London 12-14 Nov 2010

ultra-cool: Daniel Radcliffe did The Elements a capella on the Graham Norton show on Fri night.

At the NPG on Sat: Thomas Lawrence portature exhibition - very good & and well-put-together exhib; Photo Portrait Prize - the one of Tony Blair showed him as aged and care-worn; Royal Society 350th anniversary; the Lady Chatterley trial.

At the Coward Theatre I saw the thriller Deathtrap (review and trailer). This is in Sleuth and Dial M for Murder territory. The cast are excellent and the play has many layers & twists, reaching a satisfying conclusion.

On Sunday I went for my first walk across Regents Park, carrying on across the canal and road to Primrose Hill. It was odd being in a place for the first time yet with it being utterly familiar, as this has been in so many films/TV.

Down the Hill to Regents Park Road - a high street of small shops (no high street multiples), with cafes and delis predominating.

On the corner of Regents Park Road and Sharpleshall Street, behind the library, is the pop-up Museum of Everything in its current instance. I'd missed the first two so was determined to see this one. Exhibition #3 is curated by Peter Blake: a fascinating series of rooms which could be characterised as the byways of popular culture: (review)

• pics of Victorian freaks
• dolls & puppets
• Ted Willcox embroideries - witty satires on contemporary life (same territory as Grayson Perry's Walthamstow tapestry)
• Peter B's collection of Hornby trains and circus posters.
• Walter Potter's extraordinary collection of stuffed animals, making tableaus of the 'improving' Victorian kind, saved from The Potter Museum of Curiosity (Art Gallery: The Museum of Everything - The Arts Desk)
• Arthur Windley's miniature fairground - a room full of hand-built classic toys, built up over 40 years - a delight (BBC news)

After a short walk to Chalk Farm Tube and the Northern Line to Bank, I went to the City of London's just-opened first shopping mall, One New Change. The roof viewing gallery is supposed to be open to midnight every day but wasn't actually accessible. There were just 2 useful shops (Foyles, M&S Simply Food), all the rest are the usual fashion victim stuff.

Lady Benda

I saw this in the paper on 25-sep and I wondered... Lady Milverton... if there was a link to Britt's grandmother-in-law, who I met just once, at Britt's wedding 15 years ago. The family always spoke of her as "Lady Bender" (which puzzled me - an unlikely aristo name) - now I know it was "Lady Benda". Then I read Daisy's blog which led via Google to a fascinating group of articles:

• Age Concern saves the day
• Britain's longest-serving Poppy Appeal collector Lady Milverton dies aged 105
• Noelle Benda Whitehead
• A LESSON IN HOW TO LIVE YOUR LIFE TO THE FULL
• Britain's oldest Poppy collector, Lady Milverton, dies in Devon aged 105

G&S thoughts

The Sky Arts Gilbert & Sullivan season is winding down now.

I just saw a treat within it: a Thames TV filming of Jonathan Miller's ENO production of The Mikado from 1987 and featured Eric Idle as Ko-Ko and Lesley Garrett as Yum-Yum.

The setting was relocated to an English art deco seaside hotel of the 1920s, with the chorus featuring as customers, maids and bellhops.

The superb costumes were by Sue Blane (sh also did The Rocky Horror Show). The Mikado himself is in a fat suit seemingly inspired by Peter Ustinov as Poirot or Mr. Creosote.

I saw the ENO revival around 2001, which seemed delightfully fresh. There are too many people who are overly-protective about the G&S canon and opposed to doing what G&S would have done to keep bringing in new audiences.

Simon Butteris's excellent documentary series features contributions from his friend from Cambridge G&S Soc. days, Nick Hytner, who said that G&S's time has come again. That made me think that he'll now plan for a revival at the National Theatre sometime in the next couple of years. He has been putting on revivals of classic musicals and G&S are the origin of the modern stage & screen musicals, so it's a natural step.

There's a clear antagonism between a group of purists, seemingly aligned with the defunct D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, and people who want to bring G&S to modern audiences. For instance at one of Raymond Gubbay's Christmas concerts at the Barbican, fearuring ex-DOC personnel, some of them made carping comments, clapped by some of the audience, about more recent revival attempts, seemingly based on a lack of 'purity'.

In 2002 I saw the New D'oyly Carte Opera Company's production of The Mikado at the Savoy, featuring Brian Blessed as a wondrously OTT Mikado. Sue Blane's costumes for the film Topsy Turvy were used in this production.