A big middle is provided by Geoff Keezer a keyboard genius whose wolfish grin makes him look like Iggy Pop

A big middle is provided by Geoff Keezer, a keyboard genius whose wolfish grin makes him look like Iggy Pop after his mother’s given him a haircut. Keezer had four decks – a grand piano, Rhodes, Moog synthesiser and a slimline Hammond – from which he teased a Zawinulesque palate of sound, alternately fluty, rich and brassy, heavy and distorting, in which the clearer tone of the piano was the light in the clearing after the thickets before. Gully is a fleet, cymbally drummer, toms tuned to get a higher-pitched, drier hit.Ron Blake, the horn player, used to be distinguished by a goatee that hung from his chin like a thread of liquorice Sadly, he’s shaved it off. He’s a good flautist and soprano player, but like many who specialise in that range hasn’t quite got the weight on tenor sax. He seemed in danger of being slightly overwhelmed.Confidence is not something the leader is short of.

On a Jaco Pastorius number McBride, now on electric bass, bubbled and popped his way through the fast samba rhythm, at other times producing a fat, bendy fretless sound or using a pedal to unleash a subterranean monster of a note. He’s simply astounding and, despite some early numbers that needed tighter direction, by the time they closed with the Weather Report favourite “Boogie Woogie Waltz”, an awesome, thrashing riot of sound was issuing. McBride clearly enjoys mining this seam, and if some disapprove I think he’s happy to tell them where they can stick their opinion.. Three British actors have had their places on Hollywood’s A-list cemented by being asked to appear in a photograph of Tinseltown’s leading males for the cover of Vanity Fair magazine. Jude Law, Hugh Grant and Ewan McGregor appear alongside Harrison Ford, Jack Nicholson and Tom Hanks in a group portrait of 13 actors, called the “Kings of Hollywood”. Law has worked with Steven Spielberg on AI: Artificial Intelligence, with Anthony Minghella on The Talented Mr Ripley and Sam Mendes on Road to Perdition. McGregor has graduated from his appearance in the drug-addled Trainspotting to the big-budget mass market Star Wars series.Grant may be lucky to be there but his floppy-haired middle-class Englishman act in Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’s Diary and Two Weeks Notice, all of which feature leading American actresses as co-stars, has given him status in Hollywood, where they assume the Home Counties is the United Kingdom.The remainder of the 13 are almost entirely predictable and, between them, account for 400 film credits and 28 Oscar awards and nominations.

It is a heavyweight bunch, particularly if measured by their salaries.. “Honour… Honour.” A man calls his wife’s name softly, as if seeking comfort He tells her he is leaving What? she asks You, he says. Honour moves her hands apart and asks, “This…? This..? Our…?”

“Honour… The evening is frequently painful and disturbing, but its effects owe more to Roger Michell’s direction and a superb cast than to the script.William Dudley’s set, in which the actors stand on and are framed by sheets of blank paper, may represent the as yet unwritten chapters of the book of life, but it could also symbolise all the things left out of this 100-minute drama of divorce.

Murray-Smith indicts George, who has left a perfect marriage of 32 years to shack up with a girl half his age, for superficiality and inhumanity.But one could say the same of a playwright who allows her characters no tastes, history, or desires beyond their roles of Bad Husband, Wronged Wife, Distraught Daughter and Selfish but Pitiable Other Woman. Murray-Smith describes her style as “heightened” and “lyrical,” but these adjectives seem less applicable than “prissy” and “empty.”George in particular is an underwritten clich?made sympathetic by Corin Redgrave only because he remains a sad sack throughout, despite constantly talking of his new-found passion. As the tootsie, Catherine McCormack is, refreshingly, no seductress but a mousy girl whose ignorance and selfishness George mistakes for strength. But the relationship makes no sense unless we believe the two are really heating up the sheets, and there is no sign of this. Anna Maxwell Martin, touchingly ingenuous as George’s daughter, shows far more passion in her anger at his “love” for a girl in her twenties, a new rival sibling.The point of the evening is Eileen Atkins, and not only because she has the biggest part and the best lines. One is familiar with her withering manner, as when she tells George: “In spite of what everyone’s saying, you’re not actually an idiot.” But her intelligence is more apparent in earlier scenes, when Honour shifts from bewilderment to numbness to near-dementia.