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Labour councillor dispensed with tip-toe diplomacy that the local authority applies to bike hire company

Friday, 16th January

HARRINGTON can find time for any local councillor, regardless of the colour on their rosette, as long as they do one thing: tell us what they really think.

After years of sitting in council meetings and interacting with local politicians, nothing is as unimpressive as hearing them recite scripts from pieces of paper.

It’s wholly underwhelming to hear their lemming-like adherence to every last note of pre-agreed stage management.

No risks, no fury.

How unusual then was the scene at neighbouring Camden town hall on Monday night when Labour councillor Awale Olad dispensed with the tip-toe diplomacy that the local authority applies to the Lime bike hire company.

Leaving no room for doubt about what his personal feelings are, he told one of the firm’s top staff in London across a council committee desk that he thought it was “a terrible, mendacious, incompetent, irresponsible, company”.

Cllr Olad says on some weeks half the emails that arrive in his council inbox are about dumped Lime bikes and overflowing parking bays in his Holborn and Covent Garden ward.

The front page of this week’s Camden New Journal

At one point, we weren’t sure whether his list of unflattering descriptions for the company would ever end.

You may disagree with him. You may be a loyal Lime bike rider, but it was nonetheless refreshing to hear a councillor share their thoughts without mumbling about… working in partnership with the relevant agencies to reach solutions for residents, or whatever it says down here on this memo from the whips.

Those who follow local politics in central London may well be thinking that Cllr Olad only felt liberated to speak in such a tone because he is stepping down from the council in May.

Perhaps going down that line only illustrates the point that councillors cage themselves in when it comes to commenting on anything.

He will surely enjoy a life where not every opinion needs “sign-off” from somebody else.

As well-liked as he is in the corridors, the Labour council leadership will no doubt have found his performance unhelpful.

Councils all over town are finding it difficult to strike a balance between meeting residents’ concerns about dumped bikes and not upsetting the people who can afford to rent them each day and like them as a new travel option.

Lime understandably regularly reminds councils of the latter, but it did not stop Hounslow council pulling the plug on the service recently.

Islington is reportedly considering doing the same.

The firm’s public affairs chief Jack McKenna was the man who faced the rage in committee room two this week.

He said it was “unequivocal” that Lime had improved in the past 12 months when it came to moving bikes out of the way and tidying the bays.

Tightly plotted play that evolves from domestic drama to small-time gangster thriller bristles with energy

Fred Woodley Evans (Phillip), Chris Walley (Treat) and Forbes Masson (Harold) in Orphans [Charlie Flint]

AL Miller’s engaging, well-acted revival of Lyle Kessler’s 1983 play Orphans offers an edgy exploration of masculinity within a dysfunctional family shaped by the absence of women.

Set in a dilapidated-row house in north Philadelphia, 28-year-old Phillip (Fred Woodley Evans) hasn’t stepped outside in years. Convincingly childlike and naïve, he’s cared for by his older brother, Treat (Chris Walley), surviving on canned tuna, mayonnaise, and the escapism of television.

Treat, a volatile thug, brings home whatever he can steal, relying on his flick-knife and well-practised menace. He insists Phillip stays indoors, claiming he’s vulnerable to allergies – a fiction gradually revealed as a means of control.

One night, Treat drags home Harold (the excellent Forbes Masson), a drunken stranger with a briefcase full of bonds. He assumes he can hold Harold to ransom, but hasn’t reckoned with the older man’s cunning and connections. When Harold sobers up, the brothers quickly realise they’ve taken on more than they bargained for.

But Harold wins their trust by reminding them that they are all orphans and should stick together. He slips into a father-figure role, offering money, stability, and opportunities they find hard to refuse.

As the play evolves from domestic drama to small-time gangster thriller, there are shades of Pinter in the shifting power dynamics, carefully calibrated by the three actors.

Confined to a single room, Miller’s claustrophobic production makes effective use of Jermyn Street Theatre’s tiny space, supported by Sarah Beaton’s understated design.

Despite some uneven pacing, Orphans is tightly plotted and the performances bristle with energy.

Until January 24

Fourth 28 Days Later instalment isn’t a film that makes up for its tastelessness with a compelling narrative

Ralph Fiennes in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple [Columbia Pictures]

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple Directed by Nia DeCosta Certificate: 18 ☆☆☆☆

HERE we go again: the fourth instalment of the 28 Days Later story, and the UK is still overrun by virus-infected zombies.

We follow on from last year’s film, tracking young Spike (Alfie Williams) as he is captured by the gang of violent murderers led by charismatic Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connor).

This tracksuit-wearing, gold chain-sporting leader says Satan is talking to him and imploring them to skin alive anyone who crosses their tracks.

Meanwhile, lonesome survivor, GP Dr Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) is building a monument from skeletons: a temple, he tells himself, memorialising the dead.

Of course, their paths are going to cross and it will lead to carnage.

As their trajectories get closer, we have twin plots picking their way through the guts.

Jimmy’s gang have schisms as Spike and Jimmima (Emma Laird) want out.

As for our Latin-quoting GP, he has some virus-infected neighbours to pay attention to – none more so than Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), a giant of a zombie.

Dr Kelson manages to placate Samson via regular doses of a morphine mixture: getting the zombie addicted allows him a semblance of control over the giant, and the GP begins to use his limited resources to see if he can find a way of helping his new friend.

Written by Alex Garland and with Danny Boyle out of the director’s seat but offering input, this glossy and grisly story is done with their usual dash.

When Jimmy’s gang stumble across Dr Kelson’s bone-monuments, fireworks are guaranteed: in a scene that has Garland’s stamp, Kelson rigs up a set that will make Jimmy’s acolytes believe he is the devil: it includes blasting out Iron Maiden – a nice touch.

But cultural jokes aside, there is a dark undercurrent to this.

The idea that a marauding gang intent on killing anything they meet have based their personas on Jimmy Savile feels like a sick joke.

But taste has little to do with this, as the moments of graphic violence and torture highlight.

An opening scene where a gang member bleeds to death is a form of violent escapism I can do without. This isn’t a film that makes up for its tastelessness with a compelling story.

What is compelling is the character of Kelson, played with hammy-Shakespearean brilliance by Fiennes.

This instalment – the fourth since we met Cillian Murphy wandering in a daze through a deserted central London – is left with another sequel in mind.

Musical that weaves together four of Grimms’ fairy-tales is a feast for the ears and the eyes

Chumisa Dornford-May, Cinderella, in Into The Woods [Johan Persson]

STEPHEN Sondheim and James Lapine’s 1987 musical Into The Woods weaves together four of Grimms’ fairy-tales with the story of a baker (Jamie Parker) and his wife (Katie Brayben), cursed with childlessness. To break the spell, they are instructed by a witch (Kate Fleetwood) to enter the woods and find a white cow, a red cape, a golden shoe and hair as yellow as corn.

As they embark on their quest, the familiar stories unfold: Little Red Riding Hood (Gracie McGonigal) encounters the predatory wolf (Oliver Savile) while visiting her grandmother (Valda Aviks); Cinderella (Chumisa Dornford-May) yearns to go to the King’s festival and is gifted an exquisite dress; Rapunzel (Bella Brown), locked in her tower waits to be rescued by her prince (Rhys Whitfield ); and Jack (Jo Foster) trades his beloved cow for magic beans, climbs the beanstalk, steals from the Giant, and kills him.

In the first half of Jordan Fein’s slick, propulsive production, the characters determinedly chase their desires.

By the end of Act One, everyone appears to have their wishes granted, but Michael Gould’s Narrator urges us to return for more.

In Act Two things take a darker turn as the Giant’s widow wreaks her revenge and the characters have to come to terms with the consequences of their actions.

Sondheim’s themes of loss, responsibility and moral ambiguity come to the fore, underscored by Adam Fisher’s superb sound.

Much of the show is sung through, and the London Theatre Company has assembled a first-rate cast and orchestra under MD Mark Aspinall. Highlights include Fleetwood’s rendition of Witch’s Lament and the princes’ delightfully hammed-up duet, Agony.

Tom Scutt’s fabulous set and costumes ensure the production looks as good as it sounds – a feast for the ears and the eyes.

Until April 18

Carlo Gesualdo

COMPOSING tends to be a solitary occupation, and for many it’s an uneventful one, consigned to quiet rooms and careful thought. But then you get somebody like Carlo Gesualdo, the 16th-century Italian master whose life was as shockingly full of incident as his often disconcerting music. And together they’re the basis for an immersive, dramatised concert in the crypt of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Jan 16 & 17.

Gesualdo was a nobleman of less than noble disposition, probably a psychopath, who murdered his wife and her lover in a gory manner and may well have dispatched others besides. He was certainly someone you wouldn’t have wanted to meet on a bad day with a knife. But he was also one of the great creative geniuses of his era, whose music speaks with a brilliance and anguish inescapably suggestive of a tortured mind.

It’s the conundrum of this dazzling darkness that the eponymously named Gesualdo Six, will explore in St Martin’s crypt – where they’ve done something like it before, re-enacting the circumstances in which William Byrd’s Mass settings were performed in Tudor times when the Catholic Mass was outlawed and priests, if caught, paid with their lives.

Having experienced this re-enactment, I can vouch that it was impressively done, although not for those of nervous disposition. It will be the same with Gesualdo. So be warned. stmartin-in-the-fields.org

• Meanwhile, the celebrated Academy of St Martin in the Fields gives its next concert, Jan 20, not at St Martin’s but at Cadogan Hall. Led by Joshua Bell, it features him in Brahms’ violin concerto alongside a new one by American composer Kevin Puts: not yet a big name in the UK, though he wrote a magnificently rhapsodic opera, The Hours, that played to rave reviews in New York and is overdue a British premiere. cadoganhall.com

• Another violinist of note is the live-wire act that’s Patricia Kopatchinskaja, who will take your breath away in Bartok’s 2nd Violin Concerto with the LSO, Barbican, Jan 18. barbican. org.uk – and talking of the LSO, its home-base LSO St Luke’s has a chamber concert based around Vaughan Williams and his Circle, Jan 22, in which the Nash Ensemble play VW alongside Rebecca Clarke and Elisabeth Maconchy. lso.co.uk

For good measure, the Nash Ensemble are busy this week with another event, Jan 17 at Wigmore Hall, where they play music by Britten and his teacher Frank Bridge. Also at the Wigmore, Jan 20, is arguably the finest living exponent of German Lieder, Christian Gerhaher, singing Schubert. It’s advertising as sold out but you might be lucky. wigmore-hall.org.uk

• Aurora Orchestra were in the news last week with the announcement that their manager is about to leave and run the LSO. But this most resourceful of bands will survive it. And they’re at Kings Place, Jan 17, with a crazily mixed programme featuring the Australian conductor/composer Brett Dean with his daughter, mezzo Lotte Betts-Dean. kingsplace.co.uk

• Finally, the Temple Singers start their new year at Temple Church with Frank Martin’s impactful Mass for Double Choir and Eric Whitacre’s Saint-Chappelle, which imagines a young girl entering the Parisian chapel and being overwhelmed by the glowing majesty of its stained glass. Something she wouldn’t be in Temple Church whose glowing windows vanished in the Blitz and have been relatively austere ever since. templemusic.org