Monthly Archives: March 2010

Gale Theatre presents The Memory of Water

Posted on by
Reply

Shelagh Stephenson’s play, The Memory of Water is being presented at the Frank Collymore Hall in April, 2010. The Gale Theatre of London and Barbados is a non profit charitable organisation founded in 2007 by Melissa Simmonds. Actor Paul McGann is also a company director of Gale Theatre both in London and in Barbados. All work is developed, rehearsed and produced in Barbados.

Mixing the best of the two locations, The Gale Theatre it brings in UK expertise where necessary while embracing Barbadian talent. Gale intends to build on the exchange, by taking productions and actors from Barbados to London.

From the Gale’s website:

Gale Theatre of London and Barbados present, ‘The Memory of Water’ by AWARD WINNING Shelagh Stephenson. A great success in both the West End and Broadway ‘The Memory of Water’ has been critically acclaimed both sides of the Atlantic. The play is to be directed by the island’s Thom Cross and produced by Melissa Simmonds artistic director of Gale Theatre. As with the previous two seasons, Gale Theatre will be uniting talent from both countries. This Olivier award winning comedy about three sisters, who all convene for their mother’s funeral, is poignant, touching, and very funny. The production will also have Olivier award winning actress Suzan Sylvester amongst its cast and Calypsonian Anderson “Blood” Armstrong.

Thom Cross, who brought Echo in the Bone, Equus, Vagina Monologues and The Final Truth to the Barbados stage to critical acclaim, will direct this talented cast and offer Barbados audiences a memorable theatrical experience.

The cast also includes:

Drew Mckensie (Barbadian), Endy Mckay (UK), Nailah Cumberbatch (Barbadian), Caroline Gardiner (UK living in Barbados).

The Memory of Water will open in the Frank Collymore Hall, Bridgetown with performances as follows:

April 10th at 8pm; April 11th at 8pm
April 15th at 2pm; April 16th at 2pm (Schools only)
April 16th at 8pm; April 17th at 8pm

Ticket prices: 50 Barbados dollars on Gala night and 40 dollars on all other evening performances. Tickets will officially be on sale from Supercentre Warrens, Big B and Oistins as well as CS Pharmacy from March 14th

Previously plays were Blithe Spirit by Noël Coward in 2007 and Macbeth in 2008, both produced by Melissa Simmonds and directed by Glen Walford.

For the future: In 2011 Gale is in the process of acquiring the rights to a modern play that is in development. During 2012 Gale intends to produce A Midsummer’s Nights dream by William Shakespeare

English counties in Barbados

Posted on by
Reply

Four English county cricket teams have just completed a series of matches in Barbados. Essex, Derbyshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire together with local teams UWI (The University of the West Indies) and a select Barbados team have been pitched in 2 day matches, twenty over cricket and then, forty over games. Finally, there’s the War of the Roses match between Yorkshire and Lancashire., usually held over 4,000 miles away.

No wonder Barbados is often called Little England, with so many English teams and supporters on the island.

On offer were 18 games played the English way in the Barbados sun. Hopefully these matches will prove to be pre-season friendlies to get the players fit for their new seasons due to start in a few weeks rather than just an excuse to escape the cool English winter before Spring arrives.

Lancashire beat Essex in the twenty over game semi final (and then UWI in the final) while Essex found their revenge in the forty over version. Billy Godleman hit a magnificent 118 runs before being caught from the bowling of opener Smith. Essex had charged to a respectable 287 in their allotted overs with Lancashire only managing to reach 203 in return.

Local support was very good, although expecting Graham Gooch to return to his Essex opening days were dashed when the current team was selected!

The games were played at different grounds all over the island, giving the touring professionals and their supporters plenty to see including the impressive Kensington Oval, home of the Barbados national team and often used location for West Indies competition finals including the 2007 Cricket World Cup Final. It will also be used for matches and the final of the World twenty20 world cup in 2010, from 30th April to the 16th May. Both the men’s and women’s competitions will be played in St Kitts, Guyana, St Lucia and Barbados.

Barbados music, theatre and entertainment

Posted on by
Reply

The Holders Season runs from 18th to 27th March in 2010. It’s an annual event where you pay your $50 to £150 each day and sit in the gardens of the Little Theatre at Holders Hill and watch a variety of acts perform for your pleasure. From Shakespeare to Bing Crosby; from Kathy Lette to Heather Small; an advanced reading of The Memory of Water play (due in April at the Frank Collymore Hall).

This year’s lineup (from the www.holders.net website):

Thursday 18th March
The Great Hollywood Stars

The silver screen comes to the Little Theatre. Clive Hischhorn was the theatre critic for the UK’s Sunday Express from 1965 to 1996. The author of numerous books on the great Hollywood studios and on some of the movie greats, Hirschhorn tells the extraordinary stories of the global phenomenon that is Hollywood and of some of its iconic figures across the decades – Garbo, Garland, Gene Kelly and many others – complete with extensive film clips.

Local Guest Artist: Ria Borman – Ria is the talk of the Barbados musical landscape, which has given the world Rihanna. There is no doubt that she is also destined for international stardom.

Friday 19th March
The Classical Piano with James Rhodes

A young master of the classical piano – who came to his instrument by the most unusual of routes with no formal academic musical education or dedicated mentoring. James Rhodes dispenses with the ‘straitjacket’ approach to classical music. On stage he interacts with his audience, sharing his thoughts on the music and the composers, bringing a touch of rock n roll to each performance. James invites you to join him in an evening of Bach, Beethoven and Banter. A must hear!

“The joy of James Rhodes is the way he reaches out to young, unconverted audiences by throwing them into classical music’s deep end – Beethoven, Bach – with performances of such natural ease and brilliance that no one can resist.” Geoff Brown, The Times

Local Guest Artist: Cavite Chorale – The Chorale consists of students and alumni of the UWI, and is currently directed by Stephen Brathwaite.

Saturday 20th March
Shakespeare – As you like him

Actor Bruce Morrison conjures up the world of the bard – an evening in the company of some of William Shakespeare’s greatest speeches, most raucous humour, and highest tragedy.

“Bruce Morrison’s command of the stage is in itself Shakespearean in scope… he mixes the pathos and beauty of Shakespeare’s poetry as well as its rougher and downright funny edges”

Local Guest Artist: Allison Norville – One of Barbados’ foremost gospel artistes and is considered one of the island’s leading singers.

Monday 22nd March
A letter from Australia – with novelist Kathy Lette

The Holders Season welcomes one of Australia’s wittiest and most successful authors, Kathy Lette. Having started life as a singer with The Salami Sisters, Kathy now divides her time between full time writer, demented mother, and trying to find a shopping trolley that doesn’t have a clubbed wheel. Kathy first achieved succés de scandale as a teenager with the novel Puberty Blues, now a major motion picture. Bring your funny bones…

Late in the Garden…

The annual Holders showcase of great African musical talents presents the debut performance of the extraordinary talents of Madagascan musician Modeste Hugues.
He is an award winning songwriter and guitarist who plays a unique style of music from the Betroka region of Madagascar. His infectious music has wowed audiences around the world including appearances at the Womad festivals in the UK, Sicilly & Singapore.

Guest appearance by Simon Mulligan: We are delighted to welcome back Simon to Holders Season for a special guest appearance as the opening act for tonight. He has been described by The Times of London as ‘the most abundantly gifted of pianists’, Simon performs and records internationally as a soloist and chamber musician.

Wednesday 24th March
A Tribute to Bing Crosby

Following the huge success of An Evening with Frank Sinatra in 2009, Holders welcomes another of the greatest of all superstars, Bing Crosby. Bing, of course, can’t actually be with us, but top London West End artist Ian Casey can. Together with pianist and musical director Don Hunt – who worked with Crosby – play the music and tell the tales of an extraordinary phenomenon who sold over half a billion records.

Late in the Garden…

A second opportunity to hear the stunning music of Madagascan musician Modest Hugues.

Friday 26th March
Jazz Double Bill – Ian Shaw and Liane Carroll

Two fine international jazz artists parade their skills as soloists and together – the hugely versatile Ian Shaw is a jazz singer with style, bravura and panache, whilst fireball Liane Carroll ‘swings like hell one minute and is brutally heart breaking and expressive the next’. A musical feast to savour.

Saturday 27th March
Little Theatre Gala Night with Heather Small and Kit & the Widow

A magnificent double bill to close the season, the traditional Gala taking on a new and special shape. Picnicking around the pool will refresh the palate between two fantastic performance sets variously by Holders favourites Kit and the Widow, and UK soul sensation star Heather Small, the voice of M People’s chart topping soul anthem “Moving On Up”
Enjoy!

Meet The Architect – From The Ground Up

Posted on by
Reply

On the way to getting our dream house in BarbadosWe were finally ready to look for an architect. (Did I mention that we had moved house and had a baby – now seven months old – while we were sorting out the land purchase?) Somewhat weary after seven months of sleepless nights, we started the search.

It made sense to choose someone with local knowledge, so we were forced to make another trip to tropical climes (Oh, the hardship!) After polling out contacts we were introduced to someone who was about to set up her own firm and who seemed to know instinctively what we wanted. And she got even more brownie points for not laughing into her drink when she saw our amateur efforts.

Caribbean Living

She asked us a lot of questions to get an idea of what kind of building would suit us best. What kind of people were we? What were our likes and dislikes? How did we use our current living space? She also gave us some magazines to look at, which featured Caribbean style homes with long verandas and balconies, shutters on the windows and cool, open plan spaces. We spent the next couple of nights looking through those mags as if our lives depended on them, choosing and discarding layouts and colours with reckless abandon. Eventually we came up with some workable ideas and met her again to get the architect’s-eye-view. Would our plans pass muster?

Planning Our Palace

Thankfully, they did and she went away to design us a small-scale palace. In addition to the usual complement of bedrooms and bathrooms (four and three), it would feature a double height sitting room, with a mezzanine gallery around the top level where we would keep our books and music. This was an innovative alternative to a purpose-built library and we were getting excited already. We also thought about having an outside dining area on part of the veranda, screened in, Florida lanai-style.

The meeting concluded, we thought we were well on the way to having a house, but we were wrong. Various bureaucratic nightmares meant it would be another two years before we were able to start building.

Missed an instalment of From The Ground Up?

Planning Our Dream – From The Ground Up

Posted on by
Reply

Like most self-builders, my husband and I had had a couple of ideas about what our dream home would be like. We even got as far as writing some of them down. It would be a mansion, of course, with separate rooms for all leisure activities (library, music room, computer room, a playroom for our daughter) and a standalone sauna and pool outside. Each bedroom would have an en suite bathroom and each bedroom a dressing room and it would have air conditioning or under floor heating throughout, depending on the location. Yeah, right. I could almost feel the rustle of pigs’ wings as I looked back at the list.View From Barbados Hilton

We Didn’t Lose The Plot

Seven months after we’d spotted our plot of land in Barbados, it was finally ours. This was relatively quick by Barbadian standards but had seemed an eternity to us, as we were accustomed to the two to three month turnaround that is usual in the UK. (At least, it was then, when the property market was booming). We’d downsized in the UK so that we could buy the land. The question now was: what could we afford to build on it?

We sat down with the dream house list again and worked out a more realistic plan. There’d be a bedroom for each of us, a guest room and a granny flat for my mum. We also needed a utility room and a downstairs toilet. An office was a must, since we both work from home, and a library to store our ever expanding collection of books, was practically essential. Anything else would be extra.

Which Software?

That decided, we thought we’d have a bash at drawing it ourselves, so off we went to PC World to pick up a home design package. There are a plethora of these programmes, ranging from the £4.99 Softpedia discs on a twirly rack at the front to the £49.99 and up packages stacked in the appropriate section. As Britain is a nation of DIYers, the range of options is perhaps not surprising.

At first glance, it’s difficult to tell the difference between the programmes. All claim to be easy for novices to use, to come with built in plans, to help you with the costings. But let’s face it, as a novice, although this sounds good, you don’t know what you’re getting. Finally, we flipped a mental coin, picked one and rushed home to start drawing our dream.

Spatially Challenged

Somehow I was elected to draw the design. This was perhaps not our best idea, as I’m spatially challenged (PC-speak for poor sense of direction, can’t read maps and definitely can’t visualise a 3D building from a 2D plan). I know there are many women out there who can do these things, but in this case I fit the stereotype, much to my disgust. (Sorry, girls).

A few days later, after endless drawings, redrawings and moving walls that had suddenly materialised where I didn’t want them, we had a plan. You could even walk through a 3D representation on screen, though for some reason the stairs had squashed the downstairs loo and one of the arches opened onto a wall. Still, it was a victory of sorts, as we now had something that we could show an architect. Our next move would be to find one.

From The Ground Up

(Photo: “View from 5th Floor of Barbados Hilton”)