How to hold your breath @royalcourt @acgrayling @ZinnieH @maxinepeakenews

A little group of us met at the Royal Court to see How to Hold Your Breath, written by Zinnie Harris and with Maxine Peake in the lead role.

Before the play, we attended the related Big Idea talk, 'How to find the Good' presented by Oxford teacher of Philosophy A.C. (Anthony) Grayling. He defined ethics and morals using classical stories to espouse ways to answer the Socratic question of how should one live one's 1000 months well. Grayling promotes humanism, whilst drawing in this talk mainly upon the gods and philosophers of Greece to illustrate his points.

I like his ideas around secularly finding one's own path although there needs to be a basic supportive context in which to achieve this. He talks of resisting habits which simply consume living without creating high points and of the need to spend the most productive 250 months well. In 45 minutes he was able to open many lines of thinking. A spike to add to my life collection. If we all light up we can scare away the dark.

And then, after pause for refreshment and chatter, I took up a front row balcony seat as the devil had a one night stand with Dana the customer relations expert. Now the devil doesn't like being in debt, but his attempts to pay Dana were rebuffed and led to a ratcheting spiral of descent for Dana in what became an increasingly fractured Europe.

This devil has a Mephistophelian scar across his chest where his soul has been removed. Unlike in Faust, we see Dana apparently having an upper hand because of the debt. In Goethe, Faust is trying to find the essence of life (ahah, an AC Grayling connection) and Mephistopheles manipulates the world to help him see it. In this we see equivalent manipulations as the devil attempts to extract the 45 Euro debt repayment from Dana.

And this devil plays hardball. After low-key initial attempts, he just keeps increasing the pressure. We see the ruin of economic Europe, personal tragedy and horror as the play unfolds.

There's some set-piece staging too, with interventions from a difficult librarian who mainly seems to stock 'how to' guides. There's also a Greek chorus of interviewers for what could be Dana's next job.

Maxine Peake's performance is extremely strong, and the immediate accompanying cast of her sister(Christine Bottomley), the devil(Michael Shaeffer) and librarian(Peter Forbes) all play well. Other characters are less developed and are there chiefly as instruments of the production. In a play that mixes together a wide range of plot-lines, Zinnie Harris creates many themes to deal with in the 2 hour continuous run-time.

When we chatted again afterwards, I said I was really pleased to have seen this - which has been written with quite some ambition. It wasn't what I was expecting, and because of the many different strands, we could take away different elements from the production's ideas. Like Grayling suggested, it's important to have the right personal character to take away the right action from a situation.

cabin in the country and a few musical numbers

I could tell we were in the countryside.

"Do you have any hunting guns with you?" came the request from the check-in desk.

...or maybe I'm in an episode or Eastenders?

No, we were in West Sussex, about to stay in some wooden cabins before heading to a show in a nearby Chichester.

The potentially rustic room had a modern twist, and gave us a sound base for our evening.

Then to Chichester Festival Theatre, where we watched the show 'Gypsy', featuring Imelda Staunton excellently playing the Momma Rose mother
to Gypsy Rose Lee. I had to admit that I've never seen any production or movie so it was an entire surprise to me.

I last saw Imelda Staunton in that recent Brit-com Camden Town gays support Welsh miners movie "Pride" where she played the Welsh town committee ringleader. In Gypsy she gets some really big songs and plays them for keeps. The other cast members, which includes Kevin Whatley as Bernie the agent, play well but are at least a notch or two below Staunton's performance.

I think the original treatment is from 1950-something. To my mind there were a few curious jumps in the logic of the production, which I suppose is in the nature of musicals, but here somehow mildly confused my sense of the story. That's not to say it wasn't easy enough to follow, but it did feels as if the main Acts had been somehow gaffer-taped together.

None of that detracts from the wisecracking Sondheim lyrics and the surprisingly elaborate staging, with West-End level false perspective rotating rooms and stage entrances via whizzy platforms.

There was also a very strong orchestra and a less common nowadays overture at the start of each half.

So, an evening's entertainment, and a cracking performance from Staunton, before we headed back to the far from silent wooden huts in the countryside.

The Book of Mormon

The cab driver looked slightly quizzical.

"You know what it's like?"

We said we did.

"Only some people really like it and others really hate it"

He sniggered. He was one that liked it.

"It's really raw. really raw."

What wouldn't be fun about the sell-out show about Mormons leaving training camp to go doorbell ringing?

That they advertise the show on buses with the line "Can someone get me a ticket?!" indicates its popularity.

That we were somehow front row circle is still a mystery to me. The safety curtain is a star field, before being transported initially via Disney-esque animatronics to the All-American Prophet Joe from Rochester, New York as he discovers the golden plates of the Third Book.

I won't mention the main plot or setting, because it's better to see it the first time without knowing too much. What I will draw from the liveliness of the audience is the conclusion that most people were the 'likers'.


Slick, multi-dimensional, bawdy, a starkness to contrast the cheesiness of the cheery Salt Lake City. Rather more cultural references than it would seem possible to include. Even the dancing paper coffee cups were in the right place.

The bimodal distribution of the reviews is quite understandable. Most will give a five or a one.

And, yes, having a saying does make it all seem better.

And the real Mormon missionaries outside the theatre afterwards were doing a roaring trade harvesting email addresses.

30 million minutes with Dawn French

I've just been to see the Dawn French solo show which was funny, poignant and like a very entertaining and somewhat personal conversation.

It'd be unfair to call it a stand-up show and was constructed as a series of carefully crafted segments from Dawn's life.

The 30 million minutes of the show's title refers to her time alive (around 50-something of our earth years) and she talked and acted her way through some of the significant moments. This was story-telling rather than gag-driven humour in a way that creates its own niche.

Completely by chance we were in the front row for this show, set on a simple black stage with AV back projections mainly comprising family photos and a few short film clips. The simplicity belied what was actually an incredibly slick set of production values. It all worked, giving bitter-sweet insights into being Dawn French, bundled with some life affirmation for the audience.

Of course Dawn also acts for a living and was able to bring in a level of emotion beyond that of many comedians. There was also good physical humour all of which added to the way that Dawn owned the stage. The audience were engaged from the very first minute of the show.

I didn't know much about Dawn French's past: her childhood as an RAF child partly spent in Cyprus; the sadness of her father's suicide; Billie, her adopted child with Lenny Henry. By the end of the evening I knew the difference between her two grannies (the naughty one and the nice one) and where to sell jewellery in Plymouth.

The show's focus was on personal life and there were only passing references to many of her show-biz exploits and friends. This wasn't tittle-tattle from the set of Vicar of Dibley or how French and Saunders got along.

So, two excellent helpings - another 120 added to those minutes, with a toffee ice-cream in between. A ten-finger point back to the stage. Yeah.

Cabaret opening night

We found ourselves in the Weimar Republic on Thursday evening. Okay, it wasn’t Berlin, we were in Bromley, having traversed about a hundred miles of back-streets to get to the Theatre because of a jammed motorway.

We were along to see the first night of a new production of Cabaret, the dark musical that starts at new year 1931 in pre-Second World War Berlin.

I think I’ve seen three very different versions of the stories by Christopher Isherwood, which is set mainly in apartments and at the KitKat Club during the time when Berlin was a pivot between a hedonistic cabarat world and the terrifying rise of the Nazi party.

I’m guessing most people are familiar with the film version of the story starring Liza Minnelli, Michael York and Joel Grey. There’s many similarities in the stage version although the story lines chosen are different. The film musical is already dark but suffice to say the stage version is even darker with a most ‘un-Hollywood’ ending.

This version follows the story of the struggling American writer Cliff Bradshaw as he arrives in Berlin on New Year’s Eve and befriends Ernst who rapidly introduces him to the ways of Berlin.

He meets nightclub singer Sally Bowles and they share an apartment in a house full of colourful bohemian characters. There’s a parallel doomed love interest - different from the film version but entirely in keeping with the main story themes.

The backdrop of the increasingly violent persecution of Jews in Germany rachets up throughout the action.

The whole story telling is framed by the EmCee, who opens the show and provides narration becoming a sort of cipher for what is happening in Germany.

Will Young plays the chameleon of the EmCee, singing the difficult lyrics with deft Berlin intonation. Equally strong is Michelle Ryan playing a cut glass English Sally Bowles, also strongly singing tremendously well-known songs from the show.

There’s an excellent band who kick up a Kurt Weill-like atmosphere driven from John Kander’s musical score. There’s the additional songs that tell other parts of the story and are sung away from the KitKat Club.

The ensemble dancers and singers provide great energy, decadence and promiscuity both in the club scenes during cabaret performances and also in the various backstage and other moments.

The staging uses mainly black flats, lit to provide atmosphere, as well as plenty of Kabaret style flashing lights.

This being a first night, there were some attempts to involve the audience in parts of the show and I can see that this will develop as the cast get more fully into their roles. This could also be tricky, given the nature of some parts of the show.

I noticed that certain elements from the symbolism of what was happening in Germany had already been dialled down in the performance.

There’s no pictures yet from the show, which hasn’t reached Press Night status yet and it will be interesting to see how it develops as it moves to the London stage in a few weeks.

Not from the show, but clearly a musical influence from the time, I’ve picked this little 1930-ish recording of Lotte Lenya singing Kurt Weill's "Mackie Messer."

spring awakening, malaysian supper and martini cocktails

I'll come clean, I was late.

My ticket was left in the lobby and the others were already watching when I arrived late for Spring Awakening at the Novello.

The play/musical is set in a 19th Century German school and is an emo teenage self discovery piece, from an original Frank Wedekind script from the 1890s updated with angsty rock music.

I'm guessing Frank didn't have a very good time of it, judging by the storylines of this play which was banned when it was first shown in its original form.

Many of the story arcs describe young hopes dashed upon the rocks of ill fortune with gothic paths of teenage self destruction at every twist.

Its still an interesting piece and has a strong cast who keep the pace through a story which ends gloomily and then gets picked up again in a couple of refrains to re-lift the audience.

Then out into the Aldwych and across to Suka, where we'd booked a 10:30 table for a late supper. Malaysian dishes to accompany stories of Mel's recent visit to Melbourne, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Followed by a short walk to the Purple Room for some frisky Martini cocktails.

I could tell I was back in London.