When we learnt that it was on at the Curzon Bloomsbury at a suitable time on the Friday evening before Christmas…no brainer!
Basically, it is a simple rom com story, set in an Haredi Jewish community in Israel.
An unconventional yet ultra orthodox young woman who runs a travelling petting zoo for children, after being jilted by her fiancée, decides to set up a wedding day and hope for a groom to appear by the deadline. Given her track record of matchmaker-arranged dates with Haredim, the new strategy seems no less likely to work than the more conventional approach.
It’s quite a long film given its slight plot, but it is utterly charming, quirky, laugh-out-loud funny in parts and very watchable throughout. Janie was mesmerised by it, not least the “beautiful looking people/eye candy in the movie”.
We were blessed with a delightful Muslim family, three generations at least, taking up the whole row in front of us. (Well, we weren’t going to get Orthodox Jews on a Friday evening).
This family seemed to be enjoying the film enormously – one lady from the group shouted out at the screen a couple of times to very amusing effect. We chatted with the whole family afterwards, agreeing that we had all enjoyed the film; youngsters and oldsters of various creeds alike.
Janie had pre-set a wonderful spread of rillettes and cheeses at the house to round off our week/evening in excellent style.
First Of Three: Brian Eno Singsong and Party, Brian’s Studio, Tuesday 13 December 2016
The first of my “three dos in four days” was at Brian Eno’s place – I have been invited to such dos on several occasions now, often but not always at this time of year. I have known Brian from the health club (BodyWorksWest, formerly known as Lambton Place) for quarter of a century or more.
The party is combined with Brian’s a capella choir gathering, allowing neophytes and bathroom singers like me to have an occasional go.
I thought I arrived in quite good time on this occasion, but the singing was well underway when I arrived; the regulars presumably having made a punctual early start.
The songs chosen were quite relentlessly morbid at first. There is usually a fair bit of spiritual blues material, but this set seemed especially bleak, with unfortunate folk being hanged for crimes they didn’t commit and all sorts. It wasn’t too difficult to pick up on the tunes quickly enough – I suppose that’s why they choose this material for the more open sing-song, but it didn’t feel much like party music at first.
The last couple of numbers were a bit more lively – not least All I Have To Do Is Dream at the end, sung in a doo-wap style. It helped me that I was standing next to a couple of very able, presumably professional singers, upon whose rhythms and harmonies I could latch. A few people afterwards asked me if I was a professional singer, but I’m sure they must have been hearing the sound emanating from those guys, not me.
Brian said that he couldn’t hear me this time, which is a good sign; presumably therefore an improvement on last time. But perhaps he also was deceived by my co-location with the professional-sounding guys.
Anyway, as on previous occasions, I also found the rest of the party great fun, meeting and chatting with several very interesting people. I also danced a bit to some excellent party mix music, well designed for the purpose (mostly 1970’s dance, with some earlier and later stuff thrown in).
I didn’t stick around until too late – I had a scheduled client call quite early the next day – so (as on every previous occasion) I missed the blood, guts, ambulances and police cars stage of the party. Brian subsequently told me that the emergency services stage failed to occur this time, to his intense disappointment.
Second Of Three: Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner, Café Rouge Holborn, 15 December 2016
Since around the turn of the century, when fellow NewsRevue writer, Ivan Shakespeare, tragically keeled over and died while jogging, several of us have gathered a few times each year to keep in touch and reminisce about our NewsRevue days. Just before his death, Ivan e-mailed a few of us suggesting that we should regroup for that purpose, but never lived to see his idea to fruition.
Quite early in the life of this occasional gathering, it became part of our tradition to play a comedic quiz or two towards the end of the evening. I think it was John Random who initiated that idea, but several other people, occasionally contribute a quiz. Gerry Goddin latterly contributes a variant in which we all have to try to write jokes on suggested themes and Gerry allocates points (or deducts points) based on how well the jokes go down, his perception of each joke’s quality and/or Gerry’s authoritarian whim.
For the December gathering in 2002 (I’ll get around to Ogblogging it in the fullness of time no doubt) I went into a local tourist gimcrack store and bought the cheapest, tackiest piece of porcelain royal memorabilia I could find; then I emblazoned it with a legend declaring it to be the Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Trophy. Since 2002, that trophy has been played for earnestly each year. Nine different people have held the trophy over the years; I am proud to be able to state that I was the 2004 winner.
Anyway, it seems to be getting harder and harder to find a venue that operates flexibly enough for a rather haphazard bunch of former (and in some cases current) comedy writers to gather in mid December. Café Rouge Holborn has become the regular venue for the past few visits, but it seems they tried to impose a Christmas season “pre-ordering” regime on us, which was somewhat beyond the capabilities of John Random’s organising and our ability to be organised by anyone or anything.
So, half-a-dozen or so of us had pre-ordered and Café Rouge assumed that there would only be half-a-dozen of us (despite John booking the table for 10); which proved problematic once the eighth and especially ninth person showed up.
To be fair the staff tried their best in what seemed to be chaotic circumstances and did relocate us to a table for 10 quite quickly.
But poor Jonny Hurst ended up waiting for best part of an hour before any food was brought to him at all, at which point a starter and two main courses all turned up at once. I was half-hoping that Jonny would say, “do you know who I am? I’m Jonny Hurst, the chant laureate, that’s who”. Jonny might even have been forgiven for “doing a Jeremy Clarkson”…but Jonny is far too mild mannered and polite for any of that, even when he has a real hunger-on and everyone around him is tucking in. Respect.
Eventually we played the quizzes. Colin Stutt offered a small quiz to warm us up, but the main quiz, for the trophy, was a very imaginative effort from John Random which comprised 10 maps, each of which had a location marked with a year. We had to name the movie that was made in that year set in that place.
I was pleased with my 7 out of 11 (one map had two years and therefore two movies and two points) but Mark Keegan pipped a couple of us 7-istas with 8 out of 11 to claim the trophy yet again – his fourth victory in 15 years. Respect.
Gerry Goddin ended the evening with one of his joke-fest games with some especially harsh marking and the predictable result that Barry Grossman’s jokes pleased him more than anyone else’s – it is nearly always Barry who wins, very occasionally me.
A most enjoyable evening.
Third Of Three: Z/Yen Group Christmas Lunch at Watermen’s Hall, 16 December 2016
For the first time in Z/Yen’s 23 Christmases, we decided to do Christmas lunch rather than dinner this year.
Linda and Michael conspired to find a five course extravaganza of a lunch at Watermen’s Hall, which seemed just the ticket in the circumstances. It’s a comparatively intimate and relaxed atmosphere for a guild’s hall; but now that Z/Yen is that much smaller, our group wouldn’t completely dominate the room.
Michael pipped me an e-mail the previous weekend to ask if I would write one of the traditional Z/Yen singalong songs – normally but not absolutely always my gig.
(Previous Z/Yen Christmas events and songs will be Ogblogged in the fullness of time).
But before exercising our lungs, we ate the following excellent five course meal, washed down with some fine wine and (for some, not me) port.
Z/Yen Group 2016 Christmas Lunch at Watermen’s Hall
(The Company of Watermen and Lightermen)
Menu
Torched mackerel, pickled and salt baked beetroot, horseradish crème fraiche
Smoked ham hock and chicken terrine, pickled apricots, watercress salad
Butter roasted Norfolk turkey, sage and apricot stuffing, bacon wrapped sausages, brussels sprout choucroute with chestnuts
Star anise poached pear, almond crumb, whipped clotted cream
Christmas pudding, brandy sauce
Michael kept me and Xueyi talking about GeoGnomo for a fair chunk of the meal, but otherwise we managed to steer clear of work chat.
Michael was also keen not to torture too many people with our song, but once there were only a few stragglers left (apart from we Z/Yen folk) we found a surprisingly receptive audience; indeed those Watermen and Lightermen joined in the singing with us, rounding off a fine afternoon.
♬ WATERMEN AND LIGHTERMEN AND Z/YEN ♬
(A seasonal song to the tune of ♬”Winter Wonderland”♬)
VERSES ONE AND TWO
Mackerel torched, beetroot pickled,
Ham terrine, we’ll be tickled;
We’ll eat Christmas lunch, Z/Yen Group as a bunch;
Watch us put on weight at Watermen’s.
At the start, we’ll be perky,
By the end, stuffed like turkey;
Five courses of nosh, all terribly posh;
Watch us put on weight at Watermen’s.
MIDDLE EIGHT
After eating turkey laced with trimmings,
We’ll tuck in to star anise poached pear;
Christmas pud as well, you must be kidding,
The brandy sauce could be a warning flare.
VERSE THREE
Head for home, very slothfully,
On the trail back to Lothbury;
Let’s hope that we scoff…ing walk our waists off;
Walking all the way from Watermen’s.
(RISING/ROUSING FINALE): Let’s hope walking makes us Lightermen!
Ged Ukulele Barefoot Ladd, not singing “This Land Is Your Land”
Hmm.
We very rarely see a dud downstairs at the Hampstead – Ed Hall’s project to put works on down there regularly has been a raging success as far as we are concerned.
But sadly, I feel obliged to report that this one, to us, was a dud.
The idea sounded great. An iconic 1970s protest songstress, now a recluse, with an estranged daughter and a fundamentally important secret about that iconic career.
Trouble is, that’s about it, plot-wise. The important secret has a rather “so what?”, tenuous feeling about it, while the motivation of the characters to behave as they do/had done in the past, if the secret was so important to them, was utterly dubious.
It was also difficult to care for even one of the three characters, each irritating in their own way: the iconic songstress, the estranged aspiring chanteuse daughter, and the Californian PhD student who has been studying the icon for six years only then to act as the catalyst for the wafer-thin plot to unfold.
Daisy nodded off about 20 minutes into the piece, once it became clear where it was (and wasn’t) going.
I persevered.
I wondered whether the PhD student’s explanation of protest song types, rhetorical and magnetic, was something the playwright had invented for him or whether it was an actual media studies/sociology course thing. Turns out it is the latter and that the explanation as expounded by the character can be found in the Wikipedia entry on protest songs under “types” and that this particular classification should be credited to the late R. Serge Denisoff, bless him.
The actors sang some protest songs along the way, closing with We Shall Overcome and at one point rendering This Land Is Your Land, quite well.
I rather like the latter song but Janie, tragically not steeped in media studies or the sociology of popular culture, perceives it as a nationalistic US song rather than Woody Guthrie’s intended protest song and has banned me from singing it on my ukulele in her presence. She should click the link I have added to the phrase This Land Is Your Land and look at some of the original lyrics. In particular, the verse that reads:
There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me.
The sign was painted, said ‘Private Property.’
But on the backside, it didn’t say nothing.
This land was made for you and me.
…that verse might come back into fashion some time soon. But they didn’t sing that verse in this rather bland play. Pity.
You don’t see a lot of all saxophone combos. So much so, that when I saw the Ferio Saxophone Quartet concert listed for Thursday lunchtime on a day that I had kept clear for a client meeting that had been deferred until the new year, I thought, “I’ll give that a try”.
Naturally, I cut things a bit fine, trying to finish off some work before heading off for SJSS and then realising that I hadn’t really allowed much margin for error on timing.
Fortunately a Circle Line train came quite quickly. Then, at South Kensington, all of a sudden I could hear a Saxophone combo on the train, playing Hit The Road Jack very well indeed. I looked along the carriage and there indeed were several saxophonists giving it plenty. I managed to snap a couple of them with my smart phone camera.
“Perhaps the Ferio lot are also cutting it a bit fine for the gig,” I thought, “although they look a bit scruffy for SJSS, even at lunchtime.”
Between Sloane Square and Victoria, the combo played Blue Moon very well indeed. But clearly they weren’t the Ferio lot, as the “Anonymous Saxtet” got off the tube at Victoria, after relieving me and others of our small change (voluntarily I hasten to add).
I concluded that saxophone combos are like buses and tubes. You wait what seems like a lifetime for one, then two come along one after the other.
In the end I got to SJSS just a tiny bit late, but in true lunchtime concert fashion they let us latecomers slide in at the back of the hall and then move forward after the first piece. The first piece was a Bach Prelude and Fugue and I reckon I caught most of the Prelude as well as the Fugue.
When I moved forward between pieces, a kindly couple made extra space for me so I could remove my hat and coat quickly, take up an excellent seat and then they also gave me a look at their programme (I picked up my own copy at the end). I’m sure that nice couple would even have shared their sandwiches with me had they brought sandwiches, but they hadn’t. SJSS lunchtime concerts are not really “eat your sandwiches in the concert” type lunchtime concerts.
They were very good indeed, the Ferio Saxophone Quartet. I especially enjoyed their arrangement of Grieg’s Holberg Suite, which was the centrepiece of the concert really.
The concert was very well attended – 150+ people, I’d guess, perhaps even 200 if you count the sniffly but very attentive outing of schoolkids.
An appointment to view the Robert Rauschenberg arranged a long time ago, as Janie takes advantage of her Tate membership so we can see the exhibition on a members’ evening.
Janie came to the Z/Yen office to meet me. We then walked from Lothbury to the Tate Modern across Southwark Bridge – a pleasant 20 minutes or so walk when the weather is good, which it was.
We got to the Tate ahead of the special evening opening hours, so we went to the members’ bar and had a small “glass of” each to sustain ourselves for the exhibition.
When we staggered down the stairs to go to the Rauschenberg, we first encountered the entrance for the Wilfredo Lam, which the Tate had also opened up for the evening to enable members to see both exhibitions out of hours. “Why not?” we thought and gave the Wilfredo Lam a quick once-over. We’d seen a fair smattering of his works in Cuba and remembered that he wasn’t exactly our favourite. A bit austere. “Picasso-lite” I described it – probably not an entirely original comment.
Then the Rauschenberg, the real purpose of our visit. Both of us had seen some of his stuff before and liked it, but neither of us had seen much and we both knew little about him.
We both like his use of colour and some of the earlier, experimental works are interesting. I didn’t much like the transfer drawings but clearly this technique was a step on the path towards his astonishing silkscreen work, which we both find very pleasing and interesting.
The later work is a bit hit and miss. Rauschenberg was bound to be fascinated by the use of digital imaging as part of his work in later years, yet somehow I think the cruder, analogue methods produce more interesting work in his genre.
Still, we got plenty to see and here; Wu Man on pipa (we’d seen her before, in a late night “gig at the Wig” a couple of years ago) and Basel Rajoub and his Soriana project.
I got all excited about this concert when I went on line earlier in the week and listened to some Basel Rajoub/Soriana music; so much so that I downloaded a couple of albums to get familiar with this Syrian/Jazz fusion music:
The concert was clearly rejigged to accomodate Sanubar’s absence, so the Wigmore Hall on-line stub – click here – and indeed the main programme did not have a running order, but a separate flyer did – uploaded and shown above.
The concert started with Wu Man alone, then Basel Rajoub’s Soriana Project, then Wu Man joined Soriana so they all played together. The all playing together biuts were the most interesting for live performance. The artists clearly enjoyed playing together.
It is a shame the concert needed to be rejigged, but frankly most of us were perfectly content. Janie really enjoyed the fusion sounds, although she claimed last night to have tired a little of me playing the Basel Rajoub recordings. Perhaps you can have too much of a good thing.
A planned, much needed break in the middle of a busy day in a busy week.
First stop, Lock and Co. to replace my sorely missed Vermont hat. No blame attached to whatever happened during our Royal Academy evening a few weeks ago; merely to say that Daisy should stick to driving duties and avoid hat-stand duties; while I should retain full responsibility for my own hats whatever other duties I am undertaking.
Then on to St John’s Smith Square for the lunchtime concert.
Selfie With New Hat and Enormous Organ
I messaged Daisy with the above picture and caption, to let her know that I had replaced the hat and to show off the fact that I was taking a substantial enough break to take in a lunchtime concert on my tod. The reply:
What the…?
The concert was lovely. We saw Laura Snowden at SJSS a couple of years ago; a very talented young guitarist who comes across very nicely.
The centrepiece of this concert was a new work by Wally Gunn, an American composer who seems to have written this piece especially for Laura under commission of a young composers/performers scheme.
Laura show-pieced the new work by framing it with works by better-known composers, although not especially well-known works. A beautiful Dowland to start. Then Villa-Lobos’s preludes; I realised I knew the first well but had never heard the others before.
I enjoyed the Wally Gunn piece; it was based on Darwin diaries and had some very evocative passages, although the whispered words didn’t really float my Beagle, as it were.
Then a couple of Barrios waltzes and finally a short piece by Rodrigo.
Perfect way to set myself up for an afternoon of grind and also for an evening of jamming with DJ on my baritone baroq-ulele. Although, after listening to a virtuoso like Laura Snowden, my own pluckings and strummings are brought into perspective.
I don’t use that word in the youthful, throw-away sense that I have been known to lampoon elsewhere – click here for an example.
I mean that some of the items I saw this evening really did inspire awe. That rare, tingling feeling at the back of my neck when seeing an especially stunning drama unfolding in an unexpected way, or hearing a wonderful piece of music, or seeing a rare, thought-provoking and/or beautiful artefact.
This was a very interesting Gresham Society outing, albeit so close to Gresham home turf that the word “outing” seems barely appropriate. The Guildhall is just off Gresham Street and around the corner from the old Gresham College; perhaps an “innings” rather than an outing for the Gresham Society.
I hadn’t realised the diversity of subject matter contained in the collection. I knew to expect music books and I knew that the Guildhall Collection generally had a massive collection of books about London; my cousin Sidney would have been in his element for those. But also many books on food in the Gresham Collection and fascinating books about travel, inventions and mechanical devices.
After the illustrated talk, Peter then showed us around the many artefacts he had lovingly laid out around the library for us to glance at and (in the case of more robust/less rare items) examine.
Among the most interesting to me, a rare manuscript of Spem In Alium by Thomas Tallis, a favourite piece of mine. The rarity of this manuscript is two-fold. Firstly, it is documented as a “grandchild” of an original autograph – those are extremely rare for words of such antiquity and especially so for this work. Secondly, it contains a forty-first part for this forty-part piece.
One very beautiful travel book, Victorian era I should imagine, included a description and illustration of musicians in Aleppo. My slightly cack-handed smart phone image below does not do justice to the picture.
But the highlight of the artefacts was the Purcell Autograph from the Gresham Music Collection. That was the item that really made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
In order to ensure we were in the right mood for the Purcell Autograph, Peter Ross put on some suitable Purcell Music. I didn’t realise until later that he really was playing the music from the autograph we were observing; the contents of the autograph were recorded some years ago and the recording is still available as a CD or download. I have downloaded the album and am listening to it with great pleasure as I write. It can be obtained through Amazon – click here...and other places too no doubt.
Libations and nibbles were available in the lecture room, at a safe distance from the precious books. The Gresham Society people are always delightful company. I believe that the merriment continued afterwards in a nearby watering hole; I needed to retreat quite early having irritatingly accepted an early morning speaking engagement in Southampton the next day. Still, this evening at the Guildhall Library will live long and happily in my memory.
I think we booked this because we had booked so little at the Orange Tree of late and because Janie said she’d never seen a Somerset Maugham play. I had to admit that I hadn’t seen one either, although I had read some years ago (and frankly had found them wanting compared with his excellent short stories).
The scenario of this play, Sheppey, Maugham’s last, is straightforward enough. Sheppey is a gentleman’s hairdresser who wins a small fortune in a lottery. The play is set when written, c1933, when the great depression was biting hard for many. Sheppey’s life doesn’t overlap much with the have-nots, but those he does encounter affect him. Sheppey has always thought himself a lucky man despite his relatively modest life; so should his charity begin at home or should he try to spread the benefits of his lucky ticket?
The play is unduly long, with two intervals, in the 1930s tradition of three lengthy acts. It is hard to cut such plays to one interval numbers, but this play really does labour its way through 2 hours and 50 minutes (including intervals). If Paul Miller needs to persevere with the Orange Tree tradition of early 20th century plays, perhaps he should drop the tradition of “hanging on the playwright’s every word”.
Janie and I lost patience with the piece after two acts, deciding to bail out and take our fabada and solomillos dinner at Don Fernando’s at a more civilised hour.
This is a shame, as Paul Miller deploys his excellent directorial skills on a very talented cast to bring as much life as possible out of this play. He also deftly uses Geff Francis as Sheppey’s boss and Dickie Beau as the prostitute Sheppey tries to help, without ceremony but equally without any indication in the text that the boss might be black and/or that the prostitute might be a man in drag.
Still, this is not a great play, in my view (and in Janie’s). There are reasons why Somerset Maugham’s plays don’t get revived much. They were popular pieces in their day, but tend to seem incredibly dated in style now.
In Sheppey, the characters are a bit one-dimensional and it is pretty easy to see where the story is going. Major plot shifts are foreshadowed so overtly, Somerset Maugham might as well have alerted those shifts with neon signs or tannoy announcements. So when Janie asked me at the restaurant to look up and tell her what happens in the end, there were no surprises for me in the Wikipedia synopsis – above and again – SPOILER ALERT IF YOU – click here.
Of course, the character of Sheppey made me think of my grandfather, who was a gentleman’s hairdresser at the time the play was set and written. I wonder whether Grandpa Lew ever saw the play. My grandmother (who coincidentally, like Sheppey’s wife, had been in service before they married) was dying or recently deceased around that time, so perhaps not.
Grandpa Lew and Grandma Beatrice
But the play was set in Jermyn Street and performed at the Wyndhams, both within spitting distance of the Piccadilly Hotel where Grandpa Lew worked, so who knows? If he took my eleven-year-old mum with him, I very much doubt if her self-confessed childhood attention deficit hyperactivity disorder would have kept her in her seat for the full three acts.
I first met David Shirreff many years ago when we worked together on a couple of “financial Armageddon” simulations. I have long wanted to see one of his plays/musicals, but have somehow been confounded by the timing and/or location of the performances.
So when I saw that David was putting Brexit The Musical on at my beloved, local Canal Café Theatre and that one of the show dates was a free Thursday in my diary, I had no hesitation in booking a seat. While I was at it, I also booked to see NewsRevue; might as well while I am there.
“I’m going to the Canal Café Theatre next week, as it happens”, said Tony, “a friend of mine has written a musical…” The coincidence grew when we realised that not only did we both know David Shirreff but we had both booked the same Thursday night to see Brexit The Musical.
I ate early and walked to the Canal Café Theatre, as I had so often done back in the 1990s, when we used to meet up for writers’ meetings on a Thursday night before watching the show.
Tony and son John were already there when I got to the theatre.
Tony and I swapped “real tennis war stories” from our famous victory in the skills contest the week before and from our match against Middlesex University Real Tennis Club (MURTC) the night before, in which Tony and I had both been part of losing pairs, but pairs who had lost more heroically than MURTC’s losing pairs, hence contributing towards a great MCC match victory; 2.5-2.5 in rubbers, decided in MCC’s favour on net games. Oh boy, John must have been fascinated and impressed.
I was also able to swap my ticket so I could sit with Tony and John during the show.
We had a chat with David Shirreff before and after the performance. It is a good show. Low hanging fruit for humour, of course, Brexit, not least Boris Johnson and Michael Gove as comedic characters. There were some superbly acerbic lines throughout the show.
The dramatic highlight for me was a parody of the three witches from Macbeth (Theresa, Andrea and Amber, presumably) confounding Boris and Gove with their power riddles. The musical highlight for me was the Putin Rap.
Between shows while I was chatting with David and some of his friends, Nick R Thomas (one of our NewsRevue writing gang from the 1990s) turned up, which was a really pleasant surprise. Nick had seen my e-shout-out that I was going that night, happened to be in London that day and thought, “why not? I haven’t seen the show for 15 years or so…”
Since 1979…like…so old!
In case anyone reading this is unaware, NewsRevue has been going since 1979. Around about the time the show first went to Edinburgh, in August 1979, I was in Mauritus looking at prehistoric-looking giant tortoises and stuff (see above picture…no, not the ones with politicians’ faces, the other picture). I wrote for the show extensively for most of the 1990s, starting in 1992.
In 2004, NewsRevue was awarded a Guinness World Record for the longest running live comedy show. It has been described as The Mousetrap of live comedy. You can read more about it by clicking here.
Nick blagged his way onto my table, where we were joined by a very perky and friendly young couple who had never seen the show before. “Have you seen the show before?” they asked us. “Hundreds of times”, we replied, explaining our connection with the show.
Realising how young they were, I suggested that, scarily, Nick and I might have been writing for the show before they were born. The young man politely replied that he was a toddler back then, while the young woman remained silent, confirming my fears. I think the young couple probably saw me and Nick as curious antique creatures, a little like…me looking at centuries-old Mauritian giant tortoises all those years before.
We really enjoyed the show. The Trump opening number was an “orthodox” medley of Queen songs, well put together. A “Corbyn Man” number to the Willy Wonka “Candy Man” song was good, as was a version of “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen; Len singing his regret that no-one listens to his recording of the song.
There were some excellent quickies and short sketches. I especially liked the customer complaining about their Galaxy Note 7 catching fire, with the gormless shop assistant misconstruing each danger/complaint adjective as slang praise for a wonderful device.
Ed Balls singing and dancing a “Gangnam Style” parody was excellent, as was a superb rap, the origins of which were beyond me, but the lyrics and delivery were superb. But despite those two numbers, most of the songs used as the basis of the show seem to be stuck in the choices we used to make in our era; musical numbers and pop songs from the 1960s to 1980s.
Sadly, the closing number broke the second law of NewsRevue songs, which is Do not use “I Will Survive”. (The first law being Do not use “YMCA”.) Still, given the way the world is right now, the use of I Will Survive might be forgiven. Indeed, come to think of it, what with Brexit and Trump, those financial Armageddon simulations David Shirreff and I did years ago might come in handy. But I digress.
I was most taken by the response of the NewsRevue audience, not least the young couple at our table. In fact the whole audience (mostly younger folk) seemed thoroughly thrilled by their evening. It was heartening to see that the formula still works after all these years and can all-but fill the Canal Café Theatre on a cold, wet but thoroughly enjoyable Thursday evening.
