Are You Listening? “Yeah, that's almost exactly like my situation except mine is way more complex and interesting."

Guys, if you're actually listening to the other person you're not properly readying that story about a thing that happened to YOU one time. 

"Yeah, that's almost exactly like my situation except mine is way more complex and interesting."

Happy Easter! Big kids we were, chasing the ice cream van…

It was a relaxing Easter Monday having a quiet pint with the boys. Or 5. Oh, and an ice cream. Happy Easter everyone!

Doctor Who : The Legend of The Sea Devils - “A disappointment. Confusing, messy, and underwritten”

If I had a pound for every time the first female Doctor Who happily relied on a man to step up to the plate and sacrifice themselves over her for no real reason, I'd have two pounds, which isn't many, to be fair. No, having a female Doctor has been great.

But I do feel bad for Jodie Whittaker. She is doubtless a talented actor but with the most terrible writing. Last night’s The Legend of The Sea Devils wasn’t exactly dire - but it was all just a bit lame. A disappointment. Confusing, messy, and underwritten. And a MacGuffin called a ‘keystone’? Gimme a break.

Saving the joke “No ship, Sherlock” it barely cracked a smile. The action scenes were pantomime. The Yaz/Doctor romance seems well-meaning but again underwritten. A kiss? No fear. Captain Jack would have known what to do.

I do hope RTD reboots the show in the right way. I need Doctor Who in my life. But it has to be good Doctor Who. And not just simply watching David Tennant, Matt Smith or The Grumpy Doctors’ reruns on Forces TV.

Goldfrapp @ Royal Festival Hall... "Which number bus did you get?" @goldfrapp @southbankcentre

At the Royal Festival Hall last night, Alison Goldfrapp said she'd heard many people have come a long way for this concert and asked for some places... Tel Aviv, San Francisco... then someone shouts out "Peckham", Alison's response is "Which number bus did you get?"

This audience interaction and humour was perhaps the only thing in short supply though. The sublime gig saw Goldfrapp conjure up swooning cinematic song after swooning cinematic song from another time, another planet to a delighted crowd.

Earlier when Darren, Stuart and I had taken our seats in the glitzy South Bank venue we knew were in for a treat. But not that is was going to be this good. It was simply fantastic.

Playing their first album, Felt Mountain, along with many loved classics we were simply blown away.

Released in 2000, Felt Mountain mixed folk, 1960s pop, electronica and lush John Barry-style orchestrations to become a chillout classic, selling 250,000 copies in the UK alone and earning a Mercury Prize nomination. One of the defining albums of its genre.

Shy Alison stuck behind her microphone for most of the 85-minute running time only occasionally stalking the stage. But she held us all captivated by her charm, by her charisma, by and that voice. An ethereal unearthly voice that bewitched the entire auditorium.

And when the two encores roared onto the stage we were on our feet going crazy dancing and singing along.

Highly recommended.

 

Below is the set list, and below that is the review I wrote in 2001 after seeing Goldfrapp for the first time at the Union Chapel. Much of that original review still holds true.

Set List

Felt Mountain
Paper Bag
Pilots
Deer Stop
Human
Hairy Trees
Road to Somewhere
Eat Yourself
Moon in Your Mouth
You Never Know
Black Cherry
Utopia
Lovely Head

Encore 1:
Ride a White Horse
Strict Machine

Encore 2:
Train
Oompa Radar (Audience exit music)

 

 

Review from 2001:-

 

"Amazing, sensational, dramatic, heart wrenching...

Last night's Goldfrapp concert at the Union Chapel was one of the best, if not the best concert I have ever been too. And judging by the roars from the packed pews I wasn’t alone in that view. I’m a fairly recent convert to Goldfrapp’s individual style of trip-hop, orchestral, landscape music. Many have likened Alison Goldfrapp’s voice to Shirley Bassey – to be honest I don’t see the connection. She has a multiple octave range and a delicious sexiness that would put Ms Bassey to shame. Alison is understated, almost shy on stage. She often would face sideways or towards the rest of the band, which only added to the mystery of her performance. She was dressed in an outfit that looked like a grey BOAC airline stewardess’ uniform from the 60’s. She drifted about the stage and struck the occasional pose that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Cabaret. A very enigmatic performance only made more wondrous when we realised that the sound coming over the speakers was actually coming out of her mouth and not from some synthesizer. She could in turns scream, soar, scale and boom in perfect pitch. The dreaminess of the songs and brilliance of the vocal performance from the outset told us we were in for something special. There were nine members of the band in total; a stringed quartet, an Irish fiddler, a drummer, two keyboards (one being Will Gregory) and Alison. Their music has an art house movie / east European freak show dramatic richness that any film score composer would be proud of. Impossibly deep organ riffs swelled and fell and echoed round the chapel with eerie effect. They performed every song from Felt Mountain to a rapt crowd. The light show transformed the chapel from late night smoky jazz room on Pilots to the magical dreamscape evoked by Utopia (the new single). Alison’s dusty vocals on Paper Bag brought a tear to my eye. Well actually tears were streaming down my face by the end. It was a very special moment. They did two encores. The much anticipated cover of ONJ's Physical and Horse Tears which brought the house down. If ever you get the chance to see them live. Go. I’ll be there.

Star Alert: Simon and Yassim Le Bon were snogging in a row but one behind us. Steven Tyler (that Aerosmith singer) and Chrissie Hynde tried to nick my seat while I was at the bar with Colin. Mark fought them off valiantly."

For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy @ Royal Court…

Last night I went to see the laugh-out-loud funny heart-warming yet poignant celebratory black theatre fantasy musical play For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy at the Royal Court Theatre in London’s glitzy Sloane Square.

Six young Black men meet for group therapy, and let their hearts – and imaginations – run wild. For Black Boys is located on the threshold of joyful fantasy and brutal reality: a world of music, movement, mental health, storytelling and verse – where six men clash and connect in a desperate bid for survival.

It’s a mosaic of young British black men’s experience; often very, very funny, physically exuberant, occasionally poetic, but with a recurring undertow of dread.

It’s performed on an almost-bare, multi-coloured stage by the hugely likeable six-strong cast of the original production at the New Diorama in 2021. Cameron co-directs here with Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu, who helmed that production, and the results are pretty wonderful.

There are tales of playground racism, police harassment and gang culture, but also delicate confessions of thwarted love and performance anxiety, of struggling with macho self-image.

Knitting it together is a surface gloss of boisterous, mocking camaraderie that masks a deep sense of empathy.

Indeed, the emotional payoff of the piece comes from the moments when the men forget their beefs and embrace for a hug when they talk about suicide, which increased among black men during the pandemic.

This makes it sound depressing. But, it is far from. There is a lot of joy, humour and celebration in the pain.

Tiger Lillies @ Soho Theatre…

Last night I went to see The Tiger Lillies’ show One Penny Opera at the Soho Theatre in London’s glitzy West end.

It was fine. But I’ve seen the boys do way better.

The show is a 70-minute, no-interval cabaret show based on John Gay’s 18th century Beggar’s Opera and Brecht and Weill’s Threepenny Opera. Ever witty, they demote their version—a mix of Gay, Weill and their own songs—to a One Penny Opera.

Deadpan and deathly in their ghoulish black and white face paints, it all feels a bit déjà vu, same old same old. Not a patch on Shockheaded Peter. 

The playing was great (Adrian Stout on double bass and theremin and Budi Butenop on drums) but it drowns out Martyn Jacques’s falsetto voice which is perhaps a little too reedy of late. 

There is no programme, but if you’re a fan you know what you’ll get with the Tiger Lillies, seedy life, pimps, cut throats, prostitutes, corruption from the lowest in the land to the top to Prince Albert, in all its glorious verbal vulgarity.

The standards are great though - “Alabama Song / Whisky Bar” and “The Ballad of Mack the Knife / Mackie Messer” still pack a punch.

Hidden London - Moorgate: Metropolitan Maze...

A few weeks ago Stuart and I took the final Hidden London tour we hadn't yet done - Moorgate: Metropolitan Maze in London's glitzy City.

We explored the 'wonders' of Moorgate station - the portal into the City and one of London’s first Underground stations.

The station opened in 1865 as Moorgate Street on the first extension of the Metropolitan line joined in 1900 by the first extension of the Deep Tube. Remarkable re-designs and station upgrades have left behind a maze of disused tunnels, abandoned track and a complete Greathead shield from 1904, the only one of its kind on the London Underground Network.

We got to visit corridors lined with the original glass tiles of the City and South London Railway, heard how the station served as a freight terminal for decades and saw how long disused parts of the station have been repurposed ingeniously in response to the needs of our growing capital.

Great fun. Not quite as good as the Down St or Clapham ones, but very us. Underground. Overground. Wombling free.

 

Straight Crazy Line @ The Bridge Theatre...

Last Friday night Stuart and I went to see Straight Crazy Line at the Bridge Theatre by London's glitzy Tower Bridge.

Great playwright (David Hare)
Great actors (Ralph Fiennes, Samuel Barnett, Siobhán Cullen et al)
Great director (Nicholas Hytner)
Great theatre (seen some great stuff there)

God, it was boring! Quite a few people left at the interval. And there was a lot of yawning from those of us that stayed.

Ralph Fiennes stars as Robert Moses - the New York public official whose lust for power, questionable ethics, vindictiveness, and racism led him to literally bulldoze his way through much of Long Island and Manhattan.

He created roads, roads and more roads along with many bridges, playgrounds (mainly in white neighbourhoods) and parks - but provided little by way of mass transportation.

For forty uninterrupted years, Robert Moses was the most powerful man in New York. Though never elected to office, he manipulated those who were through a mix of guile, charm and intimidation.

But boy did the story - a potentially interesting BBC Four documentary perhaps? - drag. We just didn't care about anyone. Drama comes from conflict. And the conflict here, despite having some potential - the black groups protesting the demolition of their homes - was largely unrealised. It was just all very flat.

Avoid.

The 47th @ The Old Vic...

Last night Stuart and I went to see Bertie Carvel star as Donald Trump in Mike Bartlett's new play The 47th at The Old Vic in London's glitzy Waterloo.

Playwright Barlett, author of the acclaimed play King Charles III about the future of the monarchy, has taken on the Shakespearean figure of Donald Trump and imagines his near-future battle to regain the White House in 2024 in this new work written in blank verse – also known as unrhymed iambic pentameter.

"I never thought I would go back to writing Shakespearean form again, but then I had an instinct that Trump is like a Shakespearean king, so it felt like a match," said Bartlett. The 47th imagines Trump’s bid to win the 2024 US presidential election and his opponents’ efforts to defeat him and right-wing populism. Can it be defeated? And, on the other hand, what is the appeal of the thing Trump offers – which is clearly huge?

Bartlett's inspiration for The 47th stemmed from Trump denying the results of the 2020 election, and "seeing that the assaults on the Capitol and feeling the country was headed towards potential civil violence. Suddenly that power struggle is the story."

The 47th is directed by Rupert Goold, who also directed King Charles III. The play was clever, quite funny, but also perhaps a little too similar to various comedy sketches performed while Trump was President. We have seen much of this before. What is new is the part that could be played by his revolting (literally) children. The King Lear / TV's Succession parallels are plain to see.

Bertie Carvel is an all-in as an actor who fully embodies Donald Trump; he’s totally fearless in presenting him as someone on stage that you might not like at all. And we don't. But sort of admire his bravado and gall.

Tamara Tunie (Kamala Harris) and Lydia Wilson (Ivanka Trump) are also excellent.

A good evening but not quite a must-see.

Clybourne Park @ Park Theatre "A great revival of a great play. Deserves all the 5-star reviews that have showered it"... ->

Last night I went to see Clybourne Park at the Park Theatre in London's glitzy Finsbury Park.

Winner of both the Tony and Olivier Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for author Bruce Norris, Clybourne Park is a razor-sharp satire about prejudice and the politics of race and real estate.

I loved it. Thought provoking, unsettling, and very, very funny. In fact, it has one of the funniest jokes I think I have ever heard on the London stage. Something I could not possibly repeat here for fear of getting banned!

In 1959, Russ and Bev are moving to the suburbs after the tragic death of their son and have sold their house to the neighbourhood’s first black family.

Decades later, the roles are reversed when a young white couple buys the lot in what is now a predominantly black neighbourhood, signalling a new wave of gentrification. In both instances, a community showdown takes place – are the same issues festering beneath the floorboards fifty years on? Short answer: yes.

Oliver Kaderbhai directs a fabulous cast; Michael Fox (Downton Abbey), Andrew Langtree (The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole), Richard Lintern (My Night with Reg), Katie Matsell (Museum of Austerity), Aliyah Odoffin (Everything I Know About Love), Imogen Stubbs (Honour) and Eric Underwood (Royal Ballet).

A great revival of a great play. Deserves all the 5-star reviews that have showered it.

HMS Pinafore (or The Lass That Loved a Sailor) @ Wiltons Music Hall - Those infectious tunes, that beautifully libretto, perfectly staged ->

Last Friday night Stuart and I went to see Sasha Regan’s fabulous all-male production of HMS Pinafore at the equally fabulous Wiltons Music Hall in London’s glitzy East End.

Regan’s inventive reimagining of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s fourth collaboration and first international blockbuster is fun, camp, fantastically sung and danced, and a joy to watch. And all that muscle on display!

The Captain’s daughter, Josephine (Sam Kipling), is caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea when she falls for lower class sailor Ralph Rackstraw (Danny Becker), but the Captain (Juan Jackson) wishes for her to marry the upstanding Sir Joseph Porter, the First Lord of the Admiralty (David McKechnie). Will Josephine follow her heart or honour her father’s wish?

The plot is silly, sure, but the audience are carried along with all the sheer bonhomie in the room. The performers seamlessly and hilariously switch from burly, surly sailors to their ‘lady’ visitors; the cousins and the sisters and the aunts.

And with those infectious tunes and that beautifully constructed libretto, it is a charming comic operetta perfectly staged.

If you get a chance go see. It ends this Saturday.

"Daddy" - A Melodrama @ Almeida Theatre...

Last Thursday night Stuart and I went to see the UK premiere of Jeremy O. Harris's gripping, modern, and powerfully political play "Daddy" - A Melodrama at the Almeida Theatre in London's glitzy Islington.

Featuring male nudity, a gospel choir, an infinity pool (complete with towels for the first two rows of the audience), and a karaoke version of George Michael’s "Father Figure" this play depicts a corrosive relationship between a young black artist and an older white art collector. An inter-generational and inter-racial S&M relationship.

Directed by Danya Taylor, the set is a sleek visual lookalike of David Hockney’s 1971 "Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)"

The young artist Franklin is played rather wonderfully by Terique Jarrett and the creepy art collector Andre by Claes Bang.  Andre has 'collected' the young African-American artist - but who is using who?

The chit-chat starts fairly lightly and continues that way as Franklin’s young friends come to hang out and swim in that inviting pool. His bestest friend, Max (John McCrea), is funny and cute, as is Franklin’s other best friend, Bellamy (Ioanna Kimbook), both of whom benefit from some smart use of costumes (by Montana Levi Blanco) and props (Love, love, love Bellamy’s giant sun hat.)

Then things change. 

There is a real va-va-voom visitor, Franklin’s Mama Zora, played to the heavens by Sharlene Whyte, who is so divine she brings a small gospel choir (Rebecca Bernice Amissah, Keisha Atwell and T’Shan Williams) with her. The original vocal music and arrangements are by Darius Smith and Brett Macias and sound just like secular gospel should sound. With Zora on the scene, Mummy and Daddy can really go mano-a-mano for Franklin’s love and devotion. While these two go at it, Franklin steadily deteriorates into infancy, which manifests itself in his unlovely habit of sucking his thumb.

I won't give away the ending - it takes its time to get there (a nearly three-hour running time) - but suffice to say we had lots to talk about on the walk home.

Not a perfect play, but packed full of great ideas.

God’s Own Junkyard…

Yesterday Tim, Andy, Darren, Vince and I went to see  dazzling neon nivarna God’s Own Junkyard. 

Nirvana? Oh yes. A place of perfect peace and happiness, like heaven. The highest state that someone can attain, a state of enlightenment, meaning a person's individual desires and suffering go away.  And a few sex jokes thrown in. Go see. It’s free. 

Frozen @ Theatre Royal Drury Lane...

On Wednesday night I went to see the musical Frozen at Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London's glitzy West End.

If you liked the 2013 film (I did), you'll love this (I really did).

This musical extravaganza about estranged sisters, an icy kingdom and unharnessed supernatural powers arrived in the West End from Broadway as part of a plan to stage five Frozens around the world in one year. As canny as that seems commercially, a mega-successful animation does not always translate into a stage hit, even with Disney money thrown at it.

Only, like The Lion King, this one does. It's a hit!

The show is packed with visual thrills, gorgeous choreography (by Rob Ashford), and those lovely signature ballads. It is big on spectacle yet never loses control with special effects that yield some dazzling coups de theatre. And yet, beyond those visual thrills and powerful ballads, this adaptation brings an unexpected depth to the relationship between two tortured sisters.

Directed by Michael Grandage, it has music and lyrics by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez – who created the songs for the film – and a book by Jennifer Lee, who wrote the screenplay. The production takes a few scenes to come into its own and the opening appears like a too-exact replica of the animation. Young Anna wistfully sings about building a snowman with her sister outside the room in which Elsa has barricaded herself, playing out the same tics and vocal inflections of her cartoon counterpart. It carries that ersatz feel even as the older versions of the sisters are introduced - bold, goofy, full of yearning Anna - and Elsa, a melancholy ice queen from the off.

Gradually, however, it grows to become its own magical thing, with some charming inventions and a few new songs (the best of which is an audacious comic number, appearing out of nowhere to satirise the Nordic notion of hygge as naked characters conga out of a sauna). What is more surprising than the uniformly storming singing voices and the theatrical razzmatazz is the sense of a real, beating heart in the relationship between the two tortured sisters.

Elsa is soaked with sadness as she speaks of the “monstrous” magic within her and the stage comes alive every time she sings. She is a far more emotionally expressive princess than in the film – an oddball stranded with her super-powers, like a lonely character from The Incredibles. The Oscar-winning power ballad Let It Go grows in strength here, saturated with emotional drama as she sheds off her old identity to embrace the magic within and take control of her destiny.

Based on Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, the story has darkness at its heart with the death of parents and the difficulties of sisterhood. It is revised in a way to contain not just self-acceptance and empowerment but also to resist simplified notions of good and bad – when Elsa strikes a fatal shard of ice into Anna’s heart, we do not consider her the “evil” snow queen. And while the sisters harm each other, they save each other too and bear flecks of Angela Carter’s brave, misbehaving girls in their adventuring fairy-tale spirits.

The ice-seller Kristoff is lumbering, earnest and utterly winning as Anna’s sidekick and Anna’s beau, Hans, is duly duplicitous. There is nifty puppetry too: Olaf the snowman is manipulated by Craig Gallivan who looks, disconcertingly, just like him minus the carrot for a nose, while Kristoff’s reindeer, Sven, is a big, delightful puppet. There are nimbly executed freezing effects when Elsa unwittingly casts her spell and then, at the end, the landscape melts back to warm colours. These transformational moments video-designed by Finn Ross are big and blinding, and there are breath-taking displays of fizzing light (by Neil Austin) and crackling sound (by Peter Hylenski).

Christopher Oram’s set design bears layers of visual effects, from a back screen of sky that conjures a perpetual swirl of the Northern Lights and an intricate grid of snowflakes. A central costume change – when Elsa is turned from a dutiful royal in robes to shimmering ice queen, dressed in white – brings gasps from adults as well as children in the audience.

The messages at this story’s core may be typically saccharine Disney ones – that it is vital to embrace your own magic and that love can thaw the coldest of hearts ­– but they are nevertheless true and important for the army of young Elsas and Annas out there.