Tag: not a book

comedy, not a book, theatre

Not a Book: The Comedy About Spies

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I’m back with my second Mischief show of the year. After Thespians back in May (with an almost entirely new to Mischief cast) today I’m back with a bunch of the OGs in their latest West End show, which premiered last autumn and sold so well I didn’t manage to get to see it and now is back – and this time I was quicker with the ticketbuying finger. And I’m posting this a bit later in the day than usual, partly because I only saw it yesterday and it was a late night home and I needed time to recover but also because tonight is opening night.

It’s the early 1960s and in London a rogue secret agent has stolen plans for a top secret weapon. Hot on it’s trail are agents from the CIA and the KGB all of whom converge on the same hotel to try and track it down and steal it back. However they’re not the only people at the hotel and soon unsuspecting fellow guests are drawn into their plans including an actor preparing for an audition to play James Bond and a baker trying to work up the nerve to propose to his girlfriend. And of course because this is Mischief nothing goes to plan for anyone and it soons descends into chaos and a glorious farce.

As I said at the top this is a revival after a very successful run in the West End last summer, which I suspect might have otherwise extended then if it wasn’t for the fact that most of the cast were already lined up to do Christmas Carol Goes Wrong very soon after this closed – so close in fact that there was probably only just enough time for a holiday and rehearsals to get it up and running. This has a fresh set up and cast of characters but all of the hallmarks of Mischief’s best stuff – slapstick, physical comedy and a joke rate that hardy gives you time to finish laughing at the last joke before the next one hits. I think the second half of the first act, which has a brilliantly clever set split into quarters to make four hotel rooms, colour coded, is the high point of the show but that may be because the stunts and jokes are at their height before the second half has to bring it all to some sort of conclusion. And I did worry about how they were going to end it satisfactorily, but they managed to land it just fine. I shouldn’t have doubted them.

All of the Mischief regulars are turning in great performances, but the more I see him, the more I become convinced that Dave Hearn is the strongest and most versatile actor of all of them. He originated Max in the Cornley shows – who is distracted by the audience, frequently has a complicated love life and is gets relegated to supporting roles. He’s great here as Lance, the CIA agent, turning in a really clever performance for reasons that I can’t really explain without giving huge spoilers which would be mean.

If this sounds like your sort of show, then do try and get to see it while it’s on this summer – the set is so complicated (travelators! that giant dollshouse hotel set!) that I don’t think it would be easy to tour and I think it’s one of Mischief’s best shows in age – I think we preferred it to Christmas Carol Goes Wrong, for all that I love the Cornley characters deeply.

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Midnight at the Never Get

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As you know I went to see this the night of England’s semi final at the World Cup, but that was only the third-ish preview and press night wasn’t until this week so I held onto my review – but just a warning – I’ve been very careful in my post here not to give too much away about the show – but not all reviews have been so careful.

This is qutie a hard one to describe without giving spoilers or ruining things, so I’m going to stick to the Menier’s own description of the show: “1965, New York City. Trevor Copeland and Arthur Brightman’s love is against the law. In their secret nightclub act, “Midnight”, they perform love songs in an act of defiance of a world that demands they stay hidden. As tensions rise at the start of a historic movement, Trevor and Arthur are torn between their own surreptitious romance, and the oncoming storm of social revolution.” It’s a chamber musical that runs 90-ish minutes and that’s about as much as I’m prepared to say because they’re so cagey about it all – the programme doesn’t even tell you the names of the character the three cast members are playing and as you go in they put a sticker over your phone camera and tell you it’s a strictly no filming show – hence my photo of the poster at the entrance which I took on the way out at the end.

But I think it’s fair to say that Ben Platt is playing Trevor – and that he is the big name here – returning to London after the brief anniversary run of The Last Five Years with Rachel Zegler (too expensive for my budget!) and obviously a Tony winner for Dear Evan Hansen etc – and the reason this production has been staged. He gets to since his heart out in 1960s-style love songs and torch songs. Alongside him Gregor Milne is excellent – accompanying the songs on piano as well as acting. Platt has got the showier, more obvious part, but Milne holds the thing together – as well as having an acting part of his own to play he’s also the link with the rest of the band, holding the musical performances together. I hadn’t seen him in anything before, but I’ll be looking out for him now.

I enjoyed this a lot – Mark Sonnenblick who write the book, music and lyrics co-wrote a bunch of songs for K-Pop Demon Hunters, including Golden, and although this is a very different style of song it’s very good. He also apparently wrote songs for The Devil Wears Prada musical which is one of the current long (well long-ish) runners that I haven’t seen, so maybe I need to remedy that. If you want a sense of the music, the Menier has put this performance of At the Mercy of Love from the first day of rehearsal on their YouTube:

I would say it’s almost worth it just to hear the songs being sung, but there are some really wonderful moments of acting in there too. And the Menier has once again been transformed – this time into a cabaret bar, with audience members at tables in the middle and on sofas around the sides. If you remember my review of The Baker’s Wife, the cabaret tables are similar to that, but more of them but in a joyous move they have swapped out the terrible hard benches round the sides for cozy sofas. We were at cabaret tables this time but I look forward to testing out the sofas when I go to see Tru in the autumn.

The cabaret seats appear to be sold out for the whole run (yes, I did look at changing the tickets away from World Cup semi final day, that’s how I know) but there are some seats available and it’s such a small venue that you’re never going to be far from the action and Ben Platt moves around a lot so you will see plenty of him wherever you are, although if you want to see Gregor Milne’s face you’ll want to be on the right hand side of the auditorium plan as you see it on the Menier site. It’s a limited run and if this sounds in anyway like your sort of thing and you’re in London I think it’s worth it.

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!

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.

not a book, streaming

Not a Book: False Prophet

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After a podcast last week, I’m back with a Netflix documentary this week to make it two whole weeks in a row that I haven’t talked about theatre. Even though I did go to the theatre (twice) this week. I actually watched this the weekend that it came out last month – but this got caught behind the theatre posts in the queue because they were more time sensitive.

Trust Me: The False Prophet is a four episode mini-series following Christine Marie and her husband Tolga Katas who move to the Short Creek community in the hopes that they can help members of the FLDS community in the aftermath of the arrest and conviction of their leader, Warren Jeffs. Christine is a cult expert who has a fascinatingly varied prior life, Tolga is a videographer. Both are very much city people and get the sort of suspicious reception from the locals you might expect. But Christine is incredibly persistent and helps the women to start a shop to sell their products and make some money. But during the course of this they discover a new “prophet” is emerging from the chaos and vacuum that has been left by the absence of Warren Jeffs.

I’ve written previously about Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, which covers Rulon and Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Mormon Church (and was made by the same director and executive producer) but after Warren Jeffs was imprisoned the community was left isolated and leaderless. Then Samuel Bateman appears in town with a group of wives – some of whom look to be underage and the community starts talking. Christine and Tolga decide that they’re going to try and find out what is going on and bring him to justice – and they’re going to film it as they do it. It’s astonishing. And what makes it even more astonishing is that Bateman approached them to make a documentary about him to help him spread his word – as in he thinks this is a good idea.

The big difference from Keep Sweet is that this has all of Tolga’s footage of the documentary that they were filming and so has all of the people that they are talking about in the documentary in their own words on camera at the time that it was happening. Including Samuel. I said in the post about Keep Sweet that the first parts of that were grimmer than I expected (and I was expecting that to be pretty grim) but I think having seen that gave me a really good background coming into this – and although this is pretty horrifying, ultimately it has a satisfying ending (or as satisfying as things can be in these circumstances) to their quest to help the young women that Bateman was marrying*.

I watched all of these episodes back to back in one sitting. I thought it was really well made and realy clever. I admired Christine and Tolga for what they were trying to do – and the nerves of steel that they showed while they were doing it. I have a few questions about the local police response, but that’s not about the documentary! And if you do watch this, this Guardian article from last week and this Hollywood Reporter profile of Christine Maire are interesting reading too.

Have a good Sunday.

*Spoiler: Samuel Bateman was sentenced to 50 years in prison in late 2024