That's entertainment

Over the last few weeks we've been in theatres a little more regularly than usual. We saw Carmina Burana in Alcoy, Totally Tina in the Gran Teatre in Elche, Miguel Poveda down at the ADDA in Alicante and then a classical orchestra at The Chapí in Villena. The last thing I went to here in Pinoso was quite a while ago now though, the Akram Trio, at the tail end of November. While we go to theatres for bands, opera, dance, music, zarzuelas and even magic we usually shy away from plays. Too tricky for our dodgy Spanish. 

As I hope you know Culebrón is a part of Pinoso and Pinoso has a population of about 8,500. In the English countryside Pinoso would be no more than a village but here it's definitely a town - probably because it provides town like services. One of those services is a theatre, the frequently used Auditorio Emilio Martínez Sáez. Settlements even smaller than Pinoso boast a theatre. Nearby Algueña (1300 people) and Salinas (1600) both have theatres and so (obviously) does Abanilla with over 6,000 people. It's something that seems to be almost taken for granted in Spain.

The theatres are all different but I'm optimistically going to see similarities and categories. Pinoso's theatre is a style much like the Teatro Cervantes in Petrer. Reasonably modern with quite a lot of wood panelling and fairly comfy seating. These venues often look as though refurb time is fast approaching. Then there are the theatres that have a bit grander design - stalls, dress circle, boxes and sometimes even gods. Examples here would be the Castelar over in Elda, the Principal in Monóvar or the Wagner down in Aspe. My favourites though are the plush velvet and gold leaf theatres lit with a sumptuous golden light; the ones with ceiling murals, with chandeliers and with the full panoply of stalls, boxes, upper and dress circles. The Chapí in Villena, the Vico in Jumilla, the Concha Segura in Yecla, the Principal in Alicante, the Gran Teatro in Elche and the Romea in Murcia all fall into this class. Strangely the last couple of places we've been to have been new to us and both have been modern. The Calderón in Alcoy was very swish, very modern, very comfy and the ADDA (Auditorio de la Diputación de Alicante) in Alicante was a bit of an eye opener to a country bumpkin like me. Much grander than most of our habitual haunts but all white, all synthetic materials, all wide open spaces. Built in 2011 it reminded me of the Palau de les Arts in the City of Art and Science up in Valencia but, as it wasn't designed by Santiago Calatrava, bits weren't falling off as we sat there!

It's surprisingly easy to book up events in these theatres nowadays. In the past it was often a pain - phone calls, box office pickups and approved agents with tickets. It's still sometimes the case. In the summer I had to go to a book shop in Novelda to buy tickets for a musical in the Cultural Centre in the town and, back in September, we chose to go to Yecla and stand in a queue to get first dibs on the seats for the Jazz Festival. If we'd waited for the Internet sale to open the next day we wouldn't have got the seats we wanted. Generally though the ticket platforms now make it cakelike. For the great majority of the theatres (and other venues around here) Instanticket is the most common platform, though some places use different ticket agencies. Prices vary. In the paraninfo of the University of Alicante (which isn't really a theatre) or in municipal theatres (like Pinoso) the performances are often free or a few Euros. In commercial theatres the  prices reflect the cost of staging the event - opera tickets are more expensive than ones for a string quartet for instance. I expect to pay somewhere in the teens, sometimes in the mid twenties and I baulk at anything over 30 unless I'm dead keen. 

Should you decide to give it a go, and you haven't before, I can't really help with the nomenclature of the bits of a theatre. I thought it was pretty simple, Patio de Butacas for the stalls, the seats lined up on the ground floor facing the stage. Anfiteatro was the first floor circle, again facing the stage but one floor up and with tiered seating. Another floor up, with your head against the ceiling, el Paraiso, the Gods usually called the chicken coop, el gallinero, by we hoi polloi. Along the side walls, so you have to look obliquely to see the stage, are the Palcos, the boxes. There's usually no problem with buying just a couple of seats in a box. I was also told, at the Concha Segura in Yecla, that the boxes that are at the same level as the stage, a little above the stalls, are called plateas but I've just been looking at the Instanticket diagrams of the theatres and every one seems to use variations of the name. It's all very graphic though, on all of the ticketing sites, so it's easy to work out. Knowing that Escenario is the stage  you just decide whether you want to look up to the stage, down to the stage, straight on to the stage or obliquely to the stage then check the availability and the prices. 

When I did the tour of the Wagner in Aspe we were told that they had never sold all the seats for any performance, that there were always unsold seats dotted here and there even for the most popular events. The ticket selling sites may say the theatre is sold out but it's not, apparently, quite true. This is because there is both national and regional legislation about how tickets should be sold. Here in Valencia 5% of tickets have to be held back to be sold at performance time from the box office. 

And if you don't fancy a performance most of the theatres do guided tours from time to time. The Teatro Chapí, named for a Villena born composer of the very traditionally Spanish opera form called zarzuela, for example does a visit one Sunday each month. As with nearly anything that involves a guided tour, from castles and museums to old air raid shelters the tourist offices are the place to ask.

Making up for lost time

We went to see some street theatre last week. It wasn't good. Blokes talking in funny voices wearing tight trousers and red noses as they tripped over imaginary obstacles. What was good was that it was on.

We couldn't get past the barriers that marked off the performance areas because we hadn't pre-booked our tickets but it didn't matter much as there was a bar beside two of the three spaces we went to and we were able to sit at the bar, non alcohol beer in hand, and half watch the performances. 

If there is still a limitation on the permitted number outside a bar (for ages it was 30% of capacity then 50%, keeping a couple of metres between the tables etc.) it is no longer noticeable. We're all still wearing our masks. I sometimes wonder, as I wash the car down in the local petrol station or tramp across some field looking for cucos, why I'm wearing a mask but I still do. The tea leaves suggest it won't go on much longer. I decided not to add a pack of ten of the FFP2 type masks to my supermarket shop the other day - I'm sure my hoard will see me through. Anyway, I digress. I always do. It's what makes it so easy to maintain a conversation on the video Spanish classes. I'm flitting from one thing to another and the hour is soon gone. 

So, we're in the bar and watching some unfunny clown. There are people all around us. They are greeting friends with hugs. It's warm and sunny and just like Spain as the summer begins to gear up. There is a pretence to mask wearing but lots are below nose and everybody is back to corporal greetings. Actually that's not quite true. There's a code to it. What people do is to tap elbows or bump fists as some sort of neoCovid greeting and that ritual over they then cheek kiss and/or hug. Some people, standing within centimetres of me, keep bumping into my plastic chair. It's a bit annoying. Everybody pays lip service but really, in the common consciousness, the virus has gone away. Even in the health centre the other day, when I went for my second jab, they took my temperature before letting me cross the threshold but forgot to direct me to the hand gel and I forgot too. I alternatively snigger and feel aggrieved as the news story about the ever so naughty young people who've been dancing and drinking at some "illegal" do without masks are followed by shots of politicians dancing and hugging each other after an election victory or back slapping at some meeting in Brussels, Ankara of Medellín. Rules, as always, different for the haves and the have nots.

As everything begins to open up, as the theatre programmes look fuller, as there is more and more advertised music, as some guided walks are happening again I'm back to spending hours looking at the things on offer. I trawl through town hall and tourist office websites and search out websites for this and that annual event. Maybe I'm trying to overcompensate for the things we've missed. There is so much being advertised that Maggie is already getting a bit fed up with my enthusiasms. I do the  - well, whilst we're in Alicante for Axolotes Mexicanos (indie band) we could pop in to the exhibition at the MUBAG (art gallery) and then go on to the English language film at the Kineopolis - and Maggie looks at me,  rolls her eyes and says - or we could sit on the terrace with a nice cool drink.

The night of nights

On Monday afternoon I was going through the programmes for the local theatres. We booked up a couple of events. That put a little smile on my face. Goody, goody, I thought. Out and about a bit, I thought. Away from the house for a while, I thought. Those were my thoughts as I crossed the patio and the living room heading for the kitchen to make a cup of tea.

If someone were to ask me if I were a theatre goer my answer would be diffident at best. Now and again, sort of, well no, not really. But, as I waited for the kettle to boil I started to think about it. I went to see a loads of plays when I was at University. At the time I knew a lot of drama students, some of whom were young women, maybe that was one of the attractions. Another was that the Gulbenkian Theatre was on campus and free. It was also really close to the Student's Union. The bar in there was very useful when I thought that I was going to die of boredom whilst watching a Congreve play. It gave me the incentive to get up and walk out; one of the few times in my life when I have walked out of something ostentatiously rather than sneaking away in the interval (and I've done that a few times!). I remember too seeing a play there that was based on Brecht - the actors had David Bowie type face paint and sat on tyres. The kettle still hadn't boiled but things were flooding in now. I remembered lots of Hull Truck productions. No, even further back, when I went to Butlins Holiday Camp as a lad with my family. I must have been about 11 or 12 and I was allowed to wander the complex alone. One of my chosen options was to go to the theatre, of sorts, put on by the Redcoats - I recall a whodunnit and a farce - careful with that axe vicar - sort of thing. Then after to the cafeteria to get a milky coffee, which I drank through a straw, from a Duralex cup. Such hedonism, such innocence.

By now the tea is brewed and I'm thinking about this as blog material. I recall that one of the few things I've ever seen in the West End is a Brian Rix farce. Imagine that, paying good money for innuendo and people called Gerald walking out of one door as Hermione comes in the other. Once I started to think about it lots and lots of theatre came rolling in. Stuff at the Arts Theatre and ADC in Cambridge, at the Key in Peterborough, those outdoor Shakespeare festivals at Tolthorpe and in Huntindgdon, the one man show in Catworth featuring a Weslyan Geologist, the Arts Centre in Spalding. It's like word association now; from one thing to the next. It's a bit like that John Hurt TV version of The Naked Civil Servant where Quentin says he's OK with the programme so long as they put in one particular image of him dancing. Images of my own come to mind, of past plays, past performances and past theatres. A mental hop and I think about being alone, when I was dead young, watching the telly, and being awestruck by something on BBC2, in black and white. It was a play where none of the actors wore shoes and it was about melting people down to make buttons. Google tells me it was probably Peer Gynt which is a bit disappointing. Not obscure enough for the growing hubris of this piece. Maybe my self analysis is wrong. Maybe I've always liked theatre. How strange. Oh, and there was  a recording of Waiting for Godot from Elland lending library. I enjoyed it so much the first time that I borrowed it a second time. My dad thought I was decidedly odd listening to Beckett. I went to see the real thing later. Remarkable memories.

We're at a bit of a disadvantage, theatre wise, in Spain. Ibsen and Beckett would probably be hard work in English nowadays and I don't think I'd manage them in Spanish. That's not stopped us though, we've been to lots of plays in Spanish. Sometimes I've nodded off and sometimes I've kept up without problems and even chortled at the jokes. The heavy stuff, Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo or Lorca's La Casa de Bernarda Alba, both of which are on locally at the moment, might be a stretch both language wise and maybe attention span wise. Another half forgotten memory just popped up there. A memory to suggest that the language has always been challenging. I think it was in Palma, in Mallorca, in the 1980s when I'd got into the habit of coming to Spain for my holidays. I went to the theatre to see something called La Pepa Trae Cola. I must have wanted to experience a bit of Spanish theatre even then and almost certainly the poster gave me hope that it would be amusing and maybe comprehensible. As I remember it was a sort of farce (again); I've just looked it up and it starred a couple called Tomás Zorí and Fernando Santos. My guess is from a mixture of memory and skimming the Wikipedia article that this was like going to see a sort of Spanish Mike and Bernie Winters, as they flailed around at the end of their careers, heading towards oblivion. It was completely incomprehensible to me.

Maggie's much more realistic than me. She knows where our linguistic limits lie. Every time I thrust a (virtual) theatre programme at her she looks through the things I haven't earmarked and steers me away from the worthy play (or the farce) and suggests the ballet, or the opera or the concert. Things that have elements other than pure language. That's good too. This time though she liked the look of a play and we even booked a bit of feminist musical theatre. It's making me grin again just thinking about it. And we're in a box for one of the events. Lots of the theatres around here are really lovely. Old fashioned with lots of velvet, with gold leaf and with allegorical paintings on the ceiling or above the stage. I always like the boxes. Mind you I like the dress circle too - definitely the best view. Oh, and the Gods can be great. The Spanish name for the Gods is el Paradiso, Paradise. All the fun for a fraction of the price and often with an experience thrown in -this time it's freezing cold, this time it's boiling hot or maybe the rake of the seating makes you fear for your life. I don't particularly care for the stalls - too squashed. Mind you the Covid restrictions mean you can now sprawl when you go to the theatre.

Just one last thing. Recalling all these plays I remembered dragging my old pal Alan to the theatre in Villena to see Darwin's Turtle. My guess is that he didn't capture much of the plot but I don't think I need to apologise. I bet you remember that evening, don't you Mr. C? Memorable stuff going to the theatre. 

Keep on truckin'

I don't remember the film title but I do remember the little gasp of horror from the audience as Michael Douglas padded across the room in half light heading for the bathroom. The reason for the concern was that he had a sunken, old man, bottom and, though I haven't dared to look recently, I suppose mine is too.

So far as I know I have no chronic illnesses though I know from people around me that your luck can change in seconds. I do often feel old though. Old as I feel the pain in my knees. Old as I realise that I'm gasping for breath after climbing a few stairs. Old as my arms ache after a bit of sawing. My feet hurt all the time, and the tinnitus is really loud. And so on and so forth. I'm getting old. No, let's be right about it, I am old. I know that people around me refer to 45 year olds as middle aged but all I can suppose is that they failed their "O" level sums.

Covid, and the responses to it, have kept us all quite hemmed in for a while now. Of course it has done much more. It has killed people, destroyed businesses, overpowered health services, left people penniless, challenged basic democratic rights and much more but, in our case, it has mainly hemmed us in. Lots of normal activity has stopped. Spain, a country where the smallest centre of population has a fiesta to celebrate its patron saint has cancelled them all. Covid is going to do to Christmas what the Grinch failed to do. 

On the cultural side the few concerts and sports events that have found a way to continue have been severely limited or have no spectators. In like manner the big museums may still be putting on new exhibitions but the the visitor numbers are scandalously low. Book fairs have been cancelled left right and centre. It's true that he cinemas are open but there are almost no big budget Hollywood films to see and even the domestic releases have been scant. Who wants to waste all that effort in releasing their film for paltry attendances? Of the five cinemas we most usually go to one has closed, probably for good, and one is running on a five day week. Current travel restrictions mean we can't use three of them; they are out of bounds. I went to a 4.15pm film screening last Wednesday and I was the only person, in the whole of the 11 screen cinema, apart from staff. Last night we went to a theatre in Elche and there were six of us in the dress circle. Down in the stalls half of the seats were taped over but occupancy of the remaining half couldn't have been more than a third. It was all a bit lifeless and depressing. You're living it too. You can add hundreds of similar examples and we're not even particularly confined at the moment.

Despite the fact that I keep doing it, wandering around yet another cathedral or a town centre hasn't really interested me for a while. But for the captions on my photos I often can't tell one from the other. Much better, in my opinion, to go to somewhere when something's happening. So I remember the community opera performance in Peterborough Cathedral much better than I remember Peterborough Cathedral. It's fine popping out to a local town, going to the coast or eating out but for me it's better when there is a twist to that. When the town has a food fair or there's a tapas trail, when something out of the ordinary is happening in the streets, when you've gone because you want to see the latest blockbuster exhibition or maybe something less obvious. Sports events, film festivals and the rest are, to me, great reasons for going somewhere.

It's not that my heart and nerve and sinew won't hold on for a while longer yet but it is all a bit wearying.

As wise as courageous

The sweat was running in a little rivulet down my back. I noticed too that my damp hands had transferred the wood-stain on the handrails on to my beige trousers. The raffia work type chair had been uncomfortable from the start but I found myself wondering if Enver Hoxha's torturers had ever thought of the possibilities of dining chairs. Wearing a surgical mask wasn't helping. The daytime temperature had topped out at 41º C and it was still nice and warm as the performance got under way just after 9pm. Maggie, who was probably the only woman in the theatre without a fan, says she was on the verge of collapse from heat and pain. I suspect a fan may not have helped much!

On stage a harpist and three women, all dressed in black, were reciting poetry and singing songs based on the work of women like Santa Teresa de Jesús, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Olivia Sabuco, Ana Caro or María de Zayas. Women who lived and wrote in what is now called the Siglo de Oro (literally Golden Century), the Spanish Golden Age. That's a "century" that ran from 1492 till 1659 or maybe 1681 depending on who you listen to. Now, as you may imagine, my grasp of Sixteenth and Seventeenth Spanish poetry, even in modern translation, is relatively tenuous. It was easy for my mind to wander from the action on stage.

We were at the Classic Theatre Festival at Almagro in the Ciudad Real province of Castilla la Mancha watching Tan sabia como valerosa. The whole Festival is super popular and you have to be quick off the mark to get tickets. This year Covid played havoc with the event - was it going ahead or not? I went shopping for tickets the first day they went on sale and, for the venue we wanted, the Corral de Comedias, the only performance that had tickets left was the one we were at. The Corral is a timber framed open air galleried theatre - think of London's Globe Theatre and, although the buildings are quite different, you'll have the idea.

The original theatre on this site  was probably built at the end of the 16th Century, though nobody is quite sure when exactly. Mentions of the theatre in Almagro turn up every now and then in the records over the years but, after 1857, not a dicky bird. Then, in the 1950s, when the main square of Almagro was being rebuilt, bits and bats were found which pointed to the site once having being used as an open air theatre. When the stage was found, almost intact, behind a brick wall, it was decided to restore the area as a typical Siglo de Oro theatre. The first performance in the new space was in 1954 and that's the theatre we were sweating in on Sunday evening.

It was an event I'll remember. If I'm honest though my favourite bit was probably when a bat fluttered into the auditorium and briefly crossed the stage. Not something you normally get when you go to the theatre!

Oh, oh, oh, oh, o, ho

We were talking to some Americans - North Americans, from the United States. We were in the Gods, the gallinero or chicken coop in Spanish, at the top of the Teatro Principal in Alicante. We were high enough to consider breathing apparatus. The seats were so steeply raked that Maggie worried about plummeting.  It was absolutely roasting presumably because the people in the stalls were at just the right temperature. Heat rises, rich people comfy, poor people sweltering. First I took off my jacket and then I took off my pullover to reveal my Gas Monkey T-shirt. That was the talking point to begin the conversation. All four of us were there to see a zarzuela. Say it like Thar thway la.

Have you ever seen a zarzuela before asked the Americans, "Yes," I said, "No," said Maggie. In a way we were both right. We've seen several scenes from various zarzuelas in full costume and three concerts of zarzuela music. It was the first time though that we'd seen a full production.

The production was La revoltosa, the Troublemaker, set in 19th Century Madrid and written by Ruperto Chapí, a local lad done good. He's considered to be one of the foremost composers of zarzuelas. The Revoltosa features poor folk, poor but happy folk. Lots of singing and dancing and chatting up of sultry maidens. Zarzuela is the name of a Royal Palace on the outskirts of Madrid.  The building is supposedly named for the blackberry bushes, zarzas, that surrounded it and where, so the tale has it, zarzuelas were first performed.

If anybody asks me, and as you may imagine it's a common question, I always say that zarzuelas are light opera - I think Merry Widow and Gilbert and Sullivan. The Spanish Wikipedia entry is very scathing about comparisons with other operatic forms. It pooh poohs the idea that zarzuelas are anything like the French Opereta and says it's more like the German Singspiel but that really it is a uniquely Hispanic form. Interesting eh? No, I didn't think so either. The English Wikipedia entry says that zarzuela is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular songs, as well as dance. And that will do for me.

It wasn't as good as I'd hoped. I quite like the zarzuela style music but as a live performance it was a bit gutless. We didn't understand most of the spoken parts - Maggie said it was because we were so far away, I think it's because our Spanish is terrible. On the other hand, as an experience, I thought it was pretty cracking. Maggie didn't. She said that the heroine warbled like Gracie Fields. The Americans said it was good too but that may have been because they were tourists.

Oh, and being old and nearly senile I managed to scrape the side of my new motor as I reversed out of the underground car park. Nothing significant really but enough to make me swear like a trooper all the way home.

Queuing for Peter Pan

We have a couple of very active theatre groups in Pinoso. One of them, Taules, was even the joint winner of a prestigious national award for amateur theatre this year. Taules usually put on a show for the August fiesta and another for Christmas.

For some events in Pinoso you can buy tickets online but for most of the events in our 400 plus seat theatre you have to get tickets, or invitations, from the box office which opens for a couple hours for a couple of nights before the event. It's a bit of a pain for us because we're not usually in town in the evenings so we have to drive in specially. We've learned that normally we can chance to luck and there will be tickets available on the night. You can't do that with Taules though.

I'd misread the programme information. I thought tickets were on sale from 4pm. In fact it was 6pm. I didn't realise though because, when I got there, there were about 40 people waiting. Now the Spanish have a queuing system that I've mentioned before. They don't, usually, stand in a line but, as you arrive, you ask who is the last person in the queue and so take your place - let's call that virtual queuing. This causes confusion when foreigners, like we Britons, stand behind the person we think is the last in line. We may be queue jumping because the line usually only represents a part of the virtual queue. I asked who was last in the post office the other day and a woman sitting on a chair pointed to a Briton and said "He is, but he doesn't know, so I probably am." She may have been just a little peeved.

As I arrived outside the theatre I was assigned my place in the order. Over the next fifty minutes though the system started to creak as people came and went, children, coming from school, joined their waiting parents whilst cousins, aunts and brothers in law stood with other family members. The noise level was rowdy. I still didn't realise I was early and I was seething about the delay and unfairly cursing Spanish organisation.

When the man from the theatre group did turn up there was a loud cheer so I still didn't realise I was early; I just thought he was late. We all jostled and pushed into the theatre lobby behind him and any semblance of place in the queue vanished. Then the theatre bloke explained. Tickets would go on sale at the advertised time, 6pm, about an hour away. There were going to be separate desks for each of the three performances and they were going to set up posts and ropes to organise a physical queue. We were asked to organise ourselves so that the new physical queue had the same order as the original virtual queue. That involved leaving the theatre and finding your rightful place. I'm not good at forceful and I realised I'd end up at the back of the queue if I did as asked so I hung back a little and dropped into the reforming queue more or less where I belonged. Then we waited for the sales desks to open.

Progress to the three desks was painfully slow but I did, finally, get there. Choosing seats involved a Biro and a photocopied diagramme of the theatre. Paying involved banknotes and coins. I was surprised how many seats had gone. People must have been buying shed loads of tickets at a time because I wasn't that far back in the line. Not many people behind me were going to get in on Sunday evening so maybe all the bumping and shuffling and standing around was actually worthwhile. If I'd turned up at six I'm not sure I'd have got any tickets.

Punctuality is the virtue of the bored

We went to a couple of things yesterday. One was reassuringly Spanish but the other followed a disturbing new trend.

There was a fundraising event in Novelda. Some local bands, names unknown to us, were playing a mini festival to raise money for victims of the flooding of a few weeks ago. We turned up a bit after, not much after, the advertised start time of 1pm and, as we expected, absolutely nothing was going on. Lots of people with pony tails, black t-shirts and big bellies were faffing around with bits of wire onstage but no bands. Obviously 1pm comes as a surprise every time. Normal, predictable, foreseeable behaviour. The bands kicked off with the normal, predictable and foreseeable twenty minutes to half an hour delay.

The bar was another surprise for the organising team. The surprise was that people arriving might want to buy a drink from the bar. The system was predictable enough. You couldn't pay with cash at the bar you had to buy tickets first - this is a common, but not universal, system for events with temporary staff. Someone known and trusted handles the money so that the the volunteers and the temps are not subjected to temptation. Usually, but not always, it's reasonably obvious that you need to buy tickets. This time there was nothing. The price list on the bar had € signs to help maintain the illusion that cash was acceptable right to the end. The woman in front of me in the queue was clutching her purse; you need tickets said the server and then we all knew. The woman and I walked the couple of hundred metres back to the entrance to buy tickets to swap for beer. Predictably there were no tickets. The organising team, taken unawares, by the sudden arrival of 1pm at 1pm, hadn't thought to arm the ticket selling staff with tickets. The tickets arrived in due course and then we were able to buy them to pay for beer. Now this is all pretty usual. Things starting late. Things suddenly happening. As Spanish as tortilla de patatas. It's sort of re-assuring because it's expected.

Later in the day we went to the theatre. We went to the splendid Concha Segura Theatre in Yecla. Always worth the visit just for the building. We'd booked late, the theatre was busy but not full. We'd reserved a couple of places in a box and nobody else joined us so we had a great view and a comfy spot. Curtain up time was advertised as 8pm. We've done a lot of theatre in our time here and I would estimate that twenty minutes delay is the norm. But not last night. No, the turn off your mobile phone the performance is about to begin announcement, was made before ten past. This is a bit worrying. I was at the theatre on Friday night too, in Pinoso, and Javier was up on stage to welcome everyone around ten past ten just ten minutes after advertised start. For West Side Story down in Alicante about three weeks ago that was nearer on time than usual too. I've only just realised but there's a pattern emerging. Spanish theatre times are closing in on the advertised time. I hope I'm not too old to adapt.

Do I have a volunteer?

Pinoso has a pretty good theatre space and it gets a lot of use. Events are usually inexpensive or even free. The price being right I'm a reasonably regular attender.

The pre event news must have slipped me by, but, in this month's What's On, there were a couple of dates for theatre pieces presented as part of the first ever Pinoso Comedy Theatre competition. Tonight was the premiere. First up was Estocolmo: Se Acabó el cuento by Carabau Teatre. The evening was introduced by a chap called Javier Monzó. In towns like Pinoso there are a handful of people who make things happen and Javier is one of them.

Now my spoken Spanish is bordering on terrible. Under certain circumstances the idea of speaking Spanish is also terrifying. As a listener though I generally I understand what's going on. The radio or TV news or a film at the cinema aren't usually a problem for instance. Listening to real, conversational Spanish is a bit more difficult but, usually, well within reach. Sometimes though, before even the simplest language, I just get lost and bog down.

Listening to the comedy theatre tonight I soon gave up on the idea of understanding it all. I could just about keep up with the gist but I only understood about 10% of the actual jokes. What worried me more than anything though was that the actors in the two man show kept bobbing off the stage and pestering the audience for low level participation. Listening to comedy is hard enough but being a part of the show?

There's nowt on t' telly

I was just on the phone to my mum. She told me her news. And what have you been up to she asked. Nothing much I said, a bit of gardening, a bit of preparation for my classes. Oh, and I've seen four concerts and I've visited the largest quarry in Europe and been on a bodega tour. I could have listed the things that I've missed too.

When I went to see the Excitements at the Yecla Jazz Festival last night I could have gone to a homage to the poet Miguel Hernandez in Pinoso instead, When I went to see Viva Suecia last Friday I could have chosen to  stay in Pinoso and see the Catalan singer songwriter Cesk Freixas. Indeed just thinking about the events that we've been to in the past couple of weeks, not including going to the cinema a couple of times, we've been to a photo exhibition, missed another poetry event because of the torrential downpour, missed the dressage event at the local riding school plus some event featuring folk dancers and traditional Valencian instruments because we were away for the weekend in Altea. Mind you whilst we were away we saw the local Moors and Christians Festival, oh, and on the way back we stopped off to see the display of banners in Monóvar to celebrate the life and works of Azorín. For this weekend I've not got much in my diary - there's a Roman market all weekend in Petrer and another photo exhibition and, of course, the Yecla Jazz Festival is still on. Next week Maldita Nerea, another band that have regular hits in the top 40, are on, for free, in Petrer as part of their fiestas and down in Murcia there's the Big Up music festival. Just to show that it isn't all music in the rest of the month there's a whole series of talks about recent Spanish history, a couple of book launches, two theatre productions, a bit of lyric opera and a couple of events for Halloween including itinerant story tellers in Pinoso. Pinoso has a population of 8,000.

I wasn't writing the list to show off where we've been but more to stress the "cultural" offer that there is in our local towns. The truth is that I tend to be a bit of a collector of events. The Internet brings me news from all the local town halls and I follow up on the titbits of information I hear on the radio or see in the press but I miss more than I get to see. What suddenly struck me about all these things was how available they are.

We went with some chums to see the first of the Yecla Jazz concerts. They are staged in a lovely end of the Nineteenth Century theatre - all red brocade and gilt. The compere is a radio DJ from the national station Radio 3 and the musicians whilst not been exactly superstars are all well above the run of the mill. It can't be a cheap event to mount. Our pals were bowled over by the setting and by the fact that the concert was free. Also in Yecla, but this time as a part of the September Fair, we went to see Fangoria. The lead singer of the band is a woman called Alaska. She is Mexican by birth, I think, but she's been a star in Spain since the mid 1970s. Alaska and Fangoria will not be a cheap band. This isn't like seeing a band who are unknown to anyone who doesn't have wrinkles and grey, or no, hair.  It's more like seeing The Pet Shop Boys or Tom Jones - someone who has been around forever and who may be past their heyday but who are still big. Fangoria were free too. A few days later I went to see Viva Suecia; this lot are an indie band but they are a band tipped for greater success. The sort of band that, in the UK, would have got a lot of airplay on the late evening and nighttime Radio 1 shows when I lived in the UK but may well be on Radio 6 nowadays. Free again. In fact from all the list above the only paying events would be the cinema.

The cultural offer in Spain is wide and varied and, even when it's to be paid for, it is usually pretty inexpensive. The arts market took a bit of a pounding when the ruling PP party jacked up the VAT rate on cultural events but, as a bit of an example, I just looked how much the three day VIP ticket for the Low festival in Benidorm would be and the answer is 40€ though that is a special "you're paying ages in advance without knowing what the bands will be" ticket and last year the Low Festival didn't drag in many big name foreign bands though they did have 75 bands and lots of them were big on the Spanish scene. Down in Cartagena at el Batel if you want to go and see Sleeping Beauty by the Russian National Ballet the cheapest tickets are 18€ and the most expensive 30€. In Murcia, at the Teatro Romea the best seats for the regional orchestra doing Beethoven's 9th are a whopping 20€. It's not so cheap in Madrid; to see the Lion King for instance you'd pay 96€ for the best seats but that's still a bit cheaper than the £129.50 for the same show in London on the same day.

Not a bad offer though for anyone who's a bit bored with what's on the telly. New series of The Big Bang Theory on Sunday though.

Sitting and walking

I half remember an early city walk that I did. It was around Oxford and the chap introduced himself as the obsequious Turnbull. He was about twelve years old, or so it seemed to me at the time, and he wore a threadbare suit complete with bow tie. He did a good tour though. I like walking tours around towns and cities. Trees and geology in Leeds, Jack the Ripper in Whitechapel, writers in Dublin or 1726 in Petrer - they're all worth a go. I don't even mind those leaflet based walks that do the drainage system in the Fens, Bomber Command in 1942 or Carmen Conde in Cartagena.

We've always tried to throw a few cultural things in amongst the alcohol and wild excesses of our lives (well that and the nightly cocoa) and even having to do it it in Spanish hasn't quite vanquished us. I've taken, purportedly, willing house guests to the theatre or to a film. We've done lots of music - festivals, flamenco, ballet, zaerzuela, contemporary, jazz, latin and opera. Folky and amateur stuff comes out of our ears and even word based activities, like poetry and comedy, haven't been out of bounds.

We've been a bit culturally bereft for the past few months though. Mediaeval and craft fairs, drinking and eating too much with pals and blessing donkeys, for all their fine attributes, don't really count as culture. So I was interested to see a bit of theatre advertised in nearby Novelda. The venue was the Casa Modernista, the Modernist House - a house we think of as being Art Nouveau - all intricate woodwork and stained glass. A theatre company is doing some sort of historical recreation there.

Almost at the same time Yecla advertised guided walks based on the books and life of the writer Azorín. They are commemorating the fifty years since his death. Azorín is getting a fair bit of attention locally because he was born in Monóvar and went to school in Yecla. Both places get mention in his books and so both have organised events. I didn't really see the Azorín link but we got to see a Billy Wilder film a little while ago as a result.

So I set about booking the Azorín tour around Yecla and the theatre in Novelda. A splendidly simple process for both. Google forms from Facebook in Novelda and a simple, reassuringly old fashioned email to Yecla.

Yecla came back quickly with an amusingly intricate form, so precise that it accepted my reservation at 8.03 Central European Time. The Google form didn't work so well. It took a couple of old technology emails to sort it out. The venue people emailed me in Spanish and later, for good measure, in perfectly acceptable English to say that there had been a bit of a blip but they had it in hand.

I was looking for a quote about Spring and the changes it rings to round off this post. Tolstoy's "Spring is a time of plans and projects" would have done nicely but Margaret Atwood made me laugh more "In the Spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt."

No coman pipas

Don't eat sunflower seeds. It was a little notice on the wall of what is now the Centre for Associations in Pinoso. It made me laugh.

I'd popped into town to see one of the events built up around International Women's Day "Sarah y Nora toman el  té de las cinco" - Sarah and Nora take afternoon tea. It's a play about the personal and professional rivalry between Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse.

In all the publicity Bernhardt is spelled as Bernhard. Spaniards don't take long to Spanishise anything they don't like the spelling of. I was reading a book the other day and it took me a while to equate taper with tupper taken from the trademarked plastic containers Tupperware which is used as the generic for plastic food containers. It's a word I know and use but I'd never thought how it was written. The misspelling, nonetheless, made me laugh.

The Director is, I think, a Spanish bloke but the company is Mexican, from Durango. I turned up at 7.59 for the 8.0 clock performance. I know that the possibility of a Spanish event starting on time is the same as the hell bound cat's but old habit's die hard. Actually we didn't wait long. About ten past the Director stood up and started explaining the background to the play. During his discourse the councillor, whose department was sponsoring the event, showed up. Maybe they are a bit more punctual in Durango than in Pinoso. That made me laugh too.

The play was fine. Competent acting and easy enough to understand which is always a bonus. It made me smile from time to time though it didn't make me laugh.

Having a laugh

Normally, when I go to the theatre or somesuch I put the photos on Picasa or Facebook and that's it but I just have to tell you about the Flamenco performance we went to see last night.

The event was at the Teatro Vico in Jumilla. Getting the tickets booked was a right faff because the box office was only open when I was at work. Jumilla is 35kms from home and they have no Internet presence. Then, to top it all, I kept confusing the performance on Friday with the performance on Saturday in my various messages. By the time I'd finished I reckon I could ask the bloke from the box office to be my best man should I ever get married - I'd have to ask by WhatsApp though.

Our seats were on the front row. Right at the front. Just the orchestra pit between us and the tight flamenco suits and frocks. To get to the seats we had to pass by a very severe looking older couple who seemed as unmovable as Joan Baez. As I squeezed past under their piercing stares the vision of me standing on her foot, stumbling and crashing into him flashed before my eyes. I made it to my seat without incident.

The couple did not move through the whole performance. No applause, almost no asides to each other. The man looked at his watch by grasping the casing with his right hand and staring intently at the time for at least thirty seconds. He was so obvious about it, he did it so often and he was so near the stage that the performers must have noticed him.

As usual the event started late. Spaniards call it courtesy time. It never seems very courteous to me to the people who turn up on time but I suppose that's my funny British sensibility. It wasn't late enough for a couple of people though. We got under way for the 9pm event at around 9.20 but some chap in the third or fourth row of the stalls turned up a few minutes afterwards. He didn't lower his voice at all as he and his partner discussed who should take which of the two seats assigned to them. The seats were at the aisle end of the row. He chose the more interior seat so, ten minutes later, when presumably his bladder betrayed him, there was another full volume conversation and quite a lot of noise as he headed for the toilet.

On row two, behind us there was a conversation that was perfectly audible above the music. The only part of it I caught though was about how and what one of the women was going to eat later. Maggie said that when a phone somewhere behind her rang the woman didn't hesitate to answer it or to have a perfectly normal conversation. All in all it was a very unsettled audience which is a bit unusual for flamenco.

Up on stage the flamenco wasn't bad at all. Four, I think, different acts doing their set. Singing, playing, dancing and even some poetry. It did seem to go on a long time though. The compeering was done by a chap who must have gone to great pains to choose his very light coloured suit. The trousers were long, the jacket was tight across his stomach but a bit big on the shoulders and the cuffs were palm covering. Later we had a cavalcade of local presidents of this association or society to hand out certificates and bottles of wine to the performers. Not one of them wore trousers that were not brushing the ground. One bloke, with a cardigan and flat cap looked like he'd come directly from his allotment. Another had a slightly grubby looking combination of black shoes, blue trousers, pink shirt and green jacket. Choosing that ensemble could not be pure chance.

All in all it was a very enjoyable event and not all of the fun was in the performances or even on the stage.

El Tenorio

Wikipedia tells me that Don Juan Tenorio,written by José Zorrilla in 1844, is the more romantic of the two principal Spanish-language plays about the legend of Don Juan. The other is the 1630 El Burlador de Sevilla probably written by Tirso de Molina. So now you know.

It's a Spanish theatre tradition to perform El Tenorio on All Saints Day as part of the Bank Holiday "celebrations". In turn this has made it one of the most lucrative of Spanish plays. It's a pity poor old  Zorilla sold the rights soon after he wrote it. He thought it was just another pot boiler.

I fear that a play written in the mid 19th Century, based on an older 17th Century work, is going to be a bit of a push for my Spanish. But blow it. Something traditional that we still haven't done being performed in Jumilla just 35k from home with the most expensive tickets priced at just 10€. Why the hell not? It must be worth a punt. We can always sneak away at the intermission if needs be. Maggie was remarkably easy to persuade.

So just the tickets to buy. There didn't seem to be any online ticket sales but there was a box office number. I tried ringing a couple of times without success. Then I checked a few Google searches and found that the box office only opens for a couple of hours on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings. Fiddlesticks!; I work all the time that the box office is open. Bit of a problem then. Anyway the website said that any tickets reserved by phone have to be picked up and paid for at least a couple of days beforehand or they will be resold - more of a problem. Reading between the lines I guess I can't buy tickets over the phone with a plastic card.

I've found an email address and I've written. Provided they read their email, and I suspect a theatre will, I'm sure they will find a solution.

Interestingly, well it's interesting to me, on the way home tonight I bought a couple of tickets for a play In Pinoso this weekend, The only way to get them also seemed to be to go to the box office in very restricted opening hours. The difference is that I could. For Don Juan I can't.

Nothing like making it easy though.

PS The next morning, before 8.30, the theatre had responded and said they'd keep a couple of tickets.

Another evening at the theatre

One of my favourite ways to start any blog entry is a reference to the past - when I was a boy..... when I lived in Elland and what not. I don't quite think of my time in Spain in the same way. Although we have been here for close on ten years now all the Spanish stories seem fresh. So I wasn't going to blog my visit to the theatre yesterday evening until I realised that it was four years ago that I last smelled greasepaint in Torre del Rico.

I met Barry and Carole (remember us as barrel) when I delivered a lot of furniture. I seem to recall that they had a lot of space to fill in their house cum converted bodega and I spent hours if not days fastening together Mexican style flat pack furniture. Nowadays we just say hello and catch up when we pass in the street in Pinoso but Facebook keeps me up to date with their comings and goings. It was because of Facebook that I realised that Carole would be on stage on Saturday evening. She's a member of a group called Asociación de Mujeres Rurales Torre del Rico or the Rural Women's Association of Torre del Rico. Maggie and I last crossed the border into Murcia to see her in a play in the village in August 2010.

We've meant to go every year but somehow things have got in the way so, even though there was no Maggie, I wasn't going to miss it again. The setting was the same. There were no tractors passing this time but otherwise it all looked very familiar and appealingly amateur in the sense that it felt community owned.

It was good fun. I was alone of course and, as always, startled to be surrounded by so many Spanish people. I kept my head low in the hope that nobody would speak to me and I bolted as soon as the cast had taken their final curtain call. It was like being in Culebrón as the audience assembled. Lots of greetings, hand shaking, kissing and smiling. It was the same as the show started. I heard whisperings behind me along the lines of "Is that Mari Carmen on stage?" Friends amongst friends I thought as the actors on stage struggled to stop themselves from laughing as they delivered double entendres, forgot their lines or consistently and purposely repeated one of the character's names incorrectly. It was full of Spanish that I didn't understand, word play type Spanish using lots of the local diminutive and even more local terminology but I see that in 2010 I reckoned  I understood about 25% of the dialogue. It was definitely a lot higher percentage than that last night - unless of course Carole tells me there was no word play or double entendre in any of it!

I was really impressed with Carole's Spanish. Back in 2010 it was definitely a double memory test. Not only did she have to remember her lines she also had to remember the strange word forms of a foreign language. Last night the pacing and delivery made me pretty sure that she understood her Spanish lines completely and only had to remember them. Good stuff all round.

Espadas Family "The Musical"

I reckon I was the only person in the audience who wasn't a mother, father, sister brother, uncle or other relative of someone on stage. There were fat girls, thin girls and the occasional boy. There were parents on stage and youngsters with learning and physical difficulties.They danced and sang. They were wired up to headset mics and they did acrobatics too. There was a father in the row in front of me who could hardly contain his enthusiasm every time his daughter appeared on stage. Waving, clapping - close to orgasm.

The poster said The Musical by the Family Espadas. In aid of a not for profit setup that works with youngsters with disabilities. I had no idea what to expect but there was nothing much on at the flicks and the house is freezing so why not something at the local theatre?

It's not the sort of thing I go for really but I had a whale of a time. I laughed and clapped a lot and I even understood a few of the jokes.

My favourite bit of Spanishness was when the elder daughter of the family, the one who wanted to go to Ibiza and live in a commune, was spoken to directly by God. You're looking for peace and love? - then get thee to a nunnery. Next scene up dancing nuns with a fetching line in popsox.

The West End is only a bit of rehearsal time away.