When a show is over life can seem a bit dull for a while so it was good to shoot off to Poland so soon. It was also I'm sure a welcome relaxation for those who, unlike me, had been doing fulltime jobs at the same time as the play.

We arrived in Katowice in the dead of night and taxied into town passing through some rather dark and ominous tumbledown streets to get to our hotel. The area didn't seem nearly as threatening the following morning when I went out for a stroll before breakfast though it did have a touch of that bleakness that I associate with eastern Europe under communism.

I came upon a funeral and was most impressed by the undertaker's men's outfits. As they took the coffin into the church a trumpeter played a suitably mournful tune. It was a pity he wasn't also dressed for the role.
We took the train to Krakow later in the morning and found a perfectly lovely city. There are lots of pictures and information about the city here so I shan't strain my limited literary powers to describe it.

We had a very pleasant little flat a few minutes walk from the main square in the sort of building that is typical throughout continental cities but just doesn't exist here. I suppose it goes back to the basic Roman villa where the accommodation is built around a central courtyard.


Krakow is crowded with attractive bars and cafes where we enjoyed delicious meals and snacks. Here's a typical offering from one of the city's oldest establishments in the cloth hall which takes up a large part of the centre of the main square.

In between eating cakes and washing down delicious meals with malty Polish beer (which I hope is available from my local Polish deli) we naturally did some sightseeing. The castle and cathedral were well worth visiting. The only disappointment being that the fire-breathing dragon who lives in a den deep in the bowels of the hill on which the castle stands hibernates. To see him in action you need to get there between May and October. There was a very interesting theatre museum and a fair bit of theatre going on. If our Polish had been up to it we could have chosen between "No Sex Please, We're British" and "Endgame". It wasn't so we made do with the museum and another museum where the work, including stage designs, of a Polish polymath was on show. He painted, wrote plays, made furniture, designed this that and the other. A talented chap called Stanislav Wyspiański. There are lots of other museums if you can stand the pace.

This is a view of part of the complex of buildings on Wawel hill. The picture is mostly cathedral but there's a bit of castle.
Our chum Wyspiański had big ideas about enhancing the hill with the addition of a hippodrome and a Greek theatre to create what he saw as a Krakovian Acropolis but didn't get any further than we did with Edinburgh's Parthenon.

Of course the museum that everyone who goes to Krakow has to see is Auschwitz, though I have to say I didn't think of it as a museum before I went. We were accosted at the station by a young man called Daniel who persuaded us to let him take us by car. He took us straight there, waited while we went round, took us on to Birkenau, waited again and then ran us back to Krakow. That was a lot easier and more comfortable than the train/bus route and in to the bargain he was friendly and informative. It reminded me strongly of how my tame taxi driver in Cairo would run me miles out of town to a golf course and just wait around till I was ready to go home.

In Auschwitz there are various displays in the buildings, piles of forlorn artificial limbs, stacks of suitcases and so on purloined from the prisoners and retained long after their owners were disposed of. The mechanics of everyday life and death in the camp are spelt out. Individual countries explain how their citizens were affected. The French for example have a very fine display detailing how Jews were rounded up and shipped off. One room is full of family photographs, mostly of children all of whom were systematically put to death.

Going around Auschwitz is clearly not an especially jolly experience but I found Birkenau much more chilling. The fact that it was previously an entirely respectable military barracks lends Auschwitz an air of normality which is missing from Birkenau where the buildings are more like battery farm sheds and were constructed specifically to house people destined for extermination. With all its displays and explanations Auschwitz is very much a museum whereas Birkenau is left almost unlabelled to speak for itself and you feel could have been abandoned by its masters only yesterday.
You can see in this photo how desolate the place appears. It's a view probably familiar to you from films and documentaries of where people spilled out of cattle trucks after an airless, foodless, waterless journey of several days to be herded into huts or straight to the gas chambers. The strange thing was that when I stood there I found it easier to imagine how proud the Nazi overlords must have felt of their work than to imagine the despair of the damned.

The hope in keeping these places intact is that they will act as a reminder of how awful man can be and prevent future massacres. To date with the Balkans, Ruanda, Darfur and countless other genocidal conflicts we can't say the policy has been too successful. I heard on the radio this morning an apposite quotation from Brecht. In speaking of Hitler he said "The bitch who bore him is still in heat." Alas.

The last week has been dominated by The Caucasian Chalk Circle despite the fact that it has occupied only a few hours of each day.

The second dress went pretty well as did all the performances. There were a few hiccups here and there, some of them to be laid at my door but on the whole the show felt good every night and the audiences while small were very appreciative.

Obviously I didn't see much of it but I was able to watch and listen to a very beautifully presented and performed scene towards the end of act 1 as I waited to stumble down the aisle to spend the interval on stage. If much of the rest looked and sounded as good then Claire has done an excellent job.

For the interval to start just as a new character appears on stage clearly offers scope for confusion in the minds of the audience. It also caused a little consternation in the more traditionally minded front of house staff. I don't know which of these situations Claire enjoyed more.

One cast member's parents decided that my interval activities, which included darning and doing an imaginary crossword and falling asleep fell into that ultra modern category - performance art. Didn't I just love that.

So show over. Director is catching up on her diary of the production. When she's finished I must read it all at one sitting.

I've spent the last two days at the cinema watching Italian films. Tonight was three hours of La Dolce Vita in black and white. You got your money's worth forty six years ago. Made today it would doubtless feature lots of sniffing but these people managed to be hedonistic and vacuous on no more than fags and booze.

I'm off to Poland this evening for a few days so hope to have lots of interesting things to report on my return. I don't want to have to fall back on the story of my hunt for extra curtain rings.

Readers will see that the previous post gave rise
to a comment which, inter alia, takes me to task for the infrequency of my postings. That’s fair and I again promise to do better but I can’t help thinking that it is the finger of irony that points out that I have not yet shared with you the story of the warped table.

The table whose arrival I have already reported was fine until after a few days the central portion of the top started to curl at the edges. After a few more days it rocked when you put your elbows on it; bad manners I know but a tabletop should be able to cope. After a week lots of daylight was clearly visible between the top and the frame, as you can see in this picture.

I went off to Habitat to complain. They were as good as gold and promised me a new one without hesitation. I admit I was relieved because I had not relished an argument over what degree of warping might qualify as acceptable in their eyes.

Lo and behold after a few more days the table started to uncurl. By Saturday last it had reached a state I felt was ok so I popped into Habitat on my way to the Lyceum and cancelled the replacement. I suppose it was just coming to terms with its new environment.

I was on my way to the Lyceum to join a Grads group going to see Schiller’s Marie Stuart. I was disappointed. I liked the austere setting but the cast failed to move me. Years ago in Kitwe I was in a production of the play that I hope communicated more emotional intensity than this one did. Of course it may have been the Heisenberg principle at work so that I cooled it down while it stayed on the boil for others.

Though I can’t remember too clearly I think we had an on-stage execution which was surely more fun to watch than the genteel procession down a stair to offstage oblivion that the Lyceum gave us. And doesn’t history tell us that she went to her death in a blood red robe? I’m sure our Mary slipped off an outer garment to reveal a red robe as she mounted the scaffold. The Lyceum gave us a trace of red peeping out under a white dress.

Here’s what one site has to say on the subject. Points for historical accuracy to Kitwe I’d say.

Much more engaging was the production of Shadow of a Gunman by Sean O’Casey that I saw at the Citizens in Glasgow the previous week. The final scene that leaves the tenement room and its inhabitants looking like a shipwreck to which humanity barely clings was brilliant.

I’ve also seen some art recently, and been to Red Road, the film that won plaudits at Cannes and lots of Scottish Baftas. It was good but must surely have had little competition to win so many.

Hallowe’en is long past now but I revived my fifty year old skills in tumshie lantern carving and dressed up to go to Claire’s party where we were treated to delicious but foreign fare in the way of pumpkin soup.

Back home there is still nothing soft to sit on but my shelves are up. The few books I didn’t give to Christian Aid last winter are in place and all my CDs are sitting comfortably waiting for me to invest in a player. Yes I’ve given that away as well. It was rather old and getting a bit noisy and what’s almost as important was too bulky for my slimline shelving.

The Caucasian Chalk Circle is almost upon us. The technical rehearsal last night was lots of fun. That’s the first chance lights and sound have to practice their art and the actors get to blunder around the stage. It may seem a bit shambolic to the outsider – “Do you see that sky getting red over there?” It says “Yes” in the script but I hate to lie. By some miracle though it will all be sorted out by opening night. We have the luxury of two dress rehearsals, mitigated somewhat by the fact that not all the cast can do both.

I was provided with handcuffs last night for one scene but they’re flimsy plastic gadgets which don’t look convincing and which I’m bound to break so I bought a length of chain this afternoon to add weight to the performance. It will be handy for the director to beat us with if we fall short of her artistic vision.