However, I swallowed my pride and went along for the ice cream in the interval.
It's a weird version: the play is a parody already, and so making a parody version of it is a high-risk punt.
The script is so great that it's hard to get it wrong, but it wobbled between camp and smut (G.A.Y. jokes in this day and age?), had some odd direction (too often we were faced with the actors' backs), derivative tropes (the butler who couldn't find the way off stage), and some fabulous clowning from the woman who played Cecily (Jessica Whitehurst, who could really have done the entire play herself). I've just realised that one of the main male leads was played by Olly Alexander, so maybe that's what drove their desire to see it! He was relentlessly fey and enormously energetic, and he too was a great visual comedian.
It was entertaining: the pace didn't let up for a second. However, I felt that the cast didn't gel particularly well; it was almost as if they had all rehearsed different versions of the play with different people before coming together for this one. Stephen Fry was actually very good, cast well in this play and completely over made-up. Those magenta lips! But again, he was performing on a different planet from the rest of the cast. Odd, but fun anyway.
Yesterday was my birthday. Offsprog Two threw a small family party, and Offsprog One made a blue tit cake (that was the icing; it wasn't actually made of blue tits, I promise). It was nice. I haven't talked so much for ages though it was low-key. They even sang happy birthday! Sometimes we go away (once even to Paris!), but this year I'm celebrating actually being alive. My brother James should have been there too. There was a gap in the festivities.
Today I made a list of the songs I need to learn. I'm doing a gig in a Crisis at Christmas homeless shelter on Friday and they have asked for a couple of cover versions as well as my own stuff. I was flummoxed till I remembered Mr Unswitchable's Lockdown Saturdays, so I chose This Boy and Storm in a Teacup to learn, and I'll do Femme Fatale and a bunch of my own songs. I did one before lockdown in Camden, and one guy sat and listened intently to the lyrics and asked about them afterwards. It was laid back and informal, and I'm looking forward to it.
I also have to learn the Rabbie Burns song Charlie is my Darling for the Country Soul Sessions Burns Night Special, and I'll learn the Gaelic version of Cailin Morun Sa for that too.
And of course: It Wasn't Me, to play with Lester Square at the gig on the 15th of January (below), plus Sixties Guy which I've never played live before, and The Porter Rose at Dawn, which I don't play very much and which Jack Hayter will be playing on.
I solved a logistic problem last night in my normal insomniac musings. I'd been worried about getting everyone on stage in time for their slots. 'What a stage-management mess', I thought. Then it hit me: we should all be there on stage anyway, do our slot, then get off. Then for the main bit of the gig, all anyone needs to do is go back to where they started and everything will be set up for them. AHA!
Never underestimate a 'sleepless night'!
Here's the ticket link, and a new poster with Gina Birch's name on it now, for I'm delighted to confirm that she will be playing a couple of songs too:
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