V&A's "Architects as Artists" reminds us of the glories of free museums

There was troubling news on the museum scene this week.  The BBC reported that while overall visitor numbers to London's free museums had gone up, foreigners account for more of that growth than the natives who pay the taxes to keep the doors open.

The numbers were particularly bad for the Tate and the National Gallery, which have seen British attendance drop by 20% since 2008/09.  The British Museum, Natural History Museum and the V&A can celebrate growth in both domestic and foreign visitors.  Commentators opined that it's probably because those three have bent over backwards to be family friendly, and have spent plenty of marketing money establishing themselves as great places for a family day out.

You couldn't have seen a better illustration of this than the South Kensington tube station at 11am last Friday.  It was half term holiday, and half the Southeast seemed to be heading for the Natural History Museum and the V&A.  The mass of humanity pressing towards the exit turnstiles, 30 people deep and packed solid from one side of the station to the other, was a claustrophobe's worst nightmare.  It made morning rush hour on the Waterloo and City line look like a blissful day out; suited city commuters don't whack your shins with errant baby strollers, and the irritating buzzing of a few too-loud headphones has nothing on the din of hundreds of shrill children in the echo chamber of a tube station ticket hall.  Once clear of the crush, however, I had to smile.  There's nothing like seeing children heading for museums to give you faith in the future.

There were no kids where I was heading, however: a thoughtful, serious and intriguing little exhibition on Architects as Artists.

The V&A often feels like two museums.  There's the ground floor and the British galleries, heaving with visitors … and everywhere else.  Generally, the higher you climb, the fewer people you encounter and the more likely you are to stumble into galleries you never knew existed.  The architecture gallery is one such, up on the fourth floor of the front building.  The main room is filled with a collection of fascinating architectural models that will make you feel like Gulliver stomping about an eclectic, globally-inspired Lilliput.  Architectural drawings, material samples, photos and well-written, informative explanations round out the experience.

There's a long, thin gallery off to the side for temporary exhibits; this is where you'll find Architects as Artists for the next year.

Is an architect an artist?  Or a professional delivering a technical service?  It's a more complicated argument than you'd think, and it's been going on almost as long as there have been named purveyors of the craft.  If a professional, they can charge more and be taken more seriously.  If an artist, however, their work gains a gravitas and is less likely to be meddled with in the future.  (Think of all the glorious buildings that might not have met the wrecking ball had people seen them as "art" rather than derelict homes or offices.)  This exhibit combines archived materials not usually on display with others from the Royal Institute of British Architects to confidently assert the artistic argument.

I was lucky enough to have a wander around with the curator, Roisin Inglesby, so got a bit of extra
insight into the show.  It's a long, narrow gallery with no room for architectural models, so she was mostly limited to works on paper, with one video.  They tell a compelling story well worth a wander.

She breaks up the space into themed chunks, where you can examine various aspects of art.  There are expected plans and drawings, where some architects clearly excelled at draughtsmanship more than others.  A sketch by Raphael studying the workings of the Pantheon is a little gem.  A detailed elevation of one of Edward William Godwin's artists' cottages is a beauty you'd want to hang on your wall.  And if I were a billionaire I'd rather buy something like the Pugin sketchbook on display here (pictured top) than an Impressionist painting.  Further along are architect's presentation drawings, where prospective buildings are imagined and populated to give potential buyers a sense of what they'd be getting.  Both these categories are very obviously by-products of an architect's trade.

I enjoyed the exhibit most, however, when it left the purely professional realm.  In the "pure art" section, there's a luscious watercolour of Egyptian ruins that drops you into the heat and colour, a fabulous comic-book style recording of a European tour by an architectural student in the 1960s too poor to afford a camera, and an intriguing work of punched, layered paper by a German architect making a statement about the Berlin wall (above).

Most magnificent to my eye, however, were the flights of pure imagination.  Never meant to be built, these architectural dreams freed the creators from the reality of clients, budgets and physics.  There's a "capriccio" (basically a mash-up of a variety of buildings, never meant to be together) by Robert Adam that seems a radical departure from his bright, clean neo-classical style.  Yet the moody, Gothic castle on a promontory will strike a familiar chord with anyone who's seen his Culzean Castle near Glasgow. Even more fantastic is a video animation of Piranesi's imagined prisons which magically swoops you in, out and around these iconic fantasy-scapes.  These drawings have obviously influenced everything from Lord of the Rings set design to Hogwarts' swinging staircases.  You can check it out for yourself here.

Like the rest of the museum, this little exhibit is free.  Take note, Brits.  This, and all the other treasure houses that are London's public museums, are yours for the wandering as a taxpayer.  There are few other places in the world where museums are free.  There's no other city where you can see such staggering variety, of such global and historic significance, without opening your wallet.  Come on, Brits!  Appreciate what you have.  You can start with a wonder through this fascinating little show.

Wanamaker Playhouse and L'Ormindo are a match made in heaven

What if you had the opportunity to nip back in time to see a Baroque opera in the year it was performed?  A sensuous, candlelit evening of fine music, rich costumes and virtuoso singing, performed in an exquisite gem of a 17th century-playhouse so new its wood was still seasoning?  You could laugh, cry, be close enough to the performers to share a wink, and still make it home to your 21st century bed before midnight.

Sound too good to be true?  Time travel is reality at the newly-opened Sam Wanamaker playhouse within the Globe Theatre complex, where they're currently working with the Royal Opera House to stage L'Ormindo.  This is one of the most magical, completely joyful cultural experiences I've had in a long time.

Just as the Globe strives to give us an exact reproduction of the open-roofed, circular venues of Shakespeare's day, the Wanamaker takes us forward a few decades to the intimate, jewel-box theatres of the high Jacobean age.  The Globe's fantastic, but you can never completely maintain the illusion of time travel.  It's too big, so the modern audience is always in your line of sight.  And the open roof looks onto a light-polluted sky crossed by planes on their Heathrow approach.

The Wanamaker is tiny, with just 340 seats spread around two levels of horseshoe gallery and a small pit.  The stage and its players fill your vision.  They're picked out by the beguiling golden glow of the six chandeliers filled with beeswax tapers, and more candles in wall sconces and on the stage.  There are no electric lights.  I don't know how they managed it with Health and Safety, but there aren't even any obnoxious neon exit signs to break the mood.  There's a strict ban on any kind of camera or phone coming out of your pocket. The illusion is complete, and lushly magnificent.

Seeing anything in this space would be a treat.  Seeing an early opera, written to be performed in a space exactly like this, and staged in rich historic costumes glittering under the candles, was a complete delight.

I'll admit, I approached this with a bit of trepidation.  We'd seen our first baroque opera, Handel's Rinaldo, last summer at Longborough, and loved it so much we wanted to try another.  I'd never heard of the opera or its composer, Francesco Cavalli … but why not take a punt?  It was only after I booked the tickets that I read that the opera had debuted in 1644, had a single run in Venice, then hadn't been revived until 1967.  Oh, dear.  How good can something be that was immediately dropped, and forgotten for 300 years?

I need not have worried.  The highly-entertaining if lightweight plot sees two heroes fighting to gain the
love of a young and nubile queen in an unsatisfying marriage to her very old king.  The setting is a mythical North Africa, allowing for dramatic Moorish costumes.  (And creative.  One, which is designed with upward extensions to provide the illusion that the standing queen is actually in bed, is magnificent.)  There's ribald humour, a bit of sorcery, adventure, trickery, unlikely plot twists, and everyone ends up happy.  It's a merry romp, in other words, and the cast clearly enjoy themselves throughout, able to work brilliantly off an audience that's so close it's practically part of the action.

The music isn't particularly memorable, and there are no big hit arias, but it's perfectly pleasant and gave the performers a chance to show off some vocal pyrotechnics.  While I didn't walk away humming anything in particular from this show, I ended up with the duet from Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea in my head for the next day.  The music is similar in style and, in fact, the two operas were written within a year of each other.

I can't imagine L'Ormindo carrying a big opera house, but it was perfect for a setting like this.  The production team used the space to maximum effect.  The chamber orchestra provides music from the balcony above the stage.  Prologues for each act are provided by "spirits" lowered from the ceiling to hover in mid-air, just like in those grand 17th-century court masques.  The cast uses the whole auditorium, entering from side doors, walking through the aisles, hanging off balconies, interacting with audience members.  This works particularly well when they're playing it for laughs, which this opera affords aplenty.

The biggest effect, of course, is the candlelight.  It's as much of a cast member as any of the singers, with chandeliers being raised and lowered to create different moods, and more candelabra being moved on and off stage as part of the action.  One of the best scenes, both dramatically and musically, is a duet between lovers who believe their end is coming, with black-clad spirits extinguishing the candles one by one as their energy and hope drains.  Of course, the stage is blazing with renewed light by the end, as three sets of lovers prepare to live happily ever after.

You won't be able to see this production, sadly, as its run is sold out.  With so few seats, I figure pretty much everything in The Wanamaker will be.  So if this sounds good to you, make an effort to see what's on, when, and get tickets as soon as they come on sale.  This has to be one of the most magical and unique experiences you can have in London right now.

The beauty queen proves it: Expectations are best when they're frequently challenged

Pay too much attention to the news media these days, and you can't help but despair for the fate of Western Civilisation in the hands of the next generation.  Youth, we're led to believe, are feckless sofa dwellers, unable to communicate beyond social media unless they're drinking themselves into a stupor.  They're probably on benefits, or, if employed, too lazy to contribute much.

Happily, that conventional wisdom gets challenged every time friends' children send me thank you notes, I meet candidates for my university or I work with any of the bright young things that enter my company through its graduate scheme.  And there's another example right out my back door.

Nicola Ascroft runs her own business in the community centre at the heart of our housing estate.  Her one-room spa was one of the most pleasant discoveries about life here.  She does all of the massages, facials, manicures and pedicures you'd expect from a "proper" spa, but for much less than the established players in their big complexes charge.  She's built a following of regulars and pursues more through monthly specials and flyers she distributes around the area herself.  And rather than taking it easy in her unbooked time, she holds down a second job at a hair salon.  So much for expectations of feckless youth.

Nicola counters another expectation.  She's a beauty queen, in the running for Miss Hampshire.  If I ever paused to think about beauty contests I doubt my impressions were positive; but then I'd never had any exposure beyond lampooning films and the odd glimpse of girls parading in bathing suits on TV.  Miss Hampshire, as I've learned from Nicola, is about far more than good looks.  It's a hunt for a young woman who will be a role model and PR representative for the county, and nabbing the prize requires effort on a variety of fronts worthy of a stint on The Apprentice.

She must demonstrate her green credentials and her creativity by designing a dress entirely of recycled materials.  There's a PR component, in which she competes against her opponents to get the most media coverage.  On the popularity front, she needs to deploy social media skills to get as many people as possible to like her photo.  Singing a simple song won't do for the skills contest: Nicola brushed up her childhood figure skating to deliver a full, choreographed programme.  Finally, contestants compete on the charity front to see who can raise the most for the contest's official charity, Beauty with a Purpose.  And, of course, they need to look good, too.  All while working full time.  Clearly, the beautiful but lazy need not apply.

Nicola's charity efforts bring us to challenged expectation No. 3.  I've had major events as part of my remit at work for more than a decade, run galas costing a fortune and had some brilliantly talented events people work for me.  But if I told any of them to dream up an event with NO BUDGET, get people there and raise money on top … while working full time on other projects … I suspect they'd say it couldn't be done.  Nicola just started knocking on doors.

Her Valentines' night formal event in our community centre featured a DJ and performances by two singers, plus a lively exhibition from a local dance troop.  Guests could graze a cold buffet before moving on to a cupcake tower, buy drinks from a cash bar or make a little madness with the costumes in the photo booth. She even pulled in decorations and lighting to set the mood.  All of this was donated by people Nicola approached with determination and cheerful cajoling.  On top of that, she pulled together a raffle with about 20 different prizes, including bottles of wine and champagne, Jo Malone candles, salsa lessons and season passes to Wellington Country Park.  Again, all prizes were donated, meaning the raffle tickets she organised her personal network to sell brought in pure profit.  She was pushing towards £1,500 as we left the party (happily carrying two raffle prizes of the alcoholic kind).

So let's review the expectations that Nicola's tumbled.  English youth are actually determined and energetic types with entrepreneurial flair.  Modern beauty queens are intelligent, determined young women with broad marketing skills.  And it's possible to whip up a good event with no budget, and make money out of it, if you're creative and unafraid to ask for help.  That's a very pleasant trio of lessons learned.

Nicola's spa, D&D beauty, is located in the Sherfield Park Community Centre.  If you want to get in touch with her or book treatments, check out her website.

Putney's Al Forno impresses with atmosphere, but the food's just average

My nephew's idea of birthday bliss is a giant calzone.

I'll be honest, I hadn't thought much about this rather niche Italian speciality since leaving university.  There, the half-circle shaped, stuffed pizza pockets were an honoured riff on the theme of Chicago-style pizza, and … when served piping hot from the back of catering trucks near midnight … essential fuel for academic all-nighters.  Though supposedly invented in Naples, I can't remember them there, and haven't encountered them in any memorable way either in Italy itself, or in Italian restaurants in the UK.

Yet here they were in Putney, a menu cornerstone at a long-running, much-beloved local pizzeria called Al Forno.  And there, whenever he can entice the family, is where nephew Charlie celebrates anything significant.  Specifically so he can dig into one of those enormous calzone.

It is, without doubt, a fabulous place to celebrate.  The calzone's not the only thing that reminds me of Chicago.  This is one of those cozy interiors done with wood, brick and amateur art, with murals in brick "windows" and market umbrellas hanging from the ceiling in an attempt to create the mood of an Italian piazza.  The wood-fired pizza oven is the star in this cluttered feast for the eyes.  I can't swear that there were red-and-white-checked tablecloths … though it seemed like there were … and I didn't spot any waxdrip-covered chianti bottles used as candle holders, but you get the idea. When Billy Joel sings Scenes from an Italian Restaurant, he's setting his tale in a place like this.

Local reputation packs the crowds in.  On the Saturday night we dined there, every table was full and there was only enough space between them for waitresses and waiters to squeeze through with the food.  The atmosphere is jovial, the soundtrack a merry cacophony and people obviously come to party.  Waiters grab diners to dance in the aisles.  Six different celebrants were treated to the birthday song while we were there, delivered by the staff accompanying themselves on comically-played horns, guitars and tambourines.  (And this didn't include my nephew, who was in-birthday-cognito so he could eat his calzone in peace.)

The food doesn't quite live up to the festivity.  Charlie proclaimed his calzone as magnificent as ever, but to my eyes it lacked the depth of stuffing that makes the Chicago version so memorable.  My thin-crust pizza was excellent, but I can't honestly say it was any better than I've had at Pizza Express.  A combination of starters that sounded appealing was in reality a platter of deep-fried balls, almost indistinguishable in flavour and without any dipping sauces to moisten the carb concentration.  Perfectly pleasant to nibble on, but certainly not memorable.  The balance on the arancini amongst them was all wrong, with far too much fried breading and not nearly enough rice.  (Yes, I admit I'm picky; this is one of my specialities in my own kitchen.)

The pastas and main courses heading to others at the table looked unexceptional, and my husband confirmed that both his starter and main were fine, but average.  The worst crime in my book, however, was billing themselves as a Sicilian restaurant and not having cannoli on the dessert menu.  Exacerbated by a waitress who didn't understand what I was asking for.  I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt, and assume she couldn't hear me properly in the din.

That said, I can see why Al Forno thrives as a local.  If we had something similar nearby, I'd happily patronise it.  Decent pizza, generous portions of pasta, good variety on the menu and a fabulous atmosphere.  Reasonably priced.  Most importantly, not a chain, with an owner who's active in the day-to-day operations.  It's the kind of local Italian place common to most American cities, but rare here in the UK.    So while I wouldn't go out of my way for it, I'd have no problem returning if in the area.  Further menu exploration … and dining outside of the Saturday night madness … might yield better food.