Notting Hill Diary

Sixteen

Last year I wrote about and was lucky enough to attend “The Garden”, a play whose stage was a corner of Little Wormwood Scrubbs. Wifey and I enjoyed it very much and I’m only too happy to bring to your attention SPID’s current production, “Sixteen”.

Now in its 10th year, SPID (Specially Produced, Innovatively Directed) specialise in choosing unusual stage settings to engage people with neglected environments and this one takes place at Kensal House Estate in Ladbroke Grove.¹.

From the press release: “It’s sixteen years since October was born into a squat. Now that everything’s legal, she’s desperate to celebrate. But the locals are suspicious of her bruises; is this a party or a cover up?

“Sixteen, as with all of SPID’s productions is written by the company’s’ Artistic Director, Helena Thompson. She has also collaborated with Shunt and Rotozaza and wrote the play whilst on the National Theatre’s writer’s attachment scheme.”.

Unfortunately I’ve been too busy this year with band related activities to get to see the show and I apologise heartily to SPID for being so slow off the mark in writing about it too. Here, nonetheless, are the details:

LISTINGS INFORMATION

For further press information and images call Martin Shippen on 020 8968 1943 / 07956 879165 or e-mail m.shippen@virgin.net

¹That’s of particular interest to me, because I believe I’m right in saying that it was from that estate that bottles rained down on us at the end of last year’s Carnival.

From L to R, Vanessa Walters, Dawn Walton and Clint Dyer, respectively the writer, director and actor playing Michael

“Who?” asked my wife
I was quite shocked, but then she is a) younger than me and b) not from these parts, so I suppose it’s excusable.

A new play, “Michael X”, is being stage over a period of 6, non non-contiguous, evenings at the legendary Tabernacle Centred (which deserves an article in its own right) on Powis Square, London W11 2AY.

Mr X, real name Michael de Freitas, was, to say the least, a complex character. On the one hand he was a leading black power activist of the late 50s and 60s, on the other, he teamed up with notorious slum landlord Peter Rachman to act as a rent collector. That’s to say nothing of his associations with such luminaries as John Lennon, Yehudi Menuhin’s sister and, of course, Malcolm X (I’ve seen one theory that Malcolm “accidentally” gave Michael his new surname in a slip of the tongue, but I haven’t seen that confirmed anywhere else).

Michael met his grizzly end when he was hanged for murder back in his native Trinidad.

The play, written by Vanessa Walters as a result of a year-long project called Between the Lines in association with The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, will be performed on November 6, 10, 13, 17, 24 and 27 from 7:30pm to 8:30pm. Tickets are £5 (plus 50p booking fee if online). To book in advance please call the box office on 0871 2715151 or online at www.carnivalvillage.org.uk. Booking information 020 7361 3204 or email arts@rbkc.gov.uk.

OK I’ll cut to the chase. We really enjoyed it.

There’s something about a play being performed al fresco in a major city. In London in particular there’s no such thing as silence, so any out door performance either has to contend with background sound, accept it as part of the experience or ignore it altogether. In the case of The Garden, the sounds of trains running past, people in the park behind us and the more distant hum of Scrubs Lane combined to form a sort of background music that gave the impression that the dialogue had been written around the location, which, for all I know, it had.

Not that those sounds were referred to in the play, far from it. In this post-apocalyptic world, the two main characters, Josh and Laura, have secured themselves within a walled garden designed and formerly tended to by Laura’s father, now lying dead in a makeshift grave at one end. The world outside the garden (and they really have built makeshift walls around it out of old fencing, pallets, road signs and pieces of cardboard) is one of desolation, inhabited by the odd gang of desperate youths reduced to living and behaving like animals.

The couple seem to be just coming to terms with their situation when the arrival of the Tempter changes the dynamic of their relationship between each other and to their situation.

I regret that it took me till last night to see it. This evening is their final performance an I urge you to take a look.

Little Wormwood Scrubs, Sunday August 31 2008, 8pm
Find Number One Café (1 Dalgarno Gardens W10) and walk a minute or so towards the lights across Little Wormwood Scrubs.

  

No really, that’s what Little Wormwood Scrubs always looks like!

A play, al fresco
I’m all up for using the environment around you as you find it for creative purpose and who doesn’t love a bit of open air theatre on a late summer’s evening? Ryan Saunders, Nicola Stuart and Samuel Collings perform what sounds like, from the description, a retelling of the Adam and Eve story sometime in the future.

Little Wormwood Scrubs
The setting for this post apocalyptic tale, is appropriately enough, that sad, forgotten outpost of either eastern Wormwood Scrubs or western Notting Hill, depending on your perspective. When I first mentioned this to Wifey, she asked if the play involved foul mouthed kids doing wheelies on suspiciously small bikes while threatening passers by, in other words, an average summer’s evening on Little Wormwood Scrubs.

Well I won’t prejudge the performance any further, I’ll wait till I’ve seen it. After all it is free and, unlike an appalling performance wifey and I once caught at the Bush Theatre (the high point was one of the actors pissing into a cat litter tray), it shouldn’t be to hard to escape if the going gets rough.

Hopefully it won’t come to that - we wish them the best of luck.

Thursday to Sunday until August 31, 8pm, free.
Tel: 020 8237 1111
http://www.riversidestudios.co.uk
Tube: Ladbroke Grove then 7, 70 or 316