MONOLOGUE - David Lloyd George
Joan and I came home raving about last night's performance at the Taliesin. She repeatedly said, "If it was on tomorrow I'd go back to see it again". A poor audience (50%) as usual for quality theatre in Swansea, and not a single face I recognised from the U3A, but received with huge enthusiasm by those who were there. I am sure the vast majority would have enjoyed it. It was above all very humorous, particularly about his womanising and his portrayal of the rivalry between Welsh chapel-goers in earlier years, but pertinent and insightful when portraying the myriad, conflicting, aspects of his character which led to an outstanding career as a liberal (and Liberal) politician and PM of a coalition from 1916 to 1922.
The scene was set in Antibes outside a hotel where he and Winston Churchill were staying separately early in WW2. He knew he had played a major part in winning WW1 and hoped he was about to be asked to join Winston's War Cabinet. But he ended the play a old man, disillusioned in love and war.
The monologue was delivered exceptially well by Richard Elfyn who was on stage for one hour, well 75 minutes if you include the beginning whilst we were shuffling into seats, which he spent on stage apparently asleep on a bench covered by a Union Jack.
What possibly put the audience off was fearing an amateur script since it was written by Australian David J Britton, Senior Lecturer in Dramatic Writing at Swansea University. A name to look for in future.
The only thing I would fault was the title, surely they should have used his name not a selection of nicknames 'The Wizard, the Goat and the Man who Won the War'. I still don't know where the first two came from.
BENEFITS
This follows the thoughts expressed in the last posting concerning the purely tactical approach rather than principle based policies being displayed by the Labour Party to which I should have added their decision to vote with the right wing of the Conservative Party to stop a very real chance of at last reforming of the House of Lords.
It was certainly not my intention to imply any support for the reduction of benefit levels overall, though it may well be a prime objective for the Conservatives. I am only too aware of the desperately low level £71/week of job seekers allowance, not a sum I would be able to cope even in the short term. But many face poverty without realistic hope of employment in the near future, an especially dis-heartening situation for our young. What I was not aware of, until U3A Vice-Chairman Michael Edmonds pointed it out, was that terribly disabled people are currently facing similar levels.
Link that to the appalling level of Child poverty, those families having to choose between some heat and some food and think how you could survive on that sort pittance
Nor do I feel at all happy about a sensible cap on over-high Housing Benefit forcing people to move, but as before I fear such a cap is impossible to argue against. The tragedy is that such levels of benefit were ever allowed in the first place and that action should have been taken to built affordable housing a decade or so ago, but is crying out for action NOW. The only winners are the landlords,make them losers instead, remember how the price of installing solar panels halved in a couple of months after the government halved the give away tariff they were prepared to pay householders.
You wouldn't think this is still one of the richest countries on earth, but just think of the billions in China, India, and Africa. There is much talk of corruption in China, which the Chinese we know accept as a fact of life, but it still looked to me a far more equal society, though still poor, when we travelled slowly and independently right across from the old Russian borders to Beijing in 2006.
COMMENTS on BLOG
Anyone is free to add a comment to a blog posting, and for my part would be particularly welcome if used to add discussion onto the issues raised. To read any existing please click "Comments" at the end of the appropriate posting, then proceed to type and submit another. Sorry, it's not my fault that you will have to pass a scrawling text recognition test to prove you are an individual rather than an automaton (if you make a reasonable stab at it you will be offered an easier test instead). Of course there will be none when I send out the Alert, perhaps the right approach would be to look for comments on the previous posting.
PETITIONS
Make your voice heard by voting on the Internet for mass campaigns. It will literally take only a second of your time to add your name to a petition.
I only recently became aware of 38 Degrees a not for profit organisation raising vital issues such as, Safeguarding the NHS, Child Poverty, Preventing companies such as Starbucks, Google and perhaps above all Amazon from Avoiding Tax.
Contact 38 degrees a non-profit organisation at www.38degrees.org.uk/
Check them out on Wikipedia if in doubt at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_Degrees
Then click the return arrow a few times to return to this site
U3A JIVE GROUP OUTING
We spent an enjoyable long weekend in Torquay with one of the friendliest of all U3A Activity Groups. The success goes back to the principle of switching partners regularly whilst learning new steps. Please note that there is currently a Beginners session from 10am till 11am which is being increasingly well attended.
I have just sent 18 photos taken during the evening entertainment to which will shortly be found on the website http://u3aswansea.org.uk/
In the evenings we chatted and danced but there was plenty of interest on during the days. The coach stopped at Taunton on the way down where many of us found our way to the Coffee Room at St. Mary Magdalene Church and it lovely new glass twin doors engraved by Tracey Sheppard.
The following day there was a coach trip to Plymouth
Via Dartmoor Prison which was founded to house thousands of French prisoners of war during the struggles with Napoleon and thousands of Americans who refused to fight with the English just before USA became independent.
Some of us found the way by local bus to BRIXHAM on a second lovely winter Sunday. Home from Home!!
Soon to available for sailing trips, eg to Dartmouth
SWANSEA JAZZLAND
is beginning to get the audiences they deserve. Berry Ray tells me in part that is because they are now selling tickets via their website. For whatever reason the Uplands Social Club was packed on Wednesday to hear the Laurence Cottle Big Band, I couldn't see them all from my position behind a pillar but I guess it was 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, 5 saxophones, a Flautist, percussionist, drummer, led by Mumbles boy Laurence Cottle on electric bass. All superb jazz musicians, amongst the very best in Britain, many of whom have appeared at the club in their own right, with their band or playing with the Dave Cottle's house trio in the past 12 months.
Laurence, not surprisingly, chose a theme of compositions of the bass player Jaco Pastorius, perhaps best known for his popular recordings with Weather Report.
It's a long time since we saw such an large enthusiastic crowd in the club, perhaps going back to the golden days decades ago with a succession of American stars when Russ Jones had the piano seat. What is particularly pleasing is to see a much broader age group, we frequently have very youthful performers, none more so than Swansea's own 16 year old jazz pianist and band leader Sam Vine, but rarely many in the audience, though at £20 a ticket for this particular performance we will not get too many university students.
I first learned to love jazz as a student in London in the early fifties sitting on the stage, back to the musicians watching the highly skilled jivers in the newly opened 100 Club on Oxford Street (606 now), That was during the revival boom for Traditional jazz led by the likes of Humphrey Lyttleton, Chris Barber and very traditional New Orleans of Ken Collyer.
Many years later my tastes progressed via Coleman Hawkins to the post 1940's Bebop jazz revolution of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk. Monk is still my favourite jazz composer with his twisting melodies, unusual harmonies and plenty of space in his jazz piano, try Bag's Groove. American saxophonist Greg Abate played a superb couple of sets in July with bebop music developed in the very same era by Horace Silver.
Joan and I came home raving about last night's performance at the Taliesin. She repeatedly said, "If it was on tomorrow I'd go back to see it again". A poor audience (50%) as usual for quality theatre in Swansea, and not a single face I recognised from the U3A, but received with huge enthusiasm by those who were there. I am sure the vast majority would have enjoyed it. It was above all very humorous, particularly about his womanising and his portrayal of the rivalry between Welsh chapel-goers in earlier years, but pertinent and insightful when portraying the myriad, conflicting, aspects of his character which led to an outstanding career as a liberal (and Liberal) politician and PM of a coalition from 1916 to 1922.
The scene was set in Antibes outside a hotel where he and Winston Churchill were staying separately early in WW2. He knew he had played a major part in winning WW1 and hoped he was about to be asked to join Winston's War Cabinet. But he ended the play a old man, disillusioned in love and war.
The monologue was delivered exceptially well by Richard Elfyn who was on stage for one hour, well 75 minutes if you include the beginning whilst we were shuffling into seats, which he spent on stage apparently asleep on a bench covered by a Union Jack.
What possibly put the audience off was fearing an amateur script since it was written by Australian David J Britton, Senior Lecturer in Dramatic Writing at Swansea University. A name to look for in future.
The only thing I would fault was the title, surely they should have used his name not a selection of nicknames 'The Wizard, the Goat and the Man who Won the War'. I still don't know where the first two came from.
BENEFITS
This follows the thoughts expressed in the last posting concerning the purely tactical approach rather than principle based policies being displayed by the Labour Party to which I should have added their decision to vote with the right wing of the Conservative Party to stop a very real chance of at last reforming of the House of Lords.
It was certainly not my intention to imply any support for the reduction of benefit levels overall, though it may well be a prime objective for the Conservatives. I am only too aware of the desperately low level £71/week of job seekers allowance, not a sum I would be able to cope even in the short term. But many face poverty without realistic hope of employment in the near future, an especially dis-heartening situation for our young. What I was not aware of, until U3A Vice-Chairman Michael Edmonds pointed it out, was that terribly disabled people are currently facing similar levels.
Link that to the appalling level of Child poverty, those families having to choose between some heat and some food and think how you could survive on that sort pittance
Nor do I feel at all happy about a sensible cap on over-high Housing Benefit forcing people to move, but as before I fear such a cap is impossible to argue against. The tragedy is that such levels of benefit were ever allowed in the first place and that action should have been taken to built affordable housing a decade or so ago, but is crying out for action NOW. The only winners are the landlords,make them losers instead, remember how the price of installing solar panels halved in a couple of months after the government halved the give away tariff they were prepared to pay householders.
You wouldn't think this is still one of the richest countries on earth, but just think of the billions in China, India, and Africa. There is much talk of corruption in China, which the Chinese we know accept as a fact of life, but it still looked to me a far more equal society, though still poor, when we travelled slowly and independently right across from the old Russian borders to Beijing in 2006.
COMMENTS on BLOG
Anyone is free to add a comment to a blog posting, and for my part would be particularly welcome if used to add discussion onto the issues raised. To read any existing please click "Comments" at the end of the appropriate posting, then proceed to type and submit another. Sorry, it's not my fault that you will have to pass a scrawling text recognition test to prove you are an individual rather than an automaton (if you make a reasonable stab at it you will be offered an easier test instead). Of course there will be none when I send out the Alert, perhaps the right approach would be to look for comments on the previous posting.
PETITIONS
Make your voice heard by voting on the Internet for mass campaigns. It will literally take only a second of your time to add your name to a petition.
I only recently became aware of 38 Degrees a not for profit organisation raising vital issues such as, Safeguarding the NHS, Child Poverty, Preventing companies such as Starbucks, Google and perhaps above all Amazon from Avoiding Tax.
Contact 38 degrees a non-profit organisation at www.38degrees.org.uk/
Check them out on Wikipedia if in doubt at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_Degrees
Then click the return arrow a few times to return to this site
U3A JIVE GROUP OUTING
We spent an enjoyable long weekend in Torquay with one of the friendliest of all U3A Activity Groups. The success goes back to the principle of switching partners regularly whilst learning new steps. Please note that there is currently a Beginners session from 10am till 11am which is being increasingly well attended.
I have just sent 18 photos taken during the evening entertainment to which will shortly be found on the website http://u3aswansea.org.uk/
In the evenings we chatted and danced but there was plenty of interest on during the days. The coach stopped at Taunton on the way down where many of us found our way to the Coffee Room at St. Mary Magdalene Church and it lovely new glass twin doors engraved by Tracey Sheppard.
 |
| Glass Doors at St Mary Magdalene, Taunton |
 |
| Close up of one door |
 | ||
| Church Roof, Taunton |
 |
| PLYMOUTH HOE where DRAKE first spied the SPANISH ARMADA |
 |
| THE PLYMOUTH GIN DISTILLERY |
 |
| WELCOME TO DARTMOoR PRISON |
Some of us found the way by local bus to BRIXHAM on a second lovely winter Sunday. Home from Home!!
 |
| A REPLICA of the GOLDEN HIND |
 |
| SEA-FOOD, bound for FRANCE? |
 | ||||||||||||||||||
| A TRADITIONAL TRAWLER rebuilt with LOTTERY FUNDS by VOLUNTEERS |
SWANSEA JAZZLAND
is beginning to get the audiences they deserve. Berry Ray tells me in part that is because they are now selling tickets via their website. For whatever reason the Uplands Social Club was packed on Wednesday to hear the Laurence Cottle Big Band, I couldn't see them all from my position behind a pillar but I guess it was 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, 5 saxophones, a Flautist, percussionist, drummer, led by Mumbles boy Laurence Cottle on electric bass. All superb jazz musicians, amongst the very best in Britain, many of whom have appeared at the club in their own right, with their band or playing with the Dave Cottle's house trio in the past 12 months.
Laurence, not surprisingly, chose a theme of compositions of the bass player Jaco Pastorius, perhaps best known for his popular recordings with Weather Report.
It's a long time since we saw such an large enthusiastic crowd in the club, perhaps going back to the golden days decades ago with a succession of American stars when Russ Jones had the piano seat. What is particularly pleasing is to see a much broader age group, we frequently have very youthful performers, none more so than Swansea's own 16 year old jazz pianist and band leader Sam Vine, but rarely many in the audience, though at £20 a ticket for this particular performance we will not get too many university students.
I first learned to love jazz as a student in London in the early fifties sitting on the stage, back to the musicians watching the highly skilled jivers in the newly opened 100 Club on Oxford Street (606 now), That was during the revival boom for Traditional jazz led by the likes of Humphrey Lyttleton, Chris Barber and very traditional New Orleans of Ken Collyer.
Many years later my tastes progressed via Coleman Hawkins to the post 1940's Bebop jazz revolution of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk. Monk is still my favourite jazz composer with his twisting melodies, unusual harmonies and plenty of space in his jazz piano, try Bag's Groove. American saxophonist Greg Abate played a superb couple of sets in July with bebop music developed in the very same era by Horace Silver.
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