Chawton in Stitches will beguile anyone with an eye for beauty, embroidery interest not required

A lot of places in England have Jane Austen associations, but only one has a world-leading library dedicated to early women’s writing. It’s what prompted me to volunteer at Chawton House. The fact that Jane frequented this place owned by her brother is a bonus, and the main thing that brings tourists. It’s the way the library team resurrects the life stories of fascinating women forgotten by history, however, that gives me thrills of discovery each time I walk through Chawton’s venerable Tudor doorway.

There are two gallery rooms upstairs set aside for rotating exhibitions. These generally draw from the rich source material of the 11,000 volume library. Shows introduce visitors to new topics and new heroines. The current exhibition, Chawton in Stitches, delivers once again … with a major exception.

This time, one of the heroines is alive.

And despite the fact that she’s just starting on her life’s journey, she’s impressed me just as much as her spiritual sisters from the library, revealing worlds to me that I knew nothing about. Emily Barnett’s world is that of needlework. Given that I can hardly re-attach a button, this is completely alien territory for me and one that I didn’t expect to find so interesting. I was astounded at both how fascinating and beautiful this small show was.

The centrepiece is Emily’s artwork The Chawton House Project, a magnificent embroidered triptych that embodies three different places around the house in a fascinating mix of materials and techniques. I went to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition* last week, where there’s a fair amount of embroidery work, and I didn’t see anything to match the visual impact and sheer beauty of the artwork on display at Chawton.

This was Emily’s degree project to graduate from the prestigious Royal School of Needlework, inspired by years she spent working at Chawton while a student. The first panel evokes the Library Terrace with cascades of wisteria atop the embroidered names of female writers to be found inside. The centre panel gives us the rose garden, stitched with passages from the herbal of Elizabeth Blackwell. (That book also inspired the herb garden in the walled garden above the house.) The right panel brings the orchard to life, bursting with both ripe apples and apple blossom, and underpinned with snippets from the Knight family cookbook. Far more than thread, the creative work here includes linen, leather, raffia, parchment paper and gold. You’re looking at 15,000 hours of work executed over seven months, a total that will be no surprise once you see the finished product.

Displays in the room talk us through Emily’s creative process and explain, once she decided what she was doing, how she turned ideas to reality. I was astonished to learn that the roses began as stitched copies of Jane Austen’s letters, cut into petals and assembled into unique literary flowers.

It wouldn’t be a Chawton House exhibition, however, without mining the magnificent library for more than just artistic inspiration. The first room of the show is an exploration of the history of needlework and women’s interaction with it, from the practical to the intellectual. 

We get introduced to different techniques … many illustrated with helpful panels contributed by Emily … and get a look at early pattern and instruction books. We see examples of work from historic women, including an interesting sampler by a 10-year-old girl that would probably challenge most adults today. There’s also the reproduction … along with her painted portrait … of one of Mary Knowles’ extraordinary needlework portraits. She was a favourite of Queen Charlotte and well known by the Georgian court but, like so many of the women in Chawton’s library, is generally forgotten by history. (If Shonda Rhimes wants to make a stand for minority interests in Bridgerton that also has historical credibility, she should have Knowles turn up to stitch one of the family member’s portraits.)

Books from Chawton’s collection also reveal that the debate over whether needlework is demeaning or empowering has a long history. A book written by Darwin’s grandfather lays out a generally reasonable argument about character building and being productive. A rare first edition of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Man delivers a feminist broadside, rejecting the whole practice as a way to confirm women as ornamental. Elsewhere, there’s even a nod to modern trends in feminist embroidery. I was most intrigued by passages illustrating how our ancestresses used their needlework as a barrier to hold unwanted attentions off, something any reader of Jane Austen will find familiar. Human nature doesn’t change; today we stay enraptured by our mobile phone screens to do much the same thing. 

Wherever you stand on the political debate, you can’t fail to be impressed and inspired by the talent of women past and present who turned needle, thread and other materials into art. Chawton in Stitches runs until 27 August and is included in the standard admission price to tour the house. Find more information here.

The Summer Exhibition was curiously flat this year. A group of us attend annually, usually assigning ourselves an imaginary amount of money to go shopping through the galleries. Traditionally, there’s a lot of shock and horror over ridiculous prices and hideously ugly or emotionally disturbing stuff you can’t imagine putting in your house. But there’s also usually a generous handful of really beautiful works you’d happily purchase if you had both a fortune and a mansion with a lot of empty walls to furnish.

This year was decidedly average, missing both the shock-horror extremes (I almost found myself wishing for reprise of a past year’s stuffed, dead cat) and the objects of deep desire. We wondered if the RA had actually issued guidance to bring the prices down, as there were far fewer ridicule-worthy price tags this year. It was actually a challenge to spend our fantasy league £50,000, though I made a big dent in my total opting for a sculpture of a dog smoking a pipe. (I told you, it was an uninspiring year.) The most desireable stuff we saw was actually priced in the £1,000 to £2,000 range and … unsurprisingly … most already featured red “sold” stickers.

Looks like the cost of living crisis is hitting rich art buyers, too.

Opera's most daunting experience is actually like binge watching Netflix with your mates

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away … or about 30 years ago, before the advent of streaming and social media … television provided an enormous amount of social cohesion. Yes, there were recorders to capture and play back shows if you weren’t home, but in general when something big was going on, everyone gathered in their living rooms to watch it live. Who shot JR? How many gold medals would Nadia Comăneci earn? How would all of our friends in that MASH unit in South Korea get home?

Everyone gathered around their televisions at the same time to get the answers. And then, because the majority were doing the same thing at the same time, everyone would be talking about it the next day at work or school. Building community. Today, the media we consume tends to divide us. Back then, it brought us together.

I start here because that community-building world of shared experience is the best metaphor I can come up with to describe what it’s actually like to watch a Ring Cycle. 

We are just back from a week in the Cotswolds consuming Wagner’s epic Der Ring des Nibelungen. I will leave it to the professionals to review the actual performances. (The production is earning universal adulation, especially for Paul Carey Jones’ Wotan and Lee Bisset’s Brünnhilde, pictured right.) I thought it would be more useful to write about what it’s actually like to attend opera’s most famous marathon. 

It’s a lot easier, less stuffy, and far closer to other forms of popular entertainment than you might imagine.

Wagner suffers from an undeservedly negative reputation. If most people know him at all, it’s for parodies of shrieking, fat sopranos, an unfortunate stint as the Nazis’ favourite composer, or for one of The Ring's tune’s repeated deployments as a soundtrack to brutal combat. (The Ride of the Valkyries, set within its original context, is so much more interesting than those derivative uses.) What those who listen to him for any length of time realise is that he’s a composer of immense emotion, beauty and action.

If you enjoy the sweeping, romantic film scores of John Williams, Hans Zimmer or Ennio Morricone, you already like Wagner. Because he’s the guy who pretty much invented what they do, telling stories through the music and giving particular characters themes … he called them leitmotifs … that are a musical shout out to “look at me” when a particular character is doing something important.

If you’re the kind of person who likes grand, multi-generational sagas and has found yourself binge-watching Succession, the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, the Harry Potter films or Game of Thrones, you already like Wagner. In the hands of a great director (and Amy Lane, who’s been working on this for nine years of her life, is certainly that) The Ring is a binge-watchable epic that explores greed, love, ambition and tricky relationships within dysfunctional families. This is the stuff that keeps the streamers in business. The Ring just does it to music.

Yes, there are some issues with the plot. Avid haters of the fantasy genre may dislike the numbers of magical creatures and Norse gods on stage. There’s a small but important bit of incest that makes everyone uncomfortable. Most female viewers are frustrated by how one of drama’s greatest heroines can fall head over heels for a thick, self-obsessed lug of a hero and completely loose her mojo for a couple of acts. Thankfully, she rediscovers herself and drives the plot to a thrilling conclusion. She’s so central to the plot arc, in fact, the cycle could have been called The Brünnhilde rather than The Ring. Those plot issues fade to minor irritations, however, within the opulent big picture. 

So what does it mean to do a whole Ring Cycle? 

You’re committing to four operas, stretching across about 15 hours of performance time, in one week. The first one, Das Rheingold, is just under two hours and is generally performed without an intermission. The rest … Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung … run between three and four hours each and usually have two intermissions. Performances are generally held every other day to give both the audience, and most importantly the singers, some time to rest. Delivering Wagner’s demanding, powerful scores is hard work, and a specialism restricted to a subset of opera singers. 

It would be possible to work through the week, taking some afternoons off for early starts of the weekday performances. But that's something you're probably more likely to do if it's being performed in a city where you live and work. Because Longborough is in the rural idyl of the Cotswolds, 90 minutes from home, we decided to take the week off and enjoy the delights of the area outside of the performances.  

The multiple intermissions increase the similarity to binge watching a compelling series. You’re taking breaks at logical places before rolling the next episode. It’s with these frequent intermissions that country house opera really comes into its own. Gates open 90 minutes before the show kicks off, giving you time to establish your picnic set up, pop a bottle of bubbly and have some nibbles. At Longborough, performances tend to start mid-afternoon so you’re kicking off just after lunch. If you’re on holiday all week in the Cotswolds, as we were, you’ve probably slept in and had a late breakfast, meaning the operatic progression of dining breaks will fill in for both lunch and dinner. 

A half-hour break between parts one and two gives you time to finish that fizz and have your starter. The main dining interval is between parts two and three, which generally starts between 6 pm and 7 pm, and runs for 90 minutes. This gives you time for a leisurely main course and dessert, plus the opportunity to use the loos and stretch your legs with a stroll around the gardens. Performances tend to end just just after 9pm, when the Cotswolds hills are bathed with golden twilight. You can hang around the grounds for a nightcap, but with such a small audience traffic moves quickly and we were back in Stow by 9:30. In time to catch the magnificent sunset on the longest day of the year.

Four performances gives you a chance to mix up those picnics. We started with a German-themed spread of sausages, cheese, and dark, seeded bread to honour the national origins of the story and composer. Other nights featured roast chicken and a particularly delicious roasted-then-chilled salmon with an Asian glaze. In past years I’ve cooked up al fresco delicacies for opera picnics, but having to assemble four of them in a week skews you towards the store-bought. Luckily, Stow is home to D’Ambrosi, an upscale deli and caterer who will assemble a basket of delights for you with no effort beyond waving your card in front of their reader. There are two restaurant options on site if you don’t want to do your own thing, but you have to book them when you buy your tickets as space is very limited. 

These dining breaks transform the overall experience. Fifteen hours of continuous opera does indeed sound like a marathon to be endured rather than enjoyed. Spreading that over a week, when you’re never in the opera for longer than the run of a typical film, and intersperse it with an equivalent amount of time swanning about country house grounds in formal wear eating and drinking nice things, and you have a very different thing. 

Four performances also gives you a chance to mix up your operatic outfits. Longborough is not as formal as Glyndebourne, the grandfather of all country house opera, and its web site emphasises coming in something that is celebratory and comfortable for you. For at least 60 percent of the crowd that’s still dinner jackets (tuxedos) for the men and the equivalent for the women. But we saw lots of variety. A subset of men went for magnificently patterned jackets from luxurious … often oriental … materials that brought a touch of Oscar Wilde to proceedings. (Wagner and Wilde were contemporaries, so that's rather appropriate.) 

Some alternated velvet smoking jackets with traditional black DJs. Long, embroidered or dyed silk jackets over neutral bases were a go-to for the women, with a few turning up in some fabulous ball gowns. If you like getting dressed up, a Ring Cycle is a tremendous excuse to take a circuit through your whole formal wardrobe in a week. 

Longborough’s sartorial flexibility meant that we went for a Bavarian interpretation of formal wear for opening night, fitting for an opera cycle with its heart in that part of Germany. It was such a hit with fellow guests we decided to bring it back for closing night as well. 

Opening night, however, was not as planned. We’d popped out to the grocers to pick up a few things for our picnic and returned to discover that our 12-year old spaniel had climbed onto a table, snatched the slide of his heart medicine and consumed 10 days’ dosage at one go. On a Sunday, when almost all vets are closed. A call to our own vets' emergency service confirmed this was a life-threatening emergency; the longer the drugs were in his system, the more danger he was in. So instead of getting dressed and swanning off to watch some Rhine maidens get their gold stolen, I was desperately searching for a vet open on a Sunday, driving an hour to get there, then holding a bowl while my beloved but stupid dog emptied his stomach multiple times, triggered to do so my special drugs. I’ve had better afternoons. The dog recovered quickly, though his little adventure added a significant expense to our holiday. We found a version of Das Rheingold on YouTube, spread our picnic on the coffee table and enjoyed an alternative kickoff to our Cycle. The dirndl and lederhosen made their debut for Die Walküre two nights later. 

The opera house at Longborough holds just 500, and for a Ring Cycle it’s the same people in the same seats for every performance. If you’ve reserved a dining spot, the people at your neighbouring tables will also be the same all four days. With only 500 in total, you start recognising people in Stow during the week and feel like you know most attendees on sight by the final performance. This all adds to that communal viewing experience, because you’re sharing opinions about the performance throughout the week. The further in you go, the deeper the conversations get.  

If this weren’t enough community building, Longborough put on additional events on the off days to for those who wanted to learn more about the production. Back to the binge-watching analogy … these were like tapping into the extra features on the director’s cut DVD. On Friday we attended two lectures in Longborough’s parish church. The first was a Master Class in which two singers who played smaller roles were performing bits and pieces and getting coaching from Rachel Nicholls, who played Brünnhilde the first time Longborough did The Ring. Underlining the intimate nature of this opera festival, current Brünnhilde, Lee Bisset, was sitting in the pew behind us and happily chatting to audience members. I don’t think I’d be able to get out of bed the day after delivering a performance of such power, much less enjoy chatting with strangers.

The second session featured director Amy Lane and Longborough’s Ring Conducting Fellow Harry Sever talking about the challenges of putting on the Cycle. The behind-the-scenes view into the complexities of something this monumental, yet staged in such a small space, was fascinating. In between, all the audience members … who’d now seen three of the four operas together and were all mates … rolled into the local pub for a few pints and more Wagnerian bonding.  

To be honest, I doubt I’d enjoy the experience as much at the major urban opera houses. There are more than 2,200 seats at Covent Garden, far too many to build the same kind of community with fellow audience members even if you are sitting together for 15 hours. While I’ve come to love these operas, would I enjoy them as much without all those dining and drinking breaks in a pretty garden? I’m not sure. Sadly, I can’t recommend any other country house operas at which you might try a Ring Cycle, as this has traditionally been considered impossible for small companies to deliver. Longborough is unique. They’ve done it twice in their thirty year history and are now regularly called “The English Bayreuth”. (Bayreuth being the Wagner-built opera house in Bavaria where The Ring was born.)  

But I do recommend sampling Wagner, and caution you against thinking that attending a Ring Cycle is something strange and foreign. It’s as modern as binge-watching Netflix with your mates. And if you’re lucky enough to do it at Longborough, it’s magnificent fun.

Ekstedt at The Yard elevates humble BBQ to the culinary stratosphere

The Masterchef franchise has done a lot of damage to Bencard family finances. Admittedly, it’s only been two weeks since I talked about the excellent value on offer at the restaurant of last year’s winner, Khao Soi by Chariya. Our more usual temptation, unfortunately, is to try out the restaurants of the top chefs featured in the show’s “master classes”, a route that has led us to amazing but pricey meals at places like Gidleigh Park, Murano, and Core.

Now we can add Ekstedt at The Yard to that lofty and luscious list. If barbecues, blazing logs and wood- fired ovens trigger your culinary fantasies, then this is a place of dreams. Niklas Ekstedt is one of Sweden’s top chefs, and made his name resurrecting … and perfecting … the ancient art of cooking over open fire in the Nordic hinterland. (One suspects, however, that an internship at Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago couldn’t help but hard wire him for a love of BBQ.) His restaurants turn their back on electric and gas, opting instead for beech wood and charcoal. While he spends most of his time in Sweden, he’s opened a restaurant in London, just off Whitehall, and he pops up regularly in the Masterchef franchise.

We dove in head-first for the Chef’s Table, an evening-long combination of fine dining and high entertainment that takes place at a barstool-height table for six placed perpendicular to the pass, next to the wood-fired oven and pastry station and with clear views into the open fires of the kitchen. (Note that if there are fewer than five of you, you’ll probably be sharing the table with others. As they will also be obsessed enough with food to spend £150 each on the experience … before wine … you will probably have plenty to talk about.)

Head chef Tess and her team are used to chatting while plating up and are delighted to go into detail about ingredients, preparation methods and their personal backgrounds. Tess and I had such an in-depth discussion of pickling techniques and where I might be going wrong that she sent me home with a bottle of her favourite Swedish vinegar on the house. You are deep in foodie territory here.

You’re also going to eat extremely well. Nine official courses augmented with a variety of nibbles will leave you satisfied and replete, but the artfully plated, modest portions won’t over-stuff you. The most impressive dishes bookend the meal: two starters, one of oyster and another of veal tartare, and a soufflé desert made from cep mushrooms.

Eksted’s signature flambadou oyster came from his restaurants in Sweden and appeared on Masterchef in a blaze of glory. Everyone who orders one, not just the Chef’s Table high rollers, gets invited into the kitchen to watch this being prepared and eat it next to the fire. The concept is simple but delicious. Start with beef fat and a gizmo that looks like a metal funnel at the end of a long bar of iron. Fill the funnel with the fat. Ignite it. Do not try this at home as the resulting conflagration is the definition of “fire hazard”. Now place a tray of oysters underneath the shower of flaming fat coming out of the bottom of the funnel. A few seconds later, put each oyster into a clean shell with a zingy dressing and some nasturtium leaves, and shoot it down with a glug of mineral-rich white wine. Haters of oysters will love this, because the cooking method has removed all but a hint of that seawater-swallowing experience and instead given you the rich mouthfeel of the best beef. Not recommended for burn victims or vegetarians.

Soon after that came our favourite dish of the whole night, an exquisitely hand-cut and deftly flavoured veal tartare … gently infused with hay smoke … seasoned with dried egg and served with a quenelle of mustard ice cream that was a thing of tear-inducing beauty.

Two hours later it was time to stick our spoons into the soufflés we’d seen going in and out of the wood fired oven all night. Much as I love mushrooms, I’ve never considered putting one in a dessert. But, oddly, it worked. Mushrooms are, of course, mainly a spongy conduit for other flavours so there was as much wild blueberry and wood smoke on the tongue as fungi. I suspect it would still be a turn-off to a mushroom hater but for those with adventurous palates this is a magnificent dish that manages to turn the forest floor into a showy closer.

In between, we feasted on grilled lobster, barbecued cuttlefish cut ito strips so thin it was like pasta, juniper-smoked tortellini, sea bass done on the coals and a succulent slice of duck breast cut off a crown that had hung for at least six hours several feet above the fire, taking in smoke and heat slowly but steadily for final perfection.

The wine paring, as is usual these days, was just as expensive as the food and is the choice that sends the bill into the stratosphere. But it’s thoughtfully constructed, with all of the wines coming from volcanic soils and therefore bringing the theme of fire through the drinks. And, of course, offering some exceptional options from around the world. Pours are generous and the sommelier might offer some additional tastes if you show enough interest. This is a meal after which it’s best to drink plenty of water and pop a couple of aspirin before heading to bed. If you’re a lightweight on the alcohol front, maybe save the money and just have a couple glasses.

Ekstedt at the Yard is coming up on its third anniversary and it’s puzzling why it’s still lacking a Michelin star. It has the combo of exquisite flavours and Instagramable plating. It’s been consistently well reviewed. Its sommelier commands an impressive wine list and offers clever parings. The atmosphere is sophisticated yet exotically rustic, as if you’ve stepped through a magic portal and found yourself deep the Swedish forest. The final bill certainly screams “Michelin star”. I would no more try to figure out the guide’s issue with the place than I would try to flambadou an oyster over my Weber kettle. But I’d certainly tell anyone thinking about a visit to go in with expectations on par with other starred places. It’s just that you’ll just find it easier to get a spot at this Chef’s Table than those officially blessed by the guide.

Two London productions re-interpret literary classics: I only love one of them

If I were a real arts critic, paid to be an arbiter of good taste, I would no doubt tell you that the best theatre experience I’ve had in London in recent weeks was Player Kings, the mash-up of Henry IV parts one and two currently providing a star vehicle for Ian McKellen at the Noël Coward Theatre. But I’m not, and I won’t. Because though there was much that was worthy and thought-provoking in the Shakespearean offering, my heart belongs to an extension of Jane Austen’s universe brought to life on a tiny West End stage that even most of London’s theatre cognoscenti don’t know exists.

Being Mr. Wickham is a one-man, one-act show that drops us in to the study of Jane Austen’s most notorious villain on the evening of his 60th birthday. He’s had a spat with his wife Lydia, but he’s fired with the energy of the day and he wants to talk. Given the milestone of age, he’s in the mood to reminisce. What follows is a wildly entertaining conversation that updates us on how all of our favourite characters from Pride and Prejudice have evolved, makes us question the plot we thought we knew, and suggests some interesting parallels with our modern times.

I use the word “conversation” intentionally. No, you’re not talking back to the actor. But the 70-seat Jermyn Street Theatre is so intimate, and Adrian Lukis so adept at engaging the audience, that everyone else seems to disappear and you really do feel like you’re having an intimate tête-à-tête with one of literature’s most charismatic rogues. The fact that Lukis brings Wickham to such glorious, credible life is no surprise. He played the role in the BBC’s landmark 1995 adaptation, and though he’s been a busy actor in the three decades since, there’s a whole generation who will always imagine him as a Regency-era rake.  

He also wrote the play, thus brings an author’s intimate understanding to the words. And good words they are, too. Many writers have tried to extend Austen’s world, with varying levels of success. They usually get the language wrong, forgetting that Austen was remarkably sparse in her description, simple in her vocabulary, and deftly subtle in her characterisations. Lukis gets all of this spot on, as well as giving us plot evolutions that are entirely credible. His combined amazement and horror both at making it to 60 and evolving into a somewhat respectable member of society is so Wickham.

Austen never wrote scenes without women, because she insisted on writing only what she knew. So another delight of this show is getting a perspective that feels authentically Austen, but is also undeniably masculine. It goes places Jane could not, reminding us of a sexual licentiousness and an urban dynamism within the Regency that are alien to the novels, but would have been familiar to … if unspoken by … her male characters. Wickham’s anecdote about almost winning a night with one of the greatest courtesans of the age, only to by cut out by Byron, is thrilling.

Lukis originally wrote the one-act play for the 2019 Jane Austen festival in Bath, and I originally saw it during a broadcast production when the pandemic locked us all in. I liked it so much then that I jumped at the chance to see it live, and I’m so glad I did. The size of the theatre and Lukis’ electric presence made this a truly memorable theatrical experience.

Player Kings was equally memorable, even if I didn't enjoy it as much. There’s a reason that Ian McKellen is considered one of the greatest actors of his generation. He commands the stage with a presence few other human beings can muster. As expected, he delivers the best Falstaff I’ve ever seen. Remarkably complex. Villainous yet vulnerable. Unattractive yet compelling. Funny yet heartbreaking. Robert Icke’s editing of two plays into one has, naturally, left a lot on the cutting room floor. What remains might have just as well been called Falstaff.

The challenge of this approach for me is that Falstaff’s always been the character who irritates me most in these plays. Queen Elizabeth might have loved him so much she asked Shakespeare to give him his own play (giving us the Merry Wives of Windsor), but I would have asked The Bard to cut that role way back. I get the poignancy, and real-world relevance, of balancing the father Prince Hal has with the father figure he chooses to have fun with. But I want the plays to focus on Hal’s unexpected development from disappointing rebel to great king, and his changing relationship with his father. Falstaff is a necessary catalyst to those changes, but I prefer him in the background.

I wanted the Prince Hal focus even more from this production, since Prince Hal is being brought to life by Toheeb Jimoh, who gave us the delectable Sam Obisanya in Ted Lasso. Jimoh is fantastic. He probably did a better job than any other actor I’ve seen in the role at bringing out the teenage irresponsibility and madness of the young Hal. I think the prince’s character transformation is one of the hardest in literature to pull off … yes, I know Shakespeare is sacred but his plot makes the evolution pretty hard to believe … but Jimoh manages well. 

He’s hindered by Icke’s interpretation however, which makes some odd choices. I’ll avoid spoilers but say the way this production delivers the duel between Hal and Hotspur bothered me so much I pulled out the play as soon as I got home to check the author’s stage instructions. While Icke isn’t specifically countering anything written by Shakespeare, he’s introducing stuff that brings Hal’s whole character development … and thus the traditional meaning of the whole play … into question. No matter how good the acting, “the play’s the thing”, and I’m not a fan of what this production did to this one.

Of course, I’m not the target market. Player Kings, like the current production of Romeo and Juliet with Tom Holland playing just down the street, has been designed to bring in a younger audience that isn’t naturally drawn to Shakespeare. Thus the present day East End gangland setting, the mixed race casting, the modern music. Being Mr. Wickham, on the other hand, was clearly developed for a generation of people … mostly female … for whom that 1995 television production was transformative. It’s no surprise that we meet Wickham on turning 60; I suspect his frustrations at reaching an age he doesn’t feel parallel a great many in the audience. Including me in a few months. So while I’m glad I made the effort to see McKellen and Jimoh live on stage, it’s Lukis who gave me the greatest joy.

Both shows have very short London runs closing on 22 June, so if you’re interested in either get booking now.