Latest news with #Takethe'A'Train
Times
29-04-2025
- Times
The Orient Express brings glamour to the Italian countryside
In the Orient Express lounge at Ostiense station in Rome, my train leaves in an hour but the high living is already under way. There are glasses of iced Veuve Clicquot and Italian mid-morning snacks, alongside gorgeous marble bathrooms that invite one to linger over the artisan soaps, the soft towels, the fresh flowers. A trio of piano, saxophone and double bass serenades passengers with a medley of cool jazz standards, among which I recognise a Duke Ellington classic, Take the 'A' Train. What I'm about to take is an A train in another sense altogether. Unveiled with great ceremony, La Dolce Vita is a new iteration of the Orient Express marque, raising the bar for rail travel to heights rarely scaled even in the splendiferous 140-year history of the brand. In the humdrum surroundings of this suburban-line station, the newly refurbished carriages, gleaming in their smart blue-and-brown livery, give off alpha waves of sophistication. At 12.07pm precisely the train pulls out of Ostiense to embark on a 24-hour round-trip journey entitled Tastes of Tuscan Vineyards — one of eight La Dolce Vita routes (all within Italy) that will be available by the end of this year. We cross the Tiber, slinking through Trastevere station where a group of locals gawp open-mouthed as the train glides by. I settle into my suite, a substantial cabin incorporating a double bed with crisp cotton sheets, a small sofa, a lacquered table and leather-upholstered swivel chairs, a miniature bar and a bathroom with a power shower. The train's interior, designed by the Milan-based masters Dimorestudio, avoids the chintzy maximalism of the brand's fin-de-siècle origins in favour of a sleek, chic evocation of mid-20th-century Italian style, the curvy retro shapes and glossy surfaces channelling designers such as Gio Ponti and Gae Aulenti. The references are telling: in the low-lit corridor outside my cabin, black-and-white photographs by the society snapper Marcello Geppetti (the original paparazzo) reflect the gilded 1960s world of Federico Fellini and Marcello Mastroianni, of Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren and Claudia Cardinale. Lunch, served in the all-white dining car, is a multicourse affair created by the chef Heinz Beck, whose restaurant, La Pergola, holds Rome's only trio of Michelin stars. Banish all thought of regular rail food: this is by some way the most lavish, but also the most delicious, collation I've eaten on board a train, nimbly served by uniformed waiters (no overspilling soup bowls here) and accompanied by fine Italian wines. Beyond the window, postwar housing blocks gradually give way to a landscape of open fields, stone farmhouses, vineyards and umbrella pines. The original Orient Express made its maiden voyage in 1883, linking European cities from Paris to Istanbul in a service that, especially after being immortalised as a crime scene by Agatha Christie, became a byword for glamour and intrigue. This route ran until 1977, then the service petered out in 2009, having become a series of shorter routes operated by Belmond under the name Venice Simplon-Orient-Express. Somewhat confusingly, the French hotel giant Accor has reactivated the Orient Express brand per se, using it as an umbrella for high-end hospitality projects that include the Italy-based La Dolce Vita train and the historic La Minerva hotel in Rome, which has recently been given a stunning new lease of life. (Slated for later this year are a Venice hotel, the 15th-century Palazzo Dona Giovannelli, and a sailing yacht, the Corinthian, said to be the largest in the world.) • The makeover of the Orient Express and its glorious new suites Halfway through the afternoon we pull into a country station serving the hill town of Montalcino, where the programme features a visit to the aristocratic wine estate at Argiano. (La Dolce Vita journeys are the closest thing on land to a kind of hyper-exclusive cruise, with bespoke gastronomic and cultural visits instead of harbour stops.) The visit begins with a private tour of the Renaissance art collection amassed by Argiano's owner, the Brazilian magnate André Santos Esteves, followed by a tasting in the estate's 16th-century cellars and a magnificent dinner in the grand hall. Probably a higher degree of railway luxe exists somewhere in the world, but it's hard to imagine where or how. A detail that impresses me are La Dolce Vita's next-level guest amenities: the bathroom soap from heritage soap makers Eredi Zucca in Milan comes neatly wrapped in tissue paper and tucked inside a cobalt-blue box; a leatherbound notebook from the Florentine stationers Pineider is monogrammed in gold with my initials. A highlight of this Tuscan trip is returning from a night-time negroni in the bar to discover a pair of pointy-toed velvet Friulane slippers (made in Venice) waiting for me on the down-turned bed, along with a saffron-scented macaron, should I feel peckish before snuggling down into those cool cotton sheets. • Aboard the Royal Scotsman — Belmond's epicurean journey Life aboard the Orient Express is a heady experience of contemporary travel at a level of opulence that feels almost surreal. But for me the best thing about La Dolce Vita is the dolce far niente — the sweetness of doing nothing. Simply to lounge on the big white bed in a post-breakfast glow, idly watching the spring-green Tuscan countryside slide by, soothed by the motion of the train as it rolls back to Rome and reality, is genuinely as good as it gets. This article contains affiliate links that can earn us revenue The two-day, one-night Tastes of Tuscan Vineyards journey by Orient Express costs €4,160pp,
The Guardian
26-01-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The week in theatre: Play On!; A Good House; Moby Dick
Mood indigo. Moments of blue. Hot spots of red. Play On!, a jazz musical conceived by Sheldon Epps with a book by Cheryl L West, is a blend of tributes. To Twelfth Night, whose opening line, 'If music be the food of love, play on', supplies the title. To Duke Ellington, whose numbers run through the evening as plot and permeate it as atmosphere. Also to Ellington's reported synaesthesia – his seeing notes as colours. Ultz's strong evocation of the Cotton Club, where black artists performed to a white audience in 1940s Harlem, is not painted in predictable monochrome: beats of violet and azure are framed by a scarlet proscenium arch. This is not the first time that Shakespeare's comedy has lent itself to musical reinvention. Kwame Kwei-Armah's opening show at the Young Vic in 2018 set the drama to R&B, Motown and music hall. Still, this Talawa production, directed by Michael Buffong, is not so much a version of Twelfth Night as a response to it. A nice bit of name-play is at the centre: the melomane, brooding presence is not Duke Orsino – a titled, entitled nonworker – but the Duke: Ellington, who earned his soubriquet through his gifts. Several characters have vanished, though no one is likely to sob at the absence of Sebastian. What most of us would think of as the nub of Shakespeare – the speeches! – are obliterated. You have to listen hard to catch the few direct quotes: 'Some are born great' gets a look-in, as does the playing around with witty fools and foolish wits, delivered by Llewellyn Jamal's Jester, whose limbs are as elastic as his loyalty. Yet the play's moods of rapture, longing, discontent and sudden surges of energy are gorgeously present, woven through the evening by an onstage band who deliver wonders by Ellington, from Take the 'A' Train to It Don't Mean a Thing. Koko Alexandra sultries compellingly as Lady Liv – dressed with shimmering irony in a butterfly costume with glitter thorax and gauzy shawl wings. Earl Gregory's Duke and Tsemaye Bob-Egbe's Vyman/Viola take off beautifully from each other, the latter's character reimagined as an aspiring songwriter who would not get taken seriously dressed as a woman. Waves of frustration and exhilaration sweep across the stage in shrug-shoulder dance routines choreographed by Kenrick 'H20' Sandy. Shakespearean disguise – a vital route to self-discovery – is central, and cast off more literally than usual when Viola reveals herself to her lover not by suddenly appearing in women's garb but by stripping off. There is good news for those who feel Malvolio (here 'Rev') has more to offer than scapegoatery. Cameron Bernard Jones – slick, uptight and appealing – is also well served by his costume: no cross-gartering but all-over bright yellow, like an animated dollop of custard. Bright and emphatic, Amy Jephta's new play punches home its awkward arguments with a leery grin. A Good House, produced in collaboration with the Market Theatre in Johannesburg and Bristol Old Vic, expands the geographical boundaries of David Byrne's Royal Court – one of the characters is a Zulu speaker – though without greatly enlarging its social and psychological targets. In the tradition of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun (1959) and Bruce Norris's Clybourne Park (2010), the play looks at racism and class through the prism of property. In a South African gated community (Ultz's design is convincingly declamatorily bourgeois, with plush pouffe and decorative basketware), three couples – one black and two white – discuss a price-lowering shack that has suddenly appeared on an adjacent lot. Rough-edged prejudice quickly emerges over the cheese board: one man assumes that when his black neighbour explains he works in 'securities', he must mean he is employed by a security company; another that he must come from the shack. The neat and nasty points land, but with insufficient shock. The hearty bonhomie of the white householders is too evident a cover: one man wags his finger at a black resident when he talks about the sedate neighbourhood's aversion to loud music. The shack itself is given a subtle aura of unreality – glimpsed from time to time in arbitrarily altered form, while the owners remain invisible – but characterisation is dogged. Jephta's intriguing play would be more fulfilling with a subtler undercurrent and less underlining. As improbable as the idea of Herman Melville swallowing the unconscious in his prose is the notion of putting his novel on stage. With puppets. Yet Yngvild Aspeli's 85-minute production of Moby Dick for Plexus Polaire – part of this year's MimeLondon – magnificently summons reality and its shadow, waves and depths in a mixture of puppets and fleshy actors. The swoops of the novel – its metaphors and its adventures – are given eye-enlarging expression as the scale contracts and expands. The massive Barbican stage is covered in black-and-white video of the sea. The crew of harpooners and cabin boy and mates are lit individually, as they swing below deck in their hammocks. Tiny boats with matchstick oars are sent out on the billowing waves. A skull-faced chorus moves across the stage, where a tremendous onstage trio – double bass, percussion and guitar – conjure up the noise of a shoal of small fish moving through the ocean. Finally, the mighty whale glides past like a giant duvet, one tiny knowing eye embedded in its folds like a jewel. Star ratings (out of five) Play On! ★★★★A Good House ★★★Moby Dick ★★★★ Play On! is at the Lyric Hammersmith, London, until 22 February A Good House is at the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Royal Court, London, until 8 February
