I have a fun bit of unemployment and Phoebe has half term, so we’re making the most of the novelty of a mid-week West End matinee. £25 limited view tickets for Teeth ‘N’ Smiles was the conclusion. They weren’t kidding, we did lose a good third of the stage, which to be fair was mostly inconsequential until it wasn’t. It’s hard now, a few hours later, to recount the plot instead of the premise. I’m not sure all that much of any real consequence happens in this. The premise is that a punk-ish rock band gets hired to play a Cambridge college end of year ball, and while some things then happen, nothing really… evolves, narratively, thematically, plotwise. And it’s not quite got a strong enough cast to carry it as an ensemble piece of enjoying spending time with the characters. The curse of needing your actors to also play instruments means that they’re not necessarily the best at either, so Rebecca Lucy Taylor does stand out as a result. The rest, by contrast, does have a little bit of a sixth form drama vibe. The music is good (although oddly balanced across the two acts - 2 songs in the first half, 6 in the second), but not quite committed too enough to carry the whole. I didn’t have a bad time, but not my favourite.
With the matinee of Dracula cancelled at the last minute, I am a bit more refreshed for a nap in time to head into London later than expected for Romeo and Juliet. This one fits into a weird limbo zone, in that there is to some degree stunt casting (Noah Jupe and Sadie Sink respectively) but that’s not why I’m here (I like Jupe enough, but can’t say I made a beeline here for him, and I’ve never watched Stranger Things, so…). So really I’m just here because I want to see Romeo and Juliet. I broadly get that? I’m not fully sold on the whole thing, but didn’t hate it. Most of the cast are saying the words but not really imbuing them with meaning - it feels like recitation more than performance. The revelation, though, is Sadie Sink, sitting somewhere between Emma Stone in Easy A and Emma Stone in La La Land (it’s not just the red hair, honest). “Wherefore art thou [etc.]” is delivered with such heart and angst, it’s a joy to behold. The staging is minimal but effective - the use of implied space in creating a nightclub scene is a lot of fun. There are two end-of-act needle drops, one horribly on the nose (“I Don’t Like Mondays” indeed), but Adrienne Lenker’s “not a lot just forever” is done to great effect at the end of the play (the hard cut on “so I bash around the house and the poison stains my mouth”, divine). The most baffling element is the introduction in the first half of a strobe-light time reversal effect, detailing how else scenes could have played out. It’s not very well integrated into the rest of the staging, and in a play whose finale lives and dies on the idea of the tragedy of what else could have been, this effect is utterly wasted by the end. Deeply confusing. I enjoyed it with reservations, but at least it’s something to think about.
Hard to tell on this one, really. The audience were such that it’s hard to gauge how good Ferguson actually was, or what my impression of the whole thing was. We’ll start with them - I was surrounded by chippers-in, of all varieties: the “oh no!“s and “no way!“s; the repeating the punchline; the filling in the gap of the implied punchline lest anyone not understand they got it. And, in the least snobby way possible, laughing in the wrong way. My memory of Ferguson’s late night show was one of gleeful absurdism, earnestness, and empathy - think of his discussion of therapy, his interview with Desmond Tutu, his monologue going against the grain of talk show hosts making jabs at Britney Spear’s mental health. This is not the level the audience is engaging on, and so it’s hard to tell whether, in the absence of that, if Ferguson himself is operating on that level. Jokes that might be read a different way seem harsher in the light of that laughter. Is he playing with the idea of “you can’t say anything these days”, or is he steering into it? Beyond that, it’s a subtly structured show, with some off-the-cuff callbacks added in, and performed with great bonhomie. He does make it seem effortless. Still. A lot to ponder.
There’s a moment when Mulaney first walks on stage that is slightly disarming - a sense that this is somewhat not as slick as it might have been before. Maybe that’s a function of an earlier conversation with Alasdair about how for American comedians, the tour is not the artefact, the special is, so maybe there’s more of a WIP feel to it; maybe it’s the ruffled shirt and rolled up sleeves, a sharp contrast to the sharp suits of before; maybe it’s that, bafflingly, John Mulaney is performing at the Bristol Beacon. I still can’t quite conceive it. It’s a lot of fun, some good local material up front (“I love the Bristol accent. No notes for five thousand years”) and the show itself is looser, if still classic Mulaney. A long routine about his custom party bags and his insistence that he’s not updating his references for the UK are perfect. The personal stuff about his Vietnamese family is a masterclass in tightrope walking. The turns of phrase (unfair to quote here in the spirit of the no phones policy) are immaculate. We are dweebs and go wait by stage door, where he is a consumate professional in how genuinely happy he is to meet us but how smoothly he moves people along once their time is done. He is thrilled that I think The Sack Lunch Bunch is the best thing he’s done, and he takes an actually lovely selfie of the three of us. He is tired enough to accidentally sign my vinyl addressed to himself, and I find that very funny. The supports - Mandal and Andrea Jin - are both very American in their own ways, but I enjoy both of them more than the supports the last time I saw Mulaney in London.
Big year for my favourite authors inexplicably coming to Bristol! This time, it’s Ben Lerner, author of The Topeka School amongst others, here to discuss his new (as yet unread by me) novel Transcription. Inasmuch as he gets the chance to. Olivia Sudjic, another favourite author of mine, is the moderator for this, and whilst she is an excellent writer (do read Sympathy!) and I have a lovely conversation with her after the event, book talk moderation is not amongst her skills. A little more conversation, a little less opining, please. But fighting his way through the jet lag, Lerner is insightful in his own laconic way about the way he writes and it makes me all the more excited for Transcription.
Putting a bow on the anniversary weekend is taking Alasdair to see the most heartwarming thing you can possibly see in London, the stage adaptation of My Neighbour Totoro. I saw it when it was first staged at the Barbican, and they’ve had to do some adapting of the staging to fit the stage at the Gillian Lynn. It remains as magical as ever, fully captivated from the first puppet. Alasdair revealed to me about 5 minutes before it started that he’d never even seen the film (which, yes, we’ll remedy), and even he was enchanted. It’s also a lot of fun how much the puppeteers are keying the children in the audience in to how this all works, when they are and are not meant to be visible on stage, and trusting that it all works. It’s just great theatre!
Galling to sit through a play written 6 months before you were born and realise that at least two or three ideas for scripts you had have been done here. Ah well. This is the kernel of our anniversary weekend, its last day of performances aligning nicely and being something that Alasdair really wanted to go to see. I’m a huge convert. Intricately written in both plot and dialogue, grasping at the big things without ever being polemical, and in this production some excellent staging and acting, with Isis Hainsworth as Thomasina being a real highlight. I think it got a little muddied in the last act, as Stoppard became too attached to his characters to end it when it narratively and thematically made most sense to, but I melted in the final 10 seconds because I’m a sucker for that kind of thing, so it’s a moot point really.
I’ll happily make a trip to Oxford on a Friday evening to see John Finnemore do one of his “Among Other” shows, and so what convenience that I had to do that. Joined by Margaret Cabourn-Smith to perform, in the first half, various (mostly) two-hander sketches from across the breadth of the Souvenir Programme back catalogue and, in the second half, one of his Double Act two-handers. Being a connoisseur of the former and a novice at the latter, they were equally fun in different ways. A delightful selection of sketches including the Wheels On The Bus (which did sadly make me aware of something worse than people singing along badly at gigs, which is people live-quoting a comedy sketch at a gig), the Gnu song, and my old favourite about hotel towels. The Double Act was “A Flock Of Tigers”, which was honestly quite touching in a lot of ways, whilst still being very funny. A surprise encore of a Since You Ask Me transformed one of my least favourite editions into a less-least-favourite edition. And, if I’m honest, I enjoyed a moment of schadenfreude of a child’s nascent attempt at living with main character syndrome being quietly dismissed out of hand. Parent better!
Alasdair’s Valentine’s Day present to me (cunningly hidden in our shared calendar as brunch with a friend of ours, but disappointing when I realised we weren’t getting to have that brunch with that friend - the perils of loving deception), a truffle making workshop at my favourite place. I opted to make vegan ones - it seemed churlish to not let Alasdair at least sample some of them - with a peppermint touch and a variety of coatings. Helen was an excellent tutor, and fair play, I left with 14 truffles, 8 pralines, and a large slab of chocolate as well, so absolutely not short-changed. A wonderful way to spend a morning, and we’ll see if I ever make them again at home.
Much like the Christmas preview evening last year, this is a wonderful opportunity to have a glass of fizz, sample some chocolates (and indeed some hot cross bun ice cream, a thrill to the taste buds), and support one of my favourite local businesses. We don’t stay long, but it’s nice to pop in.
Frankie briefly mentions at dinner a few weeks ago that he’s got his circus showcase coming up, and Matt and I are thrilled to indulge. I know Frankie’s been doing these classes for some time now (and has suffered the injuries accordingly), but never been able to see him in action. He’s very good at this! So much so that he’s in two different routines tonight, one solo and one group (the latter to the tune of La Bamba, of course). I think that makes him the only repeat performer, which says something. It’s sometimes hard to tell what is and isn’t impressive, but the routines that stand out to me are the ones where there’s some kind of concept to it. The monks that end the first half a prime example of that. An excellent way to spend a Sunday evening.
Oh my word. What an evening. Kearns - whose cogs you can hear turning when trying to riff at the best of times - gets thrown off about 20 minutes in by a barely intelligble heckler airing a many years old grievance about an interaction at a previous show about making fridge magnets. It’s beautifully defused in a very clever way of redirecting the anger at someone who can take it, but also heightens future potential interruptions. The show itself is classic Kearns, remarkably dense and emerging from such a rich persona. The comparison of the shared calendar to a chessboard, chef’s kiss. He’s one of the best we’ve got, and very happy to chat afterwards. Pat Cahill is a phenomenal support act, both in general and for Kearns, letting the audience know what to tonally expect while being completely different. A touch of Harry Hill, a glint of Sean Lock, but something quite different altogether.
At this point, I think if asked I would still name Ali Smith as my favourite author, and I am delighted that Christie has managed to nab her for a book talk. Smith is an easy raconteur, clearly happy to be talking to and at people, her mind making the connections and drawing the deeply held fragments of knowledge out of nowhere that characterise her writing - it’s just her, it really is. Insightful as to how she approaches writing, the way the seeds grow. I also get to meet her briefly and talk to her about using Boy Meets Girl to woo Alasdair, and she seems genuinely touched to be told that and we have a nice little conversation about the Greek myths.
Fair play to the Slapstick Festival, they’ve pulled a blinder here, convening Armando Ianucci, Rebecca Front, and Chris Addison to talk about the history of The Thick Of It. They’re all in good form and full of anecdotes (including, fatefully, Front trying to convince Lawrence Fox he shouldn’t join Twitter).
Even if it’s no longer quite at its peak, Not Going Out remains close to my heart as a sitcom. At its best, it couldn’t be beaten for gag rate or farcical plotting. So it’s a real treat to have Lee Mack in Bristol for the Slapstick Festival, talking about the history of the show. Thrilled, genuinely, to see actually never-before-seen clips from the original pilot with Catherine Tate, something I honestly never thought I’d get to see. It would have been a very different show. Well-wishing videos from Tim Vine and Sally Bretton reveal the origin of Mack’s pedantry over people saying they have two choices, which is a fun bit of minor lore I’m obsessed with. The Q&A is absolutely disrupted at the end by someone using it to propose to their partner, which tops every “more of a comment than a question” I’ve ever heard for worst instance of an audience question. Bravo. Afterwards, I get to tell Mack how much I used to love the Radio 2 show he did, which took him aback, as I might be the first person to have ever mentioned that to him. I do my best.