January can be dismal, and so it's a good month to refuse to be unhappy.
I got paid for my illustrations, and that meant that I could go with my Champagne Friend to see Cabaret yesterday afternoon. It was really wonderfully put together, with a particularly good actor playing the MC, a part originally played in London by Eddie Redmayne. Somehow, it was almost better to not know who the actor was this time around: it allowed him to inhabit the part as himself, free from reputation. The band/orchestra was superb, the costumes were perfectly suited to the different moods expressed in the script, and the stage was really well-designed. So much thought had gone into the whole thing: vodka shots for the audience on arrival at the 'Kit Kat Club' (alas, neither of us drink!), a pianist in the bar, wandering musicians and acrobatic/erotic dancers. The joint main story line about the landlady rejecting her Jewish lover was heartrending, especially his assurances that nothing could possibly go wrong in Germany, so he did not need to leave the country. The Nazis would never take over. Someone behind us was in floods of tears by the end. The song Cabaret was reserved till the penultimate scene, where it was performed as a macabre and chilling precursor of the social and political upheaval that was to lead to the holocaust.
Occasionally the singing was rather shrill, but the performers appeared to realise this and reined themselves in. Even the programme sellers were impressed at the energy of the production. I'm so glad to have seen it.
Today, Gina took me out for lunch for my birthday. French Onion soup, perfect for January. Then we walked over to Mayfair to see the Helen Chadwick exhibition at the Richard Saltoun Gallery. Oh, what a wonderful person she was! The gallery was showing her final year film made in 1976 at Brighton Art College, featuring lots of people that I knew back then, dressed in Helen's fabulously pervy costumes yet presented in all innocence and normality just as she aways did it. She was so clever, and all against the backdrop of proper old-fashioned art college misogyny and conservatism.
One of the lecturers in the film audience actually used to go to Carrera and paint big blocks of marble: absolutely beautiful and timeless, but (sorry) also absolutely mindless. Another lecturer used to pat me on the head, so I cropped all my hair off, close to my scalp, so I looked 'ard. Another used to go into a cupboard with an MA student and....
Oh dear, what a soap opera it was! Please go if you can- it's on till Saturday. The film is completely charming.
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