Tag: London

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Restaurant review

The Café in the Crypt, St-Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London

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If you are near Trafalgar Square, Charing Cross, St Martins Lane or the National Gallery, there is a lovely little hidden café underneath the St Martin-in-the-Fields church.

You enter by going downstairs in a circular glass structure in the wide alley just to the North of the church.

Once you are downstairs you will be in a large atmospheric crypt with beautiful arched vaulted ceilings. The acoustics are great, even when it is full you can hear your party’s conversation without difficulty.

The floor is flagged with large stones and some very old gravestones. There are busts of famous ancient Londoners  dotted throughout, in hidden alcoves.

It serves very good food; soup made on the premises, nice hot dishes that change from day to day, lovely cakes and biscuits and it is licensed, if you fancy a glass of wine with your lunch.

There is a good choice for vegetarians too.

If you a looking for somewhere that is right in the centre of tourist London that, perhaps, most tourists might miss, then this is just the place.

A real hidden gem!

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The picture above is of the entrance, in case you miss it. It has Jazz evenings on Wednesdays. Oh and the church that it is beneath, St Martin-in-the-Fields, is not to shabby either!

Categories
Film Review

Locke (dir. Steven Knight) 2013

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This is basically a single-room, dialogue only film. Except that the room is a car being driven from the Birmingham to London, and there is only one person in the car.

Tom Hardy plays Ivan Locke, a man organising change on his phone after making a life altering decision.

The concept does not sound promising but Steven Knight shows off his immense skill as a scriptwriter here and Tom Hardy turns in a monumental and understated performance, making this a movie that will stay with you long after the titles roll.

This is not a film to get you in the mood to go out or even to see with a group of friends and pizza, because it is not a light easy watch.

If you are in an introspective mood and want to see a thought provoking film, this will repay your time many times over.

Great writing and a great performance. I really enjoyed this.

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Theatre review

Peter Pan Goes Wrong, Apollo Theatre 2016/7

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This production is just coming to the end of its Christmas 2016 run, but I am pretty certain that it will return next year, because although Captain Hook keeps asserting that this is not a pantomime, well……(all together now!) Oh! Yes it is!

This is not the show you should choose if you are looking for the full-on traditional British panto experience, but it does have some elements of the genre, along with some slapstick and a lot of physical comedy.

If you take note of the title, you will know, generally what to expect, everything that you can think of does go wrong, but I’ll bet that they manage to find a few extra disasters that never even occurred to you.

A version of this was performed for the BBC and shown on television over Christmas. This was quite entertaining but it is a play that comes across much better live.

The show is very funny and the characters are very likeable, even the villain. It is great for kids and adults alike, in fact it would be a fantastic first time theatre experience for a youngster, both memorable and enjoyable.

It is great that London finally has a Christmas show to come back to every year!

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Theatre review

“Art”, The Old Vic, London 2016/7

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I saw Art in 1996 when it first played the West End. Back then I loved it and gave it 5 stars. It is still a really good show, discussing interesting themes; aging, friendship and art. It has dated a little bit, some of the references are old fashioned, a couple of the arguments are a less convincing now, society is less in awe of money than it was then. Having said that, most of the lines are still funny and none of the questions it raises have been resolved.

This production is (if I remember correctly) almost identical to the one from the 1990s and might have benefited from a couple of small tweaks. The acting is good, Paul Ritter as Marc was wonderfully aggressive and argumentative, I was less convinced of Rufus Sewell’s love of his painting and Tim Key played it for laughs and was genuinely funny.

Overall, I enjoyed this production and will happily go to see it again in another 20 years!

Categories
Theatre review

Half a Sixpence, Noel Coward Theatre

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This is a revival of a 50 year old show. It has been done with so much love and a nice attention to detail.

There are new songs and a tidied up storyline but it still does not feel current and it doesn’t attempt to.

It looks and feels like an early 1960’s musical and that is its charm.

It has the early 60s obsession with class, it has the big boisterous dance numbers of the time and it has some great songs. There is an innocence and optimism about this show that one doesn’t find in contemporary musicals.

The whole cast are fantastic but Charlie Stemp is outstanding as Arthur Kipps. How he manages to maintain that energy throughout the whole show is remarkable.

Some of the songs have been moved around and there have been new ones added. “Pick Out a Simple Tune” is a particularly memorable new song. Moving “Flash, Bang, Wallop” to the close is a master stroke, finishing the show on a glorious high.

This is a great show with a wonderful finale and I will be amazed if it does not win a host of awards in the coming season.

Go see it while you have the chance – you will leave the theatre elated!

Categories
Restaurant review

The Forest on the Roof, Selfridges, London

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I have just been to the winter incarnation of the forest on the roof, on the top floor of Selfridges. The entrance is beautiful and Christmassy, with glitterballs and tree branches sprayed silver.

The food is good quality but overpriced (e.g. £14 for a hamburger and another £4 for the chips to go with it). The choice of beers was limited, although there was a good selection of wines.

It was packed on a Monday afternoon as I guess it will be up to Christmas and through the sale season afterwards. The tables are far too close together making it difficult for the customers and the waiters to pass through.

The restaurant is set under a long, narrow awning with a roll down transparent screen to protect you from the elements. It was a sunny day and the sun streamed through into diners’ eyes and the staff had no way of preventing this.  It was noticeably chilly as the sun went down. The main view is the roof of Primark across the street.

All in all, I would say the experience was less “Forest on the Roof” and more “Lunch in a lean-to”.

It is certainly not up to Selfridges normally high standards, I can only imagine that this is a venue more suited to the summer.

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Attractions Exhibition

The Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly, London

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The Royal Academy of Arts’ gallery is on Piccadilly, it is directly across the road from Fortnum & Mason.

The Academy was founded in 1768 by King George III. They have many varied exhibitions throughout the year. These include single artist exhibitions, for example, Hockney and Ai Wei Wei have been on so far this year. There are also themed shows containing many different artists. “Painting the Modern Garden” included works by Kandinsky, Monet and Matisse. Next years “Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932” will have Chagall, Rodchenko and Eisenstein among others.

The highlight of their year is the Summer Exhibition, on open submission exhibition, to showcase the talent of emerging and established artists. The first one was in 1769 and it has run every one of the 248 years since. This is a huge and wide ranging exhibition usually holding over 1000 pieces, of every shape, size and medium. Most of the works are for sale differing in price from a hundred pounds to hundreds of thousands.

The gallery is nominally free, but most of the exhibitions are charged, so choose what you wish to see.

The Summer Exhibition is good value, although I take off the voluntary donation and only buy one list of works for the whole party, the cost of these is automatically added unless you ask for them to be removed.

The Royal Academy is  self funded so do as your conscience sees fit!  Personally, I don’t feel too guilty as they charge 30% commission on any work sold.

Categories
Restaurant review

The Gallery, Fortnum & Mason, Piccadilly, London

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This restaurant is quite modest in terms of décor, with its unvarnished tables and plain wooden floor, which in Fortnum and Mason terms is definitely understated. I have seen this listed as a low cost restaurant, but I couldn’t say that I agree with that description.  I suspect that you could get away with £25 per person if you were to choose the absolute cheapest starter and main course, but you couldn’t have a dessert or wine and you could certainly not drink tea.  I noticed that tea was £8 and while I have no doubt that it is lovely tea and will come in a pretty teapot, it is hardly economical.

However, the restaurant is attractive with a view over Jermyn Street out through the window and a view over the sweet displays when you look in towards the shop. Everything is very high quality, as you would expect; pretty menu, nice napkins, good cutlery and crockery. The service is excellent.

The food is lovely too, the ingredients are top notch and each dish is beautifully prepared and presented. The beef was perfectly cooked and the gravy was rich and indulgent. So, although this is not somewhere to go if you are on a tight budget, it does serve a great lunch and I recommend it if you feel like a treat.

Categories
Exhibition

82 portraits and 1 still life, David Hockney, Royal Academy, 2016 London

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This exhibition is like a scientific experiment into the nature of portrait painting.

All the portraits are exactly the same size and shape. They are all full body portraits of a subject sitting in the same, yellow cushioned, wooden chair. They all have roughly the same, green and blue, background and each one was painted over the course of 3 days. They are all very recent – some only painted in February and March this year. There are 83 paintings crammed together in 3 small rooms, the walls painted in a matt magenta. A couple of people are pictured twice and one person three times over the course of the exhibition.

The individual portraits themselves are very good; Hockney is a fine portrait artist, but this is a single piece of work and it is seeing the whole exhibition as a unit that transforms this into an exceptional show. The uniformity of the portraits in terms of size, colour, and time, makes one notice the differences between them; the pose, the clothes, the gaze.

I don’t think of it as 83 individual pictures, I see it as one portrait of 83 individual sittings.

This is David Hockney at his best; confident, relaxed, colourful, witty and experimental.

I left very happy.

Categories
Attractions

The Hive, Kew Gardens, London, 2016

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The Hive is a work of art that has come to Kew Gardens for a visit form Milan. It is an interactive piece and it is unique in that it allows the visitor to interact with bees. These bees are in a hive somewhere else in the gardens and their activity alters the look and sound of the installation.

It is an impressive structure from the distance. As you approach, it looks a little like a huge rectangular swarm of bees hovering over the park. When you get closer, you can see and hear its vibrancy and as you walk inside, it hums, throbs and gently changes colour with 1000 LED lights flickering. The work also contains an area where you can put a lollipop like stick into your mouth in order to mimic the method of communication of bees.

The Hive is both informative and interesting. It is also strangely relaxing in the way it filters the light as you sit inside sheltering form the sun on a warm London day. I would recommend not to rush through the artwork, it repays time spent there. The summer wildflower meadow on the walk up is beautiful too.