Sparks at Bournemouth International Centre

Seeing every possible Sparks gig in London was not enough to I went to see them in Bournemouth as well. The timing worked well with my sister's birthday and we dragged her along too as part of a celebratory weekend.

But first we had to get to Bournemouth and while the trains worked well (Richmond to Clapham to Bournemouth) the station is just outside of the town and we had to walk the mile and a bit in. For that I used GoJauntly to find a pretty route and that worked well.

We had to eat somewhere and failing to find anything along the way we went to Elevate Brassier and Bar within BIC which was excellent with good food, great service and superb value. If I ever make it back to BIC I will eat there again.

 

I had not been to BIC before so the seating arrangement was a surprise. We were in row E (£75.25) which was a level area; normally that would worry me but the stage was high enough for the tall people not to worry me.

The photo, taken during Ron and Russell's duet in Let's Get Funky, shows how good my view was.

While this was a seated area people kept getting up to dance and after a few false starts we all were. The video my sister supposedly took of me dancing is fake.

The setlist was the same as it was a few days earlier in Chelsea, as expected, and it was just as good musically this time round and the better seat made it a better show.

Stand-out songs were the usual singalongs When Do I Get to Sing "My Way", The Number One Song in Heaven and the closer All That. Of course they played  This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us which went down a storm but, oddly, it is not one of my top favourites of theirs. It was also good to see the very political and (still) very topical  (Baby, Baby) Can I Invade Your Country from 2006.

Sparks always entertain mightily and I hope they live up to their promise of touring again soon.

Sparks at Royal Hospital Chelsea

Another year brings another Sparks tour and that meant going to their London date. There are rules.

Once again it was another eclectic venue, the Royal Hospital Chelsea (home of the Chelsea Flower Show) where they were appearing as part of the Live at Chelsea series of summer concerts.

I bought tickets the instant they went on general sale and bought the three best seats then available,, Block A Row G 14-16 for a shade under £300.  The view was good enough from there and the sound quality was excellent so no complaints.

The support act (!) was Chelsea Pensioner Singers who filled their time admirably, especially as they opened with It's a Sparks Show, a song which Sparks used to open their shows with until it was replaced by So May We Start from the film Annette.

The joining instructions did say "People are likely to choose to stand and dance within the seated area, particularly during upbeat numbers." which in practice meant that everyone in the front area, including us, stood up immediately Sparks came on stage.

For the next hour and a half or so it was non-stop dancing to a succession of great songs with a few newer less familiar ones scattered amongst the many familiar hits like This Town, No 1 Song and My Way. It was relentlessly excellent and even the brief power cut did nothing to dampen the mood.

And it is  only a week or so until I do it again in Bournemouth!

It Walks Around The House At Night at Southwark Playhouse

I do not get to Southwark Playhouse as often as I whould but that is London's fault for having so many theatres. This production sounded interesting enough to get me back there and the clincher was the production company ThickSkin, who I first encountered with much delight in 2012.

Being over a decade later meant that I now qualified for the Old Gits discount and my seat in the front row was a modest £22.5, about the price of three pints.

Though not my core passion, I have seen several ghost plays over the years, mostly touring shows like 2:22 and The Woman in Black at Richmond Theatre. This was nothing like those. It was far far better.

The story was unexpected and the storytelling exceptional. It was narrated in the first person with George Naylor telling us the story of jobbing actor Joe who took on an unusual commission to walk around a house at night. Iy was a more-or-less solo show and George Naylor led us skilfully through a turbulent experience of lust, fear, laughter and friendship.

There was a lot going on around the main story including a reference to Simon Armitage's poem Those Bastards in their Mansions and an different use of the term "spell checker". Those are just two small examples of the many rich nuggets in Tim Foley's script.

The set and direction were exemplary too with lots of darkness, appropriate loud noises, some projection on the back of the stage and a wire allowing George Naylor to adopt otherwise impossible poses.As with the script, there was a lot going on and it was all good.

It Walks Around The House At Night was exceptional theatre.

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.

The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown at The Lexington

My list of "must see" bands is sadly reducing as we all get older so I was delighted to have another opportunity to see The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. 

The venue this  time was The Lexington in Islington, a place I had walked past many many times but had never visited before, so that was something to look forward to too.

Another bonus was that despite having walked all around that area when working by Kings Cross there were a few roads that I had not ticked off on my CityStrides Life Map, either because they are dead-ends or simply because I was not mapping my walk when I had been that way, so I spent an hour or so before the gig filling the gaps. That was another fifteen streets completed.

I even had time to grab a coffee and a sandwich from the local Pret before heading to the pub and in the pub I had time for a pint of Black Sheep Bitter before heading upstairs for the music.

I was quick enough upstairs to get to stand right next to the stage, something I had not managed to do with Arthur Brown for a little while. That let me take a few close-up pictures like this one.

The performance was much like the ones I had first seen in Lewes in 2023 snd twice since then. It had a lot of songs that I did not know, as well as several classic that I did, all of which were presented very theatrically. Obviously Time Captives was my stand-out song as it was entry into the crazy world of Arthur Brown way back in 1973.

It was another great evening and to cap it all off it finished in time for me to get back to the Grey Horse in Kingston for a couple of pints of The Naked Ladies.

I have walked 20% of Greater London

I used MapMyWalk to record each of my exploratory walks and CityStrides to summarise them all in one place. 

CityStrides also tracks the number of roads that I have walked on each town or city. Of most interest to me are the totals for each of the London Boroughs (I have walked every street in three of them) and the total for Greater London overall.

I have just completed 20% of Greater London. This is in terms of the number of roads walked (7,964 of 39,362) rather than, say, total distance.

The map below shows where I have walked and, more depressingly, those I have yet to do with some large areas hardly touched (there are a few gaps where I did not map my walks, such as the top section of London Loop).

My vague plans is to keep plugging away and to use every opportunity to walk new roads. For example, I have been to Royal London Hospital a few times recently and have walked quite a few new roads around Whitechapel and Stepney,

While walking 20% of London is some achievement iy is only fair to point out that I am only 4th in the CityStrides leaderboard and those ahead of me have managed 27%, 31% and an astonishing 68%. I do not expect to catch any of them.

I have walked every street in Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames (again)

My claim back in May that  I have walked every street in Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames got a slight setback this week. Not that unexpected but unwelcome none the less.

The app I use to keep a record of everywhere I have walked, CityStrides, is based on OpenStreetMap which is maintained by a community of users, including myself (much as Wikipedia is) and it gets updated both with changes to the physical world, e.g. new streets, and by clarifications, e.g. marking streets with locked gates as private.

These changes get uploaded to CityStrides periodically and when these changes create unwalked roads (or parts of roads) the unwalked sections appear as red dots.

The latest update for Kingston upon Thames created a few red dots for me, as shown here.

Frustratingly none of these were new roads, just roads newly marked s walkable, and I would have walked them when in those areas had they been marked as walkable at that time. Still, things are what they are and so I set out to walk them all.

More frustratingly, some of the dots were at the very southern tip of the Borough (I live on the northern boundary) so it was a longish ride on two buses to get me to Malden Rushett. 

From there is was a pretty dreary walk up A243 all the way to the large junction with A3, an even drearier walk along both sides of A3 to the border with Surrey and back then further along A3 to Tolworth and just beyond. That accounted for three of the four groups of red dots.

Then I was lucky. I was expecting to continue along A3 to the final group when I learned that I could directly there on a 265 bus, so I did.

The final group was a little bit more of annoying A3 but the final two streets in my quest were in an exclusive private estate so I had lots of impressive houses to look at while tracking the final dots.

And that was it, I have now walked every street in Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames (again).

Gold Rush at The Half Moon (19 Oct 25)

I was always going to see Gold Rush on their latest return to The Half Moon Putney and this time I made something of an afternoon of it by tackling some location-based challenges in two phone Apps.

I collect Gold Gyms in PokemonGo (I have 750) and this means making repeated visits to specific locations to battle the gyms there, gaining more points each time until you read Gold level. I had a few targets in Putney and Wandsworth that I wanted to revisit, two of them in particular. Over the afternoon I got points at seven gyms and went Gold at two!

The other target was walking new (unwalked) streets for my CityStrides LifeMap. I had already walked most of Putney but there were plenty of gaps heading towards and into Wandsworth. It is a non trivial task to walk out the best route to cover new streets, I had to walk down and back a few dead-ends, but in the end I was pleased to tick-off 19 streets. This raised my total for LB Wandsworth to 975 streets which is just a midge shy of 60%.

I had to look after myself too and that started very well with an All Day Vegetarian Breakfast at Sweet Tooth in Putney, continued reasonably with a coffee in Black Sheep Coffee Wandsworth and finished correctly with another coffee and a cake at Nlack Sheep Coffee Putney.

I had not forgotten the main purpose of my trip and I duly arrived at Half Moon Putney around 6:30pm, in good time for a rest and a pint before the music started.

I do not have a lot to say about the Gold Rush concert that I have not said several times before, so I will mention Tom's guitars instead!

Tom have half a dozen or so guitars on stage and he surprised us on one song with a bright yellow one. He explained that he had been doing something else during the day (he is a co-founder of charity Electric Umbrella) and a helper had put the wrong guitar in the wrong bag.

He also had issues with his black guitar, pictured above, and had to swap it for a less iconic one for the last few songs.

Every Gold Rush concert is different, just as every Neil Young concert is, and my mood is different each time too, so different songs strike me harder each time. On this occasion my stand-out performances were Down by the River, Cortez the Killer (loved the keyboard intro) and Cowgirl in the Sand.

The night ended something over two hours after it started with some good news, Gold Rush had booked to play the The Half Moon four times next year. I will be there.

The Poltergeist at Arcola Theatre

My mission to watch every performance of a Philip Ridley play in London (and easily accessible places beyond) continued with The Poltergeist at Arcola Theatre, were I had first seen it almost exactly two years earlier.

This time it was on downstairs in Studio 2 where front row seat A12 was a sound investment at £25.

I planned the day to give me a little time in Dalston beforehand and I did a little exploring while also looking for somewhere to eat. 

It struck me that gentrification had failed to stick and the posh places that I had eaten at previously were all gone. And so I found myself, yet again, at The Speakeasy which despite being little more than a marquee is a friendly place and serves reasonable beer with good food; it was a pint of Camden Pale Ale and some veggie tacos this time. 

I remembered the gist of The Poltergeist but, as with all Philip Ridley plays, there is so much going on in the dialogue  that I knew I would be surprised, stimulated and entertained.

This was a solo performance (monologue seems inappropriate) and the heavy duties were given to Louis Davison who played the narrator, Sasha, and a host of other people. Incidentally, Sasha is a deliberate unisex name and many of Ridley's solo plays can be performed by a woman or man.

The stage was empty and the only props Davison had to play were his clothes and in his simple outfit in which he strode the length and breadth of the stage assuredly telling Sasha's story for eighty minutes.

On one level it was a simple story with Sasha and his partner attending a family child's birthday party which Sasha found difficult for reasons that gradually became clearer. Through the many conversations with the many party attendees, all played by Davison, we learned that Sasha had once been a promising artist until he had some sort of breakdown, the causes of which also emerge. 

The richness of the plau is in the dialogue, not the plot, and I was totally engaged for the full eighty minutes as I desperately tried to catch each quickly delivered word. And despite the core subject matter, a mental breakdown, the mood was often light and I laughed out loud quite a few times.

Philip Ridley has a distinctive style and voice which appeals to me immensely and The Poltergeist was yet another great example of why that is.

Entertaining Mr Sloane at Young Vic

There was a time when I was a fairly regular visitor to Young Vic but for various reasons (my changes in employment, their change in artistic directors) I had not been there since 2017 but a Joe Orton play was a good reason to go back.

It was a slow return and it took some good reviews to finally nudge me into booking and that was a non-trivial process due to my poor memory of the seating plan there. 

In the end I went for row P entirely missing that this is the front tow of the Balcony which I would have gone for automatically if I had noticed it. There seat Balcony P35 cost me £57.

The view from there was excellent and the first impression of the set was good too, this was clearly a production with some strong stylish thinking behind it.

Entertaining Mr Sloane has a simple concept, young exuberant Mr. Sloane starts renting a room with lonely middle-aged Kath who is regularly visited by her wheeler-dealer brother Ed. Their elderly father also lived with Kath.

The rich comedy came from the dialogues between the three main characters and the way that Orton wrote their words. The speech comes thick and fast with lots of short sentences that followed each other erratically, much like jokes work but with more natural language.

The stylish staging continued throughout with, for example, Mr Sloane remaining a centre of attention even when not in the scene by posing spotlight off-stage. The ending was equally stylish.

The Joe Orton script gave the play a solid base which the cast and staging enhanced. It was a marvellous return to Young Vic. I suspect it will not be another eight years before I go back.

Emma at Rose Theatre

There are obvious attractions for a play based on Jane Austen's novel Emma but for me the main one was simply that it was on at Rose Theatre where I have to have a good reason not to go and see a play.

Quick booking got me a seat in the very centre of the Circle, A35, for £41.5 with Senior Citizen Concession.

My only recollection of Emma, from a radio drama adaptation, was that she interfered unsuccessfully in other people's relationships while ignoring her own; not much of a plot but a sound basis for some character comedy.

The only comments I read about the production beforehand said that it was a complete reworking set in current times, so I had even less idea on what to expect.

Not knowing the original story that well I cannot comment on how close this version was and all I can do is comment on the play in its own right.

This Emma was a very entertaining character comedy. Emma, the character, was a fairly normal young woman surrounded by several exaggerated characters, notably her soon to me married self-centred sister who was fully into all the modern tropes from Instagram to Love Island.

Other notable characters included her frantic father, a boisterous hairdresser, a surly parcel delivery man and her sister's timid fiancee. A rich source for comedy indeed.

Given that the richness and success of the play relies so much on the strength of the cast, some of them with notable tv exposure, I think that it is something of a shame that the poster shows just the relatively unknown Emma.

This Emma was an unashamed rom-com and hit all the right buttons providing plenty of lives as the various couples eventually came together as they should and as we all expected.

The Truth About Blayds at Finborough Theatre

It was nice to have a good excuse to go back to Finborough Theatre and a play by A A Milne was certainly a good excuse.It also helped that it included William Gaunt who I have fond memories of from The Champions in the late 60's.

All that was easily worth £28.

Visits to Finborough have a routine and that started with a pint in Courtfield, opposite Earls Court Station, then a small meal in Cafe du Coin before walking down the incredibly busy, and fast, Redcliffe Gardens to the theatre.

That routine got me to the theatre early enough to claim a seat in the front row somewhere close to the middle.

The stage was set as a period study and this is where everything happened.

The titular Blayds was an elderly man and a famous poet. He lived in a fairly grand house with several members of his immediate family, one of who acted as his carer and another who managed his affairs.

The first half of the play covered the preparation and execution of Blayds' birthday and the second half covered the aftermath of his death soon after and the deathbed revelation (the truth) he made.

It was an interesting, if simple, plot whose real purpose was to be the framework for the interactions between the family members who were very different people and had very different perspectives on the situation. The truth was elusive, disputed and modified.

It was the mix of characters and their viewpoints that made the play interesting and entertaining while the truth in question raised a few points to ponder over. An entertaining play that makes you think is always good.

Pitchfork Disney at King's Head Theatre

I am still determined to see every production of a Philip Ridley play that I can so a revival of The Pitchfork Disney at King's Head Theatre was a no-brainer, despite (or because of) having seen it twice before, in Brighton in 2023 and Shoreditch Town Hall in 2017.

The King's Head Theatre has moved from above a pub to far below a new mixed-use development nearby and that has had an impact on ticket prices so my seat C21 was £42. That's not actually that much for theatre these days but my price expectations are sill somewhat set (unreasonably) by pre-covid pub theatre prices.

My keenness meant that I was quick to book and got a seat in the centre of the main seating with a perfect view of the stage.

All the action takes place in this messy sitting room with its many door locks.

Here we meet the odd twenty-something twins Presley and Haley. They argue over chocolate and medicine and tell each other exaggerated stories about being chased by dogs and being in a dark wasteland. These are stories they have told each other many times, just like one repeats stories to young children.

These stories are also typical Ridley monologues and so have their own value despite not being directly related to the main story.

Then they see two people outside, one of whom leaves, and after some argument they allow the other one in. That is Cosmo Disney and everything changes. Cosmo is a loud force of purpose and certainty which the meek and subdued twins can do little to contain.

The tone changes from retelling favourite stories to a barrage of questions as Cosmo tries to work out what is going on with the twins and they struggle to find out something about Cosmo. This is where the cockroaches in the poster come in. Here Cosmo's swagger dominates the play and William Robinson's acting is relentlessly powerful, questioning and in command. Cosmo has to carry the play and with William Robinson it does so assuredly.

The final short section introduced the other man seen outside, Pitchfork, who is monstrous in appearance and sound. While the Cosmo character is recognisable, if exaggerated, there are no similes for Pitchfork in real life.

It is a short sharp shock that bring the play to a magnificent conclusion.

The Pitchfork Disney at King's Head Theatre was an excellent production of an excellent play.