 ?To be born a woman is the worst punishment.? Well, it is if you?re one of Lorca?s women. Trapped by the constraints of a society governed by men, where honour, tradition and reputation are paramount, they are second-class citizens, little more than chattel. This is one of the reasons Emily Mann?s new version of Lorca?s 1936 play, which transposes the action from Andalusia to modern-day rural Iran, works so well. Bernarda Alba is the fiercely proud matriarch who imposes a sentence of eight years of mourning on her five daughters after the death of her husband. Confined to the house, cut off from the outside world ? except the eldest, who is engaged to the village stud (nothing to do with her having inherited all the property) ? the daughters, aged from 20 to 40, are prisoners. Holed up together in the stifling heat, the tension in the house builds. The fact that most of the sisters are in love with aforementioned stud doesn?t exactly help matters. We can practically feel the heat emanating from the veins of these desperate, sexually starved, lonely women. And director Bijan Sheibani carefully fosters the claustrophobic atmosphere of this pressure cooker of a household, the tension growing and growing until it implodes in an inevitably tragic finale.
The entirely female cast proves impressive. Of the five sisters, Amanda Hale stands out as the jealous Elmira, twisted with grief and quietly defeated by past losses. Jane Bertish is wonderful as the tough old housekeeper, Darya, almost a match for her imperious mistress Bernarda; played by Shohreh Aghdashloo, who brings a flamboyance and deadly fieriness to this dictatorial woman whose overweening pride and snobbery bring about the devastation of her family.
The House Of Bernarda Alba runs until 10 March at the Almeida Theatre, Almeida Street, London N1 1TA. Call 020 7359 4404 for tickets or book online.
Production image by Johan Persson
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Welcome to the latest episode of Londonist Out Loud, a podcast about London. You can listen in-browser, or subscribe via iTunes or RSS.
News and Views
Londonist Out Loud is presented and produced by N Quentin Woolf. This week?s show comes from the unusual environment of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park near Mile End tube station.
His guests this week are:
The guests discuss recent London news and features including the working hours of Chinese people who produce Wenlock and Mandeville Olympic mascots, the question of charging entrance for infants at the Games, bonuses for transport workers during the Olympics, Oyster card issues, London?s best tube stations, mobile libraries and book barges for London, as well as other interesting happenings in London.
What?s On In London
NQW rounds up the best new exhibitions and shows opening over the coming week.
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Image by Stephskimo in the Londonist Flickr pool.
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 You build your own furniture because it makes it cheaper. Before you head to the airport, you check in online because it?s faster. When you go to the supermarket you scan your own shopping because you like arguing with electronic women who think you?ve bagged double the weight you ought to
We are in a D-I-Y era.
With the opening yesterday evening of The Thirsty Bear at Waterloo, self-service has come to the service industry, with London?s first pull-your-own-pint pub.
The venue, which replaces the old man friendly Stamford Arms, is the first venture by the appropriately named Robot Pub Group, and though we?ve been made aware of this place in Manchester which uses a similar concept, it?s a brand new one to us.
Each table is fitted with a mounted iPad and several beer taps. On entering the pub, you start a tab and are given a swipe-card to activate the iPad and taps. Your bill is automatically collated depending on what you drink, measured to the 0.1 of a pint.
It?s understandably not feasible to have a tap of each beer on every table, so most have just two. However, by logging out of the system and relocating table, you?re able to take your pick of everything on offer. So long as whoever?s sitting on the other table doesn?t mind, of course.
 There?s no escaping the fact that it?s a novelty, but it?s a fun one. And anyone who?s ever queued up for 25 minutes to buy a round of drinks on a Friday night will understand the potential usefulness of having your beer already at the table. The iPads also allow you to order bottled beers, wine, cocktails and food without leaving your seat. And should you need some entertainment, you can play a track from the online jukebox for 20p. Games are apparently on the horizon, too.
Now, for all the reasons listed above, we really, really want to love this place. But we do have a problem – the drinks on offer. The fact there?s no ales on tap is understandable, given the skill involved in pouring a decent pint, and the difficulty of hooking a pump system up to the iPad electronics. However, we do think they could go a bit better than Amstel, Magners and Aspall. Belgian lagers, for example, or a quality product like Meantime, and some less usual ciders. Even the bottled beers at the bar are run-of-the-mill.
We?d like to see The Thirsty Bear attract a discerning, beer-loving crowd who are as inexplicably excited about pouring their own beer as we were, but if the juice on offer doesn?t meet expectations then it?s likely to be a one-off visit. Still, it?s early days and there?s glitches to overcome, so perhaps it?s wise to start small. We?ll certainly be back to check on the progress soon. We?d just love a bit more variety on tap, please Thirsty Bear folk. Then you could become one of our favourite pubs in London…
The Thirsty Bear is at 62 Stamford Street, SE1 9LX, ?behind? the Southbank close to Waterloo station. Petition them for more drinks on Twitter @TheThirstyBear.
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 How does burnt toast cost London money? When it sets off the smoke alarm at your office and the automated system calls out the fire brigade, that’s how. By cutting back on incidents like this, London Fire Brigade have saved £9m over the last four years.
LFB went to around 8,000 fewer (40,734) false alarms in 2011 than it did in 2008 ? and either students at Kings College aren’t smoking as many sneaky fags or the halls of residence alarms are less sensitive, with a whacking 44% fall.
There’s still a false alarm or hoax call every 10 minutes on average, which the LFB reckon costs £37m a year. Taking a nerdy look at next year’s budget, that’s almost as much as the expected earned income for the whole year, which is crap.
While we’re talking money, the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority last week suggested combining fire and ambulance services in a bid to save more cash. Moving 50 of London’s 70 ambulance stations into nearby fire stations, bringing them under the jurisdiction of the Mayor, could save £50m. London Ambulance Service, however, has said it needs to remain part of the NHS and that, like, thanks and everything, but no.
To get an idea of the Fire Brigade’s work, take a look at their Bonfire Night live tweets from last year.
Photo by McTumshie from the Londonist Flickr pool
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 Love, pancakes, rugby… February presents many occasions that can be augmented by a good beer, and there are plenty of London venues putting on events to help you do just that. A selection of festivals and beer-related events is below, but please point out any we’ve missed in the comments.
1 February
The Bull, Highgate. The North London brew-pub hosts a dinner to match a variety of dishes with seven beers from popular Chicago brewery Goose Island. Tickets are £30 and available here.
2-5 February
The Snooty Fox, Canonbury. The Fox gets its groove on with the ‘Ale House Rock‘ festival, which features 25 craft ales (including the new ‘Unknown Pleasures’ which has been brewed as a tribute to Joy Division) with a focus on unusual flavours such as Milk Stout and Plum Porter. The festival kicks off at 3pm on Thursday and there will be 50′s and 60′s Rock ‘n’ Roll played on Friday and Saturday nights, with the decks, appropriately, manned by London beer writer Des De Moor on Friday.
6 February
Cask, Pimlico. The next instalment of their ‘meet the brewer’ series brings a representative from Bristol’s craft ale brewery Arbor Ales to Cask for the evening.
8-10 February
Battersea Arts Centre, Battersea. The 22nd Battersea beer festival brings you the chance to sample 160 ales on draft – check out the provisional list here. Ciders, perries, bottled ales, foreign beers and food will also be available. Entry is £4 (or £3 before 5pm on Wednesday) with a £1 discount for CAMRA members at all times.
15 February
The Draft House, Tower Bridge. Czech food and folk music accompany a historical overview and tasting of Budvar beers, led by their master brewer. Tickets are £25 and available here.
22-26 February
The Bricklayer’s Arms, Putney. Real ale and English wine champions the Bricklayers Arms will offer 100 Yorkshire ales, plus ciders and perries, as part of their ‘legendary’ Yorkshire beer festival. There’s no admission fee, but a returnable £2 deposit will be taken for your glass. There will be live music on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and you can check here for updates on the festival beer list.
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Ben Wilson made his name by applying artistic designs to that most unlikely of canvases, squashed pavement gum. An exhibition and trail of his work opens at Trinity Buoy Wharf on 2 February.
The masticatory maestro is the first visiting artist in a new arts programme funded by Trinity Buoy Wharf Trust. Each artist will leave a permanent work of art at the site, which is famous for its lighthouse and container city, and as home of the Longplayer 1000-year piece of music. As part of the show, Wilson has created a trail of illustrated chewing gum from East India DLR down to the Wharf, where you’ll find a photographic exhibition of his previous work.
Ben Wilson’s exhibition is at The Boiler House, Trinity Buoy Wharf, E14 0JW on 3-5 February 2012, 12-5pm, with an opening night on 2 February (5-9pm). Entrance is free. The gum trail is visible at any time.
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 How far can you walk from here? Extreme walker Victor Keegan reckons you can journey over 17 miles without setting foot on the bitumen.
Until the arrival of motorised transport London was mainly a walking city. There are now signs of a revival thanks to traffic calming measures and the increasing realisation that walking is not only an easy option to keep fit but also a great way to enjoy the delights of the most exciting city on the planet. Transport for London which, believe it or not has a statutory duty to promote walking, is now taking its role seriously.
A couple of years ago, as a test of the walkability of London, I set out from Trafalgar Square — the official centre of the town — one Sunday morning to see how far I could get without crossing a road or going over the same place twice. It was almost 17 miles before I ended up going round in a circle.
I know of no other capital city where it is possible to do this (suggestions welcome!). If you want to try all or part of it yourself start from the north end of Northumberland Avenue (or from Trafalgar Square proper if the underpass is open) and head down the Strand for 100 yards. Turn right and go through Charing Cross Station and across Hungerford Bridge until you are on the South Bank. The rest is easy as you have access to miles and miles of riverside walkways with no need to cross any road. By contrast, the south bank of the Seine in Paris has half a dozen very busy traffic lanes. As I was aiming for a long distance ramble I turned right rather than left in order to add a couple of miles by crossing Lambeth Bridge and passing through Victoria Gardens and under the road at Westminster to Blackfriars where I crossed back to the south and on to Tower Bridge.
At Tower Bridge you can either walk straight on, but will end up walking in a circle where Deptford meets Greenwich (total distance about 12 miles), or you can cross Tower Bridge and hug the river around St Katharine Docks and further on until you come to Island Gardens at the tip of the Isle of Dogs. This last stretch was the most tricky, with innumerable small side roads to the west. That often meant going into a crescent or back street to come out not much further on than when I started. But I never went over the same road or pavement twice or got into a loop.
 To Greenwich and beyond...all with no roads. I carried on and on walking, hugging the pavement until I ended up somewhere in the Lea Valley or 17 miles from Trafalgar Square as measured on my pedometer. But if, at Island Gardens, I’d gone under the tunnel and turned left at the Cutty Sark, I might have beat my record easily by looping round past the 02 complex and on to the Thames Barrier (assuming the Thames Path is open). From here, goodness knows how many extra miles can be achieved. The map below shows the route from Trafalgar Square up to a point near central Greenwich. It could be extended much further.
View Long Walk from Trafalgar Square in a larger map
The wider point about this is not to walk for the sake of walking but to integrate some of the hubs — like the South bank and London?s amazing canal routes — into you normal schedule. Anyone going from Waterloo to work in the City should surely eschew the Waterloo And City Line and instead walk down the South Bank and cross over the Millennium Bridge — a complete joy. People sometimes look at me askance when I say that I walk from Victoria to Paddington (‘haven?t you heard of the Circle Line?’) but it is less than three miles and takes you via Buckingham Palace and Green Park to a delightful stroll across Hyde Park, at whose northern extreme you are a couple of blocks from Paddington Station.
A new literature of walking is beginning to emerge, as can be observed in most London bookshops, though there is nothing yet to compare with two great classics. John Gay — author of the Beggars? Opera, arguably the world?s first musical — also wrote ?Trivia: or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London? (1716), which William Henry Irving described as ?without question the greatest poem on London life in our literature”. It tells you what clothes to wear, how to cope with rough football matches in Covent Garden and footpads in Lincoln?s Inn Fields. Even earlier, Richard Ames published a two-part poem in 1691 devoted entirely to a largely fruitless search for a decent glass of claret in London, rubbishing most of the pub landlords as he did. In one tavern on Snow Hill, Holborn his imbibing was interrupted by a prisoner in chains having a last pint of beer before being executed at Tyburn. This is possibly the origin of the phrase ?one for the road?.
So embrace the joys of walking, be it for commuting or simple pleasure. And let us know if you can adduce a route from Trafalgar Square that improves on the notes above. How far can you get along the Thames path past Greenwich to the east? What happens if you head in the other direction, towards Vauxhall, after Lambeth Bridge. Are there any other lengthy routes one might take?
By Victor Keegan
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