The Rat Trap at Park Theatre

I need few excuses to go to Park Theatre and none to see a Noel Coward play so the only question was when to see The Rat Trap and I settled for a Saturday matinee just to be in Finsbury in daylight.

The show was selling very well and so I experimented with the small balcony area for the first time. It was bit of a risk as while some balconied work well, e.g. Young Vic, others do not, e.g. Orange Tree.

That in mind, I went for Park 200 E30 at £39.

The picture below taken from my seat shows that everything was okay and I would sit up there again.

Being a matinee meant I had to find somewhere to have lunch and my memory served me well and I went back to Frame, which I had discovered in November 24, and helped myself to a good sized and very tasty vegetarian breakfast.

I knew nothing of The Rat Trap and was relying on my general knowledge of Noel Coward, including a recent visit to see Private Lives (again). That worked.

The heart of the story was a recently married couple, both writers, trying to find space for each other and also their work. Under this pressure something broke.

This made it a darker play that others of his but the tension was lightened at times by the small group of people around them.

It was all deeply engrossing and I was shocked when the lights went down for the interval and an hour had somehow passed. Time for an ice cream.

The second half continued nicely towards its dramatic ending.

Everything about the performance neatly done, as it had been for the same company's The Forsyte Saga Parts 1 and 2 in the same theatre in 2024 which also used a great cast and an almost empty stage to tell a compelling story.

This was a superb afternoon at the theatre and even a horrendous journey home, I gave up trying to catch a train at Vauxhall because there weren't any, did nothing to spoil it.

All My Sons at Wyndham's Theatre

Initially I avoided All My Sons at Wyndham's Theatre for several reasons: I had seen twice before in recent memory (2016 and 2019) and I generally avoid the big star productions in the West End because of the high prices.

What changed my mind was very good reviews, a willingness to splash out on a major event  close to my birthday, and the appearance to two seats in an otherwise sold out production.

And so I paid £103.5 for seat Row A26 in the Royal Circle (the uppermost level). From there I could see almost all of the stage.

The set was nice and simple. The house was represented by a plain board across the back of the stage with a simple door and a round window above it; there were no other decorations or features. The only object in the garden was a fallen tree, which we saw fall at the very start of the show. This tree was were people sat. I like simple sets and this was a good one.

The story was what it was with lots of dialogue and little action. Plays like that have to be written well to work and clearly Arthur Miller knew what he was doing. I had remembered the gist of the story but there was a lot of detail that had slipped my mind and which I was glad to hear again.

Bryan Cranston had the star billing and played the patriarch superbly but the rest of the cast was so strong that his performance did not standout. All of the acting was superb.

The only part of the production that I am unsure about is the background music. I am not sure why it was there, it did nothing to enhance my enjoyment of the play but at least it was quiet enough to ignore most of the time.

This was a great play with a great cast and a pleasingly simple set. It was a perfect birthday treat.

Akram Khan's Gisele at London Coliseum

This was another show that crept under my radar, even though I subscribe to a vast number of arts emails (the volume may be part of the problem1), and it was a late decision to go, prompted by good reviews.

I was lucky with returns and got seat Upper Circle: A5 for a no-brainer £67.

I had seen Giselle many years before as a traditional ballet but this version promised "mesmerising choreography blends ballet with classical Indian dance kathak and contemporary movement, harnessing groups of dancers to dial up the intensity in every scene" which sounded very interesting, and I like interesting.

This version of Gisele combined so many things that I love including industrial music, low lighting, large groups of dancers, a simple set and unusual movements. The mix of dancing styles was obvious and worked very well.

My lasting image of the performance is the workers moving synchronously to the dark repetitive music as they did their task, which is why I chose the image above from the several available.

There was a story in there too but frankly I cared little for it and made no attempt to follow it, this was a dance of moods and movement and those did not need a narrative to justify them,

There were only a few performances at London Coliseum but a show this good must reappear somewhere before too long and I will gladly travel to anywhere (sensible) in the country to see it again.

Akram Khan's Gisele at London Coliseum was the best dance show I have ever seen.

An Ideal Husband at White Bear Theatre

TLDR: An Ideal Husband at White Bear Theatre was excellent and you should have gone.

Now for the full story ...

I first came across Dan Rebellato (a playwright and Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London) via his play Beachy Head at Jackson Lane in 2011 which I described then as "one of the very best things I have ever seen in a theatre.". Since then I have seen and heard more of his plays and followed him on social media which tells me that we have been to many of the same plays but never at the same time.

It was because of his knowledge and love of the theatre that I followed his advice to go and see Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel at Battersea Arts Centre in 2023, and I loved it.

When he recommended An Ideal Husband at White Bear Theatre I bought tickets immediately, wife and sister having no say in the matter!

White Bear Theatre in Kennington used to be one of my fairly regular venues but that was when I was working in Kings Cross and it was more-or-less on my way home. Times change and I had not been there for almost four years, May 2022 for Harold Pinter's The Dwarfs. It was good to go back.

With the three of us travelling separately it made sense to meet and eat in the pub and that worked well. We sat in the large dining area where the theatre used to be before it moved upstairs,

It was unallocated seating and being very experienced at that I was first in and we claimed three seats in the middle of the long side of the "L" shaped seating.

And this was our view of the stage.

Clearly this was a modern production though just how modern was let to be seen.

At the core of the play was Oscar Wilde's flamboyant quote-laden script from which I give just one example to make the point "Lord Goring, I never believe a single word that either you or I say to each other."

The Oscar Wilde script alone was enough to make the evening good.

An Ideal Husband is a play with little action (apart from moving form one formal room to another) and so its need strong dialogue and characterisation. Wilde's script provide the base and this was built on substantially by the cast of actors who made each character distinct and interesting. Again, to give just one example to prove the point; one of the English gentlemen was played as an American complete with cowboy hat and shades.

The staging was the final element and there was a great deal going on here from amusing props (e.g. a roll of sticky tape for a diamond broach) to the off-stage characters watch intently from the sides. As always with clever staging there is a balance to find between adding to the play and distracting from it and for me the staging definitely worked.

All this meant that you could simply enjoy the play as written, or go a bit further and appreciate the way that the actors brought the characters to convincing life or go a bit further still and understand how the whole production (I forgot to mention the lights!) worked together to deliver a good play brilliantly.

An Ideal Husband at White Bear Theatre was excellent and you should have gone.

I averaged 21,517 steps a day in 2025

While the headline, 21k steps a day, is true the graph shows that there is more to the story than a single number.

After averaging almost 29k steps a day in 2024 I set a goal of over 30k steps a day for 2025 and for the first five months I achieved this comfortably.

Then the health issues kicked in.

My health story is long, complicated and unresolved. I would be as bored telling you about it as you would be reading it so all I will add is that the drugs are helping and I am now back up to 20k steps a day. I even managed 40k steps one day recently.

Many of the walks have been to new areas and new streets as I build my CityStrides LifeMap and this remains a great way to discover new things and to build a sense of achievement as the number of streets walked in each area (city/town/borough) grows.

I have set more modest targets for 2026 and these include the reasonably modest Go Jauntly Walk 2026 Challenge and  Two Million March.

I also hope to redo London Capital Ring (anti-clockwise this time) and London Loop; hopes carried forward from last year.

Rainbow in Rock at The Cavern (20 Dec 25)

Another very welcome gig by Rainbow in Rock at The Cavern in Raynes Park. Superficially it was the same as all the other Rainbow in Rock gig I have been too (and that is a very good thing) but I did nake a few mental notes during the evening.

The setlist, which always changes, seemed to be geared more toward the newer Rainbow material rather then the older Deep Purple songs. There were a couple I barely recognised and there was no space for songs like Burn, Mistreated or Stormbringer.

The keyboards were more prominent that before.

The bar staff were quietly efficient. The service was always quick and friendly, they remembered what I was drinking too.

It was worth going for Stargazer alone, it is possibly the best song ever written, though Like A Hurricane is a contender too.

NT LIVE: The Fifth Step at Olympic Studios

While a play staring Martin Freeman and Jack Lowden was tempting it was not tempting enough to get me to pay west end prices so I skipped the run at Soho Place but it was tempting enough when it transferred to screen under the NT Live umbrella.

I chose my usual cinema, Olympic Studios in Barnes, where central seat F6 cost a modest £18.5.

The timing worked well with a matinee performance at Bush Theatre I was able to stroll down slowly to Barnes pausing for coffee and cake along the way before arriving at Olympic in time for an unhurried soup and a beer,

By chance, both plays were about therapy sessions though this one was framed around alcoholism and the AA 12 Step Programme where Step 5 is "Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.".

For me, The Fifth Step failed almost immediate in comparison to the earlier After Sunday as these sessions seemed contrived and unnatural. I also found it hard to care for either character.

Jack Lowden initially played the alcoholic going through the programme with a lot of nervous energy but as he went through the multiple sessions he gained composure and almost became his Slow Horses character.Martin Freeman play the session leader as a man who was never in control of the process with lots of hesitations and mumblings. It was almost as if he had not learned the part fully. 

The staging tried to stir some life into the production with some light effects and rearranging the chairs(!) between scenes but these were more of a distraction than an enhancement.

The Fifth Step was a disappointment with only Jack Lowden's acting in the early stages leaving a good memory.

After Sunday at Bush Theatre

My theatre going changes over time due to factors like where I am working, artistic directors changing and, obviously, Covid but whatever the reason Bush Theatre in Hammersmith had drifted slightly off my radar and I only sent to see After Sunday because an email from the theatre said that it had a good review from Morning Star!

The synopsis on the website included "Ty, Leroy and Daniel have signed up to a new Caribbean cooking group. But when you’re locked in a secure hospital, too much food for thought can be a bad thing.". This sounded exactly my sort of thing so I am surprised that I had not picked up on it earlier.

Still, no serious damage was done and I got seat A6 fort £20, very much in the no need to think about it price range.

It was good to be back amongst the buzz at Bush and back to a seat in the front row.

While the basic premise of the play was simple, four inmates in a secure hospital attend weekly cookery classes with an Occupational Therapist, the insight to group therapy sessions was unpredictable and engaging.

With the five characters having different pasts and expectations their stories went in different directions and, as with therapy, some of them had significant moments but none of them ended.

Over an hour and a half we had interesting stories rich in all sort of emotions. Stories and characters that I cared about.

After Sunday sounded exactly my sort of thing, and so it proved. I loved it.