I be able to pop over to mainland Europe to play at a music festival? Like hell will we. Will Nathan be able to pop over to mainland Europe and be paid to run knitting classes? Like hell will he. He already can’t be paid to work in the USA. It makes me feel so sad.

Returning to the UK this evening I have no idea if I am able to get from Kent back to London because of various train lines being closed down for “planned engineering works.” So we cut ourselves off from Europe, yet we can’t even get around our own country? We’re such desperate twats.

Belgium!

I am in Belgium! I don’t really feel like I’m here. We came on the Chunnel, so I have neither flown, nor been on a ferry.

We’re in a beautiful medieval city called Leuven, which is west of Brussels, very much in the middle of the country. I’m here to accompany Fiona who is playing in a festival. It’s actually a violin festival, which I find almost too intriguing. Will the majority of the music be classical? Will Fiona’s esoteric electric violin set be considered avant guarde?

The journey here was incredibly speedy. I took the train from Victoria to Maidstone where Fiona picked me up in the car.

The Chunnel is a surreal experience. You effectively drive onto a train, and sit there, in the car itself, as the train hurtles underneath the sea. You know you’re stationary, but at the same time, you’re also aware that you’re moving, so it can be quite bewildering when you actually start driving again.

The north of France is a fairly underwhelming place. It’s essentially flat and full of factories and farms. The motorway hugs the coast, passing between places with deep military significance, like Dunkirk and Ypres. I’ve never been to either. One day I will. It strikes me that you can’t call yourself a true First World War nut until you’ve experienced the Last Post at the Menin Gate.

Our journey to Leuven took us around the edge of various Belgian cities, which I suddenly realised I wanted to visit: Bruges, Ghent, Brussels... We were apparently within a stone’s throw of the famous Atomium, which I would have liked to have seen again for old time’s sake. I remember going there as a child and being really rather impressed. It’s a giant metal stainless steel structure shaped like some sort of atom. A quick google reveals it’s actually “the unit cell of an iron crystal, magnified 165 billion times.” Because I don’t know what any of those words mean in context, I’m gonna have to take Wikipedia’s word for it.

Upon arriving at our hotel, we were informed by the man behind the counter that there had been a computer system malfunction and that the hotel was over-booked. He was way too chirpy as he told us that the solution was going to be for one of us to stay in his hotel and the other to stay in another hotel which they would organise for us. Obviously we kicked off and explained that we would both be staying in the SAME hotel, that they should have told us in advance that there was a problem, that this new hotel would have to be comparable and that they were basically very stupid if they expected us to schlep across town and check into another hotel without any form of reimbursement.

So, five minutes later, we were back in the car looking for the new hotel, which, it turned out, was next to the train station. Leuven, it seems, is fairly ethnically diverse. I don’t know why it surprised me to discover this fact. I think I’d always thought of Belgium as being one of those whiter-than-white places. I think I may well have assumed that the Walloon-Flemish dichotomy would deter wide-scale immigration, which is, of course, a fairly spurious argument.

Our new hotel turned out to be rather lovely, with a fabulous woman at reception who spoke very good English, which is somewhat atypical in these parts. 50 miles north, in Holland, English is practically an official language.

We dropped our bags off and headed into the historic city centre, which is charming. There’s a glorious, ancient town hall with some of the most ornate stone carving I think I’ve seen since visiting Notre Dame.

Leuven was “sacked” by the Germans at the start of the First World War. Buildings were damaged and destroyed and 200 people were killed. The university library was burned down, and hundreds of thousands of precious books were lost. One wonders what the point was. Did orders come down from above telling the troops to behave as appallingly as possible? It’s strange, I’ve always felt that the German invasion of Belgium was rather “hammed up” by the British powers-that-be to get the people behind the war effort. When you start to read about 200 people being murdered in one city alone and the mindless destruction of art and books, the stories of priests being strung up and used as bell clappers start to sound more plausible.

We had some food in an Italian restaurant on a street the lady at the hotel reception recommended. It was pleasant enough although it took me a long time before the waiter understood that I was asking for vinegar. I managed the word in three languages, which I thought ought to have been plenty. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when he went away and returned with a napkin!

There was a slightly surreal encounter at the end of the meal as well, when the waitress came up to us, smiling sweetly, handed us the bill and said “I hope you don’t need a receipt.” “Actually, yes I do” answered Fiona. She looked a bit non-plussed, disappeared and, seconds later, returned with a receipt. We couldn’t work out whether we’d just had a lost-in-translation moment, or whether she was telling us that she couldn’t be bothered to press the receipt button, or walk across the restaurant to the till!

Meanwhile, three English women had appeared in the place. “Ooh it’s a bit quiet”, said one, “never mind” said another, “we can make it louder!” As I left the restaurant, I could hear them shouting at one another, and, once again, I felt ashamed to be British. It’s a sleepy little Belgian city. What on Earth were they expecting? And frankly, on mainland Europe, us Brits have got a duty to keep quiet and be charming.

Award ceremonies

I’ll tell you what I hate... those awards that are nothing more than popularity contests. A couple of years ago now, Beyond The Fence was nominated for an award in the category of “best underrated musical.” I was rather pleased to discover that such a category existed. There are so many pieces of art which, through lack of publicity or due to a critical mauling, don’t get to raise their heads above the parapet. As a result, I was rather chuffed with the nomination... until I realised that the winner was being decided by public vote. So, in short, the most over-rated of the under-rated shows was going to get the award! In order to win, we’d need to get all of our friends to tell all of their friends to vote for us - regardless of whether they’d actually seen the show! Our production had a limited run of just two weeks. Even if everyone who’d seen it voted for us, we still wouldn’t have been able to win. The entire thing instantly felt ludicrous, so I politely declined my invitation to attend the ceremony. I’m too old for the footle of pretending to be pleased for a winner who’s done nothing more than play a PR game more effectively than I have.

I now see these sorts of silly awards, particularly in theatre, all over the place. An email arrives, asking me to vote for such-and-such in the category of best something-or-other, because whoever-it-is needs the validation of winning an award. And of course we all know that the shows with the big followings, like Wicked, will always win hands down, although I remember, on one occasion, an actor in an NYMT production almost winning a fairly major award because he’d galvanised the fabulously loyal community associated with that particular organisation.

But, as we all know, vanity comes with a price, and the companies and organisations running these awards can hardly be described as altruistic. Fairly regularly, when voting for your mate, you’re told you can’t register an opinion unless you sign up to be on a mailing list.

I find myself feeling even more irritated when these ludicrous competitions get played out on the telly: “And this category is special, because it’s voted for by you, the audience.” Special? My foot! Patronising? Deeply. Flawed? Not ‘arf! Live shows like This Morning will have made aggressive public appeals for people to vote for them, in a way that BBC shows aren’t allowed to do, so when the presenters appear on screen the day after the awards, looking as bleary-eyed as they are pleased with themselves, you wonder what they’re actually celebrating.

In my view, no one is qualified to vote for anything unless they can honestly say they’ve seen or heard everything else in the category. Eurovision is laced with voting bias, but at least everyone is subject to the same parameters (6 performers on stage, three minutes long etc...) and everyone who votes can be assumed to have watched all the other songs. In the majority cases, I much prefer a proper industry jury full of people with expert opinions. When I judged the TV BAFTAs, we really considered the merits of the nominated shows and spent hours, with a highly diverse panel, talking about them. We were forced to see everything on the shortlist, and the viewing figures and popularity of the show didn’t even get discussed in passing.

So, in the future, you can expect never to receive an email from me asking for your vote if I’m lucky enough to be nominated for a lovely award. I think the price is considerably too high.

Rehearsals

Nathan returns to London today, which means my shambolic life of late can calm down a little. I can go to bed at a decent hour. I won’t stay up late watching episodes of Eight Out of Ten Cats Does Countdown. I’ll eat at sensible hours. It’s all good.

Rehearsals are going brilliantly and some of the actors in my cohort are really quite remarkable; focussed, subtle, nuanced, well-researched. We’re mainly doing table readings and character work whilst the music gets learned in the main rehearsal space. It’s actually a very good show when it comes to maximising rehearsal time because the lads and lassies are rarely in the same scene. This means that whilst our MD, Andrew, is teaching harmonies with the girls in one space, I can be in another with the boys, and vice versa. As a result, I think we all feel quite on top of things, although I’m pretty sure the actors’ brains will quite swiftly start to drip out of their ears because they are being overloaded with so much information. We’ve done some amazing work. Our choreographer, Simon, even got a chance to dip his toe into the murky waters of Barnbow Lassies yesterday.

It’s a happy environment and I feel very well looked after. The building itself is wonderful and doesn’t seem to have any of the teething problems normally associated with new buildings - apart from the dust, of course, which gets everywhere. It’s absolutely enormous. There are four floors of studios and work rooms, all with enormous windows looking out over London. The atrium is a riot of noise - largely the sound of several hundred excited drama school students - but you can easily find a quiet little corner to have lunch in, or a chat about production. I feel very privileged to be there.

Rats

I was up most of the night, listening to the rat running about in my house. I kept thinking she was in my room, but the door was shut and I’m pretty sure she was actually behind the sofa in the living room. It’s most disconcerting. It really shouldn’t be - I had pet rats, I love the creatures - but that all-too-familiar pitter-patter of a rat lolloping along the floor is a little sinister when you don’t know the creature in question.

I saw her in the flesh last night, crawling about in the airing cupboard. She’s obviously made a nest for herself under the floorboards, using bits of carrier bag which she’s chewed up and pulled down there. I feel quite sorry for her. The man from Rentakill is coming today to ensure she had a lingering and painful death. Her only crime is trying to go about her life and I’m not altogether sure that I have the right to decide she has to die, purely because I don’t want to co-habit.

The tube was heaving on my way down to Peckham this morning, filled to the rafters with people who tut when you lose your balance, or, in my case, try to put a computer away in a suitcase. Londoners have this rather nasty habit of making you feel like you’re deliberately trying to be obstreperous when you get into a pickle on the tube. I’m sure I can be as guilty as the next man in this regard. How many times have I huffed at someone who stops in their tracks to read a tube map, or got irritable at someone talking too loudly?

I reckon the tubes themselves are getting louder. I wrote a blog post recently where I was beginning to wonder if my decrepitude was making me more sensitive to noise, but I spoke to a musician a couple of weeks ago who said that tests had been done and that underground trains regularly topped the decibel level where extended periods of exposure could lead to permanent damage. And they wonder why we’re all ratty down here.

Perhaps we all need to remember the quote I once found written on a gravestone, “Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

First day of Brass

This morning, I got up with the lark in order to take myself down to Peckham for the first day of rehearsals on Brass.

And what a double treat it is to be back at Mountview directing my (somewhat grown up) baby.

The new Mountview building is stunning. It feels like it belongs to a confident and classy institution with its eyes very firmly fixed on the future. It’s all industrial chic atriums and state-of-the-arc rehearsal studios.

Of course all the staff were rushing about like headless chickens. Today was the first time students had entered the space, and only last week the place was still a hard-hat-only zone. We had the obligatory fire alarm test, which meant we all had to traipse out into the square outside the school. I’m told we need to expect more of the same whilst those who care about these things are fully convinced that it’s a building which works.

The new cast of Brass are utterly fabulous. They’d all done a hell of a lot of research about the era and the show’s themes. I explained to them that they were entering an incredible family of people associated with the show. Protecting the memory of the Leeds Pals and the Barnbow Lassies feels like a responsibility that successive casts have taken really seriously, and I have no doubt that this new cohort will do their bit. I could feel the show getting under their skin more and more as the day went on and the great pride I feel to have written Brass came flooding back.

We didn’t do a great deal more than you might expect on a first day of rehearsals. I did a meet and greet, and spent an hour or so talking about the show. We had a read through of the script, had a Subway sandwich for lunch and then, in the afternoon, we talked in more depth about the show, before learning the song, Letters.

My creative and stage management teams are wonderful. They all feel like hard workers, yes people, kind people and very good at their jobs. So watch this space. Let the immersive experience begin!

Life can be a funny creature sometimes. I was in a bit of a miserable mood yesterday. I had a much-needed lie in, and finally hauled myself out of bed at about 11am. I could hear the rain throwing itself down outside. I probably should have stayed hidden for the whole day because, as I walked into the living room, I was confronted by a scene of absolute carnage. It seems the workmen who spent much of last month “fixing” the roof, were actually destroying it. Water was pouring through the ceiling. Literally flowing like a waterfall. The printer was submerged, as was the Little Victorian box piano we were given as a wedding present, three lamps and the whole area where the phone plugs in. I rushed about throwing buckets down, but not quickly enough, it seems, to stop the water sinking through our carpet and down into Little Welsh Natalie’s flat below. It was so horrifying that I actually ended up becoming quite zen. I kept telling myself that the mayhem was just for now, and, that, aside from trying to save the things that were being destroyed by water, there was nothing I could actually do. So, I sat for a day in the half of the room which didn’t have a soggy carpet and pretended that I lived in a functioning flat with a proper roof and no rats.

Kol Nidrei

I’m presently sitting in a MacDonalds after the Kol Nidrei service at the New West End Synagogue. It’s a big old sing! We started at six o’clock and basically didn’t stop until 10.30pm.

I am actually fasting. I’m not doing it for religious reasons. I’m doing it as an act of solidarity after experiencing my first dose of anti-semitism. On Sunday, as I came out of Highgate tube, someone on the A1 unwound his car window and shouted “yid” at me, simply because I was wearing my kippah after returning from a rehearsal at the shul. I wasn’t really upset. I was more confused. Had I been with children, or anyone who had been frightened by the incident, however, I would have been irate.

It felt like such a peculiarly old school thing to shout, and I was instantly transported back to the Midlands in the 1980s, when words like “poof” were casually thrown out of the windows of passing cars. In those days, those occurrences made me feel shame because being gay was my dirty little secret. I wondered how the people shouting knew. Was it my slight lisp? Was it my shambolic gait? I felt like a failure for not covering my tracks properly, almost as though I deserved the homophobic abuse because I wasn’t a proper man.

I feel no such shame about my sexuality these days, in fact, I am hugely grateful to be gay. I feel the same about my Jewish blood and have always worn my kippah proudly to and from services in the shul. My general ambivalence towards religion, of course, allows me the luxury of taking the kippah off as and when I choose, but I’ve always felt that the least I can do is wear it to and from the synagogue when I’m going there to facilitate worship. I feel uncomfortable when I see Jewish people guiltily (or out of fear) removing their kippahs as soon as they leave a synagogue to blend back into the community at large. There’s actually a school of thought which suggests antisemitism only happens when the community isn’t visible.

And of course we’re all reading a great deal about antisemitism at the moment. We’re told it’s seething beneath the surface on the far right and the far left. Perhaps Sunday’s incident proves that there’s still a fight to be fought, and if I’m supposed to be in the battle, I’m happy to report for action.

So why, if I’m fasting, am I in a MacDonalds? Well, I wanted somewhere quiet to sit for starters. The Kol Nidrei service was ever likely to be an emotional roller coaster for me. When I was a teenager, my theme tune, if you like, as a ‘cellist, was Max Bruch’s Kol Nidrei. I loved playing the piece. It engulfed me emotionally and touched my soul. What I didn’t realise is that Bruch’s composition was based on an ancient Jewish melody which was exclusively performed at Kol Nidrei, the eve of the day of atonement. So the first thing our choir sang tonight was that very melody and I was instantly transported into that seventeen-year-old self. Once again, I was that young lad who was so terrified of being gay. It was a curiously cyclic and highly emotional moment.

The other reason why I was sitting in a MacDonalds was that I needed a cup of tea. It would be damaging for me to sing for four hours today and seven hours tomorrow without taking on liquids, so, even though I’m fasting, I am drinking water and tea.