We recently made a visit to the soon to be relocated Southwark Playhouse in Elephant and Castle to see a reworking of ‘Romeo and Juliet’. This production is set in Brixton (a popular neighbourhood south of us) in 1981 with a backdrop of Thatcher, The Specials and Madness. If these names mean nothing to you please ask your parents and feel free to read on.
In this production the Montagues and Capulets become rival council houses. The presence of pop music has the potential to make the production has the cheesy, but it is subtly done and used in the background. The play sticks almost entirely to the original script, but manages to weave into it a fair degree of humour and levity and the odd bit of swearing and slang. One monologue is delivered while a women is folding laundry and asking audience members to help her. And when talking about Juliet, Paris and Romeo have a bad habit of condoms popping out of their pockets. Exceptionally strong characters are Yinka Awani as a Friar Laurence determined to make a wedding happen come what may, and Fiona Skinner as a hilarious Lady Capulet who at the end of the day just wants to have giant piss up for Juliet instead of a wedding.
This production is part of Southwark Playhouse’s ‘Shakespeare for Schools’ project, will enables over 2000 Southwark kids to see the play for free during a series of matinees, but hopefully with the fucks and shits taken out. This year Southwark Playhouse will be moving to the top of Kennington lane, in the giant and strangely named ‘Uncle’ high-rise. While this has been in the works for ages, we’ve been informed that the move is imminent.
Romeo and Juliet is on now until 5 February and tickets can be booked here. There are six characters playing 13 roles, so it pays to pay attention. This is a very fast paced production and comes in at 1:45 with no interval, so get a large drink to take in from the very fun café. And to the bosses at Runoff HQ, we too had a large drink but this counts as a business meeting, like it or not
As our exercise calendar is looking almost as barren as the wine aisle of Boris’s local ‘Tesco Metro’, we decided to rededicate ourselves to more achievable tasks, namely eating out. A great place to start is the critically acclaimed Guyanese Caribbean restaurant Kaieteur Kitchen. Formerly a long standing food stall outside Elephant shopping centre, it now proudly has its own spiffy premises for both eat in and take away in Castle Square, across the street from Elephant and Castle overground. It’s a bit tucked away on the first floor, but well worth the effort.
Upon arrival at Kaiteur everyone is offered either ginger beer or mango juice, served by the very friendly staff and the grand dame of the kitchen, Faye Gomes. The menu at Kaieuter changes weekly, and sometimes daily, and on this trip your scribe had the beef stew served with okra. The okra was a rice based dish mixed with chili and garlic. The beef had been very slowly cooked and could not wait another second to fall off the bone, made earthier with sinew and connective tissue. Served with carrots, scotch bonnet chili and what appeared to be cassava sauce.
Jan from accounts had the chicken curry. Served on the bone, it was so slowly cooked that it almost fell off the bone when picked up. It was drier than an Indian curry but just as spicy and rich. Both dishes were served with either roti or spinach rice. We chose the rice, which was reminiscent of Jamaican rice and peas minus the peas with a nice stream of coconut milk. We also shared a side of a midly sweet creamed pumpkin. Meanwhile, the chaps at the table next to us were tucking into deep fried and chunky plantain and meatballs about the dimensions of a baby’s head.
If you aren’t familiar with the unique cuisine from Guyana, it is essentially food with its foundation in Africa. However, with the movement of labour around the world, the food was heavily influenced by Chinese, Indian and Portugese fare making it quite unique to its Caribbean neighbours. Ka is good, home-made Guyanese fare served with friendly warmth. And with a background of late 80’s slow jams to accompany your salted cod stew, you’ll be glad you broke that resolution only 18 days after you started it, just like we did…. But will it make our much heralded and upcoming top 10???
With our New Year resolution of daily marathon walks not quiet going to plan, we’ve decided to pursue our second goal – to attend more theatre. Last night we hopped over to the White Bear Theatre Pub to catch a play called ‘A Final Act of Friendship’ which kicks off a season of exciting new theatre at our little and oft overlooked local playhouse.
A Final Act of Friendship concerns two young men who have recently graduated from drama school. Caught in an industry where one ethnicity is favoured over another, it explores aspects of white privilege, alienation, communication and a human desire for connection that transcends race. The story is told in a semi autobiographical manner but does not come across as trying to teach a lesson to the audience. The residual story is that we impose many barriers in getting intimate with people, made all the more graphic when getting close to people has been inhibited over the past two years.
White Bear Theatre is totally independent and not associated with the Young’s owned White Bear Pub downstairs. Your ticket gets you 10% off food, but we can’t really recommend the food there unless you like your dinner cooked by a sous chef named ‘Mike ro Wave’. Having said that, it is fun to have a drink before the show and peruse the Kennington/Oval/Vauxhall paraphernalia festooning the walls. The theatre itself is a very intimate and almost immersive experience. In fact, on a recent outing the naked people getting gouged with shards of glass on stage seemed almost personal. To make people safe they have reduced seating and the venue is very well ventilated.
A Final Act of Friendship runs tonight (13 January) and through to Saturday and tickets are still available. This is the first of a whole season of other short plays which are an interesting mixture of new writing, horror, politics and comedy. The tickets are £12 (£10 concessions). These are all one acts so if you don’t like what you’ve seen you can just toddle off home and forget it ever happened.
`Here in the office we’re always saying to one another ‘wow, how can we all stay so thin when we’re eating out ALL THE TIME’? Well, it’s finally caught up with us, and post holidays we’re all about as wide as a swollen pigeon and sweating like we just stumbled out of Ministry of Sound at 6:00am. So we are determined to solve this dietary dilemma by going on a series of healthy walks around our anointed shire, and maybe you can as well. We hope you find our little guide to local walks healthy both for your backside and your brain.
Kennington General (3 ½ miles. This is a more general walk and is perfect if you are new to the area and want to know more about Kennington, Vauxhall and Oval).
There are plenty of things that you can experience in Elephant and Castle. For instance, being hit by a car. Or being mowed down by a Just Eat delivery person cycling on the pavement. But one doesn’t often experience high quality Chinese food there. It’s for this reason that we were devastated when our favourite Cantonese ‘Dragon Castle’ closed in March 2020, but they are now back with a vengeance.
They taste better than they look
With the cheap chandeliers, plastic plants, lazy Susan’s and even a water feature, at Dragon Castle you delightfully experience the feel of being in a mega restaurant in Beijing without the torture of six lateral flow tests and a 10 hour flight. But alas, you are at the top of Walworth Road. We commenced our feast with the dim sum sampler. Dim sum is a speciality of DC, and they did not disappoint. Crammed with prawns and veg, they were congealed in a very pleasing way and were almost certainly made fresh on the day.
My dining partner enjoyed a main of braised pork belly and broccoli flavoured with soy and spices which the dining partner described as ‘delicious and also generously sized’. A slight sweetness to balance the saltiness and meltingly soft pork was evident. It was a delicious soft fat, as you want, but with a high ratio of pork meat and plenty of it.
Your scribe ordered the sizzling beef and black bean with green pepper, onion, and chilli. Served with generous soy sauce, the beef was extremely lean and tender. It was just on the right side of spicy with the black bean sauce creating a big, palate clinging flavour. The generous sticky rice portions were served in metal lined baskets looking not dissimilar to mop buckets.
Beef
Pork
Dragon Castle is not as affordable as it used to be but still good value for the quality of the food. We ordered draft beer as the wines started at £25. Importantly. there were not a retinue of delivery people scurrying in and out (but DC is on Deliveroo). A fun night out, and the risk of a vehicular injury could perhaps even add to the adventure.
If it was possible we would buy all of our readers a colourful Christmas gift. Unfortunately, we once again failed to get a bonus this year or any other kind of appreciation from Runoff management. Well, unless you count Monday morning when Phil from finance shouted ‘here’s your lot’ and threw a handful of Quality Street into our cubicles before walking away. What we can give you, therefore, is a present that will enhance our lives in other ways.
Lambeth County Court has stood proudly near Kennington Cross for almost a century. It’s functional life came to an end in 2017 and its future was very much in doubt. It was tantalizingly shut from public view after that with the exception of two occasions, which we chronicled in 2019 and earlier this year. During this time the Duchy of Cornwall, who owns the property, cynically applied for the building to be immune from listing with the plan to convert it into……you guessed it……luxury flats, with the added indignity of an extra floor plopped on top. This would of course entail gutting the building and destroying the original, period courtrooms.
We’ve always had a passion for the Courthouse, but we’ve given our opinion about planning consent before and let’s just say it took the better part of a year to put that toothpaste back in the tube so we weren’t doing that again. However, to the rescue came the 20th Century Society who gave advice (read, pressure) to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to list the building and after a great deal of exertion the building was granted Grade II status, ensuing that it will remain intact. We’re happy that the Society used some of our images on their website.
At the moment part of the building is used as studios for artists affiliated with City and Guilds. In our little crystal ball the Courthouse could perhaps become a gallery or studio space for everyone in the community to enjoy in perpetuity. Everyone needs a place to live, but they also need a place to explore. Merry Christmas……
As the spectre of further restrictions swirl around us, some folk in Greater Kennington aren’t feeling very festive right now. If this includes you, we have a suggestion that is safe and raises money for charity.
The annual Cleaver Square ‘Carols in the Square’ takes place this evening (Monday) from 7:45 and the best part is that you don’t even have to live in Cleaver Square to take part. Or even look like you live in Cleaver Square (god knows we don’t). It is open to all and in 2020 raised over £2700 for local charities. We attended last year and it was very well spaced out and well organised.
2020 and well spaced out
Leading the carols will be the lovely sounding but unfortunately named ‘Fever Pitch’ choir. There is a suggested donation of £2-£5 and people are asked to give whatever they can. Festive hats are apparently now a tradition, and mince pies will be in abundance. Regarding the mulled wine, there will be no cash bar this year but people are encouraged to bring their own beverages. To drive the point home we have made arrows below and even CIRCLED THE WORDS!
We will of course be there so please come over and say hello if you can figure out who we are…..Good luck with that….
Last weekend our newish MP, Florence Eshamoni, opened the spanking new ‘History Hut’ in Kennington Park close to the tennis courts. Formerly a seating area frequented by gentlemen who like to enjoy an outdoor beverage, the rest stop has been transformed by the installation of eight boards celebrating the vitality and diversity of our area. The boards cover areas from royalty to hangings, cricket to Chartists, and Van Gogh to WW1. If you are an astute reader you’ll be aware that we have written about many of these things before *collective office high five*. Well worth a pre-Christmas perambulation to work off those extra calories
The boards also mention a little known but fascinating tattle of trivia taken from the estates around Greater Kennington. The strange railings that you see around many estates are not actually railings at all, but repurposed stretchers from WW2. They were placed in storage by the Civil Defense Corps until the 1960’s in case of a nuclear (!) attack. We wrote about them in 2019.
Camera Club
We really know very little about the Camera Club other than it has been there for years and we know very little about it. It is actually one of the oldest photography clubs in the world, and the site in Bowden Street acts not only as a studio but also an exhibit space for members. Until 25 January the gallery is having its annual Winter Member’s Exhibition and it is totally free. The photos offer a poignant overview of the highs and lows we’ve all faced in 2021. The very friendly staff on hand can even tell you how you can become a member yourself if you are the snappy sort.
Before we commence with our run down of how we can treat people we love, lets think about all the Greater Kenningtonians out there who are struggling with the basics. If you would like to help them but aren’t really sure how, the Vauxhall Foodbank is a good place to start. You can either donate money, volunteer, or donate food directly at Tesco Kennington Lane or Sainsburys Nine Elms.
If you’re anything like us, you’d rather have a pencil crammed into your ear canal than face the throngs of Oxford/Regent Streets right now. And if you like to hold objects before you buy them you can do this in our very own manor, and we hope you find our little guide useful.
FOOD
Italo Vauxhall and Mimi’s Deli both have a range of Italian foodie gift ideas including wines, beers, spices, panettone (or as we call it ‘stale cake’), oils, cheeses and even posh sauces. Mimi’s has also turned the former seating area into a kind of pop up Christmas shop in the back, not visible from the road.
Mercato Metropolitano has all of the Italian fare outlined above and also feature some Italian themed hampers and they’re also selling wreaths. They have wonderful meats and cheeses but if they sit under your tree for 10 days the smell might rather dampen your Christmas vibe. Don’t forget they have a new shop at 1 Walworth Road.
Ever thought about buying an edible Christmas gift our own beloved Oval Farmer’s Market? They stock many things that won’t perish under the tree such as chocolates and wine. You have one more Saturday before Christmas!
The Beefeater Gin Distillery has a lovely but totally deserted gift shop offering unusual, limited run gins and gin accessories. You can also buy a gift voucher to tour the distillery (we can confirm it’s great fun). Perfect for your loved one who likes a nice holiday tipple or who just has a drinking problem.
NON FOOD
Now, when you think Christmas shopping the first thing you say to yourself probably isn’t ‘ooh, lets go to the place behind Elephant Station where they keep the bins’. But, if you venture there you will discover a clutch of independent shops in Castle Square that used to exist in the shopping centre. Great for you younger folk looking for baseball caps, hoodies and clothes.
If you are in Elephant pop over to the new SoLo Craft Fair which is a collective of artists and creatives who now run a bricks and mortar shop. 60 small businesses have their work shown on rotation and during our journey we saw affordable jewellery, handbags, baskets, cards, scarves, bath salts, prints and T-shirts.
From the chains, cages and chew toys in the window, for many years we thought Hound Hut in Clapham Road was actually a bondage/S&M shop. However, it is your one stop shop for everything canine, even refrigerated dog food.
Next to the (not S&M) Hound Hut sits new kid on the block “Pretty Shiny Shop’ which swaggeringly exudes itself to be Greater Kennington’s Christmas Shop (steady) and they stock a range or cards, houseware items, Christmas tree goodies, and small pieces of jewellery.
Mary over at Windmill Flowers stocks not just flowers but also collectables and houseware accessories.
In addition to books, Vanilla Black also has some nice gift ideas such as cards and masks and also a few food items. We think VB secretly hates us but we’ve moved on with our lives and are plugging them anyway. And since you are over there, I Due Amici has some fine looking panettone hanging in their windows (no that isn’t a rude euphemism). And if at this very second you are thinking ‘what happened to Didi and Franc’. Well, we have no idea but try asking in VB.
As a second joyless year comes to a close, have you ever thought about the gift of comedy? Our local gold star comedy club Always be Comedy are doing E vouchers for their virtual and socially distanced and live events (the virtual being very surreal) at The Tommyfield. Recently we’ve seen Harry Hill, Al Murray, Sara Pascoe and more.
Most importantly, this has been yet another shitty year for almost all of us. So you have the Kennington Runoff seal of approval to treat yourself during the 2021 festive season!
