The Truth at Apollo Theatre

I have seen several Florian Zeller plays and films over the years (I even wrote about some of them) and that experience made me want to see The Truth. The names Mangan and O'Hanlon helped too.

Knowing that the dialogue would be the key feature I went for a cheap seat rather than a good one and paid a very modest £35 for Section Grand Circle

Row A Seat 2. I could not quite see all of the stage due to a rail but it was more than good enough and well worth the money.

The Truth is all about when to tell the truth and when to lie, either to protect yourself or to protect the person you are lying to.

The play starts with a simple truth, Stephen Mangan's character is having am affair and we know this because they are in bed together. After that things get more and more complicated as the lies and the truth mix unexpectedly. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that one of the complications is trying to work out who knows about the affair, if indeed they do know, and how they found out.

The dialogue is full of dramatic and unexpected twists delivered brilliantly by the whole cast who twist things further with subtle expressions that we can see but not the person they are talking to.

It is all rather brilliant and extremely funny. The audience laughed, gasped in surprise and clapped all the way through.

Paranormal Activity at Richmond Theatre

xxxxI see almost everything at Richmond Theatre and while Paranormal Activity did not sound like my sort of thing the West End pedigree and my general love of theatre was enough for me to fork out £50 (more than I usually pay) for my usual seat Dress Circle A 24.

As expected, it was a play that used special effects and loud noises to carry most of the drama and little was asked of the characters or of the actors who played them. For some reason a lot of the noise was by grunge legends Soundgarden, and I was happy with that.

The play carried on much as expected with a series of possibly paranormal events that were well staged and often unexpected. Scenes like the one on the sofa got loud gasps from the audience.

Like 2:22 – A Ghost Story, and other similar plays, it ends with a big twist that was most unexpected, in this case that was largely because no clues had been given.

Paranormal Activity was a two-pony, special effects and a surprise ending, and while it was entertaining enough it was not very substantial.

A Slow Fire at Jermyn Street Theatre

I try to see Simon Stephens'  plays whenever possible (and to write about them here) so when Jermyn Street Theatre (a favourite) announced A Slow Fire I was quick to pay my £28 for a central front-row seat (A5).

I got a bit distracted on the way there and left myself with little time to eat something beforehand so, yet again, I ended up in the pub around the corner, Three Crowns, where I had just about enough time to scoff a couple of starters and drink a pint of Level Head.

Having seen several Simon Stephens plays I am not sure that he has a style, other than swearing, but this still seemed different, possibly because of the post-apocalyptic setting.

The structure of the play fooled me immediately. The first scene had one of the two main characters try to prise the other man away from a gay relationship. I was not impressed by the acting at this point.

But the joke was on me. This was not the actors acting, this was their characters acting as they relived a hopeful scene from one of their lives. They acted out several scenes and had their favourites that they returned to. These scenes of hope were what kept them going in whatever bleak world they were living in.

And somebody was stealing railway tracks.

This strange but stable situation was rudely interrupted by two separate visitors and things changed.

It was not really a story, rather it was about real people in a series of weird situations and the characters, the actors who played them and Simon Stephens who wrote the words they said made it all work beautifully.

... later ...

I deliberately leave writing anything up to give me time to reflect and this time it took a little while for the obvious truth to dawn.

I was trying to categorise this play by thinking of something comparable and finally it hit me, this has the hallmarks of a Philip Ridley play and, to be specific, it owes an awful lot to The Pitchfork Disney, so much so that the connections must be deliberate on Stephens' part. Both have an odd couple living an isolated life in a dysfunctional world that is not explained, both have two visitors who shake things up, one of those visitors is decidedly weird vocally, there is a brother and sister and there is someone called Presley. All that cannot be a coincidence.

The relationship to The Pitchfork Disney was a nice bonus, a little easter egg for Ridley fans, and A Slow Fire remained superb play that was excellently delivered by all involved.

Tao of Glass at @sohoplace

The simple explanation is that this is a story with music about the making of this production and the Taoist ideas that inspired it.

To add to that the music is by Philip Glass and the writer/directot/performer is Phelim McDermott who had worked with Philip Glass previously on, amongst other things, several productions of Satyagraha and Akhnaten which I had seen and loved several times.

All that made Tao of Glass unmissable and I gladly paid £65 for my seat at @sohoplace, my first time there.

Given the nature of the narrative it is hand to describe sequentially, and that would serve no purpose anyway as it was not really a sequential story. The opening set the scene with Phelim McDermott talking from his seat in the audience as if he was also watching the show.

Narratively we heard various stories about his love of theatre, of Philip Glass' music, Taoist texts, an aborted opera and the show that replaced it, this one.

The narration was embellished with folded paper and puppetry, familiar from his production of Satyagraha, along with Philip Glass music composed for this show.

It was very much aimed at fans of Philip Glass, his music and themes he had explored before and as one of those I absolutely loved it. So did everyone else judging by the extended clapping and standing ovation at the end.

I have walked every street in Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

I continue to use MapMyWalk to record where I have been when venturing to places new and CityStrides to keep track of all of the places that I have been.  

CityStrides tracks progress by London Borough and having previously walked every street in Kingston upon Thames, Richmond upon Thames and City of London, I have now also completed Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC).

Given its central location, I had walked through lots of RBKC over the years but it took significant effort to stretch that to every street. London is not a grid and planning the best way to cover every street in an area is a constant challenge and always requires some retracing of steps.

The character of the area varies widely, as you would expect. In the south of the Borough I had to content with many dead-end mews that I had to walk all the way to the end of only to turn around and walk all the way out again. In the north Westway, the railway lines out of Paddington and the canal were all formidable barriers to navigate.

I hope to do Westminster next which is a similar Borough with similar street layouts. I have managed 87% so far and it will take five or six trips there to finish it off; always presuming that I can, I have one road left to do in Hammersmith and Fulham but that was in a construction site when I last tried to walk it.