Recreating an historic Hamlet – with outstanding results

The Motive and the Cue

“Theatre is for thinking,” director Sir John Gielgud tells Richard Burton, as the latter prepares to take the stage as Hamlet on Broadway in 1964. And there is no shortage of that here, with Jack Thorne’s magnificent new play offering a feast of food for the mind.

Based on two accounts from actors who were involved in the production – Richard L Sterne’s John Geilgud directs Richard Burton in Hamlet: A journal of rehearsals, and William Redfield’s Letters from an Actor, the play takes its title from part of a speech by Hamlet in Act 2 scene 2:

“What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? What would he do Had he the motive and the cue for passion That I have?”

It was a hugely successful production, but its gestation was troubled. There was no lack of respect from either for the other, but director and leading man struggled to work out what their individual visions were.

Gielgud was beset by fear that he was becoming irrelevant (he’d taken this job because it was the best offer) and was trying to do something ‘modern’, while Burton – now a global film star and celebrity after just marrying Elizabeth Taylor – was desperate to add ‘classical’ heft to his CV.

With an avaricious press camped outside the hotel where Burton and Taylor are staying, director and star fight, reconcile and fight again. Will they achieve what they both want – and how?

Gielgud’s great modern plan for the production was to stage it as though it were in the rehearsal room rather than before the footlights. Thorne’s script moves between shortish scenes, with surtitles telling the audience what day of rehearsals has been reached (there were 25).

Set designer Es Devlin uses black curtains to allow us to see into various sets behind, which change as one or more of the cast walk to the front of the stage to continue the play as the curtains close behind. If it sounds clunky, it isn’t. That, of course, is also down to the magnificent direction of Sam Mendes. The production moves smoothly and never lags.

If the central theme is about why we create art – and indeed, how – there is no shortage of other themes.

Father and sons, masculinity, ageing and sexuality to list a few.

On the latter, Gielgud at this point was 60. As a gay man, having lived his entire life with homosexuality being illegal, this adds a vulnerability, loneliness and a poignancy to him. In one scene, he takes Hugh, a sex worker, back to his hotel room, but cannot go through with any act and begins to talk.

When Hugh embraces Gielgud, the actor breaks down and sobs. It’s utterly heart-rending.

In essence, this is a two-hander with accompanying ensemble. All, of course, who are top quality. Special mentions to Allan Corduner as Hume Cronyn and Janie Dee as Eileen Herlie.

Taylor is played by Tuppence Middleton. She doesn’t have a vast amount to do, but brings light and sparkle, and also an important contrast to the two main protagonists, in seeming supremely confident and at ease in herself.

Johnny Flynn gives an excellent turn as Burton, moving fleetly from rage to fear, while there’s almost an impotence in his lack of knowing of what he himself wants.

But ultimately, this rests on the performance of Mark Gatiss as Gielgud – and it is an absolute masterclass. Not an imitation – though he fabulously captures the musical quality of his subject’s mellifluous delivery, and the quick-fire wit (and sharp bitchiness – though never used cruelly) too.

Finally, there is the ending. I give no spoilers, but is spine-tinglingly, eye-prickling stunning.

All in all, this really is outstanding – a love letter to theatre, and to Shakespeare.

• The Motive and the Cue is at the Lyttelton Theatre Until 15 July. It seem likely to transfer to the West End after that.

Kani and Sher provide meat for the mind

John Kani and Antony Sher

It’s South Africa, 25 years after the death of apartheid and the birth of the Rainbow Nation. Successful classical actor Jack Morris is struggling to learn his lines for the eponymous role in Shakespeare’s King Lear.

Interrupted by the doorbell, he is horrified to discover that the carer/nurse that he was expecting from an agency is actually Lunga Kunene, an elderly black man and senior nursing sister.

But why does he need a carer/nurse? Because he has stage four liver cancer. Can he live long enough to perform Lear? Can he stop seeing Kunene as all black people?

Kunene and the King is written by South African acting legend John Kani (the first black Othello on stage win South Africa in 1987, and also T’Chaka in Marvel’s Black Panther), who also plays Kunene in this RSC production, which has been seen in Stratford upon Avon and Cape Town before arriving in London’s West End.

Now, just to be clear, in 1985, after appearing in the anti-apartheid play Sizwe Bansi is Dead, which Kani co-wrote with Athol Fugard, he received a phone call saying that his father wanted to see him. On the way there, Kani was surrounded by police, who beat him and left him for dead. His left eye was lost in the incident and he now wears a prosthetic.

Kani is more than qualified to give lessons in what apartheid meant – and what its legacy means. He's lived it. And he is scathing, for instance, of Jacob Zuma’s corrupt governance.

At approximately 96 minutes – with no interval – this is a short work, but while it has plenty of laughs, it’s also full of enough intensity for double that time.

In some ways, it feels simplistic: yes, yes, yes – we (the white West) know about this! Don’t labour the point!

But any simplicity is superficial. There’s real meat here – on a number of levels. The clashes of culture, ‘othering’ – and not one by any one group alone; the universality of Shakespeare; the fear of mortality …

This is a deceptive work by Kani – a work that is utterly apt not just for South Africa, but (like the Bard’s works) for everywhere and perhaps particularly in these fraught times.

The work relies on the strength of the actors playing the roles in this two-hander. At first, you think that Kani seems physically constrained –  until you understand that the character is all buckled-up self-restraint: he’s seen the worst behaviour of both white and black South Africans in the fight to set his country free and subsequently, and is fighting against his own anger to be a good human being.

His has been a life spent constantly struggling within himself to be humane and to bolt down the rage within against what he has seen and experienced.

It is a superb performance.

Opposite Kani is his South African compatriot, Antony Sher, as Morris. And Sher also turns in a simply stunning performance as someone struggling with his place within history and against a dreadful disease. Neither of the men are flawless – but neither are evil either.

It’s on until 28 March. There are still tickets available – and I recommend it.

Taming the Shrew offers laughs and pause for thought

In the critical analysis of Shakespeare that emerged in the late Victorian era, it was decided that the canon included three ‘problem plays’: All’s Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure and Troilus and Cressida.

These were so called because they are complex and ambiguous, and shift rapidly between comedy and a darker tone.

It’s a vague enough definition – and Shakespeare’s work so wide ranging – that other works have been included in that description over the years.

The Winter’s Tale, Timon of Athens, Merchant of Venice and even Hamlet have all found themselves with the ‘problem’ label added.

Rather more recently, author Professor Neil Rhodes has described the defining element of a problem play as possessing a controversial plot.

On this basis, even if The Taming of the Shrew (1590-1592) is not classed as a problem play, then it’s a play with a big problem.

Here we have the tale of Petruchio, who marries and then ‘tames’ the shrewish Katherine – i there an equivalent male adjective for ‘shrewish’? To do so, he employs psychological torture (denial of sleep and food) as he ‘educates’ his new wife to understand that, if he says the sun is in fact the moon – or visa versa – then it is.

Subservience is the order of the day and makes, we are told, for a peaceful, loving marriage.

As such attitudes have been seen as increasingly unacceptable, directors have sought to find ways of dealing with it in more modern terms.

For instance, in 1978, in Peter Bogdanov’s iconic modern-dress production at Stratford – the first time I had seen the RSC – Jonathan Pryce and Paola Dionisotti played the leads, (with David Suchet as Gremio). Here, Dionisotti made Kate’s final speech one of defeat, not of a victorious sense of having delight at having been ‘tamed’.

The Royal Shakespeare Company’s current production by Justin Audibert is not the first to flip the genders in the piece, but it is particularly successful.

By presenting Italy as a matriarchal society, the comments and actions about and against those who do not hold power become more obviously jarring: in which case, how have societies regarded them (and still do, to varying degrees) as acceptable when said and done by men against women?

It also helps to bring out the centrality of money to the society represented – not least in terms of its links with marriage through dowries and land, with women having an intrinsic link to property.

And when, in the play’s closing monologue, our gender-flipped, male Kate tells us: “I am ashamed that men are so simple, To offer war where they should kneel for peace …” we have the play concluding with a comment on toxic masculinity that gives it all an added edge, and has the audience laughing sharply as Kate faces them from the front of the stage.

However, Taming of the Shrew was neither a po-faced nor puritanical play – it’s a bawdy comedy with plenty of references to sex that the first audiences would have found hilarious.

Rather, this is Carry On Taming the Shrew for the #MeToo era.

The company’s Merry Wives of Windsor that I saw at the end of 2018 had me laughing out loud more than at any previous production of anything by the Bard and, while this doesn’t manage quite that level of hilarity, there are are no shortage of laughs from an exceptionally strong cast – all of which also helps to avoid any whines about it being ‘PC’.

My pick of a terrific ensemble has to be Sophie Stanton as Gremia – one of three scheming suitors for Kate’s younger brother, Bianco, who cannot be married until his sibling has been paired off. Somehow she manages to glide around the stage, her Elizabethan skirts presumably hiding wheels, with the audience constantly laughing at the movement. Together with her struggles with words, swords and more, it’s a glorious comic performance.

Joseph Arkley is very good as Kate, while Claire Price has a ball as Petruchia. Hortensia, another suitor for the hand of Bianco, is served excellently by Amelia Donkor and Amy Trigg makes a wonderful Biondella, servant to Lucentia.

Oh, and what a delightful nod to Broadway to have Petruchia absently sing a line from Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate at one point – an acknowledgement that, for all its problems, The Taming of the Shrew remains a very popular entertainment. All of which serves to remind us, were it needed, that Shakespeare remains the Bard for all seasons and all times.

• The Taming of the Shrew is in repertoire at London’s Barbican with As You Like It and Measure for Measure until 18 January – www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2019/series/royal-shakespeare-company-2019-20-season. After that, it will visit Canterbury, Plymouth, Nottingham, Newcastle and Blackpool – www.rsc.org.uk/the-taming-of-the-shrew/on-tour, before heading to the US, South Korea and Japan –www.rsc.org.uk/the-taming-of-the-shrew/international-tour/.

All badged up

The overarching message from today’s exercise in re-badging my leather jacket, now returned from the cleaners, seems to have been that you can make statements without appearing to do so.

I started badging it some years ago, seeing it as a very personal form of ‘rock chic’ and absolutely refusing to add any obviously ‘political’ badges.

Over the last few years, it’s attracted plenty of comment and enquiry. Perhaps counter-intuitively, I think it says more about me and what I believe in than if I’d dressed the jacket in rather more obvious pins.

Loosely, there are themes. And as Thomas Mann once said: “Everything is politics”.

So here’s a guide to my newly badged jacket.

From top left (approximately) – travel is good. We start with a flag pin representing Lübeck. This was my destination as a 50th birthday ‘thang’: I’d never been out of the UK on my own before this and it was a (long overdue) rite of passage to prove I could travel to ‘Abroadland’ all on my own.

I chose Lübeck because of Mann and Günter Grass and because I’d spent around 10 years teaching myself a bit of German so felt a certain confidence in the idea that I might be able to communicate at a basic level.

It was a fabulous and seminal trip.

Füssen? More German stuff – Bavaria; the Alps; simply gorgeous. Ties in with the edelweiss pin.

Then Thomas Mann – I have spares ope this pin; that’s how important it is to me. I loved Buddenbrooks … but then I read Death in Venice and my mind was well and truly blown.

The travel section includes Collioure – of course – plus Vienna, Sorrento and Sicily: all are special to me.

Beethoven is crucial: I love classical music and Ludwig in particular. And his 250th birthday is next year, so it would be poor tom leave him out.

That Concorde? A lovely pin, bought in Folkstone, together with a Spitfire pin. But at present, wearing a Spitfire could send out all the wrong signals, while this suggests European co-operation.

The Royal Opera House? Well, if you read this blog regularly, you’ll know why.

The Haring ‘resist’ pin? Haring at Tate Liverpool was my art revelation this year and resisting the Establishment and racism and bigotry in general is good.

The birds? Well, I saw a kingfisher this year and interacted with a raven (my absolute top bird). I love corvids in general, including those beauties, magpies. Red squirrels – only seen in Germany and Austria – but wonderful nonetheless.

Stephen Sondheim is a god, Star Wars is a big part of my cultural life, along with The Wizard of Oz (and as some of you will know, I’m a ‘friend of Dorothy’), while Captain Haddock represents comics and cartoons, and Shakespeare … well, I ‘dig’ The Bard big time.

This is how to make comments about yourself but leave others imply enjoying the colour!

The RSC's Caesar was a dish fit for the gods

It was a plain classroom with traditional, simple desks that still had a place for an inkwell. It was the mid-1970s and it was my second year at Fairfield, a state grammar school for girls that stands just up the road from where Manchester City strut their stuff now.

The school is linked to an historic Moravian settlement – at least 75% of the reason that my rather religious parents decided to send me as far again as far as the nearest grammar school (in Ashton) when I passed my 11+.

The other reason was that Ashton was co-ed. Fairfield just had 800 girls in those days. By way of further colour, they were either football or speedway fans – Belle Vue speedway was not far away, but it the former, then obviously either City of or the mob from Salford.

Regular readers of this blog know that I have been a Blue since around 1974.

Anyway, it was my second year. We had been introduced to Shakespeare via the traditional route of The Dream – because … y’know … fairies, lurve etc (nothing to do with Titania lusting after someone who has been turned into an animal that the first audiences would easily have known had a whopping penis – thanks to Jill Betjeman’s doctoral thesis for this coming to my attention some years ago) and after that, it was Julius Caesar.

I remember the books: small hardbacks, annotated by generations of pupils. Years later, I started buying the Arden texts because they actually provided contextual essays and serious notes. You possibly don’t want to get me started on Merchant.

The lessons are remembered in a general sense – the teacher would ‘cast’ the characters for the next section and we would read before analysing. Since I had already shown a certain flair for reading aloud/acting, I was usually quite pleasantly busy.

Later, we did Romeo and Juliet. I seemed to be the only one in the class that hated it (I still dislike it, even having seen the seriously memorable Michael Bogdanov 1986 RSC production at Stratford with Sean ‘One-Note’ Bean, Niamh Cusack and a fabulous, black leather-clad Hugh Quarshie – lust alert – as Tybalt).

However, in the case of old Julie, I was the only one who seemed to care for the play.

So, fast forward 40-plus years. The RSC were bringing their Roman season to the Barbican and both The Other Half and I wanted to see at least two and, if we could, the whole batch.

In the event, since I ended up spending November and December dealing with serious family problems, we hadn’t even got around to booking by the time 2017 morphed into 2018. Then, just over a week ago, an alarm bell sounded in my head and I looked at whether it was still possible to get in for anything.

Remarkably, with just a couple of performances to go for the entire season, I was able to get tickets for Julius Caesar.

Subsequently, I have read a number of reviews. It’s an odd occasion where I find myself aligned with the Guardian’s Michael Billington (stopped clocks ‘n’ all). But most were, in my opinion, really quite stupid. For instance, more than one seemed to doubt that theatre audiences are clever enough to catch the modern relevance of the play – unless it’s done in contemporary dress with posters of Trump plastered all over the set!

Now it might be that I’m *so* much more intelligent than most people in this country that I do not need to have such literal signposts – or perhaps not. But I certainly had no problem seeing the relevance, for all it’s classical Roman setting.

Other reviews whined that Alex Waldmann’s Brutus isn’t, y’know, heroic enough. He doubts, he wavers – and then he rushes at it all like a naive fundamentalist. Disagree with this interpretation by all means, but it is nonetheless a valid and very interesting one.

Personally, finally seeing the play on stage, so long after loving it so much at school … I thought that it was an exceptional production that brought home to me just how very good this play is in the first place.

As with Macbeth, Shakespeare absolutely ‘got’ politics and the behaviour that goes with it. There are no obvious ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’ – even those who see the tyranny of Caesar are not themselves immune from behaving in a way that is dictatorial.

I utterly adored seeing this done in Roman dress – the first time I’ve seen a play like this done in such historic dress. I have no problem with modern-dress productions – but I thought this was wonderful. I love the sort of set that Robert Innes Hopkins gave us: simple, yet sophisticated.

Angus Jackson’s production was, for me, one of the best things I’ve seen in a very long time – and it brought home to me just what a truly great play this is. My teenage self was not wrong.

Martin Hutson – simply superb as Cassius

On the cast, while Waldmann’s Brutus does challenge our preconceptions of the character, it is a far, far better performance than some reviews would lead you to believe. Hannah Morrish (in her debut RSC season) is wonderful in her brief time on stage as Portia, Andrew Woodall’s Caesar is an excellent study of a supercilious despot, his Bill Nighy-like spit-lisp utterly spot on, while  James Corrigan as Mark Antony is superb – not least in wooing the mob with the oratory of the “Friends, Romans, countrymen” speech, ending as it does when he rips up the fake will that he has used to rouse the crowd.

The ensemble cast was excellent. But the star performance really does come from Martin Hutson as Cassius – simply stunning.

One of the joys of this is that there were no simplistic ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’. Every single character is flawed. And by the end, it's hard to know who you sympathise with – or not. Indeed, I felt that Cassius comes out of it with rather more integrity than others.

For various reasons, I haven’t seen the RSC for around 20 years. This reminded me why it is such a great company, why Shakespeare is still so relevant – and why Julius Caesar is such a sensationally good play.

Judi Dench shines in a disappointing Winter's Tale

Judi Dench – a Shakespearean masterclass

The Winter’s Tale might not be one of Shakespeare’s best-known plays, but it holds a very special place in my personal canon.

As an A’ level text, it became as familiar as a lover. And in 1982, our English teacher at Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School took our class to Stratford to see the RSC perform it on stage.

The cast included Gemma Jones – who I knew from BBC’s The Duchess of Duke Street – Sheila Hancock and one Patrick Stewart, who was an associate artist with the company, but relatively unknown beyond that sphere.

Thinking back inn the last couple of weeks, I’ve realised just what a seminal piece of theatre it was for me. It was the first time that I had seen a straight play and been left jaw-on-floor shattered, tears streaming down my face.

This was as Paulina led Leontes from the stage at the end of what we know as the first part of the play. My god – it was staggering!

And it was the moment I decided that Patrick Stewart was a personal god. He turned in an absolutely superb performance. Even now, over 30 years later, I can still close my eyes and see parts of that production in my mental movie house.

At various drama school and polytechnic auditions, I’d used one of Paulina’s big speeches as my classical offering.

A few short years later, I was in a very high-quality non-pro production – as Dorcas, one of the shepherdesses. These were the days when I was cast quite regularly as some variation or other of a tart with a heart of gold (or not).

But since then, I have not seen a production.

So when it was announced, last spring, that Kenneth Branagh’s new company would open a year-long residency at The Garrick with just this play, I leapt into ticket-buying mode.

The added bonuses were that I’d never seen Sir Ken live, so would rectify that, while Judi Dench was slated to play Paulina.

Memory is a fascinating thing.

I was astonished at how much huge chunks of the script has such a deep sense of familiarity as it was spoken.

Christopher Oram’s design is very good – simple staging, with an early 20th century look.

But some of the acting was odd to say the least – very shouty. And into that category comes Branagh, in a performance that never caught the melodic beauty of the Bard’s verse, but is broken and staccato.

Was this Leontes done Method style? I don’t know the answer, but it was disappointing.

Not that he was alone: Polixenes (Hadley Fraser) and Florizel (Tom Bateman in an eternally thankless role) were shouty too, adding to the sense that this was a directorial decision.

Which is a shame on many levels.

The pastoral scenes – and getting the correct balance and pace between the bookending scenes in Sicily and the those in Bohemia is not easy – seemed somewhat hysterically played, with Mopsa and Dorcas, for instance, engaged in a really rather OTT cat fight.

Thank the theatrical gods, then, for Dame Judi, who illustrated – once again – just how good she is. Paulina is a gem of a role. Dench didn’t shout: even when she rails at Leontes, her voice never sounds strained.

She conveys sense and great emotional depth, but never, ever without also giving us the poetry – the music – of Shakespeare.

She can flounce with simply an intonation. She can convey power and rage and desperate sadness and irony with the slightest of inflections.

In all the ‘national treasure’ stuff, it’s easy to forget just how good – no: how great – Judi Dench really is.

As others seemed flummoxed, she gave us a masterclass. Frankly, her Paulina was worth the ticket price alone.

There were other compensations: Michael Pennington was excellent in the unfortunately rather small role of Antigonus (‘exit, pursued by a bear’), while John Shrapnel turns in a very good Camilo.

Jimmy Yuill has a couple of moments where he rises above the pastoral shtick to convey real tragedy as the shepherd, while Miranda Raison is a dignified Hermione, if rather lacking in any of the sort of guts that I remember of Jones.

Interestingly, at least one critic has praised Branagh’s fall into jealousy. I found it unconvincing. More than three decades after seeing that Stratford production, I remember Stewart’s descent starting with him joking about Polixines and Hermione. Then his own joke backfires and the seed of real jealousy takes root.

It’s possible that, in the few days between the late preview I saw and the opening night the playing was vastly improved, but I find that difficult to believe.

Rob Ashford is co-director with Branagh and perhaps here lies the heart of the problems: with one director on stage and one off, confusion was always a possibility.

So it’s a sadly unsatisfactory evening – except for a true great who can still light up a theatre. 

A taste of the Gothic

'In Mr Stoker's Hand' A Kendal (2014)

If you happen to be in London over the holidays and are wondering what to do, then why not pop along to the British Library to catch it’s exhibition, Terror and Wonder: The Gothic imagination?

We took it in last week, as part of my post-work birthday celebrations – and a damned good option it was too.

It begins in 1764 – a crucial date, as this was when Horace Walpole published The Castle of Otranto, generally accepted as the first Gothic novel.

Indeed, by it’s second edition, it bore the words ‘A Gothic Story’ on the title page.

Walpole, who lived in Twickenham in a house called Strawberry Hill, was such a fan of all things Gothic that he converted his home to reflect that obsession, with thousands of people visiting to see the results.

This is not to say that the Gothic novel emerged from nowhere: its roots can be found in a variety of works from the likes of Shakespeare (think Tempest and even Hamlet) to Edmund Spencer’s The Faerie Queene.

Mind, the minute I started seeing these connections, I started thinking of Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe as having Gothic elements.

Gothic may sound like a small niche market, but when looked at through the prism of this exhibition, you realise just how far-reaching its tendrils are.

The exhibition, though, takes us from these beginnings right up to the present day, with a series of photographs from the twice-yearly gathering of Goths in Whitby.

These, incidentally, were commissioned by the library for this exhibition and are well worth paying attention to – don't just rush past.

In between, there’s plenty to see and learn, including on Bram Stoker and Dracula, and we can see that the populist fears of our own times are not new: immigration/foreigners, disease, sexuality, science/technology and change can all be found in the Gothic literature of the past, although new themes have emerged in recent years, including the impact of humanity on the environment.

There are the pulp novels, and the satires as well as the literature; filmed versions of classic tales such as Hollywood versions of Frankenstein are represented, plus our own The Whicker Man and there is even, in a stand-alone glass case, the eponymous bunny from Wallace and Gromit’s The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

There’s a particularly interesting section on Edgar Allen Poe, who I have now been inspired to start reading.

And the section on Poe was not the only area where the power of a good book illustration could be seen too.

Boris Karloff as an iconic Frankenstein's monster

Showing an overlap of issues, one exhibit was a letter to police from 'The Boss’ who claimed to be Jack the Ripper and goaded police by saying he’d lop the ear off his next victim. When the next victim had a damaged ear, the police were slightly less skeptical.

But with this is displayed the front page from a sensation paper of the time, with its illustrations, including ghoulish – and clumsy – sketches of the face of the second victim, Annie Chapman, “before and after death”.

It’s a reminder of how the sensationalistic press – and the concomitant voyeuristic and vicarious public – has been with us for a far longer time than we might think.

But from a personal perspective, the highlights include two pages of Mary Shelley’s manuscript for Frankenstein, complete with notes in the margin from Percy.

If you have any fascination for old documents and original handwriting by famous writers, then this has the sort of jaw-dropping impact that’s worth the exhibition price alone.

This exhibition requires time: we had 90 minutes, but were still rushing a tad by the end.

It is, however, well worth the effort.

In an entirely coincidental manner, my birthday continued in Gothic vein, with dinner a few steps further along Euston Road in the Gilbert Scott, which is housed in the restored Midland Grand Hotel (now the St Pancras Renaissance) and originally designed by George Gilbert Scott.

Watch out for the Were-Rabbit!

Since we were in good time, we had cocktails – and a brief glance at the cocktail menu told me that I could manage to find a perfectly Gothic-sounding cocktail to sip.

The Herbalist is a mix of Tanqueray 10 gin, green Chartreuse, elderflower, lemon and an absinthe rinse. Pale green, and served with a garnish of mint and thyme, it looks the business, but is far more subtle than one might expect – although packing a powerful punch. But how Gothic an you get?

The food was as good as ever: foie gras to start, with a delicate garnish of cranberries, followed by haddock with a crust of crumbs and toasted almond, and served on a bed of charred broccoli with a gremolata, and with new potatoes on the side, with a garnish of seaweed (treated like chives).

For dessert, I couldn’t resist having a special Marcus Wareing confection: Kendal mint cake choc ice, which gave a rather green tinge to a dinner that had started with a pale Gothic green cocktail.

So often I struggle with portion size, but I swear, every single one of those three plates was absolutely scraped clean.

All in all, a most enjoyable evening.

And as you can see from the illustration at the top of this piece, the inspiration continued well into the weekend.

For far fuller reviews of the Gilbert Scott, see if you think food is food, think again and Comfort and joy.

Plus: Dracula: The Gothic classic with a sexy bite