Someone is going on Sunday, so I will leave my comment on the performance till later.  However something must be said about Sadlers Wells front of house and it general lack of eptness.

The dongler at the end of the wire to put through the arm of your coat in the cloakroom for a quid didn't work for Sancho.

At least two programme selling points were out of programmes by the time I got there.

But the biscuit.

Ten minutes after the start was due, nothing had happened.  Neal Davies, as Bunyan, continued lying on a futon in full view of everyone pretending to dream Calvinistic allegories.

A crackle in the sound system and inaudible words ending up with "the show will start soon."

Then the message came over audibly.  "One of the performers is stuck in traffic.  When she arrives we can start.  The show will start soon."  O my God, I am becoming a TOP fuddy duddy.  I have seen Sir John Tooley wringing his hands and sweating profusely in front of that red curtain at ROH.  No senior management can be bothered to assure the punters nowadays.  And the lack of tact!  The message would once upon a time have gone:  "One of the performers is delayed for unavoidable reasons.  Tonight's performance of Vaughan Williams' Pilgrims' Progress will start as soon as she arrives."

After twenty minutes, and Neal Davies having tried several more positions on his futon to avoid cramp, Tracey tells us that the part of First Shining Being will now be sung by Shirley Smithers.  The strings and chorus take their places.  The lights go out.  The lights come up on Richard Hickcox at the podium, the psalm tune York starts up, and my heart and stomach turn over.

If music can move me after that degree of irritation, it must be very important to me.

As I muttered to Sancho in the longeurs of the delay, Lilian Baylis would never have allowed it.  The show must go on was her motto come what may.

And if the First Shining One was stuck on a 19 bus at 7.30, why not push out the understudy then in stead of leaving the audience and the other players to twiddle thumbs?  It must have been awful for the performers to be all keyed up to go and then hang around.

Our return home was slightly delayed by Turkey's victory over Croatia, which lead the entire Turkish population of N16 to drive their cars round Newington Green honking and waving Turkish flags.  They managed to reproduce in Green Lanes the typical traffic conditions of Istanbul, ie total gridlock.  We got off the bus and walked.

George and Ruth may have their own take on the work, but I can't remember being so moved in a theatre for years.

The law of the theatre is quite firm; unless otherwise directed, all performers must be in by the 'half' - 35 minutes before the curtain is due to go up. Failure to arrive before the appointed time means replacement (at the Company Manager's discretion). If a performer fails to arrive by the 'quarter' (20 minutes before the show's due up) then the cover is normally prepared for performance. I appreciate that in these circumstances there may not have been a standby prepared, but there should surely have been a more professional way of dealing with the delay.

You have made me look forward even more keenly to tomorrow's performance, Don B, although sorry to hear about the shambles at the start. I understand that The Grand Inquisitor will also be taking his place in the Cardinals' Box tomorrow so the management had better smarten up their act before then if they want to avoid serious repercussions.


That was the miners, surely, in the run up to the 1974 Heath/Wilson election? 

That may have been where the principle arose, but it was certainly one of the grievances behind the ENO Chorus work-to-rule of the 1980s.  It was a grievance with which I sympathised, and underlying it were the dismally inadequate changing-room facilities for the chorus...  to have any hope of getting made-up in time, or getting your head under a shower afterwards to get the caked make-up out of your hair, you needed to plan on arriving an hour before, and leaving up to an hour after the performance.

Was very glad indeed that I went to this and, as I mentioned to IGI, if it weren't for the benevolent influence of this MB (and Ron's advocacy of RVW in particular) I probably wouldn't even have thought of doing so a couple of years ago. The score is just glorious and, if you are prepared to trust it and meet it on its own territory, it's a deeply moving experience. The harmonies RVW conjures up are phenomenally beautiful and the brass writing in particular just wonderfully individual and completely disarming. I agree entirely with IGI about the effectiveness of the simple staging and about Roderick Williams' outstanding central performance. It seemed to be a labour of love for him and indeed for all involved in the production and it was good to see that reflected back in the response from the audience which, I think, almost surprised itself by its warm enthusiasm.

In a desperate attempt to find something to nit-pick about, I wasn't wild about the depiction of Mr and Madam By-Ends which seemed jarringly out of style with the rest of the production but, that minor niggle apart ... beautifully judged stuff.

Oh yes, indeed, Don B. No complaints about RVW's setting. I just meant that I thought the acting/direction at that point was overdone and undermined Bunyan's/RVW's satire whereas the main Vanity Fair scene was much more sharply presented. But that may have been just me. Did something go a bit wrong on Sunday just at the end of that scene, IGI? It was out of my line of sight (far stage right) unlike from Your Eminence's seat bang in the centre of the stalls.

I think they probably had. It was noticeable as being miked but acceptably discreet to my ears. A young Hickox indeed.

And just to show I can do other than gushing, I thought that Neal Davies (surprisingly) as John Bunyan was a little weak vocally but that may have been the contrast with Roderick W's excellent clarity.

But all these are all minor niggles. Overall a deeply rewarding musical experience.

Without wishing to be ungallant to anyone, I can only immediately count on the fingers of five hands the number of female opera singers of whom the same could be said. Seven hands ...