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| Art Review - I.P.Ellis
Our exhibition programme for the year started with a fine display of paintings by artist Walter Cherry. The work spanned several decades of research and investigation and, in my opinion, firmly established Walter’s reputation as a front runner in the Op Art movement. The paintings were colourful and vibrant and resonated movement and rhythm. The next exhibition consisted of paintings by Neil Drury and sculpture by Sophie Thompson and Philip Wakeham. This was followed by an exhibition of mixed media work by the ArtWrights Group. The show brought together a wonderful eclectic mix of photography, painting, sculpture, jewellery and textile work which both intrigued and challenged Radleians on a number of fronts. The final exhibition of the year consisted of interesting and varied photographs and memorabilia from the Art Department’s visits to Beijing. During the Private View Henry Woodward-Fisher and Richard Martyn- Hemphill delivered a speech in Mandarin which they had originally given to pupils in Beijing Middle School district Number 159 where it was |
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 overwhelmingly received with mass applause. Chinese food and tea was consumed and the boys gave demonstrations of Chinese calligraphy, carving and the use of ink stamps known as chops. Centre stage of the exhibition was a Chinese New Year wish tree to which many colourful wishes were added as the evening progressed. Common Room too entered into the true spirit of the evening along with a former Sub-Warden who attended in full Chinese dress. A great evening was had by all and Common Room once again has my thanks for their generous support of evenings like these. This brought the Michaelmas Term exhibitions program to a close.
The Lent Term opened with an exhibition by mixed media artist Gerard Whiteley entitled Orniphobia. It looked in detail at the English countryside and the role played by modern farming methods. Link Constructions in Fabric and Fibre, work by Wendy Hughes and Joanna Gilmour exhibited a fantastic show of sculptural textiles. All of the work was beautiful and awe inspiring. The summer term saw our Artist in Residence Lee-Anne Hampson use the New Theatre foyer as an exciting exhibition venue. Lee Anne’s interesting and exciting show of residency work was inspired by her travels over the last few years. The A-Level and GCSE examination shows followed and the Gaudy Show of work by Radleians concluded the exhibition year.
I would like to thank Tom Ryder, Margaret Craig, Maxine Hart, Kate Lean and Lee Anne Hampson (Artist in Residence who we will miss enormously - see Vales) for helping to make the past academic year so memorable. A special thanks also goes to Judy Harris whose care and ongoing support for the exhibitions program continues to ensure that we exhibit work of the highest calibre in a lively and imaginative way. My final thanks go to Common Room for the fantastic enthusiasm and support they continue to offer the Arts at Radley. Top of page Music critics call it ‘the tingle factor’, when at the end of a performance the hairs are standing up on the back of your neck. I call it the ‘Gosh’ effect, when at the end of a Declamation you realise you have heard something so special that for the moment you do not even want to applaud. And three ‘Goshes’ there were in VI-2 Declamations, after Ed Chalk’s The Raven, after Douggie McMeekin’s When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed (Whitman), and after Jake Cheetham’s Wasteland. The standard of VI-2 was exceptionally high this year, and all the finalists deserve mention. Jos North gave us Byron’s All These I Learnt and managed to make a long herbifloral list totally compelling. Somewhere in the last five years this intelligent and sensitively voiced competitor should have been the winner. Fred Laurie gave a brave and impassioned Know Nothing (Sharon Olds) and Alex Sants offered Woody Allen’s The Moose, beautifully timed and all the funnier for his own evident enjoyment. As they should be, but not always are, the senior year were the stars of the competition. Was it a coincidence that this was the first time since the event was made voluntary for VI-2 that there was not a single drop-out from the list of previous finalists? And VI-1 were generally felt to be the next best. Catholic in choice, they delivered Shakespeare, Jonson, Longfellow, Wilde, Eliot and General George S Patton. William Summerlin came third with the Eve of D-Day Speech of the last, a powerful rendition which like Ben Hatt’s rendering in the Remove competition of Vince Lombardi’s Number One had many of the audience at the Reprise saying ‘Very good, but why?’ Jamie Hepburn was second with A Psalm of Life, the first time Longfellow has been heard in the Final in at least sixteen years, and Jamie Randall won with Mosca’s speech, a real performance, mannered but never over the top. To praise the Sixth Form is not to belittle the Lower School. Not all my colleagues agreed, but I thought this was the best set of Shell performances for some time, certainly the most confident on the day, and with three prizewinners (Sam Nugée with Five Ways to Kill a Man, Alexander Donger with “Out, Out...” and James Bruce Crampton with Little Red Riding Hood) all of whom had become class acts by the Reprise. The Remove event was won by Joshua Rencher with Archangel Winter, second was Ben Hatt whose Lombardi speech though hardly great literature in itself was powerful and passionate and third was Charlie Burton whose extract from Kes was so magnificently deadpan that one forgave him the uncertainty as to which part of the North country he reckoned he was coming from. In the Fifths James Crole relished the huge consonants of Heaney’s Death of a Naturalist. He made a powerful poem of it. A less tolerant Judge might have drawn Angus Dickson’s attention to the need to carry the sense over the ends of the lines but he nonetheless gave a tranquil and controlled reading of Auden’s As I Walked Out One Evening. In first place was Edmund Lindsell who was not defeated by the rhymes (so often more of a hindrance than a help) of Angelou’s Still I Rise. Freddie Tapner, his generation’s winner in Shell and Remove, was at the time of the competition away from school having chemotherapy treatment in London, but nonetheless recorded from his hospital bed Browning’s Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister and this we heard after the six competitiors. For the second year running there was no Larkin in the Final. Instead a lot of Americana, so much so that if you credit Eliot with his birthright and give Auden honorary US citizenship then over half the pieces in the Reprise were such. The Adjudicator was actor Charles Edwards, giving up his time to us in the middle of the London run of The Thirty-Nine Steps. Kindness and generosity informed all his judgments, which concentrated more on the performance side of each declamation than the textual. Thus he was less fazed than were the performer or the audience by the memory problems experienced by Ed Chalk. Sadly these recurred in the Reprise and prevented us from hearing The Raven in full. It boded to be as compelling as Matthew Johnson’s Remove rendition, less frightening perhaps, but maybe the conversational intimacy and variety was going to lead to terror. The Reprise, for the first time, was on a Sunday evening and benefited enormously from having in the audience parents who wanted to be there rather than Shells who didn’t. Douggie McMeekin’s Whitman was again stunning in its soft measured beauty, an amazing control of pianissimo and pause. And although he had not carried off the laurels on the day, Jake Cheetham showed what I have said many times before, that a reading of Eliot by an intelligent sixth-former who understands the text, who can vary the dynamic, who can bring in light and shade, becomes an act of creation in itself. As always one comes away from the competition thankful not just to the performers but to the audience as well. It is quite remarkable how each year group of Radleians who cough and shuffle through lessons and Chapel will rise to the occasion and listen to their peers in a rapt silence that raises the level of the performance. One is deeply grateful. Next year’s Judge is Arthur House, B Social 1995–2000, whose VI-2 performance of Prufrock was the best Declamation I have heard in sixteen years’ association with the competition. Will anyone be brave enough to risk comparison?
Some GCSE and A level design projects Top of page Cambridge Footlights - Ben Sheen Theatrical performances are undoubtedly a useful addition to extra-curricular experience and knowledge when it comes to school pupils, not to mention an often well-deserved break for all those involved. However, the logistics of such an exercise, perhaps bussing a year group into the West End, is an organiser’s nightmare. What better way than to bring the performance to Radley instead? We have after all got a stunning new theatre, more than capable of staging many travelling productions. On Thursday 13 September 2007, we did just this. For the first time, Radley College opened its doors to the New Theatre to the paying public, as well as all 630 boys and Radley Dons and Staff, for a one-night only performance by the world-famous Cambridge Footlights, on their national tour WhamBam. The Footlights perform, for the culturally oblivious out there, a series of improvised and prepared sketches. The Radley performance began bravely with an improvised sketch, which, although it was a funny and imaginative piece on fire-fighters being put ‘out of work’ by smoke alarms and suchlike, it lacked the pace and energy that is almost essential to starting an evening of comedy. However, once the performers moved on to their prepared sketches, the show picked up the pace. The first half had some memorable moments that would oft be reenacted around the College for days to come; mainly completely random and, in places, completely ridiculous concepts, but sadly, the overall feeling by the interval was that of slight disappointment. The second half upped the anti with some genuinely funny skits which had much of the audience in stitches with its typically teenage humour. Halfway through was most definitely the highlight of the show, a Harry Potterinspired sketch that was an inspirational piece of truly witty slapstick comedy. A notable aspect of the entire performance was the ability of the cast and crew to rocket from sketch to sketch almost seamlessly, giving the show the pace which it occasionally didn’t get from the sketches themselves. Overall however, it was an enjoyable evening, with some classic moments that will be remembered for months to come by many people. From a boy’s point of view, it was great to have such entertainment so close at hand, and a momentary break from the rush of everyday school life. A worthwhile 90 minutes spent and a production recommended for one of those spare evenings. 'Ashes to ashes': Badac Theatre Company - G.H.S.May No sooner had the laughter echoed away from the cream of Cambridge comedy than the Holocaust arrived with its entourage of horror, humiliation and human depravity. More of the same some might say, but from the carefully staged ‘holding’ of the audience in the Foyer to the final act of friendship and death, this was an altogether different experience for cerebral Radley theatregoers. On February 21st 1940 it was decided that Auschwitz, a former Polish artillery barrack in south western Poland, would be used as a quarantine camp, intended to hold 10,000 prisoners. Five years later that decision had led to the death of at least 1,500,000 people. Steven Lambert, founder of Badac Theatre Company, decided that someone should write a play about the consequences of that decision. In his role as the guide/guard in the opening sequence of the play, he reminded us of the decisions we make and the consequences that result. ‘It was decided to build a concentration camp. It was decided to build a gas chamber.’ The next hour traces the out-workings of those decisions, not just on Hirsh and Moshe, the two characters portrayed by the remaining members of the triumvirate company, but for thousands upon thousands who were exterminated in similar camps across eastern Europe during the Second World War. Badac’s approach was remarkably simple for such a lofty subject, enabling the audience to focus on the nature of human relationships rather than environmental conditioning. Three actors, three costumes – reversible/removable, and a baton, recreated the horrors of torture, humiliation and, ultimately, extinction in the camp. The minimalist set was broken by two metal sheets upstage centre suspended on chains, reminiscent of the two thieves on Golgotha. Four spotlights delineated different acting spaces and intensified the sense of physical and mental isolation for the prisoners from each other, the world outside and from the Kapo(guard). Lambert, playing the Kapo, occupied the upstage centre spotlight, beating the metal sheets with surprising abandon and vigour. The two actors playing Mosch and Hirsh occupied the downstage spotlights, stage left and right respectively, facing out towards the audience, directing their pain, their loneliness and their hopelessness straight at us. Most of the action took place within these spotlights, but on occasion the actors invaded the audiences’ physical as well as psychological space by breaking the fourth wall and staging scenes in the auditorium. The second scene with the industrial style house-lights glaring down on us, brought Lambert, as the guide, to introduce himself and the circumstances in which the play was to be set. Having been bombarded on our entrance to the auditorium by the three actors continuously chanting ‘My God, My King, no other King but You’, the shift to the intimacy of Lambert’s guide was unsettling and uncomfortable. Lambert made for a compelling but somewhat in-your-face, performer. His own research and visits to Auschwitz and Birkenau pepper the narrative of the play giving it an authenticity but his performance was direct, disturbing and aimed at affecting the audience on a personal level. His training at the Stanislavski/Laban inspired East 15 Acting School, coupled with his admiration of the work of Artaud, provided the technical elements and performance skills by which he constructed the external and internal lives and behaviours of his characters, and his own choice of performance style. This was most graphically portrayed in his multi-role playing as the Kapo and Philip, the conscience stricken gas chamber operator. At one moment he was the Kapo. His eyeballs were rolling, his mouth contorted like a rabid dog, spittle and spite erupting from his innermost being. The audience were abused and berated by ‘If you can’t work, you f***ing die’ repeated ad infinitum, (a phrase I have yet to hear in the environs of Radley even in the testosterone driven History Department). Then, like Gollum, he transformed his physicality, leaped from one spotlight to another, and became the consoling, genial Philip, encouraging the two prisoners to ‘help each other by helping themselves – you can only help yourself.’
The play’s exploration of human nature under extreme conditions relied upon our complicity and willingness to engage with it. This is where the decision to perform in an Artaudian style resulted in isolating some of the audience. For example, the routine of watching the two prisoners dance, whilst the audience were lit by ground-row lighting that blinded us in a whiteout, was excruciatingly repetitive and visually uncomfortable. Not only were we discomforted by the blinding light, but we were subjected to some extreme images of human degradation. Their arms were held aloft, trousers round their ankles, penises hanging limply down, shuffling in their attempt to dance and humming ‘Whistle While You Work’ for what seemed like eternity. Part of me was numbed by it and part of me just switched off. I allowed my battered eyes, fortunately the only extent of my pain, to wander from the offending, exhausted, sweating actors, to some safe part of the stage. Unfortunately, the only other animated object on stage to look at was Lambert, and as we were lit up by the groundrow lighting, as soon as he saw us diverting our gaze to him, and not at the ritual humiliation taking place before us, he screamed, ‘Don’t look at me, look at them! Don’t look at me, F***ing look at them.’ It suddenly dawned on me, that he needed us; he needed us to consciously join in. He was trying to drag us into the show even though our defenses were up. Some of the audience continued to repress their emotion and ignore the invitation to ‘look at them,’ the other half decided to obey. Those who did obey were richly rewarded for doing so, even though it was an uncomfortable experience, but by obeying were we just as subservient as the prisoners themselves? Those who internally concluded, ‘enough is enough, got the message, when does this end’ missed out on the gesamtkunstwerk of the piece, and probably would have been shot. This show was about educating us, not entertaining us, but like all education there has to be a willingness on the part of the tutee. To engage and learn something of the nature of humanity, to remind ourselves of what we are capable of, and to warn ourselves that it can and it will happen again. It happens in Darfur, it happens in Indonesia, it happens in British military jails in Iraq. Could it happen in our lives? Could we be capable of that kind of brutality? The journalist David Grossman asked recently, ‘How did ordinary men and women, as most of the Nazis and their supporters were – become part of a mass-murder apparatus? What thing in us must be suspended, repressed, dulled, so that we can ultimately collaborate with a mechanism of murder? What must be killed in order to be capable of killing? If we were on the receiving end, would we give in, beat up our own friend, just to appease some guard? Or would we be able to maintain some modicum of humanity, cradle a little hope in our hearts, take the bullet and embrace death with a clear and open conscience? I hope and pray we never have to find out. Top of page
At the heart of it all, however, was a beautifully-judged and understated performance from George Service as Oliver. In a strangely difficult role, with a lot of stage time for the number of lines he has, Service held the audience’s sympathy and attention superbly, showing naivety, courage, fear, curiosity, and gratitude variously as the moment demanded. His tip-toed escape from the Sowerberry’s cellar was a typical example: hushed, brave, and exquisitely executed. I was also enormously impressed again by Owen Petty as Nancy. In an all male production, the female parts can too easily turn camp, even among professional companies. Petty took no such short-cuts. He very quickly established Nancy as a tragic role, and played it with utter conviction. In the best traditions of the theatre, we accepted what we knew was false because it carried the imprimatur of truth in the delivery. The set and lighting contributed handsomely to the smoothness of the overall effect. The colours were fairly dark, In his inaugural production for Radley College, George May controlled his substantial cast with a calm and trusting hand. He created the space in which some very promising talent was able to flourish; but there was tight choreography too, which showed that the fresh naturalness of the production was all the result of craft. There were some beautifully-timed moments, such as the frantic chase and arrest of Oliver, which was a technical as well as a dramatic joy to watch. Other moments impressed for their quiet dignity, such as the death of the Girl Pauper, which caught the audience poignantly and hurtfully by surprise. It was typical of what was a thoroughly convincing evening at the theatre, and one for which all the cast and crew deserve the warmest possible praise.
Some more GCSE and A level design projects Top of page On the evening of Remembrance Sunday there was a performance of Faure’s Requiem to accompany a Solemn High Mass. Our Victorian Chapel seemed designed for a service like this, with the carvings in stone and wood coming to life in the flickering candlelight, a light which draws the eye automatically to the finest features of the building – the roof and the reredos – while dark, plush vestments, some bells and more than a whiff of incense, courtesy of a server who nervously got into the swing of things, added to something of a Puseyish atmosphere. I thought that the founders of the College might have felt very much at home and tried not to imagine my own Presbyterian forbears performing backflips in Calvinist indignation. Having said this, I was at first unsure whether the event had the mood of a religious service or of a concert with props. But once the service began, the music and the liturgy complemented one another powerfully and I found myself paying much closer attention to the words of the Requiem because of the liturgical context. These words, grave, timeless and resonant as only Latin can be, were delivered by the choir, especially the trebles, with good pronunciation and clarity throughout. The Introit set the scene beautifully and, having already heard pieces from the Requiem performed in Chapel with just the organ, I immediately realised the huge benefit of having an orchestra there. Instruments and voices blended well as the orchestra changed the underlying harmony. The particularly rich string sound was created by just the violas and cellos and basses – unusually the violin only makes a brief appearance in the Sanctus and the final movement. George Nye rose admirably to the challenge of the solo part, a part which perhaps requires the gravitas of a mature voice. The Sanctus was spine-tingling, from the rippling harp at the beginning to the loud Hosannas at the end; the fanfare of horns and the strings’ staccato chords were easily carried by the super volume of the choir. The highlight for me was chorister treble James Allen, who powerfully projected a sweet, strong voice without ever compromising pitch. It is difficult for young lungs to cope with the demands of this part, but his slight breathlessness was not a problem, and any nervousness only served to colour this unpretentious performance with a charming touch of vibrato. Contrasted with this solo was the ensuing Agnus Dei which gathered the richer tones of the chorus, orchestra and organ; the bass line was particularly rich and gorgeous. The In Paradisum was heart-achingly haunting and ended with an incredibly long chord which achieved a sense of finality. The retiring collection was for the Jane Ashley Unit, the dedicated breast care ward at the Churchill Hospital, Oxford. Top of page
The Music Department decamped here one Sunday afternoon after weeks of meticulous, almost military planning: three coaches; hundreds of packed meals; over 100 Radleians; 20 choristers; 20 dons; over 60 instruments to transport and millions of notes of music to rehearse – it was an ambitious affair.
The Chamber Orchestra, led by Arthur Sawbridge, played Light Music for Strings, a medley of Catalan folk tunes sewn together and orchestrated by Noel Rawsthorne, a past Organist of Liverpool Cathedral. It was a polished performance from the start, with a mellow string tone. At this point we saw the first of many smooth transitions and lightning-quick stage setting before the Brass Ensemble marched on, lead by Stephen Keavy. This was Galliard Battaglia – a polychoral brass piece – and in the organ loft at the back the Succentor approved, ‘Every good concert has some Scheidt,’ he said. The Guitar Ensemble appeared: four taps and they were off: seven sets of hands strumming in unison. Simply mesmerising, furthermore it did not feel out of place in this venerable building. The place was warming up, the prosecco was kicking in, and a great atmosphere was developing. Pelham Groom has an unflappable and very cool stage presence. Guitarists often have to cope with housekeeping on stage like microphone moving and sound checks, but Pelham copes with any kind of delay or technical disaster with a deadpan comment; for many of us, it’s now part of the entertainment. ‘Two-fifths of The Spring Offensive’ sang Until Tomorrow, one of their lyrical original numbers. Theo Whitworth and Pelham’s high tenors sang this semi-folk melody with impeccable harmony and a range of tone extracted from their guitars – from some Spanish touches in places to some Britten-esque harmony at the end at ‘Let me stay until tomorrow’. Haunting. The Radley Clerkes sang two close harmony numbers arranged by a former music don, Peter Gritton. Feelin’ Groovy was a confident and relaxed performance. There were great stereo effects, and some notable solos – Rory Stallibrass, George Nye, unique alto Ali Maxwell and counter-tenor Ben Sheen each stepped forward. Hernando’s Hideaway was a witty arrangement at a faster tempo. The altos shone, the basses provided solid support, and all ended strongly on an ‘ole!’. ‘I Was Glad’, one of the most famous English anthems of all, is a setting of Psalm 122 by Sir Hubert Parry. The Chapel Choir, Radley choristers, and the Choir of Eaton House, the Manor, assembled on stage and then the magnificent introduction began. The Sainsbury Organ was built by Klais & Sons of Bonn: what a sound! Like a large BMW it was smooth and sophisticated most of the time but just sometimes you felt the power left in reserve. The Succentor played it splendidly, sending the sound over the heads of the audience from the west end loft to the choir, who rose to the challenge with 100 voices split over eight independent parts. Spine-tingling moments abounded, particularly in the antiphonal ‘Jerusalem...Jerusalem ...is built...is built...’ middle section when the melody was thrown back and forth between the two choirs. At the end we heard exactly what the organ could do when the throttle was opened – a grand, warm, fiery sound. After the Foundation’s reception downstairs in the crypt the second half opened with two pieces from the Concert Band. Linden Lea – one of those folk song melodies by Vaughan Williams that he wrote from scratch but sound centuries old – was played in a beautiful arrangement with the brass beginning in colliery-band mode. This was an enormous gathering of players on stage, from Shells upwards. It was impressive to see so many of our younger wind and brass musicians playing together so well.
Our Saxophone Quintet gave an entertaining performance of Safer Sax. Rory Robinson led on soprano sax, with promising Shell player Tom Buckley and Seb Lomas on altos with Charles Cutteridge and Callum Davidson on baritones. There were complicated middle parts going on here, and some great close harmony moments. The audience were enjoying themselves and the concert was whizzing by.
The two movements from the Shostakovich Suite for Jazz Orchestra were simply enjoyable and zipped along, alternating from bounce to melancholy. Charles Cutteridge had the clarinet solo, and the orchestra was led by Myles Watkiss. This was clearly an orchestra that knew what it was doing. The March was another foot-tapper with lots going on. It sounded like Sousa in places, oddly, and the powerful brass section stood out here. ‘Jerusalem’ with full orchestra and organ was a spine-tingling experience. We went out into the night, back to our green oasis in the country, humming the music that we had heard and impressed by the quality and variety of music making that is flourishing now at Radley. We are a country school, of course, but just now and then it is absolutely the right thing to do to venture wholesale into the big city. It was a very full day for those that left after Chapel and returned near to midnight, but well worth it to establish a Radleian cultural foothold in Westminster for those wonderful two hours. The retiring collection was for a Leukaemia charity nominated by Freddie Tapner, who would have been playing in nearly everything were he not in hospital. Congratulations and thanks to the Music Department: Mr Carr, Miss Naylor, Dr Morris, Mr Williams, Mr Clarke, and the Music Administrator, Mrs Gunningham, for their hard work behind the scenes as well as on stage, in organising and rehearsing this extravaganza. (Abridged) Top of page
The plane was an hour delayed so the Clerkes and friends decided to start entertaining the airport with all their songs. There were people gathering and even taking photos. Eventually we were called to our gate. We arrived in Prague quite late and found our lodging – Hotel Albion, appropriately enough. We got up quite early the next day and went on a sight-seeing trip. With us was our full time guide, Paul, who talked to us in our coach. He would say, ‘Good Morning Everyone’ to which there would be a huge roar from the crowd. Some of his trademark quotes were ‘Springy weather today,’ ‘we meet at the Stony Bridge,’ and ‘look at the glassy windows’. Well, you had to be there. We saw the castle and walked down to the Charles Bridge. At the castle we saw the Changing of the Guard and a street band. We then had twenty minutes free time which I took to go and look round St Vitus Cathedral within the walls of Prague Castle: we were to sing there on the Sunday. The cathedral has about 20 side chapels; some of them were amazing, especially the one for King Wenceslas which was riddled with gemstones. There was also a mini organ which someone was playing. King Wenceslas (the good one, remember, from the carol) is very important to the Czech people, so he gets a nice place to rest in the national cathedral.Our walk finished at the famous Charles Bridge, the bridge was made for Charles IV, and did not originally have any statues. However the Catholics wanted to have some and so built thirty. There are now seventy-five statues. In the afternoon we rehearsed for the concert in the Martin Hall, Academy of Music. By 4:40pm, the hall was packed and at 5:00pm it was standing room only! The concert turned out to be a triumph, which may explain why the next concert on Monday was also so busy. In the evening, we all went out for supper as a gang and had a lovely meal in a restaurant that was partly underground. It was dimly lit and there were skulls around the place – a little strange. It was at this joint that one boy asked the bartender for a ‘cold hot chocolate’… SLN and JCN showed us some of the sights of Prague: we walked from the Charles Bridge to Wenceslas Square. Wenceslas Square was huge and had the National Museum at the end of it, along with lots of shops that you would find in London, like Hugo Boss. We saw the memorial for two young men who had tried to fight against the Communists when the tanks came rolling in. On the Sunday we got up early to go and sing the Mass in St Vitus Cathedral: we had just 10 minutes to rehearse and then we were into it. The cathedral was absolutely freezing, and, listening to the Czech, we didn’t know which were the prayers or the sermon. We knew the tune to some of the hymns so there was some la, la-ing from the organ loft where we were stationed, high up in the north transept. After that we had just twenty minutes to have lunch before going to the Jewish Quarter. Prague used to have lots of Jews but after the mass deportations in the Second World War there remain just 1600 Jewish people in the city. We had a guided tour around some of the synagogues: there used to be six working synagogues, but now there is only one; the rest are museums. One of the synagogues that we visited had all the names of the people that died in the Holocaust painted on the walls: it was amazing. I couldn’t believe how many people just from the Czech Republic had died. To think that some people now – there was a conference in the Middle East recently – are trying to say that it never happened... After that we went on a boat down the River Vltava (famous from Smetana’s patriotic orchestral suite, Ma Vlast). We went under the Charles Bridge, and saw lots of the buildings that we had seen, from a different view. During this trip, the Clerkes and friends sang songs again and there were people standing on the bridge taking photos. Seb Lomas’ ties always seem to draw a crowd. On the Monday, after a bit of a lie in, we went on a short trip to the nearby town of Slaney. We then looked around a local school. The Clerkes sang to them and then they sang to us ‘We wish you a merry Christmas’. They also provided nice elevenses. After that we went to the local theatre, to rehearse for our concert in the afternoon. The theatre technician there set up a stage with the British and the Czech flag hanging from the ceiling. The concert went well and the house was full again. Returning from Slaney we dropped in to the local brewery for a tour. At the end some tried the beer which was (apparently) delicious. In the evening we went to a restaurant nearby, and had a traditional Czech meal of dumplings and a beef stew – surprisingly nice. An enjoyable spring break in Prague – the first visit for nearly all of us – and it was thrilling to perform to packed houses with such great atmosphere. (Abridged) |
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In the Art School the boys produced some great work and the Art Department was delighted to award Oliver Hunter the Charles Mussett Travel Prize for his proposal for travel to India. The Charles Mussett Drawing Prize went to Oliver Mann for a superb drawing of a life model. Congratulations must also go to Delaval Knight who was a first time representative for Radley at the Roche Court Art History Articulation Competition. Delaval spoke about Sergeant Jagger’s First World War Memorial Sculpture in Hyde Park (
By playing both parts and wearing the same costume of blue and white fatigues and green flak jacket, it reiterated the point that we can choose which path we follow, we are capable of deciding whether to be the torturer or saviour. There is often little in between, except a moral decision to subdue or elevate our fellow human beings, but we do have a choice. Lambert clearly relishes the role of Kapo, but who wouldn’t in those circumstances? If you had the choice of being a prisoner, whose chances of survival were minimal, or a Kapo, with all the resultant aggression, brutality and resident evil that goes with it, would you not leap at the chance of Life rather than lingering Death?
There can’t have been many people in the audience for the opening night of this production who didn’t already know the story of Oliver Twist. Ever since its first serialisation in 1837, Dickens’s rags-to-riches tale of the winsome orphan who asks for more has become as familiar as the Nativity Story. And that is the difficulty for any director with such material: how do you make it fresh? And in particular, how do you do that with a large, young, inexperienced cast? No one need have worried. It was clear from the opening scene that this production was in very good hands. Owen Petty’s distraught mother in labour gripped the audience’s attention in the first seconds, and the rest of the cast held onto us from there. There were some very fine performances indeed: Finn Dowley was a marvellous Mrs Mann, flicking deftly from stern matriarch to smiling matron; Henry Frewer was alarmingly well-cast as the play’s charming rogue, the Artful Dodger, a role for which, as Peter O’Toole said about his own portrayal of Jeffrey Bernard, he might have been practising all his life; Tom Milligan’s Fagin was splendidly creepy without being a caricature; and Tobi Momoh was a tall and menacing Bill Sykes. Jack Lahiff played a series of fabulous small roles, including a bustling Old Sally, and a wonderfully blustery hat-eating Mr Grimwig; and I simply have to mention Henry Verrill’s surreally hilarious pieman, a cameo of crystalline brilliance.
but without being gloomy, and left plenty of space within which the comedy could flourish. The set conveyed all the stony, brooding coldness of Victorian London, shifting between pallid workhouse, busy street, foggy bridge, and murky thieves’ den with convincing ease. Lianne Rowland’s costumes, too, were magnificent, always seeming to be artlessly right, and helping to complete a fragile, shifting portrait of this morally complex, troubled city.
St John’s Church, in the middle of Smith Square in Westminster, a stone’s throw from the Houses of Parliament, is an imposing Baroque masterpiece built in 1728. Utterly symmetrical, with four towers crowning the corners and almost as wide as it is long, it delights the eye from many angles. The church is now one of London’s finest concert venues, attracting internationally renowned artists and performers. Sir Hugh Casson, the architect wrote, ‘just to come across it in that quiet square is an event. To enjoy its spaces, to listen to fine music, is an experience not to be matched in conventional halls.’
The concert began, as is traditional, with the College Pipers led by Pipemaster Lyndon Ingram. This was an atmospheric start to the concert, and the pipers played as well as I can remember them playing, immaculately kitted out, of course, in kilts and all the rest. There can’t be many nights of the year when the sound of the pipes rolls across Smith Square into the quiet streets of Westminster.
The Big Band played Watermelon Man by Hancock with a great sense of swing. This was an experienced ensemble, relaxed in each other’s company, projecting a powerful sound (nine trumpets – a Very Big Band indeed). Seb Lomas stepped forward for a solo, followed by Torsten Christian. The Full Throttle Funk, probably never before heard in this building turned out to be a fast movin’, toe-tappin’ polished romp of a piece, showcasin’ along the way Removes Jack Emmett and Charles Cutteridge on sax, and Rory Robinson depping at the back on drums. Very enjoyable.
There was a small break for logistics to take over at this point: getting a large orchestra and grand piano on stage is not an easy affair. Jonathan Williams was the soloist in the first movement of Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor. The orchestra was superb – supporting flexibly and surging forth when given reign to do so. Jonathan’s ripples of semiquavers sounded effortless as his hands leapfrogged along the keyboard. The tempo did not let up until the cadenza which contains tricky filigree passagework up at the top end testing the performer’s sensitivity and control. All were gripped by the playing, watching with minimal breathing as Jonny crouched low over the keyboard like a young Glenn Gould (without the muttering) then stormed up and down in a frenzy of immaculate octaves. A standing ovation followed, deservedly, and our soloist looked as happy as we have ever seen him.
The last day before Leave Away. While most boys are depositing themselves and general junk into mummy’s Land Rover, members of the orchestra and choir gathered with varying amounts of excitement (Shells literally bouncing around, Removes and Vths pretending they were above it all, and the Sixth Form getting everything done as usual). Although moments of mayhem ensued, somehow the whole party (50 boys plus SDJC, SLN, TMM, KH, JCN, SVC and Mrs Williams) managed to get onto the coach with no instruments, music or Shells forgotten; spirits of the dons noticeably rose as we drove off campus.