Jarkko Lehmus Diary

República Presentar: ¿Qué Infierno Suceder Anoche?

Vida diario cubano. ©

I've just spent the best part of an hour on the blower chatting away in Spanish, a language I didn't have any idea of a week ago, with some cubana I don't even remember meeting. All I know is that I found her number in my wallet when I got back home to Glasgow. I must have met her on that Tuesday night... I was totally plastered busting some stupid moves in a shady little hip hop club with my newly acquired, and equally incapacitated, local friends. I don't know. All the memories of that night seem to bleed into each other: at some point we were on the Malecon washing our brains away with rum, at another I was in some Lada speeding through the town and yet another I was getting jiggy with a pretty santera, a yoruba priestess all dressed in white, before another lady in white dragged her so rudely away. Wednesday came and I woke up without my pants in my own bed and started doing some sudoku to kick-start my ailing brain. On Saturday morning my friend Donato woke up without too many clothes on as well, but he hadn't quite made it to his bed, nor to his or anyone elses house for that matter. Shit happens when you're shitfaced. Six o'clock that same evening he was still strolling around in his boxer shorts.

The rich neigbours decided to park their boat on the pavement. ©

For the first couple of days I got hustled all over the place before I caught on to the act proper. I don't mind paying a fiver extra for my meal if I know that it'll be feeding a family for a week, but if you try to pull a fast one on me, I don't have any time for you. Funnily enough most of the folk are very honest and even sometimes tell you exactly how much they've hustled from you. Aside from the usual hard pros, friendly fellas and foxy ladies there seems to be another much rarer, possibly Cuban indigenous hustle: the family hustle. You bump into a family, with kids and all, on the street and they ask you to go for a drink with them and after a few you find yourself holding the sleeping son while his mum and dad are fetching you some Cohibas. It does get a little tiring after a while,though, when everyone seems to want something up to and including the clothes off your back.

Lazy day on the Malecon. ©

Just the other day I was minding my own business walking down the street giving the jineteros and jineteras a cold shoulder when I bumped into some locals, 400 000 of them actually. I didn't have a chat with all of them, but the ones I did turned out to be local rappers, so we hooked up, headed for their friend's house via a bodega and pumped out some tunes. After reaching a suitable state of inebriation we took a b-line to a cultural centre a couple of miles away to check out some local musical talent, my amigos included, and after the fat lady sang we walked through half the town fuelled by some more rum and landed into a club on Calle 23. That day was Tuesday. Of the rest of that night you know just as much as I do. As we all know after Tuesday comes Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday mornings are for ornithology. I especially like wading birds observed from the safety of a sunlounger.

Donato, Chico y Tonio! Ser mi muchacho cubano. ©

Cuba is a very interesting country of huge contrasts. What is presented to the tourists and how the real cubanos live are worlds apart. The restored architecture is amazing, the hotels polished to international standard, the cigars the best in the world and for a price of a Sprite you could feed a family for two days. The policia is everywhere, but not to catch any criminals. They're there to make sure the locals don't get too chummy with the tourists. This seems to mostly affect only the chicas hanging around fat germans, but one gets some sideways looks when one hangs around at a street corner swigging Anejo Blanco with some boys with tattooed faces and gold teeth. I managed to fit some touristy things into my itinerary as well, mostly on the expense of sleep. The usual sightseeing stuff, a museum of santeria orishas, paying extortionate amounts of money for internet access, watching cigars being rolled into the rhythm of Beyonce's 'Naughty Girl' and then there was that spot of ornithology. But to go back to the locals, apparently going to prison is not unheard of if the cubanos get too friendly and the policia gets a whiff and their families would probably get a year's food coupons denied for a good measure just for knowing the fraternisers.

Jesse James and a feast in the making. ©

The whole trip really wasn't much what I expected, but life never seems to be. A lot of weird nights can take place if you let them: the other night I went out for some more rum and cigs and came back with lighters and toothpaste. Another night, before or after the toothpaste I can't remember, we got some meat from the black market and my friends cooked us a meal. I think it was mutton, because you get locked up for eating cow. It must be some secret Communist/Hindu pact. The last evening in town I exchanged my trainers for a $300 box of cigars. I got the trainers from a sale.

It's a weird flippin' place. I want to go back.

Cinderella: The Ashes of Insanity

Quite a few weeks has passed in a blur leaving behind vague memories of twisted faces and names scattered like shrapnel after a night out in Stalingrad. There was a guy called Houdini in Edinburgh, who talked about break dancing and culling deer. My friend Mallet hit me on the head like a hammer and when the action really got hot in Aberdeen I retired in the kitchen with James, Jack and Tracy.

Good friends one can always depend on... ©

The first leg of the tour is over and I'm freshly back from the colourful town of Aberdeen. It has been heavy work being such a philandering slag with three wives and four daughters, but the reviews, audiences and the general reception of the shows have been fabulous. You can check out the Company's official site for all manner of weird and wonderful news about a new system of funding the arts in Scotland and all the rest of the official blah-blah. The funding thing is potentially a very interesting topic, though, so I might look into it more in the future, but as I'm sitting on the computer at a stupid hour in the morning absolutely wankered before hopping on the plane to Cuba you might excuse me for not writing anything too intelligent.

A small aberdonian with brass balls and bulls' sacks. ©

In about four hours I'll be jetting off to Havana to create a few inter-continental missile crises aimed squarely at destroying Ronald MacDonald's plans of taking over from Fidel. I'm going to achieve my mission by diluting my blood with Havana Club and infiltrating the local lingerie while chomping on a robusto.

To be absolutely honest, as I always am (eh?), I have no idea what to expect. I've seen pictures, heard stories, learnt Spanish, danced salsa and checked out the weather on BBC's website, but I still don't know where I'm about to stick my head to. As long as I get back with it attached and the rest of my body intact as well, I'm a happy bunny.

After the holidays we're facing the gargantuan task of rehearsing Forsythe's 'Suite from Artifact' and Petronio's 'MiddleSexGorge' and warming up Balanchine's 'Episodes' while keeping 'Cinderella' on the boil all within five weeks before hitting Stoke-on-Trent and Sadler's Wells. I'm doing my running, swimming and other assorted activities to work up the stamina for the forthcoming onslaught. It'll be some seriously hard fun doing those pieces again. I can't wait! Well, actually... I can wait for a week.

New Year, New Tricks

Some weeks ago I challenged you to go and let your hair down. Did you do it? It was the Festive Season for crying out loud! It's only once a year, everybody acts like an idiot for a few days and you can always blame the booze: "I'm sorry Nigella/Nigel, but I really thought that I was in a saloon and you were the bucking bronco... It wasn't me... Of course it was me, but it wasn't ME. The Evil Spirit of Mr Daniels possessed me!" I'm sure we've all had a conversation like that some time in our lives... (a deafening silence) ...I'll get my coat.

The Secret Santa, in the form of our technical director Tim, giving out sacrificial gifts on the altar of Andy W. ©

I've been racking my brain with this for many years now: who are the poor bastards who end up washing the costumes every Christmas? They must be either very badly trained to wash expensive theatrical costumes in too high a temperature to make them shrink so much, or maybe they're just very badly paid imported workers who just don't give a toss. I suspect incompetence and child labour, though: "If you don't vash these klothes and vring them dry by the morning, ve vill shoot your family and kastrate your pet goat!" I suspect this is a global phenomenon, because I have encountered it in every single country I have worked in over the festive period. Maybe it's some kind of nefarious alliance of The Underpants Gnomes and The Sock Eating Washing Mashines. Hold on! There's only one person whose minions are in every single country every single Christmas! That's another one for the conspiracy theorists.

Moeisha's sister Shanika popped over from Harlem for a surprise visit. ©

The Christmas with the company secret santa, a goose, assorted pieces of a pig and some very bad afternoon television passed truly uneventfully.

How interesting was that to read?

Having some time off it's so nice to relax with a good book, don't you agree? As you know I've been reading some vintage Hunter S lately. At the moment I'm working through Ollie Reed's biography. So what's next? A toss up between Keith Moon and Richard Pryor?

I'm refusing to acknowledge that I'm going to drag myself into a ballet class in twelve hours... Dammit... I wrote it down, so I must face the truth now. The holidays are over. It's been nice and very chilled out actually. After losing most of the last New Year, I remember almost too much of this recent one. You know the usual: worrying about the massive herpes outbreaks and cussing some chancer for drinking half of the frenchie fizzy stuff I got for the bells. All in all it was a quiet, yet challenging, and occasionally even relaxing one.

How was yours?

Did you get really messed up? Did you enjoy it? If the answer is "yes", then do it again for the next few weekends and when the February kicks in throw away the crutches, cross the Rubicon and go out and have fun while sober. Now that's really trippy.