Of course we should remember the Second World War, and the outstanding role that our ally, Russia, played in defeating Nazism. My father fought the Fascists and went on to play a part in restoring a form of peace to the Middle East at the end of the war, so naturally I have great respect for all those that gave or risked their lives to overcome tyranny.
Raising funds for the Red Cross by staging a commemorative concert is commendable.
Yet, does that have to mean we can throw any form of entertainment at those wishing to remember, and hope ‘that’ll do’?
May I invite you to join me on my personal journey of torment, as I recall the full programme of events at the Royal Albert Hall, last Monday?
With a seven o’clock kick-off and a table at Prue Leith’s in-house restaurant booked for six o’clock, all seemed set for a relaxed and enjoyable evening. Except that my chair at the aforementioned table was located in a beautifully central location that placed me directly in the way of every single person who wished to enter or leave the restaurant. I had no room to ‘squeeze in’, or edge sideways, thus I was up and down from my seat more often than Bertie Wooster in the Drones Club, dodging bread rolls on Boat Race night.
“Can we sit somewhere else?”
“I’m sorry, sir, all our tables are reserved.”
“Yes, I am one of those who booked a table.”
“Yes sir, this is your table,” (said with pride).
With ten minutes ‘free’ before the start of the entertainment, the four of us popped outside and were chatting away, when a breathless usher came bristling along to inform us that we must have our tickets scanned, with the further instruction that leaving the hall caused problems as we may be asked to hand our tickets over for a further scan, and thus be ‘double-counted’.
Accompany us now, as we enter the renowned arena and we settle into our seats. The back of my seat will consistently be booted by a young chap sitting behind me, who, when I turn to glare, apologises most profusely and rather genuinely I suspect, but then kicks again with the velocity of a Didier Drogba free kick.
The lights went down and a single spot caught Jeremy Irons as he strode on to the stage and gave us a reading from something or other. I didn’t catch much of it as I was glaring at the bloke behind me.
Then, in an odd piece of casting, Nicholas Owen, BBC News presenter, made his first appearance as compère. Now Nicholas is a supporter of the Red Cross so jolly well done and all that, but if you are going to anchor a live event, it might be sensible to do a little research, check who is on the bill and when, perhaps, faced with Russian names you don’t know how to pronounce, and pop groups of whom you have never heard, obtain some advice before announcing these names in the style of someone whose mouth is full of gravel.
There then followed a succession of Russian artists who were very good (“Please welcome Russia’s very own Frank Sinatra”), but all were eclipsed by the beauty and the strength of the Red Army Choir. The poignant footage on the video screens, and the delicate form of many of their arrangements, contrasted sharply with their immaculate, military uniforms.
The Choir’s performance captivated the audience, and they received the longest and loudest applause of the evening.
Our reverie was short lived. You may recall a heavily publicised YouTube video from a few months ago, featuring the sand artistry of the winner of Ukraine’s Got Talent.
Ksenia Simonova’s outstanding mastery works very well on television with an overhead camera, but sadly less so in five thousand seat auditorium. When your ‘lightbox’ fails, as it did for poor Ms Simonova, then the capacity for the audience to enjoy the experience is diminished even further.
As she walked off the stage, and the technicians heaved her ailing lightbox off after her, there was time to fill, apparently, even though the interval was already long overdue. It was thus that we were first treated to Nicholas Owen stretching out a sentence of half a dozen words to about a minute and a half, as he tried, and failed to ‘fill in’. He erred, and he ummed for some time, before his sense of relief could be felt around the building as we once again welcomed ‘Russia’s very own Frank Sinatra’ to perform a couple more rather booming songs.
Surely now, it’s time for the interval?
Oh crikey, here’s Nicholas Owen again, and he’s telling us that we must all have been disappointed not to have witnessed the full value of the sand art, that the lightbox had been fixed, and that the redoubtable Ksenia Simonova was going to give it another bash.
That she did so, and for so very long, was a testament to her doggedness, but as the audience twitched in their seats and longed for the interval (I was continually twitching in my seat due to the accuracy of the kicks from the chap behind me), her resoluteness became just a tad wearing.
Ah, she’s written a ‘peace and love’ message in the sand to close her ‘set’. Time to leg it to the bar. There were four of us. One cup of tea, one diet coke, two tubs of ice cream. ‘Tubs’ only if one can call a teaspoon sized portion of Häagen-Dazs, a ‘tub’.
“That’s exactly eleven pounds, sir”
Well done to whoever owns that concession. They can probably afford to buy the Albert Hall.
After over three hours of being hoofed in the back, the interval was rather like that football match between the German and British troops in WW1; a welcome break from the relentlessness of it all. Although in this case it was in retreat of the Eastern European Frank Sinatra and a pretty young lady, about fifty yards in the distance, juggling with sand.
So it was quite a wrench when, after what felt like two minutes, a bell rang, and a rather fierce voice instructed us that the interval was very much over.
Back to my battered seat, and here strides, once more, the upright figure of Jeremy Irons to give us his reading of a WH Auden poem. ‘Sonorous’; a word that could have been devised purely to describe Jeremy’s delivery.
Wait a minute, here’s Nicholas Owen again; what’s that he’s saying? He knows that we would love to see more from Ksenia Simonova and her sand-based entertainment. No, Nicholas, no!
But it’s too late. The hulking great lightbox thing is wheeled out once more, and as the time approaches eleven o’clock, here’s the undoubtedly talented Ukrainian contest winner, throwing more of her sand hither and, as if that wasn’t enough, also thither.
I mused upon the words of the great Samuel Johnson "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."
Unable to do anything but imagine the wonder of whatever the sand lady was doing fifty yards away, I began to look around the Albert Hall, at those great big acoustic mushroom things dangling from the ceiling, the ornate...
Hang on, what’s happening here?
People are slowly but surely beginning to gather up their belongings, and their companions, and drifting towards the exits. Had the brisk ‘scanning usher’ decided to eject them? Had they been double-counted and were thus facing the wrath of the box office heavies?
A more sensible member of our party pointed out that it was a week night, babysitters would be getting twitchy, and last trains would be heading for the suburbs. Eventually, the sand swishing lady left us with another message of love, peace and harmony scratched into her beach based grains, and men were sweeping, with much vigour, the area of the stage where she had been so liberally spreading her granules of alluvium.
A couple of songs (the inevitable Nessun Dorma, and Jerusalem) from Russell Watson, who is, apparently, ‘The People’s Tenor’ (probably a bit like being the People’s Princess but without the bulimia), and then a cape wearing Rick Wakeman ambled on.
Now Rick can bash out a tune, it can safely be acknowledged. The question of whether an Albert Hall audience, who had enjoyed over four and a half hours of the ‘Russian Frank Sinatra’ and a sand scattering Ukrainian woman, were quite ready for Rick’s cheerily introduced ‘Eleanor Rigby played in the style of Prokofiev’ became clearly answered when dozens and dozens more of the attendees became something of a tidal wave heading for the doors. By the time Rick played his second and final twiddly piece, all you could see was row upon row of empty seats, and people scurrying along the aisles on their way out.
Approaching midnight, and Nicholas Owen felt it appropriate to soliloquise a lengthy summary of the evening “so far” and an equally lengthy set of ‘thank you’ messages. Finally, he bid us a fond farewell, and left the stage. The few hundred people left in the Hall thought they could escape, and I began to quote from the King James Bible “An end is come, the end is come: it watcheth for thee; behold, it is come.”
Stop right there! Here come some late middle aged fellows to the stage. One of them is carrying a wind instrument, if I’m not mistaken. To cap it off, here’s Nicholas Owen, returning to the scene of his previous crimes, the on-stage microphone.
“This man here,” he said, gesticulating at Ian Anderson, “asked me if I was going to introduce him. So here he is, Jethro Tull!”
With that rather tersely delivered introduction, and clearly unaware that Jethro Tull is the name of the band, and not the bloke looking like he was about to thump him with a flute, Nicholas marched off, and left us for good this time.
Suddenly, I was reminded of the closing scenes of Woodstock. That event, too, had over-run and Jimi Hendrix finally made it to the stage at 8:00am on the Monday morning after the event had officially finished. But where Hendrix had played to a few mud soaked stragglers in New York State, Jethro Tull were playing to an ever diminishing audience of a dozen or so hardy souls in Kensington. It was rather a shame, as the Tull boys had clearly spent some considerable time rehearsing a ‘Live Aid’ style medley, consisting of, probably (I wouldn’t know their songs if they came and kicked me in the back of my seat), a couple of their more celebrated tunes, mixed in with some wartime nostalgia – the ‘Dambusters March’, and ‘We’ll Meet Again’. It’s possible that they may not wish to meet Nicholas Owen again, but to be fair to the Tullers, they left the stage, acknowledging the remaining few dawdlers with cheery waves and bright smiles. Maybe they, too, just wanted to get home.
So... I hope oodles of funds were raised for the Red Cross, and I hope we all paid due respect to those that sacrificed so much. But I urge the organisers of next year’s event: consider the welfare of your audience. No sand related entertainment of any sort; don’t book Emerson, Lake & Palmer under any circumstances; and if you would ban the seat kicking man for life, that would make me very happy indeed.
Terence Dackombe, May 2010
