The Alchemist

Directed by Nicholas Hytner and with a cast including Simon Russell-Beale, Alex Jennings, Lesley Manville and Ian Richardson, The Alchemist (currently playing at the National) was always going to be an odds-on bet for a good night out.

Subtle, a pimp (Alex Jennings), Dol Common, a prostitute (Lesley Manville) and Face, a gentleman’s valet (Simon Russell-Beale) are ensconced in Face’s master’s London house, which the Master has vacated due to fear of the plague.  He is not expected to return until at least the end of the summer, and so our 3 ne’er-do-wells cook up a scam in which Face (posing as ‘Captain Face’) heads out to find gullible victims to lure back to the house, where they will be met by ‘The Alchemist’ (Subtle), who (they are told) is on the verge of making the Philosopher’s Stone, which will cure all of their ills.  Face also finds the odd trick for Dol to turn, and all 3 have a share of the takings.

This much, I confess, I had to pick up from the programme notes, as the combination of fast paced action and Jacobean language were sometimes hard to follow.  Jonson introduces so many characters that it is hard to keep up, especially as there are different roles within roles – each ‘gull’ that comes in is met by an alchemist tailored to exploit their individual weaknesses.  Quick changes are therefore the order of the day for Subtle, from Californian hippy to besuited Scottish doctor to new age druid.  Face also plays various characters, including a hilarious Dutch scientist, togged out with leather gauntlets, flying goggles and wild hair, and sporting an exaggerated limp.  Of course, the number of different characters that they have created leads them ever further into confusion, as their various dupes start crossing over, and the action quickly falls into ever more enjoyable farce, with confusion and double-crosses abounding.

Madcap, funny and well-acted, this is a production that I will certainly be seeing more than just the once.  Great stuff.

Groo

Beer and a late night do not make for a very productive Katja the following morning. Luckily I’m not exactly rushed off my feet, so I shall mostly be drinking a lot of water and feeling a bit queasy – all sympathy gratefully received, especially if accompanied by courier deliveries of greasy fry-ups.

The reason for drinking too much beer was that I went to help Ciggie record his radio series pilot. The thing is that I had to go to saaaaf London to do so and the karma fairy was beating me round the head with an enormous great club for some reason (don’t know what I’d done, but it must have been bad).

It started when I got to London Bridge and tried to get a ticket, thinking that I could just get myself a travelcard extension. However, oh no, that would be FAR too easy! After much buggering about and getting more and more annoyed with the various useless machines, I eventually decided just to get myself a return. This should have cost me five pounds, and I put a tenner in to pay for it. The machine gave me the ticket – and £2 change. I’d have kicked it, but I’m a lady – so I merely turned the air around me a brilliant shade of blue and then sweetly asked a policeman where to go to report a fault. I must be getting old, because he looked about 12. Shoot me now…

The child policeman directed me to the customer information office, but – guess what? – it was, of course, closed. Growling obscenities under my breath (apologies to everyone that I passed in the station) I stomped my way to the correct platform to catch my train.

The train was, of course, absolutely rammed and I had my nose in some smoker’s armpit for the 20 minutes or so that we were travelling. Eau de Stale Cigarette Smoke and BO – nice. My feet were also killing me by this point and I had The Fear big time – I’m a North London girl and going south of the river brings me out in a rash. No word of a lie.

Finally, when I reached my destination, I opened my purse to take out my ticket – and it exploded everywhere, throwing old train tickets, timetables, railcards and lord only knows what else all over the concourse, directly in front of the gates through which a multitude of people were passing. I think at this point the karma fairy decided that she’d done enough beating, as this was the last drama of the journey. Admittedly, the fact that I was wearing a short skirt may have helped *ahem* as there was a flurry of kind gentlemen rushing to help me pick everything up.

Being a girl ROCKS.

Love Songs in Age

Gosh, it’s been a while since I came in here, hasn’t it? *blows dust off*

Now, apparently yesterday was National Poetry Day in the UK. I know I’m a day late, but I wanted to post my favourite piece of poetry for your delectation. It’s a poem that I first read aged 16, on a mock GCSE English Lit paper. The first time that I read it through it didn’t make much of an impact – in fact, as usually happens the first time I read a poem, it didn’t really go into my brain at all. On the second reading, however, I started to realise that it was worth reading again, and so I did. The third time I read it it brought tears to my eyes, I started scribbling copiously and got an A for the paper, as I remember. So anyway, it’s a poem that I’ve loved for nearly half of my life. It is bittersweet and beautiful and I really hope that you enjoy reading it.

Love Songs in Age by Philip Larkin

She kept her songs, they took so little space,
The covers pleased her:
One bleached from lying in a sunny place,
One marked in circles by a vase of water,
One mended, when a tidy fit had seized her,
And coloured, by her daughter -
So they had waited, till in widowhood
She found them, looking for something else, and stood

Relearning how each frank submissive chord
Had ushered in
Word after sprawling hyphenated word,
And the unfailing sense of being young
Spread out like a spring-woken tree, wherein
That hidden freshness, sung,
That certainty of time laid up in store
As when she played them first. But, even more,

The glare of that much-mentioned brilliance, love,
Broke out, to show
Its bright incipience sailing above,
Still promising to solve, and satisfy,
And set unchangeably in order. So
To pile them back, to cry,
Was hard, without lamely admitting how
It had not done so then, and could not now.