Coram Boy

One of the reasons for living in London is to have easy access to a wide variety of experiences, including the arts, and we make a reasonable effort to take advantage of this by going to museums, galleries, concerts and plays. And a few times every year we force some of this culture on our offspring and take them too.

Often this is over the Christmas period when there are, unsurprisingly, more things on that are suitable for children and they have less school work to do. This year we took them to see Coram Boy at the National Theatre. It was excellent!

Philip Pullman (whose Dark Materials we saw at the NT a couple of years ago), describes the play better than I could, "A rich and almost Gothic drama unfolds, full of dastardly villains, cold-hearted aristocrats, devoted friends and passionate lovers, and set against a background of cruelty, music and murder."

All I can add is that it kept our family of four, including two teenage boys, enthralled for three hours.