The Heart of Robin Hood @ RSC Stratford upon Avon

Panto is always different in the hands of the RSC and this production keeps up their tradition of offering us something different, last years Matilda now a hit in the West End, and the equally stunning Beauty and the Beast a few years back bear testimony to the fact. We bought some restricted view tickets late and whilst I had a narrow metal cruciform post in front of me it only detracted a fraction from the stage only a few metres away.
9 / 10

Below is Paul Taylor's review from the Independent who gave it 4/5 and I won't argue with that.

The greensward is a massive 40-foot high slope in The Heart of Robin Hood, the RSC's captivating new Christmas show.

The characters enter by sliding down the near-vertical back wall of Borkur Jonsson's set with an elating whoosh. Their other main route into the proceedings is by insertion upside down on ropes lowered from a lofty canopy of oak branches. Since the Company started performing on high-altitude thrust-stages, niftiness at dangling in a harness must have become virtually an audition requirement for actors at the RSC. And there's no one better at choreographing this form of suspense than Gisli Orn Gardarrson of Iceland's celebrated Vesturport outfit. Ending with a lyrical aerial twirl by the now-entwined hero and heroine, his is a Christmas production that, in the best possible sense, keeps things above the heads of young and old alike.

If the dominating slope approaches a 1:1 gradient, Robin Hood is on an equivalently stiff learning curve in David Farr's wittily revisionist new version. Looking a bit like a Joe Orton fantasy with his bare chest and laced-up leather trousers, James McArdle's blunt, Yorkshire Robin starts off as an emotionally arrested boy who heads a gang of ullulating thugs dedicated to self-interest. Then along comes Iris Roberts's winningly spirited, blonde-bobbed Marion who (shades of Rosalind in As You Like It) is forced to lead a double life. In the castle, she feigns betrothal to Martin Hutson's pervily psychotic Prince John. In the forest, she masquerades as Martin of Sherwood, spearhead of a rival, more caring-and-sharing bunch of thieves.
 
A bit too politically correct? Actually no, because there's lashings of irreverence (Little John is played a drily philosophical dwarf); some good gruesome gags (such as playing for time by playing puppets with the corpse of Guy of Gisborne) and a lovely fool in the burly shape of Olafur Darri Olafson's Pierre, a self-involved French fop (“”Green is not my colour”) who later quite gets off on faking “butch”. And there's a frizzy-haired dog who parps on a clarinet and wild boar who saws on a cello before it is removed as his innards during a ritual disembowelling.
 
There are also disturbing elements in the central story of the traumatising dangers facing the two children of a man who was hanged as a subversive for refusing to pay Prince John's fraudulent Holy Contribution Tax. For this reason, I think it would be safer to take children a little older than the 7 upwards suggested by the RSC. Otherwise, warmly recommended.

Great Tracks No 5, Facelift by Soft Machine

Recorded in 1970, this the opening track on their album titled 'Third' is made up from two live recordings, primarily from Fairfield Hall, Croydon but some from the Mothers Club in Birmingham a week later
"Facelift" is the most radical track of the four on the double LP being some 19 minutes long. A majority of the finished product is essentially a live recording, involving tape collage, speeding up, slowing down, looping and backwards playing of tapes, the ending being the most memorable part, where two different treatments of the same basic riff (one from the live concert, the other, at double speed, from their Spaced project) are heard simultaneously, backwards. Facelift is bassist Hugh Hopper's composition and is an extended rock-jazz improvisation of the basic rift. Use of tapes in an live situation was ahead of its time, now a band would have a couple of laptops and an array of Boss loop pedals. Hopper did in fact employ a fuzz pedal. Saw them twice, once at the UCL student union in a large room with a very low ceiling, then when they made history by becoming the first 'rock band' invited to play at London's Proms in August 1970, a show which was broadcast live and subsequently released as a cd.
Very influential, and could have easily chosen any of the three other tracks, so a brief note for 'Slightly All The Time' and Robert Wyatt's 'Moon in June'
.

Great Tracks No 4, Sweetest Decline by Beth Orton

One of current favourite tracks at the moment, a very simple gentle ballad in fact that just oozes laid back calmness. The string background just lulls you into a great sense of well being and then over the top a simple repeating melody on piano (Dr John The Night Tripper???) and Beth's glorious vocals over the top.
Wonderful chill out music, you could loop it forever.

Great tracks No3: Astral Weeks by Van Morrison

Released in 1968, such a great opener on such a great album. Beautifully scored with the minimum of instrumentation, acoustic (rytham) guitar, upright bass, flute, maracas, and a slewing string section. Lyrically said to be going head to head with Dylan at the time but criticallt reviewed as 'impressionistic' and even 'stream of conciousness' this 43 years later sounds as contemporary as the come. Within a five to six years and after the release of St Dominic's Preview it was all downhill for Van the Man.
A must for anybodies album collection.

First open fire of the year

A taste of winter to come maybe, but this afternoon lit the first open fire of the year.
Listening to Nick Cave's 'Dig, Lazarus Dig' to be followed by John Martyn's 'Solid Air' a classic indeed.

Great Tracks No2, Tip Your Way by The Felice Brothers

On the evening when I have just learnt The Felice Brothers gig tomorrow night has just been postponed until March and I was going. Ian Felice hospitalised with shingles in Berlin, I offer this concluding track of their second and eponymously called The Felice Brothers.

It’s a list and but a simple and mesmerising one, the rhythm like the Unthanks before is driven along by someone tapping their feet. The song slowly builds, thirteen verses in all, an example....

Tip the corner bum everyday
Tip the New York whore in the sleigh
Tip the carousel girl, tip the monkey in curls
Tip your way into heaven's gate.

And then picking up pace to a rousing finish...

Tip your own true love in the rain
Leave her there where the saxophone's play
Boy you're young as can be, you got country to see
Your a long ways from heaven's gate.

Probably not the most well known, and the three times I have had the pleasure of seeing them live, not performed live, but like most of the songs on the cd, a tune you can hum/whistle/sing along too.

This should be a must have album, don’t pass it by because you have never heard them. 

Again wonderful

Great Tracks No1: Felton Lonnin by Rachael Unthank and The Winterset

Felton Lonnin is the opening track of Bairns and a remarkable starter it is too, both contemporary and timeless, it is a traditional Northumberland song arranged by Johnny Handle but given the sister's unmistakable slant. the centre section containing an atmospheric interlude entirely of strings and as described on the attributes, feet. The foot tapping provides the rhythm whilst the string section has a minimalistic but Chinese sweep to it, I have not heard the likes of it before.
Opening verse goes.................

 The kye's come hyem, but Aa see not me hinny;
 the kye's come hyem, but Aa see not me bairn;
 Aa'd rather loss aall the kye than loss me bairn.
 Fair faced is me hinny, his blue eyes are bonny,
 his hair in curled ringlets hung sweet to the sight;
 O mount the old pony, seek after me hinny,
 and bring to his mammy her only delight.

Wonderful