Kneehigh Nights at the Circus

Finally, I have seen a show by Kneehigh! Their latest, at the Lyric Hammersmith, was an adaptation of the Angela Carter novel, Nights at the Circus

It was brilliant. The Lyric is hideous and too well-blended into its shopping centre suroundings to be attractive or inspiring. But once inside the auditorium , it's a Victorian music hall fantasy with red velvet seats, elaborate and heavy gold-painted plaster work everywhere and the kind of lighting that somehow suggests gas lamps and lime lights. Perfectly suited to this play - the nipple tassels, corsets, grubby backstage relations and dangerous onstage acts that included trapezes, man-eating tigers and highly abusive clowns in jealous rages were all made magical and gritty at the same time by the theatre's style.

And the ending... the entire audience was holding its breath and urging the two lovers to touch, to grab each other and kiss as they sailed up and down and through the air on their bungee ropes, the girl with the feathers seeming to really fly out her lover's grasp while he strained to reach her from the ground, eventually leaping off high enough to fly through the air with her and finally, breathlessly, grabbing her and kissing her.

Lovely. Am in the mood for more nights at the theatre now. Am also spending far too much time thinking about nipple tassels and how they stay on. Must do more research.

Official: the cheesiest speed-dating... ever!

The UK Online Winter Lodge

I've been invited to the opening night and suspect it will either be

a) a crappy Hoxton cocktail bar with loads of cheap pine cladding stuck on the interior walls and around the big screen TVs normally reserved for screenings of shite short independent films made by the barman's sister-law who couldn't get a place at St Martin's

or

b) beautiful, wonderful, chic and sexy, full of fondue and fun people and things that make me want to stay there forever

We shall see.

In other news, and looking ahead, how about this for a way to see the sights? The lovely Prandial may be rather busy when I visit his town at the end of this month so this motorised donkey ride around town could be just the thing to keep myself occupied while I'm there.

Hypatia Avenue: Ticking Every Box

I had to organise and set up a one day course today. Out of the twenty people I had in the room, there were:

Two profoundly deaf people with accompanying sign language interpreters
One person with shortened arms possibly due to Thalidomide
One person with a wheat and dairy-free diet
One vegan
One person with only one arm
One Korean with limited English
At least two gay men
One person I suspect is a recovering alcoholic
Several black people
No visibly religious people but I'm sure I had one or two followers of particular faiths in the mix too

I ticked every possible Equal Opportunities box before 10.00am.I feel oddly proud of myself. (Especially as my presence topped up the ethnic minority count.)