THE WINTER'S TALE

It is almost March. Half an hour to go, and we are in the middle of a snowstorm. My toes were frozen in the car a few minutes ago but our lovely warm house is heating me up nicely. In 27 countries around the world, across 927 screens, audiences just witnessed Shakespeare transformed once again into a different mode of art. Ballet this time. Our auditorium in Saffron Walden wasn't full because of the snow, but for those of us who were able to attend the screening, a cup of hot coffee or a glass of white wine eased us into our seats. Some of us may have had a chocolate brownie as well... hey, it was gluten free! Surely that's healthy?

Ryoichi Hirano burst on to our stage (well, our screen) and we were, to a woman, transfixed. His presence, his beauty, his actorly ability to transmit jealousy (the most potent of our emotions?) was unrivalled by any of the other dancers, even though every other dancer was obviously perfection embodied.

The youthful delights of spring and first love in Act Two contrast with the winter and storms of imagined betrayal in Act One. But Ryoichi disappeared and so Act Two was a bit meh for me. I mean, amazing, of course, but I drifted... do you drift when you watch the ballet or the opera? Or while listening to classical music? I am often distracted by the presence of all the other minds in the room, bodily with me, but each of us entering our emotional worlds, separately.

I was glad to return to Ryoichi in the final act. Hair whitened by grief, he was still magnificent, and when Hermione, the wife he thought was lost to him, is revealed to him in a dance of forgiveness, I felt almost as shocked as he was. And glad. I had missed Lauren Cuthbertson too - the ballerina who co-created her own role. A statue coming to life wasn't the only moment that stunned me - a doll masquerading as a baby, with arms and legs moving (ah, modern technology) almost made me miss the bear that wolfs down a poor courtier...

In the outside world, snow flurries awaited us, but the thrill of the performance had us on a high long enough to grab a frozen selfie... I hope you are all keeping warm and finding something to smile about. Google the gorgeous Ryoichi!! Or if such superficial things as a beautiful Principal dancer don't appeal, read Shakespeare - the ballet made me want, made me need, the words that began the dance.

Wicked Little Angel

There was an elderly pigeon walking along Finchley Road today. When he tired, he paused to contemplate a few sodden autumn leaves. London in the rain, he shrugged morosely. His glum little figure became a thing of memory as traffic moved and our taxi driver apologised profusely for his squeaky shoes. It's the rubber soles, he offered politely. Yesterday's taximan swore blue murder at an intrepid pedestrian, words that shocked my mother! But surprisingly, even he apologised at the end of the drive, with a somewhat complex tale about a cousin who wound up in prison because of... there are seven million detailed biographies entwined on these streets and no one is what they seem.


We have been swanning around in taxis in rainy London because Mum tumbled down a few mossy stone steps and a golf ball sized swelling bloomed around her ankle. But ice and my reiki righted the pain and we have travelled down Rotten Row where the horses canter, and past the Serpentine, spent hours in the National Portrait Gallery where the newly acquired bronze bust of Nelson Mandela resides beside portraits of Amartya Sen and Dorothy Hodgkin. This time Mum didn't return home determined to tear up her portraits as she is dramatically wont to do...

We are in London for my childhood friend's wedding at Langhams Hotel. A swanky affair! I wore a floaty sort of green ensemble, empire line, very Regency. Byron would have approved. And Father danced with far too many women. And almost no one knew I had just emerged from Rituximab infusions less than two weeks ago. And none of that matters anyway when I stand in awe of the magnificent exhibition of Diaghilev and his Ballet Russes at the Victoria and Albert Museum, surrounded by the living art of Karsavina and Nijinsky, Stravinsky and Massine, Leon Bakst, Jean Cocteau and a huge drop curtain detailing Picasso's Women Running on the Beach for Le Train Bleu.


Most moving was the performance of the Little Angels, an all-female children's folk ballet troupe from Korea. Sadler's Wells theatre was full of Korean war veterans, for whom the troupe was created in gratitude, in 1963, for laying down their lives in a faraway country in civil strife.


So there has been sculpture and sketches, ballet and marriage vows, but when I shut my exhausted eyes, what I hear... is singing. Have you seen Wicked, the musical? It is... well, wicked, really! Witches before they were witches, and why the monkeys became winged, and why Elphiba flings Dorothy into the cellar, and there's a man, (there's always a man), who first loves Glinda the Good and then decides it is the green Wicked Witch of the West he truly loves and suddenly everything changes... and I know, as Elphiba does...

"It's time to trust my instincts

Close my eyes and leap...

It's time to try defying gravity!

I think I'll try defying gravity!"

... and perhaps the return to a bed on the floor of a room in Cambridge, will not seem quite so dull after all.

First two images:

Nobel prize winning chemist and crystallographer
Dorothy Hodgkins, by Maggi Hambling, oil on canvas,
1985

Opera singer Adelina Patti, by Camille Silvy,
photograph, 1869

Mrs Warren's Profession

IT IS MUCH MY BEST PLAY. AH, WHEN I WROTE IT, I HAD SOME NERVE.

George Bernard Shaw, 1894

In the Preface to the first published edition of Mrs Warren's Profession, 1888, Shaw declared, "Prostitution is caused, not by female depravity and male licentiousness, but simply by underpaying, undervaluing and overworking women so shamefully that the poorest of them are forced to resort to prostitution to keep body and soul together."

Into this rather somber initiation of censorship, and the first imprisonments for Suffragette martyrs in 1913, we find the characters of Shaw's superb play enacting the rather tragic meeting and parting of a mother and daughter who can never be at ease with the other's 'profession'. Vivie, young, bright, lithe, having successfully navigated her Cambridge Mathematical Tripos, a Lady no less, must come to terms with having been funded and cossetted as a direct result of her mother Kitty's stakes in the oldest profession in the world.

And then the stage lights dim, and our breath catches on the imposing sets, the heath beyond, the vivacious bloodred brocade of Felicity Kendal making her entrance regally, minxily (she manages both), and I have a desire to leap on stage and clap like a maniac. You know I don't get out much, and I was in the front row. FRONT ROW!! 'Twas all I could do not to participate...

I bided my time. Hours later, many weary chapped hands later, Mum, Victoria and I hung about slavishly, for autographs. We were stationed rather neatly between front reception and stage door. I snagged Mark Tandy and David Yelland outside the stage door, with a winning smile and a shared eyebrow snooted to the dripping rainsky. Scurried back inside only to find the deliciously tiny Felicity Kendal nipping for the door (and freedom) with her little dog. Unh ah. You don't get away from the Tayabalis and the Kingsley-Pallants that easily. Oh she was so very gracious, and signed and signed, and I told her about being in hospital all year and how seeing her perform so magnificently had been such a treat, and she hoped I was better now... And on my return home I created her a card with calligraphic chinese paintings and poems woven into it. Do you think she'll like them? I left it with the stage manager today. I hope my words find their way to her; I hope they make her smile.