Category: not a book

concerts, not a book, previews, theatre

Not a Book: Second half of the year Lookahead

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It’s the morning after the night before. And away from the football after the book-ahead yesterday (why didn’t I call the post that!) it’s the not-book lookahead today. Which is mostly theatre, because the second half of the year isn’t great on the events in sports that Verity likes front. And it should be noted that aside from the Seurat exhibtion, I haven’t made it to any of the other exhibitions from the start of the year post, but I’ve still got time.

Let’s start with the stuff that’s happening first – this week coming I’m off to see Midnight at the Never Get at the Menier Chocolate Factory. It’s about the third preview that we’re going to so all I can tell you is that it’ stars Ben Platt, it’s set in 1965 and is about a secret nightclub act. I’m somewhat gutted that my trip clashes with England’s World Cup semi final, but I wasn’t thinking about that when I booked it! And while I’m mentioning the Menier, it would be out of character for me not to mention that their very excellent production of The Producers, which I have written about more times than I should have is closing in mid-September (and I will be tryng to get to it again before it does).

A slightly more known quantity is Jesus Christ Superstar at the Palladium. It opened earlier this week to very enthusiastic reviews (in the main) and has already added a run at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in the autumn to the summer run, as well as a tour early next year – which presumably must be based on incredible demand for tickets which is a surprise given that it’s been revived fairly regularly. What is maybe more surprising is that I’ve never seen JCS live so we’ll see how I find it.

The revival that I’m most excited about however is Rent. It’s got Gatan Matarazzo of Stranger Things as the big name in the cast (not that I’ve watched Stranger Things) and a really solid cast of West End performers, including Billy Nevers, who is currently in the aforementioned JCS revival. The original production Rent was one of the shows my sister and I saw on Broadway when we went on an epic trip back in the day and so I’m interested to see what this looks like, having missed Rent Remixed which was in the West End (briefly) about a year after that Broadway odyssey.

The same week that I’m seeing Rent, I’m also back at the RSC in Stratford to see Jonathan Groff in As You Like It. It’s an all-male production and Groff is making his RSC debut as Rosalind. As you know, I loved his performance in Merrily We Roll Along when I saw that in the cinema. I’ve never seen him perform live and it’s been a decade since he did anything on this side of the Atlantic, so I’m *very* excited about this. As You Like It is a Shakespeare that I’ve never seen or studied and writing this post has reminded me that I need to read the play befoe I go to see it.

And lets end with some music: I’m off to the Proms again this summer – this time to see the American Classics Prom, which has Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue which I’ve adored since Primary school and Berntein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side story (which I once played to the best of my poor ability at the Royal Festival Hall) and On the Town among other things. And I’m also off to see Caravan Palace again when they play London in November.

That pretty much covers off the stuff that I’ve got booked in already, but there are a few other things I want to try and get to that I haven’t got definite plans for yet (as well as that Producers revisit) like The Globe’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (currently trying to find a date that works for me), Pride the Musical at the National which I’m going to have to try and get to through their weekly ticket drops because it is incredibly sold out except for some very expensive tickes for preview shows this week, Cats at the Regents Park Theatre (it’s open air so it’ll be a last minute job) and Tartuffe (Remixed) in a small off West End theatre starring Mark Rylance, who remains the greatest actor I’ve ever seen live but the fight for tickets is going to be *wilde*. But I’m sure there will be more, and you’ll hear about the good stuff here on Sundays!

not a book, streaming

Not a Book: Child Star

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Happy Sunday, and if you’re sick of sport (and I’m sure some of you are!) I’ve got a pop culture documentary recommendation for you today.

Child Star is a documentary made by Demi Lovato and cinematographer Nicola Marsh looking at the trials and tribulations of being a child star, particularly around the issues that Lovato has faced as a former child star herself. She talks to other former child stars as well as looking at the history of child stars. This came out in 2024, but I clearly missed it when it originally came out and have only just found it on Disney+ – which is an interesting home for it in itself given that Lovato was a Disney child star herself.

There is a long history of child stars having well publicised issues as they grow up. So this was always going to be in my interest area. And honestly, the more I see and hear about what it was like for child stars, I become more convinced that children shouldn’t be allowed to be stars. Because oh boy there is so much damage on display her. Demi is quite clear eyed and reflective about her own experiences, and among the talking heads are other former child stars from different generations -among them Drew Barrymore, Raven-Symone, Christina Ricci and Jojo Siwa. I have long said that most of the children who are child stars have exactly the wrong sort of parents for parenting a child star and I’d love to watch a documentary about that too, but this is more about the impact on the children of fame and the pressure of having a job and adult responsibilities when you’re still a kid.

Towards the end of the documentary it gets into the latest evolution of child stardom – child influencers – and the lack of protections they have compared to the traditional entertainment industry – which is also an area that I’m super interested in and am waiting for the kids of family bloggers to grow up enough to have thoughts on – let alone the child influencers themselves. But that is another, longer story. This is a good look at what it was like to be a (Disney) child star in the early social media era and where that sits in the history of child performers. It’s not a cheerful watch, but it is an interesting one.

Have a good Sunday.

comedy, not a book

Not A Book: Mel Brooks

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Do not be confused by the name of the film – Mel Brooks is 100 today! He’s a comedy genius – and if you’ve missed how much I love the musical version of his movie The Producers, I don’t think you’ve been here much! I really wish I could find a clip that really shows you how genius the show is but I don’t think any of their showcase performances really demonstrates that, possibly because out of context some of the numbers.. well. How can you unleash Springtime for Hitler on people without the context that they’re trying to create the worst show ever seen so it closes straight away? Anyway, I think the closest is this one from the Big Night of Musicals.

I will be attempting to mark the occasion by watching that documentary I referenced at the top, and if I can’t manage that with the streaming services at my disposal, I will be watching one of his movies. And in case you were wondering, yes I am going to try and make it back to the West End version one more time before it closes in September.

Have a great Sunday – try not to melt in the heat!

concerts, not a book

Not a Book: Rufus Does Judy!

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I said last Sunday that I had two outings to chose from – and after telling you about The Tempest last week (which finished last night at Stratford) this week it’s Rufus Does Judy at the Albert Hall, which was basically the culmination of a near 20 year dream for me. But before we get to the review, the TV version of Scamanda is now on BBC iPlayer (having previously been on Disney+ in the UK). I saw someone watching this on their phone on the way home the other day – and noticed the BBC logo on the top corner and thought it was worth mentioning!

Back in 2006, Rufus Wainwright re-created Judy Garland’s legendary Carnegie Hall concert from 1961. After that first (double) performance at Carnegie Hall, he performed it in London twice in early 2007 and also Paris The Carnegie Hall original was recorded and released as a double CD in 2007. He also performed the concert at the Hollywood Bowl and then a couple of years later at the Royal Opera House. I have owned the CD since not that long after it was released – and tried and failed to get tickets to the Royal Opera House in 2011. So when I was served an advert on Instagram for a 20th anniversary version of the concert at The Royal Albert Hall for “the last time” I booked immediately, without needing to think about it at all.

All of which is to say that my expectations for this were frighteningly high. I listened to the album more times than I care to recall and Wainwright is one of my favourite artists generally – I think I’ve seen him in concert more than I’ve seen any other artist as you may remember from when I went to see him twice in the same night at the Proms. But the good news is that it was brilliant. The orchestra (conducted by Stephen Oremus) sounded fabulous and Rufus was on great form. The special guests on the night were Rufus’s sister Martha – who as you know I also love – and was part of the original concert album too and Nicole Scherzinger, who was not there 20 years ago, but made for an interesting addition and was wearing an amazing black sequinned dress which looked like a glittery oil slick (that’s a compliment). Also, I really loved Martha’s long shirt dress – I would totally wear that although maybe not in that bright red-orange. I thought the sound mix needed a little more Rufus and a little less of the of the band – but it was actually pretty good from where I was sat five rows back in the Rausing circle. If you want to know where I was, in picture 11 of the insta post below I was just to the right of the follow spot underneath the arches at the top.

Do I regret not spending more on my ticket to be closer? Well, yes a little – but it got very expensive to be closer and lower down front on – I think everything below me was over £100 and although I loved my seats in the choir for Want One and Want Two I knew that Rufus was going to be playing some piano himself in those so I would get a little bit of his face from where I was and as I said at the time it was a bit heavy on the brass there. So, on balance I think I did the right thing – I was front on, the sound was good and it was still one of the most expensive tickets I’ve had this year – on a par with the Branagh last weekend which was in a much smaller space. The bit I do regret is the large glass of wine I bought – which cost me more than I wish to admit and definitely more than I’ve ever spent on a drink at a venue before. I will remember that when it comes to my next trip to the RAH – which as it stands will be for a Prom in August.

Have a great Sunday!

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: The Tempest

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I had two outings this week to chose from today and I’ve gone with the Tempest for today (and the other can wait) because there is still a remote chance you might be able to go and see this one whereas the other was a total one off and if you weren’t there you’ve missed it forever.

This is the RSC’s latest production of The Tempest starring Kenneth Branagh as Prospero, in his first production with the RSC in about 30 years and directed by Richard Eyre. This is at least my third time seeing The Tempest* which makes it my second most seen Shakespeare (behind Twelfth Night, but ahead of Richard II) and as ever what I love about Shakespeare is the seemingly infinite number of ways that they can be interpreted and staged.

In this one, Prospero is a conductor – instead of a staff, he has a baton he waves to control the weather and the music that accompanies the show as well as orchestrating the movements of everyone else on the island using Ariel. And what an Ariel Amara Okereke is – suspended in the air, flying over the stage and singing – sometimes upside down. I always a sucker for the light relief in a Shakespeare play – and Trinculo (Keir Charles) and Stefano (Guy Henry) were brilliant as they plotted their drunken rebellion.

In the directors note in the programme, Eyre says that he has come to see the show through a post-colonial lens – “an island whose resources have been obtained through science and magic with a white master and two enslaved people. This element is unignorable. It is also a story in which a magician’s assistant is an invisible spirit, who manages a team of ‘spirits’, controls the weather, manipulates the enemies of Prospero like puppets and even teaches him that virtue is preferable to vengeance.” I can’t pretend to be an expert but I thought the concept and production really worked well. To me there was nothing that felt incongruous with the words I was hearing with the staging – and I’ve seen a few Shakespeare productions where that is not the case!

There is a week left in the run, which is why I’m posting this today – but every performance is showing as sold out on the RSC website at the moment. From the moment it was announced this was a hot ticket – I’m not even sure how much was left by the time it got out of member pre-sale. That said our tickets were returns that my friend snagged because she was checking the website in the hopes that something would appear, however that was back at the end of February (I was actually at the Courtauld for the Seurat when she rang me) way before the run started or the reviews came out.

There is also a chance I guess that this may come into London – like Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night did – although there may be a wait on that for a theatre and a gap in Branagh’s schedule. The next production at Stratford is a new version of Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard by Laura Wade (who wrote Home, I’m Darling and is also a writer on The Rivals) which also stars Kenneth Branagh as well as Helen Hunt and Bill Pullman and which is completely sold out for the whole run as well. It may be that whichever gets the better reviews gets the transfer – The Tempest got mostly four stars from all the big reviewers. I will be watching to see.

Have a great Sunday everyone.

*I’m a bit hazy because I have a friend who adores The Tempest and she remembers going to at least one production with me when we were at school that I can barely remember so there may be more!

not a book, streaming, tv

Not a Book: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

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I’m not going to lie, I had a different post in mind for today, but when news broke on Friday that Anthony Stuart Head had died, I went to delay Friday’s post to do a repost of my post about Buffy the Vampire Slayer only to realise that I have never written a post about Buffy. And so I thought that now was (sadly) the time to change this.

In case you have been living under a rock for the last nearly thirty years, I’m going to quote Anthony Stuart Head’s character Rupert Giles to explain the premise:

In every generation there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer

Buffy Summers might look like an ordinary teenage girl but she is the Slayer. At the start of the first season she’s just moved to Sunnydale, California after getting expelled from her school in LA*. She wants to make a fresh start only to discover that Sunnydale is also the Hellmouth – a mystical portal between earth and other dimension and basically the place that all demons are drawn to. Thus begins seven seasons of vampire hunting, demon slaying and teenage angst for Buffy and her group of friends – known as The Scooby Gang.

I’m going to date myself here, but I was basically the perfect age when this arrived on screens in the UK. Buffy was ever so slightly older than me and I wanted her outfits, her boyfriend (Angel! Oh Angel!) and her wisecracks. I hated school a lot of the time so a high school could literally be hell was also appealing. Coincidentally, I had been watching the first series (again) earlier this week and put it on again while I was writing this and within minutes there was one (“bad hair on top of that outfit?”). I recorded every episode on video (in order) so that my sister and I could watch them again (and again). I used IMDB’s quotes feature (already in existence even back then), Microsoft word and coloured paper to create a wall of quotes on the side of my desk. The reason I got into spoilers is because I went on the internet as soon as series two finished to find out (spoiler) if Angel was really dead.

Obviously vcrs became obsolete a long time ago, and my budget never stretched to the DVD boxsets, so it was only when Sy Fy did a complete repeat from the start sometime after I moved to Northampton that I realised how much of my sister and my shared language is pulled from Buffy because it was a staple of our Saturday nights in together**. I have a strong preference for the first three series which I will happily rewatch over and over and there are probably some from the final series that I’ve still only watched once or twice max, but I can recite you whole chunks of other episodes and if I close my eyes and think hard enough I can still conjure up the scene in the Yoko Factor (season four) where Angel completely mentally outwits (stupid) Riley after beating him up physically.

It’s another one of those things where I have absolutely no perspetive on how it would work for someone who has never seen it – the pretty girl fighting the baddies (not getting killed by them) is not as subversive/revelatory as it was then, but I still think it’s funny and clever and great and the special effects aren’t even too awful because the late 1990s was a work of practical effects, make up and long distance shots of stunt doubles with occasional bits of cgi rather than the cheap computer effects for everything that came a decade later. Oh and the soundtrack was cracking – I owned both “songs from” albums, and the cast recordig for the musical episode*** and my ambition was to be able to play the Buffy-Angel love theme on the piano. I know. It was a simpler time.

To go back to where I started – Anthony Stuart Head’s Giles is at the heart of the show in those first three years. He’s the fish out of water British Librarian but he’s also the father figure that Buffy needs in the absence of her real dad. The show is poorer when he’s not in it, and the world is poorer without him in it. Seventy two is no age. And obviously I’m sad as a fan of his work (he’s also brilliant in the radio sitcom Cabin Pressure and as Adam Klaus in the first episode of Jonathan Creek) but my thoughts are really with his daughters – their mum and his partner died in December and so to lose their dad so soon must be unimaginably devastating.

Here are some of season one’s best bits, featuring loads of Buffy, plenty of Giles and some Nicholas Brendon who also sadly died a couple of months back. The Buffy cast has had a really bad 18 months, as Michelle Trachtenberg, who played Dawn, died in February last year.

Go watch some Buffy -(or if you’re an F1 fan enjoy the Monaco GP and *then* watch some Buffy).

*in events in the original movie (with a completely different cast) that came out in 1992.

**Along with Clueless, She’s All That, Never Been Kissed, Ever After, Pretty Woman and the Richard Curtis oevre

***And I bet I could still sing along to pretty much all of it.

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: End of the Rainbow

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Happy Sunday everyone and I’ve got another theatre trip for you this week. I was going to save this for next weekend when we’re into Pride month, but this is a limited run and the tickets are getting very limited so I thought I’d maximise your chances of getting to see it by posting it sooner.

End of the Rainbow is a play by Peter Quilter about Judy Garland at the time that she was doing a series of concerts at the Talk of the Town. If you know your Judy lore, this is less than a year from her death and at the time that she was engaged to Mickey Deans who would become her fifth and final husband. This is the struggling with her addictions latter day Judy, and her relationships with both Deans and her pianist and friend Anthony are somewhat strained. This is a play with music – with rehearsals with Anthony in the hotel suite as well as performances with a band at the club. It’s also the source material for the movie Judy, which won Renée Zellweger an Oscar back in 2020.

If you’re a drag race fan you’ll know that Jinkx Monsoon did a very good Judy in Snatch Game on her All Stars season and she’s had success on Broadway in the last couple of years in musicals in Chicago, then Pirates! The Penzance Musical and then in the play Oh, Mary! but this is her first non-comedic acting role. And it’s a big one to take on because this play exists essentially as a showcase for whoever is performing as Judy – they need to be able to sing in a good enough facsimile of Garland and act their hearts out across comedic and tragic moments. And Jinkx is really, really good – better in the comedy and the singing than the tragedy, but pretty good all around. The audience that I saw it with went absolutely wild for it – and I enjoyed it just not as much as them!

But that said this isn’t my first time seeing End of the Rainbow – I saw the 2011 tour with Tracie Bennett, ahead of the transfer to Broadway. And my opinion on the play itself hasn’t changed – it’s a great concept and a great showcase, but it’s a bit long and doesn’t quite stick the ending and really hammers home Anthony’s role as an avatar for Judy’s gay fans in the second half in a way that is totally unsubtle and overdone (for me anyway). However it has a great band and great performances and they make up for a lot. If I’m nitpicking, I would say that the lack of height difference between the characters means that part of Judy’s force of nature character is lost. Garland was under 5 feet tall – and Tracie Bennett is about 5’2″ – and the way that Garland’s voice and charisma dominated the room and the people about her despite her diminutive size was part of the wonder of the performance. But Jinkx is the height she is, and male actors are not a tall breed, and they do make great work of the steps on the set to try and set her at a disadvantage to Mickey at various points to help with that.

This production has been getting four star reviews from the professionals – and I would basically agree with that. It’s worth seeing if you’re a Jinkx fan – and the audience reaction (and sales!) have been strong enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if this goes over to Broadway next season and that this time next year Jinkx is factoring into the Tony award conversations.

End of the Rainbow is on at the Soho Theatre Walthamstow until the 21st of June – and it’s worth the trek up the Victoria Line to zone 3 to see it.

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Thespians

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It is an absolutely scorching bank holiday so far – even hotter than it was earlier this month when we were in Colchester. As I said yesterday Colchester was the capital of Roman Britain – and we were there to see a musical about the other great european classical civilisation: the Greeks, brought to you by Mischief Theatre aka the people behind the …Goes Wrong series.

The Plot: It’s 500 and something BC and Greece is being ravaged by drought. The Tyrant who rules the country decrees that every island must send a group to Athens to compete in a prayer competition to bring the rain. The penalty for not going is death. The penalty for not winning is death. And that’s how the five residents of Ikaria (that’s the whole population of the island) come to invent acting.

Now I should say that we saw this on the first preview, so this isn’t really a proper review because that wouldn’t be fair and I’m expecting a few things will have changed since we saw it. But that said it was in pretty good shape. The joke rate isn’t as high as in a Mischief play but you don’t really expect ever other line to be a joke in a musical – and it’s hard to do jokes in lyrics too – but it’s got lots of puns and dad jokes and a lot of pastiches of other musicals, theatre in jokes and stereotypes. I thought it could use a little tightening and that they hadn’t quite nailed the sound balance, but those are fairly typical issues for early preview shows.

The cast were amazing – every one is turning in a good performance – and some of them are great – but they really work well as a company. It feels a bit harsh to pick anyone out in particular because it is very much a group – but if you really, really twisted my arm I would say that it was Rhys Taylor as The Tyrant and Allie Dart and Matt Cavendish’s double act as Bard and Rhapsodes.

I generally like what Mischief are selling (so to speak) so it’s hard for me to judge whether this will work for people who aren’t Mischief fans. This isn’t relying on things going wrong/choregraphed chaos and farce the way that the Goes Wrong shows do and of course it’s a musical. In some ways it reminded me of a (very superior) pantomime – and I mean that as a compliment. It’s all got a nod and a wink to the fact that there’s an audience watching and that there are rules and conventions of theatre that the characters are “inventing” but we are all aware of. I’m not sure it’s a “first grown up show” the way that I think The Play that Goes Wrong is, but it wouldn’t be a bad shout for an early theatre trip for an upper primary school age child – as well as being a good time for the grown ups too who will understand the in jokes.

Now the eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that this had its last performance in Colchester last night – but it is a tour – it moves to Bath this week coming and then Swindon, Guildford, Cheltenham, Cardiff, back to Guildford and then finishes up in Manchester for two weeks in July. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it have short West End run, but it’s hard to see where it would go – it’s not a big-big show and all the theatres that are the sort of size that I would think they would want are taken at the moment. But never say never.

Have a great Sunday

book adjacent, streaming, tv

Not a Book: Capote vs The Swans

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It’s only taken two years, but I’ve finally managed to watch Feud season 2 – Capote and the Swans. After having checked Disney+ for it for ages with no joy, suddenly when I was on there the other weekend there it was. When that happend for the UK, who knows, but the fact remains it has and now I have watched it.

This is an eight episode series based on Laurence Leamer’s book Capote’s Women, which I read back in early 2024 when this originally dropped in the US in preparation for watching this series – expecting to arrive way sooner than it has! Capote is played by British actor Tom Hollander, following in the footsteps of Philip Seymour Hoffman who won an Oscar for playing him in 2005’s Capote and Toby Jones in 2006’s Infamous. And the rest of the cast is incredibly starry – the main Swans are Naomi Watts (Babe), Diane Lane is (Slim), Chloe Sevigny (C Z) and Calista Flockheart (Lee) with Demi Moore and Jessica Lange also in the cast.

For me it’s always interesting to see how a work of non-fiction is turned into a drama – particularly an episodic drama, where you need to have cliff hangers and peaks and troughs to keep the audience watching. I had a couple of issues with the book – the omission of a couple of the swans and the non linear nature of the book, which deals with the Swans mainly one at a time so it is fairly easy to lose track of where in time you are. And if anything this is even less linear than the book was – jumping backwards and forwards between before and after Capote publised the article that exploded his relationship with the women. And that’s the problem with it. You don’t really get to know – or understand – the women’s relationship with Truman or even why they found him so alluring before he blows it all up (so to speak).

The outfits are fabulous and it looks beautiful but somehow – despite some great performances – it struggles to hold your interest. I watched it across a couple of days but that was because I wasn’t feeling very well and wanted some mindless TV to watch rather than because I was obsessed with it and desperate to see what happened next if that makes sense. There is so much drama in the story that it’s telling – but I wanted more of the women and less of maudlin drunken Truman and his terrible abusive boyfriend – even if Russell Tovey is doing a great job of playing the boyfriend.

So if you’ve got your Disney+ subscription turned back on for the new series of Rivals, then this isn’t a bad option for wiling away the time before the next episode drops, but it’s not one to take a subscription out for. And perhaps that’s the real reason it took so long to turn up to watch in the UK!

Have a great Sunday.

not a book, streaming

Out Today: Rivals Series 2!

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Happy Friday everyone – a bit of a break in the normal order of things today because the first part of the second season of Rivals has arrived on Disney+ (or Hulu if you’re in the US) today. You will remember how much I loved the first series when that came out in 2024 (I think I’ve watched the whole thing nearly three times now) and I’ve been so excited for the new series. I fully intend to spend my weekend watching as much of this as Eurovision and other life commitments permits because I can’t wait to how they carry everything on. I mean I’ve read Rivals so I know how that turns out but there isn’t enough of the plot of that left to do another whole season let alone a season which is four episodes longer than the first. There’s a lot of polo-playing in the trailer and the next book in the series is Polo so they may be including some of that in this I guess – although there’s not a lot of Rupert and co in that – or I guess they could be doing their own thing and expanding the world out in their own direction. Either way, I can’t wait.