It’s been a weekend where me and the missus have been hanging out with lots of famous dead folk… First up on Saturday was the RSC production of Antony And Cleopatra at the Novello in London. Partrick Stewart of Star Trek: TNG and The X-Men fame played Antony and he was pretty bloody marvellous as the Roman hero torn between his heart and his duty. Ken Bones was also superb as Antony’s right-hand man and the play’s sometime narrator Enobarbus.
Harriet Walter, however, was an absolute revelation as the Egyptian queen who moved between arch seductress, petulant and lovesick schoolgirl and jaded monarch throughout the evening. She was thoroughly engaging and utterly watchable and overall it was a pretty solid production.
Sunday saw me and the missus go on a tour of Kensal Green Cemetery. I’ve lived in Kensal Green for eight years now (the missus and the boy for 16 years) and the cemetery is a five-minute walk from our house and, somewhat embarrassingly, it’s taken me joining the Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery before we’ve done this tour.
And at £5 a head it’s great value. It’s a two-hour trek of going round the catacombs (the first hour) then the overground cemetery (the second hour) and essentially learning a bit about funerary and the history of both burial and the local area over just under 200 years.
Afterwards it’s tea and biscuits in the newly renovated Dissenters’ Chapel where you can ask whatever questions you like about the graves of Wilkie Collins, William Makepeace Thackeray, Blondin or Charles Babbage. Tours are every Sunday at 2pm but tours that include the catacombs are on the first and third Sunday every month.
More details are available here: www.kensalgreen.co.uk
A bizarrely offbeat but brilliant afternoon.
No comments:
Post a Comment