Dawn French Is A Huge Twat

Her words, not mine – this is the name of Dawn French’s new show. I say “new”, like many performers she’s finally brought it to New Zealand, after first performing it around the UK in 2022 and 2023, along with her book, The Twat Files.

The show sold out two nights at the Michael Fowler Centre almost immediately, so a third show was announced, for Monday night. Being a Monday, dining options were necessarily limited as many venues aren’t open. This was exacerbated by the fact that I’d done nothing in the way of advance planning, so by the time I looked for availability at two of our go-to places, there was none…all booked out by Dawn French fans, presumably. Instead, we took a punt on one of Wellington’s institutions, Great India, who’ve been around since, oh, ages ago. They do your standard Indian restaurant food, to a very high quality, so we enjoyed that. Must go there more often!

 

The show is about how Dawn has embarrassed herself, over the years, in a number of different ways. It’s a retrospective of her career in TV, film and on stage, as well as other excerpts from her life, in which she has behaved in a way that makes her cringe now. Much of it was supported by videos or photos pertaining to the incident in question, including her appearance at Elton John’s fancy dress party, which she attended with then-husband Lenny Henry – he as Michael Jackson (in white-face!) and she as Bubbles. She also related stories about auditions for roles, some of which she’d got, and some of which she’d failed to get; notably, a role in musical Mamma Mia!, as, despite her insistence that she can sing, she can’t actually, you know, sing. Not in tune, anyway. Other incidents include misunderstanding her doctor’s diagnosis for her knee, and a bizarre meeting backstage with Dustin Hoffman.

The show finishes with a musical number, as she sings As Long As He Needs Me, from Oliver! Naturally, she’s terrible, but she still gets a huge round of applause.

Peter Hook & The Light

Who is Peter Hook? He is a bass player and co-founder of seminal Seventies band Joy Division. When Ian Curtis died, he went on to form New Order with the remaining members. He took over lead vocals, although his voice isn’t brilliant. He’s now touring as Peter Hook & The Light.

The gig was originally scheduled to start at 7:30 at the Opera House, so I booked early at Highwater. It was later rescheduled to an 8:30 start, so we had plenty of time for dinner. The food at Highwater is very good – we had oysters, burrata, pancakes and flounder. All delicious.

Afterwards we toddled down the road to the Opera House, and took our seats in the dress circle. The format of the show, as announced, was to play two albums in their entirety: Substance, by Joy Division, followed by Substance, by New Order. Yes, eco warriors that they are, they’ve recycled their album title. 

Well, they didn’t do that. They started with three songs not on the album, before reaching Ceremony, and playing the whole of New Order’s Substance, then tacking on Touched By The Hand Of God at the end. If you’ve ever listened to Substance, you’ll know that it’s a double album, and some of the singles, notably Blue Monday, were released on 12” format only because they’re so long. At around 10pm, the lights came up and the band left the stage.

But wait, so far they’ve only played one album! This party is going to go on all night if they’re going to play the whole of the Joy Division album as well! I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I can handle that much Joy Division…despite their name, they were a gloomy bunch. It’s grim up North, you know. I don’t know as much Joy Division as New Order, so we took the executive decision not to sit through another hour or so of gloominess just to hear Love Will Tear Us Apart at the end. We therefore curtailed our Hook experience, somewhat thankful that they’d decided to do the New Order album first, and headed home.

That set list in full.

 

 

The Golden Ass

Circa Theatre’s 2024 programme is in full swing, and this month’s lead production is The Golden Ass. Once again, Nicola was ushing, so I got a ticket and went along.

The Golden Ass is an adaptation of Lucius Apuleius’ novel of the same name (in Latin, obvs – Asinus Aureus), which has the distinction of being the only ancient Roman novel to survive in its entirety. Adapted by, and starring, Michael Hurst, it is a one-man show that plays fast and loose with the original text, but takes us on the same journey. There are modern references throughout, and some of the names of the places, and the characters he interacts with, have been changed for comic effect.

Without giving too much away, Lucius, a recently graduated philosopher, is seeking his fortune. He plans to write a book. He is researching magic for the book at his uncle’s house when a spell goes wrong, and he is transformed into a donkey. Most of the rest of the play is about his adventures and misadventures as an ass. It’s all jolly good fun, involving jokes about the size of his donkey parts, amongst others.

In a change to our usual practice, we’d booked dinner for afterwards, as the show was a short one – 80 minutes without interval – so was over before 8 o’clock. We headed down to Capitol, as we haven’t been there for ages, and haven’t had a decent meal out for a while either. Oysters followed by venison…what more could you ask for?

Milan

This is our last day in Italy. We didn’t have the early start that has characterised our previous hotel departures – instead, we left at a more sedate 9:30am. This allowed us to make the short journey to Modena, and Luciano Pavarotti’s house.

Pavarotti was born in Modena and maintained strong connections with the area. When he retired he built a house on the outskirts, where he lived the remainder of his days. Whilst doing so he set up an academy for young singers, and taught or coached promising young opera singers. We toured the house, which is full of memorabilia, costumes, Grammys, platinum records, scores and books. Once we’d completed the tour we were treated to a concert from two up-and-coming singers: Yolanda, a soprano, and Giuseppe, a tenor, who gave us renditions of arias from various operas, accompanied by a pianist. Afterwards they stayed for interrogation by members of our group.

After the concert, we crossed the road to the restaurant attached to the house, for our very last traditional Italian lunch: antipasto, this time with hot bread pillow cakes, followed by risotto with balsamic vinegar (we are in Modena, after all) and roast chicken breast. Pudding was a vanilla ice-cream with caramelised peanuts.

We boarded the bus for the trip to Milan. We had about an hour to ourselves in Milan, to look around. This was hampered by (a) it being Mayday, so most of the shops were shut; (b) a demonstration outside La Scala opera house, requiring a police presence and road closures; and (c) it was raining. We wandered around a bit, then met up again at the agreed rendezvous outside Tiffany’s. As ever, one of our group was completely lost, but we managed to find her on the way back.

The big thing in Milan

The big shopping place in Milan

Our final journey was to the airport, about an hour out of town. We checked in, nd headed up to the lounge. Six hours to Dubai, then 16 hours to Auckland. Home on Friday.

 

Bologna

On our final full day in Italy, we had a bit of a rest in the morning, with no engagements. A chance to catch our breath, before heading to Bologna for a tour of the city, followed by an early dinner and the final opera of our tour, Tosca.

In the morning we had a final wander around Reggio Emilia, a coffee in the café outside our hotel, and then boarded the bus for Bologna. There we met our guide, Julia, who told us all about Bologna. The city doesn’t have quite the same cachet as some of the other cities that we’ve been to on our tour, but still there were some interesting points. It’s another city with an ancient university – this one reckoned to be the oldest in the Western world, having started in 1088. Some of it was damaged during WW2, but has been reconstructed as much as possible. Where the frescoes were unrecoverable they’ve simply painted white, not wanting to create a “fake antique” look. There was an anatomical theatre, where demonstrations of dissections were carried out, watched over by statues of Anatomia and all the forefathers of medicine – Galenus, Hipoocrates etc.

 

The new library, on the site of the old library

The really old library

The tour was then interrupted when one of our number was knocked down by an unheeding cyclist. She sped off into the distance, leaving Mike on the cobbled street. Fortunately one of the bystanders was a doctor, and within short order he was off to hospital for an x-ray. He turns out to have a broken hip, so not a good end of the holiday for him. This necessarily cast a downer on the rest of the day’s proceedings as people wanted updates on how he was doing. I managed to get a picture of the perpetrator speeding away, so hopefully the police can use that to help identify and bring her to justice.

We then had a look inside the big church – not the cathedral, that’s elsewhere – and it’s full of big church things. It’s one of the largest churches by volume in the world due to its 45m height. But it also contains science, in the form of a meridian line, which is lit by the sun through a tiny hole in the roof at local noon.  

Inside the big church

After a bit of free time – we found a café and I had a Negroni – we met up again for an early dinner; yet another plate of antipasto followed by tortellini. Not having had anything to eat since breakfast, we fell upon this like the wolf on the fold.

After dinner we quick-marched to our bus again, as we were running a little behind schedule. This was exacerbated by the bus driver taking a wrong turn, and also the fact that Kelly had gone straight to the venue from the hospital – she’s our main Italian speaker among the guides, and the driver didn’t have much English. We made it through with a minute to spare, and Kelly greeted us, handed us all tickets willy-nilly, and we sat down straight away.

The opera, Tosca, was well executed but no particular new settings or surprises. Scarpia was particularly loathsome. Spoiler alert: she dies at the end.

Aceto Balsamico

Aceto Balsamico Di Modena is a thing that we all know. For many centuries, no-one took much notice of it. It’s produced in a long and involved process taking many years, nay decades, in the lofts of various farmhouses in the region.

Then, one day, someone revolutionised the process, industrialised it, and copyrighted the name. This is what’s sold in shops around the world as balsamic vinegar, and it bears about as much resemblance to the real thing as Nescafé does to espresso.

We went to the Cavazzone farmhouse, which is owned by Umberto Sidoli, who also owns the Hotel Posta. The farmhouse was originally built for Baron Franchetti. After he died, it was bought first by the architect, then by the Sidoli family. Why was it sold? The baron’s children basically pissed away his fortune. Umberto’s great-grandfather bought it in 1919, and it has been in the family ever since.

 In their loft they produce the traditional balsamic vinegar. They can’t call it “of Modena” because that’s copyrighted, but theirs is the original and genuine product. Grape juice from four different varietals is boiled up, fermented, then barreled in a series of five different woods – oak, cherry, mulberry, juniper and chestnut – and left to mature for decades. It doesn’t matter what order you start with the barrels, but once you have, it’s fixed for that series of vinegar. The barrels are uncorked but covered with linen cloth, and evaporation happens over time. Once it’s ready, maybe five, 10, 20, or even 30 years later, you can take up to 1/3 of the liquid from the final barrel. You then top up from the next-most-recent barrel, which is topped up from the third, etc. etc. This means that the liquid sold is described as, for example, “at least 20 years old” rather than giving an exact year, as it is constantly being blended. The final product is a rich, thick, syrupy liquid, nothing like what you buy in a supermarket.

The ageing loft

After explaining all this, as well as the history of the house and his family, Umberto took us downstairs for a tasting of the differently-aged vinegars. As they get older, they get sweeter, more syrupy and complex in flavour. We tried one of them accompanying boiled eggs and parmesan cheese. This was followed by a pasta-making demonstration from our chef. He showed us how to make the pasta, then rolled out some he’d prepared earlier and showed us how to make tortellini, and similar filled pasta, as well as tagliatelle and other grades of ribbons.

This was all making us very hungry, and we sat down to a dinner in the restaurant – a typical Italian dinner. This time we had both tortellini and risotto with asparagus after the antipasti, and finished on roast pork with – you guessed it! – balsamic vinegar, and finally panna cotta with a balsamic glaze.

That concluded our education in balsamic. We reboarded our bus and went back to the hotel.