Fracking in the Cotswolds

This was the title of a presentation given by Dr. Jonathan Whittaker today to the Gloucestershire Churches Environmental Justice Network. A good number of us crowded into the so-called Jerusalem Room over College Green from Gloucester Cathedral to hear it. "I'm a dentist," Jonathan began, "so I know a little about drilling..." He was modest: fracking is clearly a subject he's studied carefully, and puts well into context.

Explaining why the Government is so keen to promote it, he uses the analogy of tobacco. The tax revenues from both shale gas exploration and cigarette sales are a pot of gold too tempting for Chancellors to resist - but the cost of encouraging fracking may outweigh its income stream in the long term, just as the cost of treating lung cancer patients puts the tax from tobacco sales into perspective.

Fracking is, Jonathan concludes, less likely a bridge to the future - more a gangplank. What if - instead - as much were spent on developing (for instance) the Anaconda wave energy converter, pumped hydro energy storage and peak demand control as is scheduled for HS2?

Jerusalem was already on my mind from last night, as we watched Henry IV Part 2, relayed from Stratford-upon-Avon. The king's death in the Jerusalem Chamber takes place off stage, but on stage there's plenty of fine business in Greg Doran's excellent production, in which Oliver Ford Davies as Shallow if anything outperforms Antony Sher as Falstaff. What a play!

Richard II

"In a theatre, the eyes of men, after a well-graced actor leaves the stage, are idly bent on him that enters next," says York in Richard II. Currently, however, eyes (not only of men) are far from idly bent on David Tennant's performance as the King: we have tickets for the live relay in a fortnight, the first such from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. There are queues for returns at the box office, and that will no doubt also be the case at Cineworld.

On Radio 4's Today programme, Maroussia Frank and David have just been talking to Rebecca Jones about the large ring David is wearing as Richard. Maroussia had inherited it from her husband Ian Richardson, who wore it in the iconic 1974 John Barton production, where he alternated with Richard Pasco in the roles of king and usurper: she felt it appropriate that a second Scottish RSC "Richard" should have it, especially - no doubt - bearing in mind that Ian's ashes are interred beneath that very stage on which David Tennant ("son" of Richardson, as it were) has next entered.

As a car-less tour guide at Charlecote Park in the early Summer of 1962, I made it my business to be especially nice to the last party I was taking round in case I could cadge a lift from one of them, back to Stratford. From there, it was usually easy to hitchhike home. One sunny afternoon, some actors were in this final posse, and I ended up with one of them in his Austin A30.

From a stage photograph I spied in the glove compartment, I realised it was Ian Richardson: though I had seen him several times in plays at Stratford, I would hardly have recognised him. "That was a bit of a matinée performance you gave us, I thought." He spoke in a soft, Scottish accent, quite different from his evil-sounding Don John or high-pitched Oberon. ("I had great difficulty persuading Peter Hall that I was right for this part," he told me: Titania was Judi Dench, Helena, Diana Rigg, etc. etc.)

I had asked for a lift to Stratford, but having explained that I lived at Arrow, Ian offered to take me the extra eight miles home. "Would you like to come in?" my father asked him, when we arrived. "Why not?" he replied. After two gins, my parents apologised, "but we are all now due to go for a drink up at Oversley Castle... perhaps you would like to come too?" "Why, yes," was the eager response, and so it was that we had the pleasure of Ian's company for the evening: as it progressed, so his tongue loosened.

I went back stage a few times after seeing him perform subsequently, the final occasion - shortly before his too early death - being after a reading of Shakespeare's Sonnets in our Town Hall. Never, of course, did I quite manage to recapture the easy atmosphere of that Summer evening.

My photograph was taken in Bristol Cathedral on Monday: there are a number of fragments of mediaeval glass preserved there. "Within the hollow crown, that rounds the mortal temples of a king, keeps Death his court and there the antic sits, scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp." One might almost suppose that Shakespeare wrote these lines having visited Bristol and seen this curious image.

Arbury Lodge

Astley belongs to the family which owns neighbouring Arbury Park. (Landmark Trust have a 99-year lease.) The properties are divided by quite a busy thoroughfare - the roadkill, bottom left, bearing this out. I biked along there this morning, to admire the view of the Castle from across the lake, but also to see if there was a way in to Arbury Park: on the map, it looked as if it was worth exploring. I was disappointed - no room for doubt is left by either the notice on the gate or its electric operating mechanism.

This turned out to be the first of a number of "incidents" today. We were all going to the matinée of The Winter's Tale at Stratford: one of the party however pulled out ("dogged" - by misfortune). We parked in our usual place, convenient for the ferry across the River Avon: it wasn't running. The theatre programme says "no photography" - I always assumed this meant during the play. At the end, I took a photograph of the curtain calls: a steward came and demanded that I delete my image whilst she looked on. "It infringes the actors' copyright" apparently. Finally, driving back to Astley in the dark, I was baffled by the labyrinth of roads around Coventry, and took a wrong turn down a side street: blue lights flashed behind me. The fresh-faced officer edged near to smell my breath... but turned out to be there just in case I was lost - and guided me back in the right direction.

Farewell Hugh

A hundred or so gathered in Stratford this afternoon for Hugh Chatwin's funeral, the average age well below the usual upon such occasions. I knew hardly more than half a dozen of those present, but it was good to see those few very old friends again, and to celebrate Hugh together.

I have to admit to feeling distracted during the rather long service: the words "transport of delight" in the first hymn induced a frisson, reviving the memory of Hugh's car being squashed by a bus. And the lights were blazing throughout: given that the chapel was more than full of natural light on this hottest of days, that would no doubt have appealed to Hugh's sense of the ridiculous - being the good Green that he was.

Following discussions in my early days of blogging, apart from the family I generally try to avoid naming living people who are referred to in these posts - unless it's a public occasion I'm writing about. But, following receipt of the news of his sudden death, in mentioning Hugh's experience as a sailor, I included Rosalind Anderson's name - she being the third person on a not-to-be-forgotten holiday Hugh had organised many years ago; and glad I was that I had done so, as otherwise Ros wouldn't have heard about Hugh's death and been there at today's send off. "Who's the bikini girl?" asked a friend. "Let me introduce her," I was able to say!

Having lived within half a dozen miles of Stratford all my early life, I felt strange discovering for the first time the beautiful Guild Chapel and Shakespeare's adjoining school room - that's it in my photograph: how old are those formes?

"The Tempest"

"I have bedimm'd the noontide sun..." says Jonathan Slinger's Prospero, as we sit ensconced inside the Royal Shakespeare Theatre through a fine, bright Saturday afternoon watching The Tempest.

As we've found before in Stratford's revamped main house, some of those magic words were lost to us this time also: we were in the extreme left corner of the Circle (as you look at the stage) - this may have had something to do with it, or are we just getting older and deafer? Slinger's admirably wide-ranging voice seemed to drop almost to a whisper at times. He has little of John Wood's presence, but the virtual twinning of Prospero and Ariel - Father and Holy Spirit - was inspired.

The Dramatis Personae listing Sebastian as King Alonso's brother makes it feel wilful at first to cast a high-heeled, curvaceous Kirsty Bushell in the part. But this is all part and parcel of a brilliant production by David Farr: a highly poetic and mysterious play is given to us full of real theatre - indeed, this Tempest is one of the best RSC renderings we have caught in recent years.

The Meckler "Dream"

My first "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was the then 28-year-old Peter Hall's 1959 production at Stratford-upon-Avon - in the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. It was a pastoral "Dream", as I recall. On the evidence of the matinée yesterday on the same site (but in a rebuilt as well as renamed theatre), I doubt many of the cast of the production by Nancy Meckler will be as well-known to theatre-goers 50 years hence as Charles Laughton (Peter Hall's Bottom), Ian Holm (Puck), Albert Finney (Lysander) or Vanessa Redgrave (Helena) are today.

Yes, there were a couple of understudies yesterday, but this does not account for the loss of so much poetry. I exonerate the stand-in Bottom, Felix Hayes, and Alex Hassell, an excellent Demetrius; but few of the others, bent as they were on displaying more larynx than lyricism, gabbled lines often jarringly shouted.

Meckler has some fine credits to her name, but her Gothic production (designed by Katrina Lindsay to place the emphasis on "night") smacked less of 24th June than Walpurgisnacht: the dismal Puck even carried a broomstick. It was amusing to have alternate readings from Folio and Quarto spelled out at one point, but what was the dramatic value of Bottom and Flute revelling so explicitly in each other's erotic capital? This was a production of effects, but little magic. There were moments when it took off ("Tie up my love's tongue, bring him silently"), but precious few.

I expect all this carping comes from age and from having a slight ear infection. After all, most of the others in the audience seemed to enjoy themselves hugely. (As of course I did, really.)

John Wood RIP

I once read that every building in Chipping Campden High Street was listed, plus of course many others in the town. One of them was the much-loved home, more than 300 years old, of the actor John Wood, who died last week and is now rightly and lavishly mourned in the newspapers. Of his obituarists, Michael Coveney surprised me by writing that "His real passion was architecture, which he rated the most important of all the arts."

Only a day or two ago, when clearing out, I threw away theatre programmes bearing Wood's name as star of the show. Whether in Shakespeare or Stoppard, Gorki or Etherege, comedy or tragedy, he always seemed to me to excel: indeed, he was one of the few I actors whose performances I would invariably seek out. Why did he never get a knighthood? No doubt because he was too self-effacing.

Phoenix of Avon

My photograph, taken this afternoon from the old bridge across the Avon at Stratford, shows the remade Royal Shakespeare Theatre, which opens in earnest next February. By the waterside, the line of the Scott building has been restored, with the café resited in the stalls bar, and a wide outdoor terrace opened up in place of the café. The dressing-room block has been refaced: in 1955, stagestruck, I saw Vivien Leigh on one of those little balconies during an interval of Twelfth Night: she was playing opposite her husband Laurence Olivier. The restaurant - excellent food and of course views - is now in the glass-faced box overlooking both the river and former theatre car park: it paid to be on good terms with Victor there - as with Leslie Mitchell in the box office. The tower is of course totally new, and I think rather regrettable. I would say the same for the octagonal crown over the refashioned auditorium.

Inside, there is plenty to admire. The layout is on the same lines as that of the Swan next door, but altogether less claustrophobic. The seats look really comfortable, and of course none is any distance from the stage - as in the Courtyard. I can't wait to hear what the sound is like.

One major disappointment: try as I might, I can find nothing in the literature to indicate what steps have been taken to make the refurbished RST energy-efficient. Heating the cavernous new shop/foyer area seems likely to cost a bomb.

Raceweek

Cheltenham High Street is, as ever, filled with strangers this (race)week.  Not just from Ireland, but also from Scotland - this piper was blowing for Help for Heroes - and who knows where else?

Though the dafodills have not obliged, the sun is shining, some of the potholes have been filled in, and Cheltenham is ready for the tills to ring. Extra masses have even been laid on for St Patrick's Day.

When Cheltenham was a more remote destination, I remember making for it myself, in the hope of supplementing my pocket money. But living on the doorstep I don't feel in the least drawn up towards the course: it was the same with Shakespeare's Birthplace, when we lived near Stratford-on-Avon.