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 Wait for ages? Buses? With the removal of copyright protection from F Scott Fitzgerald?s epic novel, we?re about to be bombarded by a ? what IS the collective noun for multiple Gatsbys ? a clutch, a slew, a bootleg-full? They?re all appropriate to this enduring story of a showman and playboy from the prohibition era, and his hapless pursuit of first love Daisy Buchanan.
Some say things are best left alone citing the original perfection of the novel. Certainly Baz Luhrmann?s remake of the impeccable 1974 Jack Clayton movie which opens here on Boxing Day has big shoes to fill, DiCaprio replacing Redford and Carey Mulligan supplanting Mia Farrow. But before that, London can expect three June performances by New York Public Theater?s Elevator Repair Service company of ?Gatz? an 8-hour Oberammergau-styled marathon with an extended meal break, at the Noel Coward theatre. The other side of the Olympics, there?s a more compact musical version at the King?s Head, a ?world premiere? no less, from 7 August.
There?s music in the Wilton?s version too. When not portraying the principal characters, all eight actors don thick round glasses to identify themselves as the vocal backing group, singing a capella a whole lot of vo-do-de-oh-doh with very nice harmonies and some basic Charleston stepping. Unfortunately, as part of the immersive experience which fills the whole of Wilton’s from the Green Room to the Chapel of Rest, in the interval and after the show the London Dixieland Jazz Band and a quartet of brilliant dancers provide the sort of display which contrasts the lack of band and full-on dance numbers in this ?jazz? Gatsby.
The acting?s mostly good ? Michael Malarkey is a suave and covert Jay Gatsby, Christopher Brandon puts all the stuffing into Tom Buchanan?s city shirt, and Kirsty Besterman?s vitreous Daisy is far less waif-like than many interpretations: more Shirley MacLaine than Mia Farrow.
We didn?t really have to get our A-level notebooks out to remember that The Great Gatsby is riddled with symbolism ? at least two essays? worth ? for the collapse of the American Dream, the widening chasm between the haves and have-nots as the US heads into the Depression, the helpless dependency of the poor on religious symbols, and over all of them the green light on Daisy?s dock representing Gatsby?s hopes and dreams for the future. Although ambitious, Peter Joucla?s production doesn?t convey these meanings, and for those who loved the movie or the book, something may be lost.
Without giving too much away, there?s an important accident which due to the budget has to take place offstage and an incident with a gun which was feeble enough to cause laughter at what could have been a moment of real tension. But with the jazz band in the bar, the dancers in the attic, a liberal supply of Hendricks? and tonic from a fountain in the foyer attended by living bronzed naiads and Wilton?s filled to overflowing with people visibly enjoying themselves in their ’20s Oxfam finery, such details can be overlooked and this really was a fine night out.
The Great Gatsby continues at Wilton?s until 19 May but all performances are sold out. Try 020 7702 2789 for cancellations. JohnnyFox received free tickets, programme and Hendricks G&T from the generous team at Wilton?s.
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 Guy’s Hospital tower looks set to finally receive a major renovation. Balfour Beatty have won the contract to bring the London Bridge landmark up to date, to designs by architects Penoyre & Prasad.
The 34-storey hospital tower is said to be the tallest in the world. Many regard it as something of an eyesore, especially next to the sleek lines of its new neighbour, the Shard. Others (probably in a small minority) claim a fondness for the building as an exemplar of 1970′s brutalism.
The renovation is respectful of the original architecture, while also smartening up the appearance. New aluminium cladding will be applied to the service tower (the bit with the bulky head-shaped protrusion), but the main hospital tower will continue to show its concrete face to the world after a major cleanup. The work will also stop deterioration of building’s 40-year old structure and improve its carbon footprint.
A spruce-up for the hospital has been on the cards for years. A previous scheme would have seen the tower wrapped in a scaly new facade like a giant orthogonal fish.
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The full line-up for the London 2012 Festival, the culmination of the Cultural Olympiad, was announced this morning. From 21 June to 9 September, London will be the focus of an unparalleled programme of music, theatre, film comedy, exhibitions, art and outdoor events.
In short, this is an arts jamboree to end all arts jamborees. All 204 Olympic nations are represented with 25,000 artists performing not just in London but throughout the UK. Much of the final programme has been previously announced, but here are some highlights from the whole festival:
- 160,000 free tickets for outdoor concerts at half a dozen riverside locations with stages for each continent. Artists featured include Scissor Sisters and Wynton Marsalis and his Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.
- The World Shakespeare Festival: centred on the Globe of course, this is being billed as the biggest celebration of the Bard ever staged.
- BBC Radio 1′s Hackney Weekend will star Jay-Z, Jessie J, Jack White and Tinie Tempah among many others.
- The 2012 BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall boasts Daniel Barenboim and his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra performing a Beethoven symphony cycle.
- The Orbit, Anish Kapoor’s 115ft-high steel sculpture in the Olympic Park, will be launched in May and Yoko Ono takes over the Serpentine Gallery.
- Choreographer Pina Bausch will be celebrated at the Barbican Centre and Sadler’s Wells.
How much the Londoners and visitors enjoying these events will care about the London 2012 Festival brand is questionable. The whole Cultural Olympiad programme has seemed amorphous at times. But there is no doubt that, with all elements combined, the festival will make arts and culture a huge part of this Olympics summer.
As well as the National Lottery and Arts Council, the festival has been funded by a raft of sponsors, of which BT and BP are the lead partners. BP invests heavily in the arts and has been advertising its involvement in the Cultural Olympiad with massive billboards across town.
The London 2012 Festival brochure will be distributed across the capital. Get the brochure online here.
Image: Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch: World Cities 2012, taken as part of the London 2012 Festival commissions. Photo credit: Angelos_Giotopoulos / London 2012.
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Those clever guys at UCL’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis have put together a dashboard of data feeds showing the current health of London.
The main dashboard shows obvious stuff, like weather information and Tube status. But they’ve also slipped in a few peculiar feeds, such as a Geiger counter reading of radiation levels and a measure of how happy the city is, via the Mappiness app from London School of Economics. There’s also a feed of trending Twitter topics for London which, at the time of writing, include Joanna Lumley, #wankfilms and #bakerloo.
Click the map tab and you get plenty more, including traffic cameras and air quality reports.
The City Dashboard is also available for Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle.
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 With a three-day strike by tube maintenance staff currently underway and due to last until Friday, the RMT has announced that it will ballot cleaners for strike action over pay, pensions and benefits.
The union is demanding that cleaners employed by ISS and Initial receive a substantial, above inflation pay increase, a substantial Olympic bonus in line with the payments offered to other LU staff, a sick pay scheme, free travel passes and improvements to the pension scheme. RMT general secretary Bob Crow said in a statement:
?These cleaning staff are an integral part of the London Underground team and should be properly rewarded as such and not just seen as a money making tool to be exploited for every last penny in the interest of private profits.
This ballot for action with these two companies will commence shortly and RMT would urge Londoners to back this campaign for justice for our cleaners and join us in forcing the Mayor and London Underground to drag ISS and Initial back to the negotiating table to resolve these disputes.?
ISS, which was awarded the contract to clean a number of London’s bus stations by TfL earlier this year, told the BBC that the RMT failed to attend negotiation meetings and announced the ballot before engaging in discussions.
The RMT has also disputed LU’s claim that delays in repairing a signal failure yesterday on the Northern line were not caused by the strike. The Northern, Jubilee and Piccadilly lines appear to be running a good service today (we hope) though an unidentified obstruction has caused the Bakerloo line to be suspended.
Photo by version3point1 in the Londonist Flickr pool.
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 Last month’s report from Shelter on London’s unaffordable rents makes pretty depressing reading for anyone trying to find a roof over their head in the capital.
The bottom line is that a family needs to earn a combined salary of £52,000 a year to be able to rent a two-bedroom home in London while still being able to eat and pay the bills. You can read the report here. When you consider Shelter’s claim that the median wage in London is £24,500 (with many people being on less than this) the gap looks pretty worrying, especially when you combine it with a 36% increase in homelessness in London. The benefits cap has also had the effect of driving the lower-paid out of central London. Shelter’s Homes for London campaign aims to put housing as a key issue in the upcoming elections.
How expensive are rental properties in central London though? We took a look at a few boroughs to get an idea of how much it would cost to rent a two-bedroom flat:
Islington – cheapest £1060 pcm
Westminster – cheapest £1365 pcm
Tower Hamlets – cheapest £1150 pcm
Camden – cheapest £1100 pcm
Southwark – cheapest £850 pcm
Hackney – cheapest £1000 pcm
Lambeth – cheapest £825 pcm
City of London – cheapest £1840 pcm
Obviously, we’ve ignored deciding factors like proximity to tube stations, whether it’s above a heavy metal pub or next to an all-night takeaway, but when you consider that even the cheapest of those flats would require a deposit of the equivalent of six weeks’ rent, plus another month’s rent in advance, plus the myriad and occasionally spurious charges levied by letting agents, it starts to look fairly tight and that’s before you’ve moved in. Add council tax, utility bills, food and transport onto a monthly rent of £825 and assuming you’re earning Shelter’s estimate of £24,500 per year, that would pretty much equal your monthly take-home pay.
So what are the mayoral candidates proposing to do to address the increasing pressure on low-earners renting in London? Ken Livingstone wants to establish a non-profit letting agency and campaign for a London living rent. Jenny Jones wants to establish an ethical letting agency and lobby for reforms to bring down rents for private tenants. Brian Paddick wants to introduce a London-wide mayor?s kitemark for the private rental sector and Boris Johnson wants to launch a rental standards accreditation and has created a London rent map to show average private sector rents across the capital. He is, however, vehemently opposed to rent control on the basis that it stifles investment and reduces availability.
With a Trust for London report last year showing that poverty and housing are worse in London than anywhere else in England, we’d like to see more from all of the candidates on how their reforms would make living in the capital more affordable. Earlier this week, our posts from Crisis and Trust For London highlight the unaffordability of living in London.
See all of Londonist’s election coverage here.
Photo by roboxley in the Londonist Flickr pool
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 The Bakerloo Line is suspended between Piccadilly Circus and Elephant and Castle due to what Transport for London is calling “an obstruction in tunnel at Embankment”. Confusion currently reigns over whether it’s a partial tunnel collapse or a whether a train struck a more mysterious object. The BBC’s Tom Edwards has been told by London Underground engineers that’s it’s not a tunnel collapse as there’s no flooding.
We’ll keep an eye on what’s happening and update this post when we get more information. LBC reports that although ambulances were called, they weren’t needed, so it looks like nobody was hurt.
Update 11am: the RMT have been saying so far the tunnel collapsed, but have now altered their stance. It now looks like all this bloody rain caused a bulge in the wall and this is what the train hit.
Photo by Jon Smalldon from the Londonist Flickr pool.
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The weekend post is brought to you in partnership with Treasure Trails
 The London Coffee Festival by joesfer All weekend
Friday:
- It’s Last Friday for the South London Art Map. Book for the People’s Choice Art Tour or gallery hop round Deptford, Peckham and Bankside (free).
- Museum hop in South Kensington as the Natural History Museum is open After Hours until 10pm (free to visit, some events ticketed) as is the V&A for its Britain is Making it Late till 10pm (free).
- The Offline Club hosts a Roots, Reggae and Rock special at the Prince Albert, Coldharbour Lane from 9pm-2.30am (free).
Saturday:
Sunday:
Other good stuff:
Browse all latest arts and events features and make your tummy rumble with our latest food and drink content.
Photo by joesfer via the Londonist Flickrpool.
 The weekend post is brought to you in partnership with Treasure Trails
Think you know London? Treasure Trails are THE fun way to explore, with over 25 fun puzzle routes now available, from Harrow to Canary Wharf. Follow the clues on paper or try our new smartphone apps. Warning, they?re addictive!
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