Memories of several Bottoms

Sheridan Smith, David Walliams and fairies

On Friday evening, I trotted along to London’s West End down to see David Walliams’s Bottom.

Yes, yes – I know. I know it’s been done before, but apart from one tweet, not by me. So I’m afraid that you, dear readers, have to put up with it being done here.

The fourth production in the inaugural season of the Michael Grandage Company sees A Midsummer Night’s Dream playing to packed houses in the West End – and the main reason for all the bottoms on seats is less that it’s the Bard and more the star casting.

Walliams has been cast as Bottom, while Sheridan Smith takes on the traditional dual roles of Titania and Hippolyta.

The former brings the pulling power of Little Britain to the production, and has been directed to camp up the part for all he’s worth.

Smith brings with her the success of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, plus stints on the Royle Family and Jonathan Creek, and has been directed in such a way that you wouldn’t know about that televisual CV unless you recognised her name or checked out the programme.

My own first Dream was way back in September 1976 at the Bolton Octagon, when a seat in the gallery cost just 50p – the ticket is still pasted into an old scrapbook.

It had been our introduction to Shakespeare a year earlier at school (when I’d read Bottom in class) and this was the first live production of a play by the Bard that I’d seen.

Then in April 1979, it was the Fairfield High School for Girls annual production (tickets 60p – there’s inflation for you), with me donning something like a sackcloth costume as Peter Quince; a performance that the local paper described as being “acted with authority”.

Actually, what I remember most was being able to say “bloody” twice in a speech – in front of the headmistress.

It was the one performance my maternal grandmother ever saw me in, and she and my mother decided that I had a likeness to one of my mother’s brothers. I’m not sure I’ve recovered yet.

But back to that Octagon production. Wilfred Harrison, who was also joint director, played Bottom. The notes in that scrapbook only mention his performance, but although this is an ensemble piece, the Mechanicals are what grabs the attention of most audiences, precisely because of the timeless comedy.

In 1991, for instance, Roy Hudd’s Bottom is just about the only thing I remember of a production at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre – apart from the less-than-brilliant weather.

When it's not raining, it’s a play that is superbly suited to outside staging.

In 1987, the Duke’s Playhouse in Lancaster staged its first promenade production in the city’s Williamson Park, around and including the Ashton Memorial as a backdrop.

Andy Serkis as Lysander in Lancaster. Puck to the left

That Dream, with a cast that included, as Lysander, Andy Serkis – now best known as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films – was utterly magical.

Of the ones I’ve seen, it remains my favourite production. The lovers were strongly done even if the Mechanicals didn’t make a major impression in the memory bank: Puck was the stand-out, although unfortunately I can’t remember the name of the actor who played him in full faun get up.

But back to the here and now, and Michael Grandage’s new production.

It’s played at F1 pace – just two hours for the whole play to unwind – and that has some benefits and some pitfalls.

Some of the languorous sense of the poetry is lost by charging at it like this – I was mightily relieved when Puck’s closing speech was allowed its necessary time – but it also works well in particular places, not least in the chaotic row between the four lovers in the forest as Oberon and Puck looks on.

Indeed, what Grandage and his company have done is remove any reverential attitude and emphasised the play’s physical comedy – the majority of which is quite clearly there in the text.

And they also haven’t ducked the point that it’s largely not about lurve, but sex – certainly in terms of Titania and Bottom.

Elizabethan audiences would have known, for instance, that an ass had a large penis, so Bottom’s transformation into just such an animal, combined with Titania’s awakening under the spell, is quite clearly about lust.*

Just imagine what would happen if all those bored schoolchildren being introduced to Shakespeare via this play were told that it was about sex?

Anyway, this is very good fun.

And more than that, it was thoroughly enjoyed by an audience that included a great many people who clearly don’t go to the theatre often – and most certainly not for Shakespeare.

The production has had some brief moments of song and dance inserted – and some snippets of pop classics – and where used, they work.

Gavin Fowler as Puck

While the mechanicals are camper than the proverbial row of tents, the fairies are a group of crusty hippies with a bit of edge.

And the lovers are far less insipid and boring than they can be.

Of the cast, Smith was excellent – all husky voice and powerful allure.

Walliams gets to nick the show – there’s more ham on display than in a Spanish deli, and anyone older than a teen will wonder if they’re seeing the reincarnation of Frankie Howerd at one point in particular – but again, in the context of this kind of production, it works.

Of the rest of a good ensemble, special mentions for Gavin Fowler as Puck – he moves superbly – Katherine Kingsley as a fabulously feisty Helena and Pádraic Delaney as Oberon/Theseus.

Christopher Oram’s sets work well, as do his costumes. In particular, I liked Puck’s trousers, which tallied with the attire of the rest of the fairies, but, in the side fringe, just hinted at a faun’s furry legs.

It’s a thoroughly enjoyable romp – more Carry On than delicate rom-com – but it’s about time that the Dream got this sort of shake-it-up treatment to rescue it from any perception of it being fey, rather infantile and ‘safe’.

Finally, just to note that we considered ourselves lucky in finding – and being able to get a table without booking – Piazza, an Italian restaurant that almost backs onto the theatre.

An independent amid the mass of chains in the vicinity, it did a very pleasant pomodoro (according to The Other Half) and a very nice diavola pizza for me – excellent, doughy base, with fresh tomato sauce, spiced minced beef, red onions, pepperoni, mozzarella and green jalapeños to get the endorphins flowing.

Really not pricy for London, with very pleasant service. That’s one to remember.

* For which insight I thank Jill Betjeman of Lancaster.

Stop a taking the pizza

Hands up all of you who noticed a little story that created a minor furore this week, about how someone has finally developed a nutritionally-balanced pizza.

Anyone?

Pizza can be part of a healthy diet, claimed Prof Mike Lean (get that name), who is the chair of human nutrition at Glasgow University and a consultant physician at Glasgow Royal Infirmary.

His newly-designed pizza bases are flecked with seaweed – because it’s a low-sodium seasoning and also provides, iron, iodine and vitamin B12 – and everything else is beautifully calculated to take the stress out of trying to get your five a day and the right levels of protein and calcium and fat and whatever ...

Because that is really, really hard.

Apparently, he’s now on the case working on a  'nutritionally-balanced ' curry – an obviously unsound dish, particularly if of the veggie variety.

What’s annoying is that there is nothing inherently ‘unbalanced’ or ‘unhealthy’ about pizza – or curry – for that matter.

Take a real Italian pizza – or the glories of a Provençal pissaladière, with it’s topping of gently and slowly stewed onions, flecked with fresh thyme, topped with a lattice of anchovies and dotted with black olives.

Or the version to be found in pays Catalan, where the onions are replaced by tomatoes (see the picture).

None of these are ‘unhealthy’ or ‘nutritionally unbalanced’.

But the chances are that, if you eat them, you’ll be eating them fresh – made in the home or by a baker (as were the ones in the picture). The latter two in particular do not hail from a part of the world where they are struggling against massively rising obesity, chronic heart disease and shortened lifespans.

Mediterranean diet, anyone?

So how about if we just stopped eating processed food?

But here’s the thing. The prof has not been working alone, but in conjunction with Donald Maclean, the founder of a company called Eat Balanced.

What he’s aiming to sell, through supermarkets, is yet more processed food.

They will be more expensive than most frozen ones but cheaper than most fresh ones, apparently.

While I have no opposition to people making money, why not just make your own?

To get an idea on price, a 300g frozen cheese and tomato pizza from Waitrose’s Essential range comes in at £1.84. It’s remarkably clean in terms of ingredients, although it includes both mozzarella and Cheddar.

How about just the former, with tomatoes and a few shredded basil leaves on top?

Since you’d need at least two of those to feed a family (more like one each, I’d suggest) it’s nowhere near as cheap as it looks at first glance.

To make your own pizza is far from difficult. There’s a basic base recipe here.

If we glance back at Ocado, then flour could be had for about 50p (this will do four individual pizzas or two large ones), then 69p for a 400g tin of Essential tinned tomatoes (in their own juice and with no added salt or sugar – and 100g per person is one of your five), a 150g ball of mozzarella for £1.40 and a packet of basil for 89p.

That’s £3.48. The other bits for the base are not going to add much, but let’s round it up to £4.

That’s £4 for four people – a pound a person. It comes in a little more the cost of two of those frozen pizzas. And it’s fresh and you’re in control of the ingredients.

And it’s probably cheaper than the ‘nutritionally-balanced’ versions will be.

Now let’s assume that the motives of bother the professor and the entrepreneur are essentially good. Isn’t the best solution to the rising obesity crisis grounded in (somehow) getting people to eat properly – and that includes cooking from fresh, not simply substituting one processed product for another?

This is just plastering over a crack or two. And it seems highly dubious to suppose that such products, being more expensive that the cheapest available, will therefore really appeal to the people who perhaps need most help.

I know it’s not easy cooking when you don’t feel you have any skills, but you can learn. And there are people out there who can help you – like Shirley Southworth in Wigan.

But that brings us neatly to another issue: how do you educate children to eat well?

Well, you start at school. You start, at a minimum, by giving pupils good school meals. Proper food – not the infamous turkey twizzlers.

Unfortunately, this is not what secretary of state for education, Michael Gove, wants.

Nope. After years of assorted reports saying more change is required (some progress was made on Labour’s watch), he’s set in operation yet another report, to be carried out by two – wait for it – entrepreneurs who operate healthy takeaways.

Jamie Oliver is up in arms. Again. And entirely understandably.

Not least because Gove has already decided that, in his beloved academy schools (something else we have Labour to thank for starting), they all need a Bible with a special introduction by himself,  but nationwide nutritional standards need to apply.

They’d apparently reduce the choice of the headteacher.

The unwritten point is that the head might decided that cheap and crappy food is much more profitable – after all, what motive would be behind someone choosing not to implement basic nutritional guidelines?

Gove is, incidentally, an absolute hypocrite on matters of ‘choice’. If a school that he’s determined will become an academy doesn’t want to, he’ll just sack the board of governors and make it do what he wants.

He’s already done this at Archbishop Cranmer CofE Primary School in Taunton, Somerset, and at Downhills Primary School in Haringey, London.

Choice is only allowed when it agrees with what he wants.

For more on the school meals fiasco, food writer Matthew Fort has penned a fabulous piece that is well worth reading.

But is food education – via quality school dinners and proper lessons – actually important?

Here’s another reason.

A new e-book, called Six Weeks to OMG: Get skinnier than all your friends, is shooting up the charts. It’s penned by one Venice A Fulton. Who turns out to be British sports scientist and ‘celebrity personal trainer’ Paul Khanna. Presumably he used an alias because even he realised what a pile of exploitative shite it is.

This piece of crackpottery advises against eating fruit and suggests swapping broccoli for cola, missing breakfast and taking cold baths and showers.

The target audience is clear, as it’s written in language that young people will recognise from populist tat like The Only Way is Essex (and even talks of “your parents” in places), emphasises competition with friends and the speed of weight loss.

I’m deeply opposed to censorship – but how do people get to peddle such irresponsible and potentially damaging bull, which will, indeed, largely sell to people with low self-image in the first place?

All of these stories have one thing in common: making money at any cost and screw the underlying problems they’re supposedly aimed at sorting out.

What a bloody mess.

Oh: and seaweed has a place in food, but it's nowhere near a bleedin' pizza.

A taste of Manchester

Last weekend (and the two days before) was a Manchester-based smorgasbord, which included a number of elements – some sweeter tasting than others.

There was equal pay in Bury, where the goings on brought to mind Alan Bleasdale's GBH, and attempts by Bolton council to close a mini zoo where parents and grandparents have been taking their children since the 1930s (and it had been open as a menagerie since Victorian times), which have now been put on hold, thanks to a super campaign by the local community (including primary schools and playgroups) and UNISON.

Then there was the football, which itself included an assortment of highs and lows, from a certain young Italian who is, on the one hand, fabulously talented, but on the other, prone to behaving like a spoilt brat at times, to the wonderful atmosphere created by 5,000 Greeks, who also turned out to be bearing gifts.

But in between all this, there was some eating to be done.

On Thursday, finding that the Pizza Express at Piccadilly Gardens had an early evening queue outside, and seeing as those 5,000 fans of Aris FC were having a party in the gardens themselves, prior to being marched to Eastlands for the evening's match by the local constabulary, I decided to get ahead of them – and concentrate on getting to the stadium.

I was hungry by this time, but settled for pie (cheese and onion) and chips. It was no better than I expected – but no worse. It was stadium fodder that did what it needed to and kept the wolf from the door.

After a game that was thoroughly enjoyable, and included some passages of exquisite attacking play from City (even with David Silva missing through injury), I was lucky enough to get one of the first buses back into the city centre – and find a table for one in the aforementioned restaurant, which has become a regular venue for a meal when I'm in town.

Equally ritualistically, I ordered a thin crust with pepperoni and jalapeno chilis, with a beer on the side to quench the fire, followed by a couple of scoops of coffee gelato. All quite enjoyable – and it got the old endorphins flowing pleasantly.

Friday saw a trip to Bury, which was preceded by an early lunch – a ploughmans in Harvey Nicks, that was not only very good, but also surprisingly good value too, when you consider the cost of ready-made sandwiches etc.

It included really lovely pork pie, thin, smoked ham, and two cheeses – although I'd have personally preferred a 'tastier' Lancashire than that available.

But Friday night was my big meal out. I'd booked a table for one at Michael Caines @ Abode.

Once there, the maitre d' suggested that, since I can't eat big portions, perhaps I should try the grazing menu: small portions that would allow me try more number of dishes than otherwise.

The executive chef is Mark Rossi, but I deliberately opted for three of Caines's own signature dishes. Then, after my order had been taken, I had the attentions of the sommelier, who made some fascinating suggestions for each dish.

So, to start: Scottish organic salmon, with salmon jelly, cucumber, sevruga caviar, honey soy, wasabi and a Greek yogurt vingarette.

The fish was not thin slices, but incredibly soft pieces from a fillet. I don’t know wasabi as a flavour to pick out, but the entire dish was beautifully balanced, with sweet, sour and bitter flavours – and the cucumber ribbons were a revelation. Fresh and clean, it was a delight.

To follow, came roast duck liver, orange braised chicory, caramelised walnuts and marinated raisins in an anise-spiced sauce.

So the sweetness of the liver, the tartness of the sauce and the bitterness of the chicory – again, sublime balance. And the recommended wine – going entirely against the red-with-red-meat mantra – was a sweet Riesling, which worked wonderfully.

Now being me, if these were ‘regular’ portions, I’d have been stuffed by this stage.

But there was plenty of room for some Lake District saddle of venison, served with smoked bacon, chestnut purée, roast root vegetables and a red and blackcurrant wine sauce.

When you look at that description, you can see straight away the balance of flavours here too. And, as with the previous dishes, a wonderful mix of textures aswell.

For dessert, I opted for another Caines signature dish – a caramel and cardamom parfait with milk chocolate mousse, nougatine and a cardamom foam.

The parfait was … well, it made me think of an incredibly grown-up version of a butterscotch Angel Delight. And utterly gorgeous.

And I was even more delighted on realising that there was a Banyuls available as a dessert wine – a welcome reminder of the warmth of the Mediterranean.

This was a sumptuous meal, with balance as the key.

Service was excellent and the atmosphere was very pleasant (although the jerk at the table next to mine, who was playing possessiveness games with the woman with him, managed to maintain a remarkably consistent level of sheer irritatingness).

It was back down to culinary earth on Saturday.

After chilly, drizzly Bolton (thank goodness the rain cleared before we went outside to do the photography!), I found Tina’s Market Café in the covered market in the town.

This was ‘the full English’ at its most basic – even down to the slightly chipped and stained white mug that my tea came in – but boy, did it hit the spot.

That evening, I resorted to pizza again – with red onion, goat’s cheese, pine nuts, capers, black olives and sultanas. There’s nowt wrong with decent pizza. And then a very odd tiramisu, which seemed to be made of sponge cake, rather than sponge fingers.

Sunday morning saw me turned away from two Weatherspoons on Piccadilly, for the ‘crime’ of wearing football colours on a match day in a football-mad town. I found consolation in the unexpected peace and quiet of Bella Italia, which actually serves an Italianised version of an English fry up.

The last real food experience of the trip came in the Arndale. It’s decades since I wandered around there: I don’t really ‘do’ shopping malls, but had time on my hands.

It has never struck me before how many shops play loud music: loud, fast music, at that. Even the Disney shop plays fast music – albeit a bit less rock ‘n’ roll than the clothes shops, for instance. Presumably it gets the old adrenalin going and the punters are, therefore, more likely to splash their cash (or credit).

Waterstones, with very soft New Agey background music, was a respite. And so, later, was Druckers, a ‘Vienna patisserie’. After gazing at the cakes, salivating, for some time, I opted for a mint chocolate mousse. It was pretty decent – although I was a tad surprised that it was served in a plastic sleeve, even though I was eating in. Would that have happened in, say, Vienna?

That aside, though, it wasn’t a bad old few days for the food. But Michael Caines @ Abode was, without a shadow of a doubt, a superb culinary experience on every level.