It's our weekly London
roundup starting with a few headlines that caught the eye in London this week,
click the links for the full stories…
SOCIETY: London's Population Heads Toward 10 Million – The Guardian
PHOTOGRAPHY: Famous Photographers on Street Photography – The Phoblographer
FOOD: Top Chef Says London Chinese Food Is Top Notch – Evening Standard
PROPERTY: No Properties Under £100,000 in London? London Loves Business
THEATRE: West End For Bradley Cooper? – Official London Theatre
TRANSPORT: Bus Strike Planned For 13th January – Evening Standard
MUSEUMS: Museum of London In Talks To Show Pieces From Met's "Black Museum" – The Independent
NATURE: Urban Beekeeping On the Rise In London – Munchies.vice.com
ARCHITECTURE: London's Sky Garden Reviewed – The Guardian
TIPS: Save Money In London – Metro
HEALTH & SAFETY: London's Most Dangerous Door – Daily Mirror
FOODIE LONDON: Pre-Theatre Dining – Daily Telegraph
If You Do One OTHER Thing In London This Week…
Our weekly slot in which we point you in the direction of
other happenings and events in our great city. A new exhibition, a gig, a
museum, a pop-up-shop – the best of London within a few minutes of a London Walks walking tour.
Columbia Road Flower
Market is open on Sundays from around 8a.m – it's the perfect precursor to
Harry's Unknown East Walk on
Sunday afternoons.
If you want to say it
with flowers, then whatever that "it" may be, Columbia Road speaks
your language with everything from bedding pants to bulbs to gypsophila to 10
foot banana trees. Plus it's lined with independent shops and cafés, nary a
tax-dodging coffee chain in sight. Hallelujah!
Here's how to find it…
Seen In London This Week…
Last Saturday night
London Spy was taken to the Harold Pinter Theatre to see Sunny Afternoon*, the
musical built around the songs of The Kinks.
I've long had a
problem with the so-called Catalogue Musicals, shows that take existing songs,
often by pop composers, and build a narrative around them. My main problem
being that the builders have often been cowboy builders, slapping the songs
into the flimsiest of books and taking the money and running. And running and
running.
No such trouble at
Sunny Afternoon. Joe Penhall's script is an equal partner to Ray Davies'
famous songs here. The conventions of musical theatre are never made clunky by
songs elbowing their way in; the story is never bent clumsily out of shape
simply to accommodate a big, popular hit. The book serves the songs and vice
versa.
And Edward Hall's
wonderful cast serve both. Especially the warring Davies brothers at the heart of the band. John Dagleish's Ray Davies is sweetly awkward as the
famously diffident Davies, the Eeyore of rock'n'roll . Great voice, too, plaintive
and true. George Macguire's wild Dave Davies is like a crate of gelignite
balanced on the handlebars of a motorbike with no brakes. He's going to blow up
sooner or later, the thrill is that we don't know when.
It seems to have been
quite a challenge to bring this show to the stage. I have been reading rumours of
the impending arrival of a Kinks musical for the best part of 20 years. Has taming
the wide variety of the songs been a problem? That other successful catalogue
musical Mamma Mia made many of us realise that Abba's songs were showtunes
waiting to happen all along. The songs of Ray Davies are not so straightforward.
They were written (and marketed) as rock and pop songs. But Davies's
influences, being the true Londoner that he is, are wildly cosmopolitan: rock
and pop, vaudeville, folk, blues, calypso, waltzes and country hoedowns are in the
mix. Many of his songs are three-minute kitchen sink dramas in their own right.
The creative team's triumph
here is to take such variety and weave it into an exhilarating theatrical cohesion. Not unlike London itself. A truly great British musical.
*London Spy paid for his own ticket
Last Word…
A tricolour on the
Thames. #JeSuisCharlie…
A London Walk costs £9 – £7 concession. To join a London Walk, simply meet your guide at the designated tube station at the appointed time. Details of all London Walks can be found at www.walks.com.
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