A Breakfast Of Eels...

Our mate and playwright David Eldridge recommended that Stuart and I go and see Robert Holman's A Breakfast Of Eels at The Print Room in Notting Hill Gate. So glad he did.

"You have to go and see 'A Breakfast Of Eels'. It is a shattering and beautiful play. Scintillating, ardent, rattles the bones and tears at your heart. It's like a cantata in play form but there is little stately. It is urgent, of London and of what it is to be a modern man with exquisitely turned heart and guts acting. Matthew Tennyson and Andy Sheridan give performances of such truth and commitment in a lovely production."

I couldn't have put it better myself. Wonderful show. Stuart and I loved it. Thanks for the recommendation Dave!

1984...

Last Thursday Stuart and I went to see 1984 at the Almeida Theatre in London's glitzy Islington. It was a slightly confusing production as it repeated traveled from a book reading club in 2050 back to the events of 1984 and back again without much indication of the time jump.

There was no interval so the production had a chance to ramp up the tension as Winston Smith gradually began to realise the doublethink/thoughtcrime/newspeak hell he was living in. The final half a hour got quite harrowing with the torture scene although we were assured no rats were harmed in the making of the show.

My review: Brave but rather confusing.

The Sound Of Music at Open Air Theatre Regents Park...

Last night Stu and I went to see nuns and Nazis singing and sinning in the park. That's the nuns doing the singing and the Nazis doing the sinning not the other way around.

Stu's favourite musical is The Sound Of Music and the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre put on a great show. The leads were excellent, the script funny, the supports acted well, the kids were great and the orchestra did us proud.

It was the regular musical version with the oft omitted songs re-added and the score in the correct order - not the mixed up film version order.

One funny bit was the abbess saying VERY dis-tinct-ly... "What is it you... CAAAN'T.. face?" Which produced loads of sniggers.

We loved it and are planning a return visit.

The Mikado...

Last Friday night Stu and I went to see Jonathan Miller's production of The Mikado staged by the ENO at the Colesium in London's glitzy West End.

Essentially it was Mr Selfridge The Musical. And none the worse for that. Three little maids from school are we...

Jumpy...

Last night Stu and I went to see Jumpy starring the lovely Tamsin Greig at The Duke of York's Theatre in London's glitzy West End.

Tragedy played as farce it was witty, sexy, moving and at times a down right riot. It was also a bit Ab Fab (with Doon Mackichan as Patsy Stone.)

The Mousetrap...

Last Friday Stu treated me to a night out at the theatre. We went to see The Mousetrap - now in it's 60th year - in London's glitzy West End.

It's a dated whodunnit but not without it's charm.

I got it straight off. Stu thought it was the usherette.

You Me Bum Bum Train...

Last night Sarah, Roger, Stuart and I went to Stratford - not to watch The Games this time but to play a game. Of sorts. We went to ride You Me Bum Bum Train. The personal theatrical experience that we love so much. It was amazing, powerful, funny & bizzare! Top notch!

It's hard to explain without giving the secrets away. It's like going to the theatre but you don't sit - you walk, crawl and (sometimes) get carried through the performance. There's a cast of hundreds but they all perform just for you. You go one at a time and you can either simple watch, laugh or take part as you want. It's brilliant. And very funny. You all meet up at the end and talk about what has just happened. Everyone wants to do it again!

"This is the eighth time the Bum Bum Train has pulled into London and the format is largely unchanged: each audience member is taken on their own immersive, interactive ride, stopping off at a series of disconnected scenes manned by some 200 volunteers. The experience relies entirely on surprise, but we can say the latest concoctions from creators Kate Bond and Morgan Lloyd are astonishing in both their realism and their logistics. Contrary to common criticism, they're about more than just spectacle. The show challenges your creativity, confidence and courage, allows the timid to find a voice and extroverts to revel. Perhaps more subtly, it prods at notions of control and trust. It's a very special 45 minutes indeed: eye-opening, magical, memorable and utterly unique."

Babel...

Last night Stu went to see Babel in London's leafy Caledonian Park in Islington. We met up with Oliver and his friend too.

Babel was a theatrical event in situ consisting of 300 actors and performers like no other. An 'immersive theatrical experience' it says here.

In the original Tower of Babel story God confounded mankind by making them speak in different languages for daring to build a tower to the Heavens. The Babel London crew were going to bring us all back together with the mantra "today's the day." It was a lofty ambition.

Upon entering the park we walked around the perimeter through the undergrowth coming across person after person. The odd thing about these people were that they weren't just standing there. They were perched in trees, they were ironing, typing, reading poetry, sleeping, cooking, watching television, vacuuming the grass, you name it. It was very "performance." But not wholy inaffective. As to what it meant - we were hoping to find out. "Today's the day" they said.

After the soujourn in the trees we entered the centre of the park proper where they were various structures - a cafe, a bar, stages, platforms etc.. There were actors, dressed mainly as members of the public, who performed songs, played instruments, danced and told stories. So far so good.

Then after an hour or so the fake 'Big Brother' policemen who had been guarding us, the ladies in white who had been standing around and various other actors all started the show proper. They had been building bamboo houses at the front of the park near the large clock tower. The speakers boomed out "everyone get back, the houses have to be moved." And the people cried out "no". The houses got moved all the same though. Someone got "arrested" for taking a stand and taken into the tower. There was a got of clever projection onto the tower. A bit of absailing up it and down it. The actors booed and hissed their oppressors. He man got rescued. The End.

To call the whole thing amateurish would be a disservice as it was indeed a part amateur production. And being the first night there were a few technical 'pauses' which were perhaps to be expected.

It was an ambitious project - in terms of scale at any rate - and ultimately it failed in it's basic requirement - to be any good. The 'Big Brother' type plot just didn't really work.

It was a bit like a festival with lots of theatre types doing their best to show off. A smaller show, more tightly produced would have worked better for me I think. Oh well. Good to have gone but hard to recommend to others I'm afraid.

Noises Off...

Last Saturday Stu and I treated my mother and father to an afternoon at the theatre. We went to see Michael Frayn's Noises Off at the the Novello Theatre in London's glitzy West End.

I have to say we loved it. We laughed and laughed. It's basically a farce - which can be hard to pull off anyway - written as a very clever deconstructive piece using the grammar and language of the genre to spoof itself.

The title comes from the theatrical stage direction indicating sounds that are meant to originate offstage. The conceit of a play within a play then hurtles along at breakneck speed following the backstage antics of a touring theatre company as they stumble their way through rehearsals to a shambolic first night and a final disastrous performance.

Celia Imrie's Dotty Otley was brilliant and deserves the Olivier Award for Best Actress.

If you get a chance - go see!

Texting In The Cinema...

"Ma'am, you may be free to text in all the other theaters in the Magnited States of America, but here at our 'little crappy ass theater', you are not. Why you may ask? Well, we actually do give a f*$k."
"We do not tolerate people that talk or text in the theater. In fact, before every film, we have several warnings on screen to prevent such happenings. Occasionally, someone doesn't follow the rules, and we do, in fact, kick their asses out of our theater. This video is an actual voicemail from a woman that was kicked out of one of our Austin theaters. Thanks, anonymous woman, for being awesome."

Ecstasy...

Stu and I went to see a revival of Mike Leigh's 1979 play Ecstasy at the Hampstead Theatre. The play, using beautifully observed social realism, covers the life of four blue-collar friends living in a ratty area in London near Kilburn High Street and the drunken frustration in their lives, namely that of the lead character Jean. Jean is a suicidal garage attendant who sleeps with unsuitable men, like Roy, drinks heavily and has abortions. Her friend from Birmingham, Dawn, who has had three children, brings back her husband Mick, an Irish labourer, and his quiet friend, Len, to Jean's bleak Kilburn bedsitter, - 'their second act ensemble trumpets the dark night of the soul, in what is at once one of the best and gloomiest party scenes in contemporary drama.'

Ostensibly a portrait of despairing solitude but, set in the first few months of the first Thatcher government, it also rings a warning bell of the hellish impact of urban poverty.

I Drink the Air Before Me...

Last night Stu, Darren and I went to see Stephen Petronio's I Drink the Air Before Me at the Barbican Theatre.
The title comes from The Tempest where Ariel says, "I drink the air before me, and return. Or ere your pulse twice beat." And surely the piece was a meditation on storms - external and internal.
Captain Petronio, decked out like Captain Haddock, oversaw the show from up his makeshift mast. He initiated proceedings with “Salty Dog Blues.” (“If I can’t be your salty dog, I won’t be your man at all.”) What followed was at times fabulous, at times interesting and at times frankly rather boring. It wasn't that the performing was inconsistent or in anyway below par. It just lacked any strong narrative. There seemed to be little connecting the movements and although the theme of storms was fine there was just not much that it actually told us.

Shirley Valentine...

Last night Stu and I went to see Shirley Valentine at the Trafalgar Studios in London's glitzy West End. The one-character play starred the marvelous Meera Syal as Shirley, a middle-aged, working class Liverpool housewife. The play is a monologue focusing on her life before and during a transforming holiday abroad to Greece.
Originally performed at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool in 1986, it reappeared at the Vaudeville Theatre in 1988 starring Pauline Collins and directed by Simon Callow. So successful was it they all transferred to Broadway and an award winning film was made in 1989.
Ms Syal was blooming marvelous. She acted her socks off, had us in fits of laughter and got the tone of the piece just right. Best line: "That's right, Millandra, I'm going to Greece for the sex! Sex for breakfast! Sex for dinner! Sex for tea! And sex for supper!"

Les Misérables...

Last night Stu, Fay, Andy and I went to see Les Misérables at the Barbican Theatre. Oh, my giddy aunt - what a show! We are all big fans but nothing had quite prepared us for what we saw. It was breath-taking. We cried with joy and pain.
It was the brand new 25th anniversary production of Boublil and Schönberg's legendary musical with glorious new staging and spectacular reimagined scenery inspired by the paintings of Victor Hugo. The musical actually started out at the Barbican Theatre way back in 1985. And apparently this is the first time anywhere in the world that two productions of the same musical are playing in the same city.
Well we just loved it - from the moving (both senses) back-projection to the great set, from the fabulous acting to the great singing. There were show-stoppers aplenty (including one perhaps not on the running order).
We had great seats too! If you get a chance, go.

The Lion King...

On Saturday night Dean, Mark and I went to see The Lion King at The Lyceum Theatre in London's glitzy West End.

It was as great a show as I remember it and we had seats right at the front so really got into the action. Mind you, I don't remember seeing that giant elephant the first time. Real wow stuff.

The music still sounds good after all these years and the actors were spot on their marks for both the singing and the dancing. The comic timing wasn't bad either.

The adult Simba wasn't quite to my taste - too many muscles and too light a voice - but minor quibbles aside it was, as I say, a great show.

Definitely worth a 1st, 2nd or 3rd look.

Hair...

Stop me if you've heard this one before.... The first proper date Stu and I went on was to see a revival of the 1967 hippy musical Hair at the Gate Theatre in 2005. Twelve years earlier than that coincidentally we'd both seen the same 1993 production at The Old Vic starring Sinitta and John Barrowman.

We are both big fans. Obviously.

So naturally we went to see the Broadway revival at the Gielgud Theatre with the original New York cast a month or two ago.

And we just couldn't keep away so few weeks ago we went again.

And guess what? We still couldn't keep away. So we went yet again last night. Still at the Gieldgud Theatre and still with the original New York cast.

Well, you would wouldn't you?

Hair is undoubtabably a great musical. A rock musical no less. The first of its kind. It explores dramatic themes throughout, most of which are displayed right there on stage; swearing, drug use, overt sexuality, anti-war, anti-racism and nudity. What's not to like?

The songs are great too; Aquarius, Donna, Sodomy, Ain't Got No, Hair, Be-In (Hare Krishna), Good Morning Starshine and of course the seminal Let the Sun Shine In.

This production really does the material justice. It is active, energetic and enthusiastic. Simply staged it allows the great singing to come to the fore. Last night the audience were involved from start to finish being encouraged to join in as the action on the stage bled into the auitorium. Climbing over the seating the cast sang, danced, handed out posters and passed round flowers. By the finale the audience were so involved they flooded onto the stage to join in the fun. Naturally we just had to join them (again).

We probably liked it even more the third time of viewing. I wonder if we can sneak in a fourth and final time before it closes on 4th Sept?