Untold Stories...

Last Thursday Stu and I went to see Alan Bennett's Untold Stories at The Duchess Theatre in London's glitzy West End.

The show consisted of a double bill - Hymn and Cocktail Sticks.

Performed by Alan Bennett looky-likey Alex Jennings is was a gentle evening of self-aware exploration.

Hymn was a memoir of music in childhood and was an autobiographical piece that focuses on a particular part of Bennett’s past - hymns and his father's attempt to make him learn the violin.

Cocktail Sticks delved deeper into Bennett's family life revealing his mother's keenness to fit in socially and the pinnacle of which for her would have been to host a cocktail party.

All good fun and although retreading some familiar ground it rather like being in the company of an amusing friend for the evening i.e. time very well spent.

People...

Last night Stu and I went to see Alan Bennett's new play People at the Lyttelton Theatre on London's glitzy South Bank.

Not quite as gripping as The History Boys or The Habit of Art it tells the story of a run down country house and the dilemma the current lady owner (Frances de la Tour's wonderful Dorothy), her sister and companion have in disposing of it. Death duties, porn films, a shady consortium and the National Trust all are circling.

It's the National Trust though that comes in for must ridicule. It's compared unfavourably to the Anglican Church in it's irrelevance, it's pomposity and it's shameless (and shameful) self-marketing.

They want to turn everything into a visitor attraction says Bennett. There is nothing they won't exploit. And harsh though it may be, Bennett puts these words in their mouth, there is ‘nowhere that is not visitable. That at least the Holocaust has taught us.’ Ouch.

Betty Blue Eyes...

Last night Stu and I went to see the rather fabulous new musical Betty Blue Eyes at the Novello Theatre in London's glitzy West End.

Starring Sarah Lancashire and Reece Shearsmith the story is based upon Alan Bennett's sharply observed comic film A Private Function.

"Belts are being tightened and the country’s long-suffering citizens are being told by the government that there will be fair shares for all in return for surviving Austerity Britain. Meanwhile local officials feather their own nests by taking far more than their own fair share. It is of course 1947, and having won the war Britain seems to have lost the peace, and the country is staggering under the burden of acute rationing, unemployment and the coldest winter for decades. The only bright spark on the horizon is the impending marriage of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip."

The notable songs of the night were Betty Blue Eyes, Magic Fingers, Painting By Heart, Dance at the Primrose Ballroom, The Kind of Man I Am, Another Little Victory and Sarah Lancashire's stomping Nobody.

The songs were great, the acting wonderful and comic timing spot on. May it run and run.