Tuesday in London

The celebrations of my father's seventieth birthday are beginning. Today we had lunch at the invitation of family friends at this splendid hotel near Heathrow. The hotel was once a hunting lodge of Elizabeth I, and in the 1930s was a haunt of film stars visiting Britain, including Londoner Charlie Chaplin.

I drove my parents and sister back into London, having intended to help collect some tables from a shop, but the tables had not arrived. Instead we ended up going to the theatre to see Guys and Dolls, now on its third cast. I'd seen the film, and an amateur production in which my mother appeared about twenty years ago, but never a professional show. I'd have liked to have seen Jenna Russell as Sarah Brown, but she left a few weeks ago; Kelly Price was very good, however, and Neil Morrisey shows that he can act without deploying his sitcom persona into every situation. Adam Cooper was an uncertain Sky Masterson; at times it seemed that he was playing Ewan MacGregor (who first played the role in this production) although considering that he had minimal involvement in the dancing it was clear that the role hadn't been restructured around his talents. Sally Ann Triplett was a very strong Miss Adelaide, helped by this production's decision to free her from the characterisation designed for Vivien Blaine, the Broadway comedienne who first created the role, and give her a bit more credibility. The staging was very dark, replacing the conventional bright and gaudy 1950s visualization of urban life with the more shadowy one of the 2000s. The best set was probably the sewer!

Here's to you, Mrs Robinson?

About a decade ago, gervase_fen lent me a CD which he said was essential listening. I'd been sceptical of such concepts, but the first track brought on tears of recognition. The album was The Honesty Room, and the singer-songwriter was Dar Williams.

I soon bought the album, have been to one of Dar Williams's performances on this side of the Atlantic, at Queen Elizabeth Hall, and have kept up with her career, usually a few months behind each new album. Unfortunately the last couple of releases have seen the quality of her work drop. There was a clarity of vision about the first few albums, and a sincerity about her voice and her music which began to disappear during her fourth album, The Green World, and vanished during The Beauty of the Rain, the fifth, most of which came across as astonishingly complacent. My Better Self tries very hard to recapture the impact of those early albums, but suggests that Dar no longer knows where her audience is. She's too old now, as her lyrics show, to make us feel that she is singing along with her 'Teen for God' of the opening song. Apparently some of the other songs are supposedly protests against the Bush administration's intervention in Iraq, but they are so oblique it is difficult to tell. Only the last song on the album, 'The Hudson', recaptures some of the rawness of her early work. I really wish I didn't lay some of the blame on Dar Williams getting married - sorry, you married folks out there - but I identified with her musings on the single life, breakups, exes, and the like. (Her husband's called Michael Robinson, by the way.)

But I've still got Eveningland to look forward to, as I catch up on another of Gervase's recommendations, Hem. At least, this cynic thinks, they are only on their third album now.