Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, Playhouse Theatre

 Last summer,I  booked to see Cabaret, starring Eddie Redmayne as the Emmcee, Jessie Buckley as Sally Bowles,and Omari Douglas as Clifford Bradshaw.  That was a long time ago, when nothing seemed certain, and making any kind of booking felt light offering a hostage to fortune. It  crept up on me a little, and had I known ahead of time it was going to fall just as our government moved to an 'ignore it and  it will go away' policy on Covid, I might not have chosen this week, but such is life...  

The theatre has been completely reconfigured inside, there's now a central, circular stage, with seating behind as well as in front  of the stage, creating the feel of a club. In addition, the first few rows of the stalls have been replaced with cafe style tables. There are art-deco style, monocled masks on the walls (I can't remember from my previous visits, I think they are covering up the Roman style Ox skulls that used to be there) - it's very thorough.

The booking e-mail sending tickets also gives you an entry time, encouraging everyone to arrive early to allow time to visit the bars and pre-show entertainment. My entry point was the stage door (who knows how the actors get in!)  so one goes in to a rather utilitarian corridor, to the first of the bars,(and a complimentary shot of schnapps (or a bottle of lager or water) where a live pianist played,

On the main level, the second bar, in decadent white and gold, murals on the walls (destined, no doubt, were we truly in Wiemar Germany, to be condemned in the near future as degenerate art)  with dancers on a platform over the bar, live musicians, as well as a champagne bar.

And all this before you get to your seat!

Then - the show itself.

It's good. Very good. 

Eddie Redmayne is superb as The Emcee - almost clownish in the opening number, (sporting a fetching little party hat) and gradually becoming much darker, and colder, as the show continues, including an angel of war or death for 'Money Money Money', moving to a more conventional, if grimmer, appearance towards the end of the show.

Jessie Buckley didn't appear at the performance I saw, the Sally Bowles role was played by her understudy, Sally Firth (according to her mum, who I bumped into in the foyer during the interval, it was the first time she'd appeared in the role) 

The rest of the cast is very strong - Ellliot Levey and Lisa Sadovy, Her Shultz and Fraulein Schneider were particularly strong, and Omaro Douglas as Bradshaw was also excellent.

Booking information here, (the cast is changing from the end of March, Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley are leaving)  but I think that the production is good enough that it will be  well worth seeing even without them!

There are some photos of the show here, and of the redesign of the theatre here 

Storm Eunice - 18th February 2022

 We have been having a certain amount of weather. Which,of course, gives us something to talk about..

The Met Office issued an unusual 'Red' warning, and while I live just out of the red zone, even an amber warning is pretty serious.

Our local council recommended tht all the schools should close on Friday, the local bus company cancelled all services, and (true sign that it was serious) the council cancelled our rubbish and recycling collections, depriving us of the opportunity to spend the evening hunting our bins and recycling boxes throughout the village, to wherever the storm might take them.

It was due reach us mid-morning but was a little delayed. 

It seemed to be worst mid afternoon ,when we were enjoying hail and localised power cuts; little tiny one at work, and longer ones at the house - I was discouraged rather, when I checked the power company website and found that (at 4.30 on Friday) they were hoping that they would be able to get the power back on by 6 p.m. on Saturday...

Under the circumstances, I headed home (avoiding fallen trees)where I found that (a) the electricity was, indeed, off, although happily I have a gas hob so could at least heat things up, and (b) I had rather less than the recommended amount of garden fence. Well, I  suppose I had nearly the same amount of fence as I had first thing, it's just that rather less of it was attached to the fence posts and rather more of it was on the lawn, than is the norm in the best regulated gardens!

I also lost some felting from my garden she's roof, but that was unsurprising as it's been on it's last legs for a while.

Several of my neighbours lost roof tiles, and there are a lot of trees down. My next door neighbours lost the board thy'd put up to cover their shed's missing window..

We got our power back much sooner than expected,which was nice - I had dug out my stash of candles but was happy not to have to use them! 

So it felt as though we got off pretty lightly. The weekend was cold and wet and breezy - I didn't go for much of a walk at the weekend as it was not very pleasant,but I did take the long way round when I went for my paper, ad found a few more fallen trees and branches.

 Then on Monday Storm Franklin arrived, and took down part of my neighbour's fence. But, somewhat to my surprise, my temporary botched props, to stop the rest of my fence blowing  down seemed to work,and hardy any more of fence fell down,although some of it did end up all over the grass again. 

So, not the most enjoyable weekend I've ever had, but I'm very glad it wasn't worse.

The Ocean At The End of the Lane - Duke of York's Theatre

Back in December 2019, I got to see the stage adaptation of Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane, at the Dorfman at the National Theatre, and it was extraordinarily good (I ended up seeing it 3 times), so when I heard that it was transferring for a longer London run I suggested to my cousin, A, that she and her boys might like it, and we arranged to go together. Then, of course, or tickets.

Since the tickets we originally had were for January 2021, ended up being a longer wait than anticipated, but we finally got to go, almost exactly a year to the day after our original date - and it was worth the wait.

The Duke of York's is larger than the Dorfman, but the play still manages to feel intimate, and immediate, and the Hunger Birds are still terrifying! 

And, even though I have seen it before, I was still almost in tears at the end.

It's beautifully staged, and the story is such a poignant , heartbreaking evocation of childhood loss and fears. 

It's on until 14th May, at the Duke of York's Theatre and I do recommend that you see it, if you can. Since it is a  National Theatre  production, and one which is getting excellent reviews, I hope that they may film it for NT Live. I know that there were plans or a touring production, too, although I am not sure whether, post Covid. that's still the plan. I hope so.

Dr Semmelweiss - Bristol Old Vic

When I saw that Mark Rylance was going to be coming to Bristol and appearing in a brand new play, I naturally couldn't resist, and promptly booked myself a ticket, for one of the preview performances..

The play is Dr Semmelweiss which as you may expect, is about Dr. Ignaz Semmelweiss, (1818-1865), the Hungarian obstetrician who pioneered the use of hand-washing in hospitals, prior to Louis Pasteur and  Joseph Lister's research into bacteria. 

He noted that the incidence of puerperal fever / childbed fever (sepsis) was significantly lower in women who were treated in a ward run by midwives than one run by doctors, and, following the death of his friend and colleague Jakob Kolletschka, after accidentally butting his finger with a scalpel during an autopsy,realised the key difference was tht the doctors and medical students also attended and  performed autopsies, and posited that they were carrying 'cadaveric particles' or 'decaying organic matter' from cadavers, on their hands.  

He instituted hand-washing with chlorinated lime (which was used to clean and remove the smell, in the mortuary) , and reduced the mortality rate by around 90%.

Sadly, things did not end well for Ignaz - his conclusions were not accepted and, in a tragic irony, he died of septic shock after being  committed to  an insane asylum.

The play is told mostly in flashback, we start with Semmelweiss (Mark Rylance)  in Budapest with his wife Maria,  (Thalissa Teixeira) visited by his former colleagues seeking to persuade him to return to Vienna to speak, at a conference, about his discovery.

As we watch him , back in Vienna, learning that the death rate is higher in the Doctor's than the Midwives' ward, and facing the first death of a patient, then follow his story as he works out the connections and then struggles to cope with the difficulties of being unable to to convince others of his findings, and of being unable to navigate the politics needed to make people accept his theory.

Rylance's performance is, perhaps not unexpectedly, superb - passionate, and tragic - haunted by his failures, absolutely single-minded (and therefore intentionally cruel) in his determination to convince others of what he is certain is true, and his anger at those who cannot, or will not, accept his findings. He is ultimately overwhelmed by the failure to change things as much, or as quickly, as he wishes.

The play is very balletic - the Salomé quartet  provide music throughout, and there are dancers,(choreography by Antonia Franceschi)  as the various mothers, adding to the sense that Semmelweiss is always surrounded by, haunted by, the women he has failed to save.

Although Rylance's performance is the centre of this play, the supporting cast is also very strong, particularly Thalissa Teixeira as his wife, Jackie Clune as Nurse Muller (who also gets some of the best lines) and  Enyi Okoronkwo (Franz Arneth) 

It was planned and written before Covid hit, but inevitably  feels relevant and contemporary.

Very well worth seeing, and on at Bristol Old Vic until 19th February.