Hymn and Cocktail Sticks: Sunday Double Bills

Synopsis

Hymn - Alan Bennett writes: ?In 2001 the Medici Quartet commissioned the composer George Fenton to write a piece commemorating their thirtieth anniversary. George Fenton appeared in my play Forty Years On and has written music for many of my plays since, and he asked me to collaborate on the commission. Hymn was the result. First performed at the Harrogate Festival in August 2001, it's a series of memoirs with music. Besides purely instrumental passages for the quartet, many of the speeches are under-scored, incorporating some of the hymns and music I remember from my childhood and youth.' Hymn is coupled with Cocktail Sticks, an oratorio without music that revisits some of the themes and conversations of Alan Bennett's memoir A Life Like Other People's. A son talks to his dead father as his mother yearns for a different life. It's funny, tender and sad. The pinnacle of my social life is a scrutty bit of lettuce and tomato and some tinned salmon. Mind you, I read in Ideal Home that if you mix tinned salmon with this soft cheese you can make it into one of those moussy things. Shove a bit of lemon on it and it looks really classy.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 17 December 2012

For someone so mock modest about himself, Alan Bennett is increasingly exhibitionist these days, writing not only about his illness, sexuality and parents, but even authorising this latest vanity project at the National Theatre in which Alex Jennings gives an absolutely wonderful pitch perfect performance in his stead.

You gasp when Jennings first appears in that familiar Brooks Brothers regulation dress code of grey sports jacket, comfortable trousers and shoes, the blue short-sleeve sweater, the red tie (replaced with a turquoise one for the second play).

Bennett himself appeared on the National’s stage as Sir Anthony Blunt in his A Question of Attribution play about one of the Queen’s pictures. Otherwise, in the West End, he’s been impersonated, or embodied, by Nicholas Farrell and Kevin R McNally as his public and reflective selves in The Lady in the Van.

But only Jennings has added the exact sly, deferential ph...

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Latest User Review

Paul Wallis - 12 January 2013:

What a delight. Hymn, set to music, is short and a delight. Cocktail Sticks is funny, touching & moving. In both, Alex Jennings has Alan Bennett down to a tee - his voice, his looks and mannerisms. In Coctail Sticks, Gabrielle Lloyd as Mam delivers a sweet & touching performance. A real treat...

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