All's Well That Ends Well.

Why is All's Well that Ends Well so rarely performed? Is it because the tests of loyalty are more refined in The Merchant of Venice, the French bashing more boisterous in Henry V, the gulling of a fool more delicious in Twelfth Night, the flight back to court more exhilarating in The Winters Tale, the demise of the King more heart breaking in Lear, the love more daring in Romeo and Juliet, the foolery more malcontent in As You Like It, the banter crisper in Much Ado or the farce better paced in The Comedy of Errors?

Or is it just that our modern sensibility finds it difficult to imagine that Helena could remain in love with bad boy Bertram despite the dastardly way he treats her.

Tonight at the National I saw the play reclaimed both as a wonderful modern fairy story and a Shakespearean classic as complex, dense and tender as any of his other comedies.

Marianne Elliot has directed a gem of a show drawing on archetypes from the European tradition of fairy tales both in Rae Smith's brilliant design and through the clever and consistent characterisation of the key players.

The play is packed with exquisite performances. There is particularly rich work from Michelle Terry as love lorn Cinderella -esque Helena. She is bright as a button, unswervingly assured that the intensity of her passion will be requited; her duelling wit only unmasked by uncomfortable shame in the face of rejection. George Rainsford makes a fine countering Bertram, unaware and unwilling to consider the damage he has done blaming all, not unreasonably, on youth. We're made aware that this handsome Prince isn't ready for commitment from the first moment where he hysterically shadow fences invisible dragons with a wooden sword.

Beyond these battles, Conleth Hill provides excellent comic relief as the posturing Parolles and both Oliver Ford Davies and Clare Higgins are unforgettably powerful as the King of France and the Countess of Rossillion respectively. Imposing figures of benign authority, upholders of the traditionalist's true belief that marriage is the only way to achieve a happy ending.

This is a production that demonstrates that All's Well, as a Shakespeare sampler and an exemplary study of redemption through maturity, works brilliantly for beginners and connoisseurs alike. I left the theatre feeling that for too long directors, unsure of its true brilliance and nervous of its anti-heroism, have let it fall between the gap.

The Observer

Caught the matinee of Matt Charman's new play The Observer in the Cottesloe yesterday. It's well made, about something important and directed with huge confidence by Richard Eyre - proper stuff.

Fiona Russell, played with wonderful spiky assurance by Anna Chancellor, is deputy chief of the operation to monitor that a fair election process is carried out in an unnamed West African country. She is good at her job, but more dangerously believes that democracy, in its absolute form will bring benefit and change to the people. This leads her to overstep the mark and through tenacity and the occasional blinked vision begin to influence as much as observe, keeping polling stations open beyond the allotted time and trying to register thousands of additional voters between the two rounds of the election. On the way her impartiality shifts and what begins as well meaning liberalism turns rapidly into a crusade. Perspective gone she encourages villagers to stand up in the face of violent intimidation, judges to expunge protocols, her team to abandon diplomatic language in their report and the press to broadcast disturbing images of police brutality. The speed of her conversion is dizzying and is beautifully nuanced by the suggestion that her romanticism is driven by a simple truth, pertaining to most idealists. She is lonely and in need of recognition.

Occasionally the play over reaches, a threatening encounter with the head of the military to negotiate the terms under which the incumbent President might concede or the open bribery of the Foreign Office official trying to glean information from Fiona's translator Daniel - but in general the exhilarating pace with which the action is moved, complete with Lloyd Hutchinson brilliantly cynical News 24 correspondent sound biting cliches to camera, keep the audience on the edge of seats as the personal and political situation unfolds.

At heart the play is a Platonic call to keep observers and interventionists apart. Charman knows both are needed but the work unheroically reveals the coercive bullshit of those who seek to empower the internal process rather than simply handing over power. As such it identifies the dangers of the West's post-imperial relationship with Africa much more sensitively than the ultra emotive Death and the Kings Horsemen, currently addressing a similar theme in the Olivier. That Charman is an excellent wordsmith as well as producing cracking plots makes the work all the more convincing.

Sing to Me Through Open Windows.

Off to The Orange Tree late yesterday evening to see former graduate Andy Brunskill's directorial debut. He chose Sing to Me Through Open Windows by Arthur Kopit - a strange, whimsical meditation on aging and the loss of innocence. At the heart of the play is the paternal relationship between fading magician Ottoman Judd and schoolboy Andrew. Every year at the beginning of Spring, the windows are opened and Andrew visits his hero to see the wonder of a magical circus act - but each year the conversation grows more stilted, the act more stale and the wonder less impressive.

The trouble with the work is understanding whose story this is. I suspect it's Andrew's - both a memory and a future. The absurdity of the text would certainly allow more focus to see Ottoman and his sidekick Loveless as magnificent, if dusty beasts. At one point Andrew describes Ottoman as the 'tallest of all the shadows' a marvellous visual image and clue.

Andy chooses a more democratic route and we're given a detailed psychological portrait of a man losing his capabilities as he struggles to control the show. There's a lot of thought and graft gone into carving out the performance, but we end up being objective voyeurs of a slightly weird event rather than feeling genuine involved empathy for the inevitable distancing between the old man and the growing child.

Still the work doesn't lack guts and Andy is brave enough to slow the pace to allow us to see the disintegration. I hope it's well received.

Bar The Door!

A long time ago I played a monk in a touring production of Eliot's verse Drama Murder in Cathedral for the National Youth Theatre. The show started in Christchurch Spitalfields went up to St.Giles in Edinburgh for the Festival, played the Tyne Theatre and Opera House in Newcastle before ending up at the Moscow Arts Theatre. It was a fantastic trip ... but to be honest apart from scuttling about in a monk like fashion, rising in mock amazement when Thomas A' Beckett returned from France and shouting my one line 'The Door is Barred!' as dramatically as I could, there wasn't that much to do. The starring roles carried the action and we obediently provided the wallpaper.

As the tour went on boredom, and inevitable subversion, grew and the monks started to make up fantasy back stories and sacred duties for their characters. Some of us looked after the bees, some illuminated manuscripts, some fermented mead, others tended the orchards and one of our number memorably became a sandal thief - this at least gave us something to improvise quietly in the back ground ('A good year for windfalls, brother Mark' or 'I'm afraid I'm clean out of left feet this week, brother Martin') whilst the turbulent priest's story was re-enacted out in front of us.

By the time we had reached Stanislavski's hallowed theatre we'd realised that our large cassocks could hold almost anything and a new competition evolved for what could be hidden in the sleeves - this led to bags of chips, water pistols, bottles of vodka and one evening a kitten joining us on stage. We were untouchable and the joy was in getting away with it.

I was reminded of this bad behaviour today because the smooth and ever reliable James Purnell was amongst our number (understudying Dan Craig as first knight - but that's a different story, Bond was obviously a harder figure to assassinate.) James was renowned for being sensible - often refusing to join in with the squirting or animal kidnapping fun - and whilst the rest of us indulgently corpsed our way through the shows - he remained steadfastly focused on providing exemplary monastic support to the archbishop in a range of impressive genuflects, bows and head shakes, even cowering behind the nearest pillar as the Knights ran Thomas through with their long swords. At the end of the run James shook each of our hands in turn, joined the Labour Party and disappeared off to Oxford to start his PPE degree.

The last line of his resignation letter released last night reads - 'I am not seeking the leadership nor acting with anyone else. My actions are my own considered view and nothing more.' Sad as the whole sorry tragedy of Gordon's demise is, if Brother James has forsaken his door keeping duties then it's only a matter of time before the Knights come storming through the sanctuary once again.

Strawberry Ham.

It's been a really positive day of meetings and the plans for next year are beginning to take shape. First up this morning Jorge and Gary came over from Ham House to talk about how we might work together next year.

The proposal is for our third year Drama in the Community students to become an associate company attached to the house in the build up to their 400 anniversary celebrations in 2010.

We'd work closely, get ourselves immersed in the house, its history and collections initially by training up as tour guides, run Christmas and Summer entertainments and develop a range of public events and experiences. It would mean a genuine partnership with the National Trust and offer our finalists a real opportunity to develop the skills, training and stamina needed for the workplace, as well as see the way the house operates on a yearly cycle. As with all the best work at HE level, there won't be anywhere to hide or excuses to make - our ideas will be tested on the road - but the work might just throw up some new possibilities for how performance and heritage can meet. So a huge commitment, but we were all very excited by the potential of the plans. Gary is keen on a legacy and so if this year is successful as a pilot it's clear that the room is there for an ongoing liaison.

This afternoon Tina and I met with the Strawberry Hill Trust, who are gearing up to re-open the Walpole House later in the year. We're keen to help celebrate the event and find ways to work with them on two projects - a Winter show of Gothic splendour mixing his letters with a magic shadow puppet show capturing the atmospheric nature of The Castle of Otranto and then another quest production for children imagined in and around the renovated eighteenth century gardens - although this won't be until spring 2011.

This evening I went to see the results of a twelve week project we're been hosting for Richmond Theatre's creative learning department, working with families for whom English is a second language. Orode's been heading up the work and it was wonderful to watch fairy stories being told by the participants firstly in their own mother tongue before being repeated in an English translation.

The stories came from Columbia, Eritrea, Poland, Finland, Turkey, Nepal, China and Brazil and featured a huge range of characters, creatures and magical happenings, with the group borrowing from each others traditions to create new international myths. In one we had South American frogs guarding the sleeping Eastern European Princess from an African Hyena, who could only become human through the magical forces of a Scandinavian wizard. The most wonderful aspect is to see the children, who pick up language very quickly through school and especially play, helping to teach and explain to their parents the directions for each scene or the rules for a game. All done with much laughter, wonder and a terrific sense of fun.

Under A Billowing Canvass

Tying things up now and beginning to think ahead a little. We had a marvellous picnic at Tina's yesterday to debrief and celebrate the community show. There were many exciting break throughs in the work and much to talk about. As ever the question of efficiency was brought up - could or should we have started earlier? Did we get the buy in from the schools that we wanted?

One of the problems seems to be establishing the credibility of the students as being reliable, committed and able to deliver, perhaps not helped by my own romantic sense of their ability to achieve amazing results. Some of the schools we worked with undoubtedly saw them as useful teaching assistants, but weren't so prepared to embrace the extra curricular commitment that this project demands. With time and legacy I think this will get easier and delivering two very well received and successful projects on the bounce in Richmond and now in Hounslow certainly helps - but I still wonder whether setting students up to liaise with the schools and venue directly is the right process.

What I don't doubt is that minor set backs, although in themselves annoying, don't half make great learning opportunities and that Danielle and Kathleen (working with the schools) and Emma (working with Chiswick House) really did develop pragmatic, diplomatic and inventive strategies to ensure that our partnerships worked.

As the day went on and the sun continued to shine we decamped onto rugs under a huge, dreamy billowing patchwork cloth that Tina had cleverly rigged up to provide shade and a touch of exotic beauty and there we stayed til nightfall eating, drinking and laughing as the year lazily drew to an end.

Appleford in the Heart of the Nation.

The weather is fantastic, which seems to have kept everybody in buoyant spirits. I spent the weekend back in Appleford watching the Cup Final and breaking through the back of the marking. It was great to put a little distance between the year gone and start to ease gently into the summer.

Appleford is tiny only with 200 houses. My parents bought their house in the mid-sixties and I spent my entire childhood there. Going back is always joyful and from Twickenham a one change stop in Reading means I can do door to door in under two hours.

...but there is trouble afoot. Didcot, expanding with commuting families and new built estates, is an economic success story and threatens to swallow the village into its suburbs. A new incinerator has been planned, which will burn thousands of tonnes of rubbish, but will provide a noisy eyesore. And now the rail services that currently link the village to Oxford in a two hourly service are set to switch to a once every six hour service - the death knell many fear for Appleford halt. I'm emotive as from the age of 12 the train was my escape route to the bright lights, record shops and, on a Friday night, the ice rink in Oxford. This became ever more vital once Mrs Paul finally closed down the village shop, with its never ending supply of chewy cola bottles, in the early eighties.

The village, in Astrerix like fashion, is full of resistance however and has over the last few years got ever better at organising and protesting. A regular newsletter campaigns on local issues. A dynamic fun loving vicar, perfectly pitched for a rural parish, cheers everybody up with jolly sermons and chocolate and the MP Ed Vaizey seems genuinely engaged.

As the train pulled in the platform was filled with protesters brandishing placards. On the opposite platform stood a photographer from the Oxford Mail. The driver was confused and waited for the village to get on. The photographer got confused and asked the train to pull out.

'No one is using the train!' said Marion, who has lived in the thatched cottage, up by the church, forever.

'What are you doing, then?' asked the driver not unreasonably.

'Protesting!' said another man, who I didn't recognise.

'What about?' asked the driver.

'That there soon won't be trains for us not to use!' said Marion smiling, with that she raised her placard defiantly.

O Appleford at the heart of the nation!