National and international politics, power as well as power vacuums, and the tragedy of the individual versus the fate of the nation. Alan Bennett?s 1991 play explores all of these issues, while Christopher Luscombe?s new production, first seen at the Theatre Royal Bath last year, has the attraction of a cast that could hardly be bettered.  

Set in 1788-89 when George III went temporarily ?mad? (he is now believed to have suffered from porphyria) the play explores what actually happened when the King?s formal authority exceeded his practical power. There were those who supported the King to protect their own futures, or because they thought that his remaining in power still brought the best chance of stability. Others used the opportunity to try to seize power for themselves, or genuinely believed that handing the reins to the Prince of Wales would see Britain prosper by removing uncertainty at the heart of government.     

At the centre of the story, however, lies the tragedy of one man, and in the title role David Haig is nothing short of magnificent. While Nigel Hawthorne in the original National Theatre production and 1994 film put in a more spiritual performance, Haig provides an earthier portrayal, making the King feel entirely human. Dramatically, George?s descent into madness is fairly swift, and his recovery largely captured in one scene, and yet Haig makes these rapid shifts in well being, as well as the numerous mood swings from line to line, feel entirely believable. 

He is aided by Janet Bird?s minimalist set that focuses our attention entirely on the characters. Atmosphere is subtly generated through the playing of Handel, or by shouts in the parliament scenes, rather than from crowds gracing the stage. The supporting cast is also excellent, and includes Clive Francis as a determined but well intentioned Dr Willis, the man who finally achieves the King?s recovery. Nicholas Rowe is also a convincingly nervous Prime Minister, and Christopher Keegan a suitably puffed up Prince of Wales.  

Ultimately, however, it is Haig who stands above all else. Whether he is recalling the marriages of even quite lowly subjects, reveling in pretending to conduct his orchestra, or still asserting his divine right while being restrained in a straitjacket, he never stops us from seeing George III as a flesh and blood human being.   

Booking until 31 March 2012. Tickets: 020 7492 9930 or from the Apollo Theatre website.

Photo: Go mad for David Haig?s superb performance as George III, (c) Robert Day.

This morning, a batch of images showing how the new Design Museum will look were unveiled at a press event in Kensington.

The museum is moving into the old Commonwealth Institute, a 1960s Modernist masterpiece that has been sorely neglected since it closed in 2003, and a building that makes a nice fit for a museum dedicated to all things design. Happily, the interior remodelling, undertaken by John Pawson (himself the subject of a retrospective at the Museum’s current Shad Thames home in 2010) respects the Grade II*-listed building as much as possible, with the distinctive hyperbolic paraboloid roof becoming the focal point of the space. The existing interior walkways and the central performance stage have been removed entirely, and the building will accommodate a cafe, auditorium, three temporary and one permanent exhibition galleries, a library and an education space.

Outside, the moat and flagpoles have gone, replaced by a newly landscaped entrance garden. There’s not much room in these images for the rest of the site, which involves a trio of residential units designed by OMA that have the unfortunate effect of boxing in the Museum and concealing it from the main road. Yet that aside it’s a win for both parties: a beautiful but neglected building is returned to public uses, while relocating from a difficult-to-reach warehouse along the Thames to the outskirts of London’s major gallery hub should give the Museum a much higher profile, and help with the goal of turning it into one of the finest design collections in the world.

The new museum, which is to cots £80m, is set to open in 2014.

See also:

Photos from inside the Commonwealth Institute

With talk of ‘Boris Island’, the proposed airport in the Thames Estuary, being on and then off again in the space of a just a few days, we look at the location of what is currently London?s largest transport hub, and the history that led to ?Heath Row? becoming one of the world?s biggest and busiest airports…

Vrrrroooooosssshhhh!

If you hop in to your DeLorean, accelerate to 88mph and set the dial back to the early 1940s, you?d find that Heathrow, or Heath Row as it was known back then, was a small hamlet located roughly where Terminal 3 is in the modern day facility.

During wartime Britain, The Conservative MP Harold Balfour, who was Minister for Aviation, wanted to persuade parliament that a new airport was needed in London, which would replace Croydon as the capital?s number one landing strip. As Heath Row already had an existing, albeit small airfield in place, and was within spitting distance of London, the site was earmarked as Balfour?s first choice.

The major hurdle to overcome was the prevailing winds. Planes coming in to land would usually have to approach from the east, taking them directly over central London. This obviously presented both safety risks with planes flying over densely populated areas, as well as what we now call ‘noise pollution’ for the unfortunate souls living under the flight path. Luckily for Balfour, noise pollution had not been invented yet so this was one less issue for him to tackle. Other obstacles in the way were the potential for protracted planning wrangles and questions over how it would be paid for (does this sound familiar Boris?).

The only way that Balfour could get Parliament to agree to the plan was by convincing them that the airport was needed for military purposes. With the country still in the midst of war, the Air Ministry claimed it was looking for an airfield in which to handle long-range troop-carrying planes, and so it used war-time powers to requisition the land. The location of Heath Row, with its proximity to London, was ideal and so under the guise of creating a military airfield, work on creating ‘Heathrow’ began in May 1944. The terrain was not ideal, however, and over 100 million gallons of water had to be drained from the boggy land. Despite the fact that works were still not complete by the time the war ended, construction continued on what was obviously now a civilian airport and it seemed that the project had slipped under the radar of both politicians and the public (pun intended).

Commercial flight was still something of a novelty at this time. However, in May 1946, the first passengers departed from Heathrow (or London Airport as it was first known), flying direct to Buenos Aires. The facilities were far from grand — the departure hall consisted of little more than a tent. This flight marked the start of a flight schedule that would eventually see over 480,000 flights a year take off or land from the west London airport.

In his memoirs published in 1973, Harold Balfour admitted deceiving fellow Ministers and Parliamentarians about his intentions for Heathrow, saying:

?Almost the last thing I did at the Air Ministry of any importance was to hijack for Civil Aviation the land on which London [Heathrow] Airport stands under the noses of resistant Ministerial colleagues. If hijack is too strong a term, I plead guilty to the lesser crime of deceiving a Cabinet Committee.?

So next time you’re woken up at 5am by an Airbus A380 flying over your house, you’ll know who to thank…

Image by Tony Lasagne from the Londonist Flickr pool

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London Underground are failing to keep their promise of maintaining staff on stations when ticket offices are closed, London Travelwatch has found.

Last February LU reduced opening hours at a number of ticket offices where demand was slow. TfL told us in December 2009, when the plan was first mooted:

We are also committed to staff on all of our stations throughout the day to provide the best possible service for our customers

and TfL Commissioner Peter Hendy told Dave Hill in October 2010:

We don’t intend ever to run stations with nobody on them. I want people on the gatelines and on the platform.

So when London Travelwatch started getting complaints from tube users of unstaffed stations they arranged a series of ‘mystery shopper’ visits. Just under half the stations had no visible staff on the gateline; sometimes unstaffed gates were left open ? allowing the possibility of fare dodging ? but on 21 occasions researchers found the gates closed and nobody around to offer help in case of a problem.

Nigel Holness, London Underground’s network services director, told the BBC that London Underground

does not recognise the picture… Our independent research shows LU staff are present in ticket halls in 98% of visits

London Travelwatch’s report also found that, weirdly, some ticket offices are open when they’re supposed to be closed, and criticised inconsistent information signage and train information displays. On the other hand, they always found a working ticket machine and stations were clean and graffiti-free.

Another small detail that we found interesting: waiting times at ticket machines were sometimes noted to be longer than guidelines given to suburban rail operators. An anecdote on page 23 about people queueing at London Bridge on a Saturday afternoon (waiting times longer than standards, even after people gave up and left the queue) will be familiar to anyone who travels that way.

Photo by Homemade from the Londonist Flickr pool

When advance tickets sold out back in November, the only way to get into the National Gallery for the blockbuster exhibition Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan was either to get a job there, or queue up for the limited number of day tickets available from 10am.

Jose Farinha spent his four hours of rainy queueing capturing this series of photos. And yes he did get in eventually.

All photos ©Jose Farinha. See more of his work on Facebook and Flickr.

There’s still time for you to queue — the exhibition is at the National Gallery until 5 February.

A London graphic designer has created a new take on cycling route signage that could change the way we find our way get lost in the capital.

If you’ve ever tried to follow any of the London Cycle Network’s routes you’ll be familiar with the mental anguish of searching the road side for the 4cm x 8cm red number that may or may not give you a new direction at each junction, side road and on occasion random patch of shared-use pavement. The modern alternative, great cycling apps like Bikehub, have a lot going for them — but with their computer-like efficiency they produce routes so complex that the human mind (ours at any rate) can’t possibly remember each of the 31 maneuvers on a typical journey. So we find ourselves, for the most part, heading for the main roads that we know, using the A road signage for broad directions and filling in the gaps with a bit of instinct — SE1 to Crystal Palace? Well that’s Elephant, Walworth Road, head for Camberwell, and, err, south and up-hill a bit.

Jun Kwon, a Graphic Design Student at Ravebsborne College, decided to tackle this problem for his submission to the International Society of Typographic Designers 2011 awards. His creation, Cycling Cities, is an attempt at a clean-slate approach for cycling signage — and we love it. Catering to our simple minds, Jun proposes to use a combination of landmarks, tube stations and compass direction to keep people on track.

Jun, who’s from Korea, said “I am… still not very good at wayfinding in London. Even worse thing was, rather many times, I fall myself into some very dangerous moments as I  was cycling, so as a graphic designer I really wanted to solve this problem in a new way that can be interpreted by international people.”

His research found that people build a mental map as they cycle, and his solution builds on this natural ‘waypoint’ technique of navigation. He combined this with the 12 direction codes from the compass to create a flexible standard.

Jun, who proposed the idea to TfL last year, told us that he “doesn’t think this is a complete and perfect solution, but I would love to develop it to make it more useful and supportive of cyclists in cities”.

London’s Harry Beck led the world on making sense of railways — no doubt because we had a rather complicated one to start with. This couldn’t be more true of our roads. Innovative ideas like this could help our somewhat subterranean-minded population negotiate street-level by bike, just as Legible London is doing for walking.

Here?s one in the eye for Marty McFly: Die Freche Muse specialise in events which go back to the past with a blast. On Saturday night, we popped into their latest vintage adventure The Impudent Muse at private members club Adam Street.

The strict dress code and the late start (doors opened at 10pm) may have keep out the casual punter but is in keeping with the inter-war vibe here that long-gone events like The Last Days Of Decadence didn’t quite capture. There’s a definite effort to make this into a modern speakeasy; after the door check, we descended into a bustling underground area to the sound of jazz and bottles clinking. While fascinators may not be flavour of the month at Ascot, they were in abundance here along with hats and cigarette holders.

In the back room, a busy crowd surrounded the Dixie Ticklers and their pumping traditional jazz numbers while in another area Marianne Cheesecake’s tribute to legendary hoofer Josephine Baker  is a jolly burlesque-in-a-banana-skirt affair. Elsewhere, there were some edifying chunks of The Threepenny Opera care of Theatre Lab to keep the old noggin happy before we staggered back out onto the Strand.

Die Freche Muse’s next event is their Valentine special. More information here.

Photographs are (c) Guilherme Zühlke O’Connor and Ramsey Pietro Nasser as marked.

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