Tag: not a book

theatre

Not a Book: 2026 Theatre Lookahead

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Yes, I know, you thought that I was done with the start of year posts, but no. One of the other things you hear a lot about from me on here is theatre, so here is what’s coming up this year in the theatre.

A view of Shaftesbury Avenue at night

I’m going to start with the things that I’ve already got in the ticket box. Firstly in May I’m off to Essex to see Thespians, Mischief’s first musical. This is set in Ancient Greece and is about the invention of acting and the world’s first play. As you know, I have such a soft spot for Mischief – I wrote about Christmas Carol Goes Wrong just a couple of weeks ago and I’ve seen so much of their other stuff too and I can’t wait to see what they do with a musical.

Also in the (virtual) ticket box is Jesus Christ Superstar. This is a revival and also a restaging – it’s the Regents Park production of a few years ago that I didn’t manage to get to see, but at the London Palladium this summer and starring Sam Ryder as Jesus. This is the last of the Andrew Lloyd Webber mega musicals that I haven’t seen live in the theatre (although I have seen the early 2000s DVD version quite a few times) and although it’s not my favourite musical, after missing out on the hot tickets that were Sunset Boulevard and Evita revivals the last two years this time I’ve decided to go for it!

Talking on missing out and Evita, I’ve already missed out on tickets for the Last Five Years concert perfomances (also at the Palladium) starring Rachel Ziegler and Ben Platt which are happening in March and were gone in the blink of an eye. Even sooner that that though is the Cynthia Erivo one woman Dracula. That starts in early Februrary and is by the same production team who produced the one-woman Picture of Dorian Gray with Sarah Snook that won a bunch of Oliviers and Tonys.

We’ve also got the London premiere of John Proctor is the Villain, which I’ve been reading about on the various theatre forums for a couple of years at this point. It’s play about a group of high school students studying Arthur Miller’s The Cruicible and got seven Tony nominations for the Broadway production last year, which starred Sadie Sink. No news on the cast for this transfer at the Royal Court, but it’s a Sonia Friedman production (like Merrily) so it could be pretty good on that front too.

Another Broadway transfer is Beetlejuice, which premiered on Broadway back in 2019 and I suspect would ahve been in London sooner but for the pandemic and all that malarkey. There are quite a few plays transferring into the West End from other theatres too – there’s Shadowlands with Hugh Bonneville, which started at Chichester; Grace Pervades starring Ralph Finnes and Miranda Raison coming in from Bath; and Rosamund Pike in Interalia which is coming in from across the river at the National. Talking of the National, they’ve got a revival of Les Liasions Dangereuses, starring Lesley Manville and Aiden Turner.

And finally I’m totally fascinated to see the revival of Avenue Q. You might remember that I went to one of the anniversary performances in 2024 and although I still adored it and the original cast, there are definitely things that haven’t aged well and I wonder how it will hit for new audiences who haven’t got the fond memories of the original that I do. I haven’t booked yet, but I’ll definitely be there at least once!

Have a great weekend everyone!

book adjacent, film

Book Adjacent: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

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I feel like I’ve been on a bit of a run of long term favourite old movies recently, but I’m back with another one because Dick Van Dyke’s 100th birthday was yesterday (13 December) and given that I’ve already told you how much I love his other big kids movie role in Mary Poppins, this seemed fitting.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is the iconic story of a magical car owned by a not very successful inventor and which takes him and his family on adventures, including to rescue their grandfather from a foreign land where children are banned. It’s loosely based on the children’s book of the same name by Ian Fleming (of James Bond fame). By loosely I mean the whistling sweets, the flying and the floating of the car are from the book, but the whole Baron Bomburst plot is… not (the book has gunrunners on the French coast instead!). Chitty probably has just as much plot as Bedknobs, but it has a lot more musical numbers. Bedknobs is a kids movie with some songs, this is definitely a movie musical.

It should be stated up front that the Child Catcher is one of the scariest villains in all children’s movies and if you’ve got kids do remember that before you show it to them for the first time. Robert Helpmann is amazing playing him and it’s a creepy scary character and performance that can easily give kids nightmares. Dick Van Dyke is perfect for the chaos energy of Caractacus Potts – a scatty inventor and single dad who can be totally oblivious to anything but his work but who has made a contraption to cook food for his family. And he also gets to show of his dancing. I’ve put the Me Ol’ Bam-boo scene in here because it’s just so good – it’s basically the equivalent in this of the Chimney Sweep on the roof scene in Poppins, with massed dancing and tricks except that Van Dyke is two beats behind for a lot of it because the schtick is that he’s copying the others and learning it as he goes because he’s hiding from a man who’s just had a disastrous hair cut from one of his inventions.

The music is by the Sherman Brothers, who basically did the music for all my childhood favourite children’s movies because they also did Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and of course The Parent Trap as well as most of The Jungle Book. And just to link it to my favourites even more, Irwin Kostal who conducted the music also did The Sound of Music (as well as Bedknobs and Mary P). Like Bedknobs and Broomsticks this was in my sister and my Saturday night rotation when we were kids, again recorded off the TV onto VCS and I’m pretty sure I still know all the words to the songs even now. I definitely borrowed the easy piano book from the town library more than once so that I could play the songs and sing along. Side note: I know that the word “quay” is pronounced “key” and when I’m singing along to Hushabye Mountain in the film I’m fine with the line “down by the quay” but any time I encountered it written down when I was playing the piano music it trips me up. Anyway.

And if you’ve watched the James Bond films there is a bit of cross over here too beyond just the fact that they’re both Fleming creations. Baron Bomburst is Gert Fröbe aka Goldfinger and the man that is scrapping the wreck of Chitty at the start of the movie is Desmond Llewellyn aka Q. And the screenplay is written by Roald Dahl (yes him) who also wrote the screenplay for You Only Live Twice. And it’s produced by Cubby Broccoli’s Eon movies and so of course because they’ve just been sold to Amazon there is talk of a remake, which is one thing we really do not need. This is already not a short film. It’s over two hours – nearly half an hour longer than Bedknobs and nearly ten minutes longer than Poppins – and I’ve never known a remake to be shorter than the original! But in any case, this is pretty perfect as is.

Have a great Sunday everyone.

film, not a book, streaming

Not a Book: Knives Out 3

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I’m breaking my own rules today, and instead of a post about a book series, it’s a post about the latest movie in the Knives Out series, which is hitting Netflix in the UK today after a two week cinematic release – and we went the other weekend.

Wake Up Dead Man sees Benoit Blanc return to investigate the death of Monseigneur Jefferson Wicks, a charismatic but fire and brimstone type priest, who is killed in a seemingly impossible crime during the middle of taking mass. He is assisted by Reverend Jud Duplenticy, a young priest who has been set to Wick’s church as punishment for having punched another deacon. Jud is the obvious suspect – as he has had conflict with Wick, but despite the fact that Wick’s congregation is in a thrall to him, but all of them might also have reason to want him dead.

I’ve seen all of the Knives Out films at the cinema and I don’t remember the other two being as laugh out loud funny as this one is. As in there were multiple moments where the screening I went to was audibly laughing at the movie. There is also a literary connection to this, which I can’t explain without spoiling the plot, but which had my brain working in the background of watching it to try and figure out what clues I could take from it to the solution. Daniel Craig looks like he’s having a ball as Blanc – again – and that just adds to the fun of the thing too. The supporting cast is as starry as ever, I particularly enjoyed Andrew Scott’s turn as

It does have a slightly different tone than the previous films – but not so different that if you didn’t like the previous movies I don’t know that this will change your mind. I think Rian Johnson is also making more commentary on the state of the world at the moment as part of this as well. If the last movie was picking at the ultra-rich and their lives, this one is going at organised religion – and that may hit differently with audiences too because obviously there are more people involved in religion than there are ultra rich! I’ll definitely be watching it again on Netflix though to try and spot the things that I missed first time around too.

Have a great weekend.

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Titanique

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Don’t panic everyone, it not a Sunday everyone, but we’re into December and I’ve seen so much stuff in recently that I want to talk about and as I try valiantly not to go too Christmas, too fast, and all the bookshops are Christmas central at this point with all the same book and gifts I thought I’d treat you to a bonus (non-Christmas) show today – although it would make a good festive outing if you wanted to, just saying.

So in case you can’t tell from the programme cover, Titanique is a jukebox musical parodying the film Titanic. It features the songs of Celine Dion and is told from Celine’s point of view after she interrupts a tour of a Titanic museum to claim that she is a survivor of the sinking. It’s another short show too – 100 or so minutes, no interval* and it really comes in, does it’s thing and ends on a high without outstaying its welcome.

I actually really struggled with how to describe this because it’s so off the wall but also at times it’s closer to a cabaret or comedy night than it is to a traditional musical. I would need to see it again to be sure, but it felt like there was a fair bit of improv coming from Astrid Harris as Celine. And you can see that dichotomy in the Olivier Awards categories it was in – it won Best Entertainement or Comedy Play (beating among others Ballet Shoes) but also Best Supporting Actor in a Musical for Layton Williams as the Iceberg (and various others). Lauren Drew, who was the original Celine was also nominated in Best Actress in a Musical.

I had a great time and would recommend it for people looking for a fun night out, but I think because of all the pop culture references it’s probably more one for adults, and maybe even millennials and up. I’ve never seen the film Titanic, but I’m old enough to remember it coming out and know what happens in it, so all the jokes about the film landed for me all the same. I can feel that this could end up being a show that groups go to on a night out – and there are definitely deals to be had on the tickets to make that happen. It’s in the Criterion which is at the smaller end of West End capacities (as well as being probably the most underground of them all) and also in one of the prime spots for passing footfall on Piccadilly Circus right next to Eros so it has that in its favour to keep it going for a while – The 39 Steps managed nearly a decade in there, and I think The Comedy about a Bank Robbery would have lasted longer than its four years if it hadn’t been for the pandemic. And I liked it enough that I’m not ruling out going back to see how the improv changes – or how a different cast handle it. But there are just so many shows I want to see that I haven’t already been to that I suspect it won’t happen in the near future!

Have a great Sunday.

*which made it three in a row in the West End for me – with Born With Teeth and Clarkston the other two.

Exhibitions, not a book

Not a Book: Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World

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Happy Sunday everyone, I had a really good time out at a gallery on Friday and given that the exhibition is only on until early January, I thought i ought to write about it sooner rather than later.

Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World at the National Portrait Gallery is an examination of the photographer’s work in Fashion and Portrait photography. It takes you through from his early days and Bright Young Things of the 1920s to the My Fair Lady era in the 1960s. Along side the photographs there are also things like his first camera, which he used all the way through til after he first started at Vogue, and one of the dresses he designed for Julie Andrews to wear as Eliza Doolittle in the West End production of My Fair Lady in the late 19050s.

I didn’t get to see the last Cecil Beaton exhibition at the NPG – because it opened just a few days before Covid shut the world down in 2020 and never reopened. I have the exhibition poster from that on the wall of my house and the exhibition book as well, and that one focused on his work in the 1920s and 1930s with the Bright Young Things. This does have some of that, but is much broader in its scope. Yes the famous Stephen Tennant picture is here, but so also are the royal portraits and Hollywood royalty – like Marlon Brando, Katherine Hepburn and a young Yul Brynner with hair!

I really enjoyed myself – it’s in the same space that The Culture Shift exhibition was in earlier in the year which is big enough that you feel that there is plenty to see and that everything has space to breathe but not so big that you get overwhelmed by it all and start to lose focus.

Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World is on at the National Portrait Gallery until January 11, and I would book your ticket in advance, especially if you’re planning on going at a weekend.

not a book, streaming

Not a Book: Victoria Beckham documentary

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It’s Sunday again everyone and I’m back with a Netflix documentary series.

Last year we had Beckham, about David Beckham, this year we have Victoria Beckham, about his wife the artist formerly known as Posh Spice who is now a fashion designer. As it’s framing device this is focussing on the fashion business in the run up to a big show at Paris Fashion Week.

Now I’m not going to lie, this is no where near as good as the first one. We’ve covered the contours of Posh n Becks life together in the first doc and so there are times when there is not a lot of new to say. There is a lot about her fashion brand and if you were reading newspapers or online gossip pages when she started that up you will remember the suggestions that Roland Mouret was doing all the work, and she (and Roland) have Things To Say about that. And of course if you’ve been following the Family Drama, you will spot the notable absence of Brooklyn from the documentary, but it’s never discussed – and he wasn’t at Windsor Castle this week when David was knighted so it’s clearly all still going on.

If you’ve watched the first one, the second one is worth watching for contrast and completeness, but if you haven’t then watch the first one instead. No memes will be spawned by this new one…

film, not a book

Not a Book: Rocky Horror documentary

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Happy Sunday everyone, and I’ve got a new release film for you this week that I went to see yesterday and am posting about straight away beause screenings may be limited and (spoiler) I really liked it and want it to do well.

Strange Journey is a documentary telling the story of Rocky Horror documentary as it went from Upstairs at the Royal Court in London, to the Kings Road in Chelsea, to LA to the big screen and then its transformation into probably the ultimate cult movie. It’s directed by Linus O’Brien who is the son of Rocky creator and original Riff Raff Richard O’Brien and as well as being a history of Rocky, it’s also the story of Richard O’Brien’s own journey with his gender identity. It’s got all the talking heads you could want, as well as Richard O’Brien – singing some of the songs while playing them on guitar at 83! – it has Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Jim Sharman and most importantly Tim Curry. And there’s loads of behind the scenes footage too – it turns out someone had a cine camera behind the scenes of the Rocky movie shoot as well as at some of the early London theatre performances, so you get to see them all in their original incarnations as well as things like watching Curry performing Sweet Transvestite to the movie camera with all the trappings of the set. I’ve put the trailer in here because it gives you a good idea of what you’re in for:

It’s very much a history and appreciation – it’s got Trixie Mattel and Jack Black for talking heads as well as various film academics and shadow cast members talking about the historical significance of the film and the positive effect that it has had on their lives. I really enjoyed it – it brought a tear to my eye more than once and I once again remember that Tim Curry’s Frank N Furter is incredible.

I’m not sure how old I was when I first saw the movie, but I first went to the touring musical when I was in my final year at uni – and came straight out of the early evening show and bought a ticket to see the late show and watched it again from the front row, having spent more of my monthly budget than I intended and then went out to the stage door afterwards (not a very Verity thing to do) and got a picture with David Bedella (an even less Verity thing) which I still have, still think I look goofy in, but still sort of love all the same. So I think I’m the ideal audience member for this, and can’t really work out how it will land if you’re not a Rocky fan. But then it’s a cult of its own really, so hopefully some of the people who go to midnight screenings every week will turn out to see it.

Have a great Sunday everyone.

not a book, streaming

Not a Book: Matchroom

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Happy Sunday everyone, I’m back with a streaming recommendation this week for something that may have gone under your radar, especially if you’re not in the UK.

Matchroom are a sporting event and sports promotion company that was founded by Barry Hearn in the early 1980s. Barry started out in snooker, managing Steve Davis and then moved into snooker promotion founding Matchroom and then taking the company into boxing and darts. Barry’s son Eddie is now in the business with him, and the premise of the series is that you’re getting a look behind the scenes at the company.

Of course it’s not that simple. The subtitle of the show is The Greatest Showmen and Barry and Eddie are very, very aware of the cameras and the storylines, as you might expect for men who work in the world of boxing and also who live in Brentwood, the home of that original British manufactured reality series The Only Way is Essex – and yes, we do get some cutaway shots of the exterior of Sugar Hut just to remind you of that. And don’t forget the Only Fools and Horses call backs just to remind you that they (well Barry) have come from nothing and made it big. Barry is talking about retirement, Eddie is desperate to take over, but there are other options inside the company for Barry than his son, who may be hungrier and scrappier than Eddie.

And it’s full of egos, rivalries and shouting matches. Get Eddie in front of a microphone – at a press conference or in a radio studio and he’ll start an argument with someone. At times he seems like a man who could argue with his own shadow without realising that he is doing it. People say that women are bitchy, but the levels of petty and grudge holding in this are off the scale. I like snooker, I can take or leave darts but boxing is one of the few sports that I don’t watch, so I watched the actual fighting sections through my fingers (or even looking away at some points). But even if you don’t like any of the sports involved, I think it’s pretty worth watching – for the pettiness, but also to spot the bits where something real pokes out from under the puff piece, and to watch Eddie and Barry trying to control their edits – and whether it works!

We watched all six episodes across two and a bit nights – and I would happily watch another series, although given how the fights featured in the series went for the Matchroom stable, Eddie may not be up for series two!

Have a great Sunday.

book adjacent, not a book, theatre

Book Adjacent: Born With Teeth

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It’s Sunday and I’m back again with another theatre post because I cheered myself up about being back in the UK and the terrible weather with a trip to see a play on Tuesday.

Born with Teeth is a play about the relationship between William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. In this European premiere, Will is played by Edward Bluemel and Kit by Ncuti Gatwa. The exact relationship between Marlowe and Shakespeare is a matter of huge scholarly debate, but in this telling the two men are collaborators at the least. Over the course of a tight 90 minutes you see the changing fortunes of the two men as we go from 1591 to 1593. Elizabethan England in this telling is a surveillance state rife with spies, where a playwright can struggle to make enough money to live unless they have a wealthy patron – or a side hustle.

For me, the performances are the star here – I find it hard to work out if the play would actually work anywhere near as well with two different actors. Gatwa and Bluemel play brilliantly off each other, and the similarity in their statures is an asset as the fortunes of the two men change and their relationship develops – there’s no physical dominance in terms of height – it’s all in the performances and charisma.

We saw this on Tuesday, and before we went to Wyndams theatre we spent half an hour people watching at the Noel Coward (which basically backs on to it) where it was the opening night of The Importance of Being Earnest, which has transferred in from the National, where Gatwa played Algernon. I love Earnest and was annoyed to have missed out on that one (too slow on the ticket buying front for it to be in my budget) so was keen to see Born With Teeth to see Gatwa and also to see why he might have chosen to do this rather than transfer in with Earnest (Olly Alexander is now playing Earnest, with Stephen Fry as Lady Bracknell instead of Sharon D Clarke) and I can see why this appealed to Gatwa – a two-hander, with plenty of scope to stretch your acting chops, rather than re-visit something you’ve already done. Gatwa was my favourite but I was both pleased and surpirsed to see that Bluemel who I only knew from My Lady Jane (RIP) was so good and so nearly as good as him!

This is on until November 1 – we got a good deal on tickets and it was definitely worth it for the performances. And if you like Shakespearean speculation, go and see this now, because I don’t think it’s something that will work as well without performances as good as these!

audio, not a book

Not a Book: Unicorn Girl

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Happy Sunday everyone, I hope everyone is making the most of the weekend, and that it hasn’t turned too-too cold and wet where you are. I’m back with another podcast today, which is the next series from the presenter of Scamanda, the podcast that inspired the documentary series that featured in a previous Not a Book.

Unicorn Girl is about the rise and fall of Candace Rivera, a divorced single mum in Utah, who built an online community based around her successes as a nurse and a CEO of multi-million dollar companies. But as you can probably guess, all wasn’t quite what she wanted you to think it was. Over the course of nine episodes, Charlie Webster tries to work out what was actually going on and who Candace really was. The first episode of this dropped into the Scamanda feed in mid-August, I listened to it and then went straight over to the Unicorn Girl feed to listen to episode two. And then I got Apple Plus so that I could listen to the rest of the series straight away rather than having to wait for a new episode each week.

Now that was partly because I have poor impulse control, but also because early on Charlie says that there’ll be times when you’re listening when nothing seems to add up, but by the end of the series it will all make sense. And that’s a brave thing to say (in my opinion!) when you’re trying to get people to keep listening, but it also intrigued me. And she’s not wrong. Candace’s con (so to speak) is a lot more complicated than Amanda’s was. In Scamanda, Charlie jumps backwards and forwards in time a bit but Amanda is really just doing the same con more than once. But Candace has got a lot of things going on and is juggling a lot of balls and that all makes it a lot more difficult to follow.

It must be really hard to follow up a series as successful as Scamanda, because so much is depending on finding the right story – the world of podcasts is littered with attempts to follow up something great that haven’t quite come off. It needs to be similar enough that your previous audience will still be interested, but not so similar that it feels like a total retread. And Candace’s story has got a lot going for it on that front, not least interviews with loads of the women who were working for or friends with Candance as well as Candace’s own voice from her social media posts. But there’s just so much going on. However, without wanting to give too much of a spoiler, this has more resolution to it than Scamanda did when I first listened to it (although no more than the documentary series had by the time that it came out).

I hope that doesn’t sound too negative – because make no mistake, I binged this podcast – listening to all nine episodes in less than three days as well as obviously signing up to a subscription service to be able to do that. I do think Scamanda is better, but if you’re interested in the same sort of Utah/Mormon-adjacent/religion-adjacent sort of things that I am (and I’ve written about enough of them at this point) then it’s worth a look. I’ve even held onto this post for a few weeks so that almost all the series is available without having to subscribe to anything! You’re welcome.

Have a great Sunday everyone.