The Producers. Milton Keynes Theatre.

I know nothing about this musical except there might be Nazis in it and it was written by Mel Brooks.  I figured that if a Jew wrote it – it cant be offensive so I thought I'd give it a go.  After all, what else is there to do on a Monday night in Milton Keynes?

 Reasons to see this:

1.     Humour

From the first scene I knew it was going to be funny.  I loved the cast singing about how bad a show was. Great characters and a brilliantly written script.  Good start!

 2.    Costume changes

What I began to notice is every number was a big production number.  I did not count the amount of costume changes but there must have been a lot. I loved it.  This was a show that really gave you everything.  Even women in pink sparkly costumes coming out of filing cabinets!

3.    This show has a real story.

It’s a story about two producers who realise that they can make more money from a Broadway flop than from a success.  Now that’s an interesting story.  And it felt like there was some truth to it too.

 

4. The scenes were fantastic.

I loved the outfits, the character definition.  The songs were so strong.  Each song was a massive production number in its own right.  Every scene had been thought through and was executed brilliantly.

5.    You won’t all get this but one of the funniest bits was when Cory English accidentally sat on his horn.  I don’t think he hurt himself badly but said to the audience that he won’t be doing that again.  Apparently having the horn hurts.

     6.    Cast

The cast were amazing.  They all were brilliant actors, singers and dancers.  There was no weak link in this casting performance.  I have mentioned a few below.

 

Gayer than frank

David Badella is wonderful. I am a big fan of his work.  I have seen him in Jerry Springer the Opera, The Rocky Horror Show and more recently in Peter Pan.  But nothing – NOTHING – had prepared me for him in a dress and being more camp than Franknfurter from Rocky! And to top it all he had Louie Spence by his side!  This show makes Pricilla Queen of the Desert feel butch!  David is so very talented.  He can sing.  He can dance.  He can act.  And boy can he camp it up!  He looked amazing in his dress!  His first number is ‘Keep it Gay’ and boy do they stick to the script.  Louie also deserves a mention – he makes us all laugh as he kicks his legs and steals every scene.

 Is Phil German?

Phil Jupitus plays Franz Liebkind, who is an old German Nazi.  He was – well Phil.  I thought he did a sterling job and made the role his own.  I wonder if he really likes pigeons?  I bet a few have gone missing from the show. ;)

 Jason can sing!

Jason Manford is one of the producers.  Forgive me Jason, but I had no idea of how great your voice is.  I was really really impressed.  I saw you Monday night and watched you on Ordinary Lies on Tuesday night.  What am I going to do on Wednesday?

 

Swedish?

The love interest was played by Tiffany Graves. That girl was cartwheeling across the stage.  And has a body I am envious of.  She played the ‘dumb blonde’ to perfection.  Endearing and charming.

 

Corrr its Cory!

The star of the show was Cory English who played Max Bialystock.  He was in almost every scene and was funny, could sing dance and had a presence on the stage that you just loved.  He was truly loveable. And gave an outstanding performance.  You might not know his name initially but I will now never forget him.

Forget what are you going to do on a Monday night. We should be doing this every night!

Memories of The point – Milton Keynes.

How sad to hear they are tearing down The Point in Milton Keynes. It is also tearing down a piece of my heart. Back in 1985 when it first opened, I worked in The Club for a year. And it was a really fun job! Obviously not a long term career but a job I enjoyed. It was like being paid to party each night. I have never needed alcohol to have a good time and this was with a great bunch of people.

I wore a tiny vest top and black leather mini skirt and worked most nights. Each night there was a different theme. Wednesdays was 60s night and I remember a blues night and of course the Friday and Saturday nights were dance. I also did a few day shifts in the brasserie downstairs.  I remember something a regular said to me once. He said I am not the prettiest girl in the room, but I oozed sex appeal. I didn’t really appreciate the comment back then (I have never thought myself pretty and didn't need to hear it from a stranger) but have taken it as a compliment since. Isn’t it funny what you remember?

Some of my favourite moments were the famous acts that came to perform. I remember meeting the lovely Craig Charles (who read poetry) before he ever did Red Dwarf. I remember Darryl Pandy and boy did the club rock that night.  The staff I worked with were great and we all had a laugh together.  I remember one night all the girls wore cushions under our tops with different sayings on the back such as ‘was it you last Christmas?’ Our world is too PC for that now but back then it was a laugh. We had staff barbeques, drank Moet at New Years and often all headed out to the Little Chef at Newport Pagnell for breakfast about 3.30am.

And a perk of working at The Club was free access to the multiplex Cinema…UCI at the time. I saw Absolute Beginners there 11 times.  I know I am a big Bowie fan but that film was excellent in its own right. I also remember seeing Jagged Edge and being the only person in the whole screen.  That has never happened to me before or since. It really gave an eerie atmosphere to the film. And of course I was still a geek back then – I saw Back to the Future twice!

I had one of the most memorable days of my life at The Club at The Point. My 20^th birthday. I privately hired the club, had printed invitations and invited my friends, family and every good looking guy who came to the club for the weeks before my birthday. I hired the mighty Evil Eddie Richards who I knew from the old ‘Starting Gate’ days and gave him a list of my favourite records to play including, of course, Bela Lugosi’s dead! I have never had so many birthday cards and I remember is that no matter how much I drank that night, my glass was always full. It was an exceptional night and I have never had a party like it since. My tiny bedsit was full of my friends who had come up from London for my party and all crashed at mine afterwards.

I also met my first husband at the club. I ended up spending 16 and a half years with him so The Club really brought people together.

In recent years The Point has not been well looked after and of course it is a prime location in the centre of the city. But how dare they throw away such a much loved venue. It is an icon of Milton Keynes and probably one of the oldest buildings in the centre.  Milton Keynes has always been cutting edge of architecture and this is a prime example.

If Milton Keynes keeps tearing down any building that is more than 20 years old – it will never build a history. It had already torn down the 1970’s icon at Bletchley leisure centre…and now this. I hope those who made this decision to keep MK soulless are proud of themselves. You have just upset a whole generation!

Photo 1 - The Point in its prime

Photo 2 - Years of neglect

Photos  - The Pyrmid Pool at Bletchley Leisure Centre

Photo 4 - Does the same fate await The Point?

Photo 5 - Fancy dress time at The Club - staff from 1985

Photo 6 - Behind the Oval bar

 

 

The gift of new romantics

I would never have described myself as a new romantic. I hated being catagorised into a box. Goth didn’t exist and honestly post-punk feels the most comfortable fit for me back in the early 1980s.

What I didn’t realise at the time and it is only just beginning to hit me – is I lived in a very special time. I lived in a time when music was magical. Had you asked me, I would have always said I was a guitar gal, but I have since realised what a huge part electronic music has played in my life.

Way before it was legal for me to drink – I was going on a weekly basis to my local version of the Blitz Club. The Blitz club really was a movement the same way that Punk tried so hard to be. For me, being individual, standing out in a crowd had always felt natural and here was a chance – once a week – to stop wearing my school uniform (no matter how much I had adapted it – it was still a school uniform) and really be outrageous. With other who felt the same. It was such an important part of my life and really imprinted on me for who I was to become as an adult.

Steve Strange, Rusty Egan and Boy George amongst others led the way for us.  At the Blitz Club, looking good was as important as sounding good. It left a lasting impression on a generation.

Sadly Steve Strange passed away yesterday.  He will be missed. He would have loved to have known how much love was really out there for him.  But he leaves a generation of Blitz kids. And without the Blitz – where would David Bowie have gone to find someone for his Ashes to Ashes video?

Rest in peace Steve – and I hope you are styling them up in Heaven!

 

Ex Machina Vs Kingsman

So how about it? Reviewing two films in one review. I do like a challenge.

Ex Machina vs Kingsman. Sci-fi vs action. Where do I start?

Well I do like top trumps so let’s start there.

	Ex Machina	Kingsman
Style	4	4.5
Storyline	4	4
Acting	4	3.5
Entertainment value	3	5
Special Effects	4.5	4.5

Ex-Machina starts out like we are going on an adventure. And it is exciting. We feel we are making a great discovery. The inventor, Nathan seems to have a bit of a drink problem but has also made the most interesting invention of all time. An AI. Caleb is lucky enough to have been chosen from Nathan’s vast empire of workers. He is here to see if he can tell if the AI can think alone.  For me, someone who has studied psychology, I found this interaction fascinating. Who wouldn’t want to try this? Test out an AI? I would be volunteering and first in line.

But I do have problems with this film. Firstly how much Nathan drinks. I don’t believe anyone would choose to keep getting that wasted. And he is sleeping with what turns out to be an earlier version of an AI.  Tell me, if you are a man, making an AI and there are no limits, would you not make a woman who had ‘Lara Croft’ sized breasts? Be honest. Yes you would.  I felt this film had some good special effects but the women kept showing a huge amount of nudity that didn’t really make any difference to the storyline.

The ending left me questioning what happened to Caleb? Is he alive? Could he get to food? Would he slowly starve? How long could Ava (the AI) survive without being identified in the real world?

So I left that cinema feeling frustrated and a bit disappointed.

Kingsman. A modern day James Bond film? The film opened to Dire Straits’ ‘money for nothing’ which really worked with the action scene.  It is a great action scene and really tells us the story of what the Kingman are without needing to know too much.

Eggsy’s dad used to be a Kingman but saved his colleagues by sacrificing his own life. When Eggsy gets into trouble  he uses his get out of jail free card and meets Harry (played by Colin Firth) who is every bit a Kingsman.  So you can tell where this is going. It has a feel of ‘Men in Black’ about it but I still enjoyed the journey.

Every James Bond character needs its Blofeld baddie and this is no exception. Samuel L Jackson gives a great performance with a lisp in his character, Valentine.  His number two is called Gazelle. Not only by name but actually she has a disability and has legs like Oscar Pistorius. Except her legs have swords on them and can easily cut a man in two.

The film keeps a good pace and is really enjoyable – I like the idea that Valentine is giving out free sim cards for free calls and internet forever. I would never fall for a free card but many would. And of course Valentine is the baddie; his idea to save the world is to cull the amount of people. The cards can trigger a violent button in humans that makes them all want to kill each other.

Spoiler Alert: How can they kill Harry? Could they not afford to keep on Colin Firth for a whole film? It is such a shame.

I also wasn’t very impressed that Eggsy, who has a common London accent, puts on a suit and suddenly speaks the Queen’s English!

But there are some great learning tips. Want to sleep with a princess? Just let her out of a prison cell. (Yes James Bond has probably done this) but then she ups the ante.  Save the world and you get to give it to me up the bum! Okay I am paraphrasing, but you know he is gonna save the world! Not sure James Bond did that!

Both films are great in their own unique way but for pure entertainment I would say Kingsman wins by a tinsy bit.

Go and see both films. They are both worth your money.

And I’m off to Saville row just to see if the Kingsman tailor really exists.

 

 

 

Taken 3 with spoilers

Is this one any different? No one is Taken as such. But within the first 10 minutes Lenore, Bryan’s ex-wife, is murdered. Well that’s different from the other two.

It is full of action and I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the pace, and quality of the performance of the actors. But is it predictable? Yes. Did I know who killed his ex wife in the first half hour? Absolutely.

Kimmy (his daughter) is pregnant. This is an obsolete storyline and a waste of time. It’s irrelevant and isn’t used in any way to

This film is rated a 12A. Now the first one was an 18. Yes it deserved its 18 rating. Have they downgraded the gruesome bits to allow a wider audience in for more money? I think they have. I would be very concerned for anyone under 12 to see this film because of the theme and violence, but unfortunately that is the world we live in.

Many parents do not seem too bothered about the amount of violence their children are exposed to. Not only in films but also in games. If they said no…movie makers would upgrade the violence and allow an 18 rated film to be made for a smaller but appreciative audience. At least Tarrantino has not yet downgraded the amount of violence in his films. I think some of his films should have an aged 30+ rating! 18 year olds can still be very influenced by what they see on the screen.

Okay, I’ll stop my rant. Is Taken 3 worth going to see? Well yes of course it is.

 

 

It’s Peter Pan. Oh no it isn’t...it’s the best panto I’ve seen in years!

It’s Peter Pan.  Oh no it isn’t...it’s the best panto I’ve seen in years!

It has become a tradition in my house that my youngest son and I go to the Panto every year.  We have been doing it for over 10 years now and he is now in difficult teenager mode who lives on his laptop and mobile.  It’s hard enough to get him to eat with me but Panto is something he still wants to do.  My husband and older son don’t like Panto and I gave up trying to take them years ago.  But Ben and I still love to go and I enjoy these special moments with him.

As veteran Panto goers, we have seen them all.  This year it was the turn of Peter Pan.  I had had trouble getting tickets as it was selling well but still managed to get us second row from the front. I love the stall seats as you can really feel the performance is just for you. And can interact with the performers.

We took our seats and read through the programme.  I was delighted to see David Bedella was in it as Captain Hook.  I have seen him several times, not just on Holby City, but in Rocky Horror and the wonderful Jerry Springer – The Opera (at which he was fantastic!).  I was also pleased to see Flawless were also performing as it gives some credibility to teenagers who want to be cool to go to Panto.

As soon as it came on we were into another world.  The performers could sing and dance. (I know it should be a given but it isn’t. Sometimes we are unlucky enough to get someone who is just well known on TV). They were great.  But the star of the show by a mile was Bradley Walsh.  From the moment he walked on he had us all in stitches.  I don’t often see Ben cry with laughter but he was truly crying. From the moment Bradley said ‘Of course it’s freezing in here…there is no roof on the house!’ It’s just our sense of humour and we started and couldn’t stop.  Another classic was ‘What do we want?’  ‘A cure for Obesity’  ‘When do we want it?’  ‘After dinner!’  Now this is humour I get!  I don’t need complicated jokes.  This is funny stuff.  It took me a few seconds longer to get the joke about a how hard it is to sing with a stool on his leg. But then he explained that medical professionals would get it and I got it. (not a medical professional at all). We made eye contact as I laughed and he missed his exit and nearly walked into a wall!

Tinkerbell was played by Francesca Mills and she was absolutely brilliant.  She could sing, act, fly and roller skate!  Not easy on a small stage.

Flawless took my breath away.  They were really impressive.  Their style of dancing reminds me of early break-dancers (although I am sure I am showing my age by making that statement), but they were spinning and flipping all over the stage.  The act when they danced in the dark and their suit lit up was truly a sight to see.  They are so cool and I could see Ben thought so too.

Tiger-lily was played by Rebecca Lisewski and had a northern accent.  I quite liked that take on it.  She could really sing and dance well but flirting with Peter made me slightly uncomfortable as she looks quite a lot older than him.

The lost boys and John and Michael were adorable.  I was so impressed with the children who performed in the show.  They were some of the most talented young people I have seen in years.  

What made this panto better than others I have seen is it felt like it had been written for the performers.  Whoever had written this was the real star of the show.  Yes I know they always add a bit in for what the performer is famous for – but here it felt it was perfectly harmonised to bring out the best in each performer.  I am a trained actress myself and I could not tell where the script started and the ad lib finished.  It felt natural and comfortable and they really did all work brilliantly together.

In the second half, well it just got better and better.  David was an excellent Captain Hook, but was looking a lot like the singer, Prince and Bradley said so.  Hook said he didn’t but I shouted out that he did.  Well it floored the cast and the audience and everyone laughed for what must have been 10 minutes.  It was a brilliant moment.  The next time Hook came on I wanted to shout ‘Oh look, there is the artist formally known as Prince’…but alas I didn’t get a chance as the story moved on.

We all enjoyed the 12 days of Christmas with the ‘bra that was made to hold three’.  They kept throwing the ‘5 toilet rolls’ into the audience ...boy is that a good way to keep fit.  I’m not quite sure how many water guns there were but it took audience participation to a new level.  Everyone was laughing.

They finished on a One Direction song and everyone was up singing and dancing. Ben absolutely hates One Direction.  I think it has something to do with the fact he is studying music and plays guitar.  One Direction don’t even write their songs.  Ben has issues with this and I can see why, but we were both up singing and dancing with the cast.  After all if Flawless can sing and dance to 1D, it must be cool!

There are only four more shows of this performance which is such a shame cause this is the sort of show you would pay to see again and again.  Why do we only have Panto at Christmas when it’s this good?!!

So just so you are clear.  Did I like the Panto this year?  Oh yes I did!

 

 

 

The Hobbit - The battle of the five armies.

The Hobbit – the battle of the five armies

Well if you don’t know about Middle Earth and Lord of the Rings / The Hobbit films by now where have you been?
Middle Earth is my place of choice to fantasise about. I love this more than Star wars, Star Trek or any other Sci-fi fantasy film. This is my home.

My long hair hides my pointy elfish ears and my home is Rivendell.  But I digress….

Anyway this is the last of the Hobbit films…It starts exactly where it left off with the dragon about to attack lake town. It’s like someone unpaused the film. So you do need to have seen the other films to get this one.

There is less humour in this one and a huge amount of action. It’s almost too much action. Too much cgi. I want more magic. I want Gandalf the Grey to use his magic. I want more interesting dialogue.

But I love hobbits, dwarfs and elves and unite with them against orcs. I hate orcs. I forgot I was in a cinema, I was in Middle Earth. I was ducking and avoiding the swords and arrows. I was screaming at Thorin that the Orc wasn’t dead and it was going to be a ‘Carrie’ moment under the ice…

For those who don’t love The Hobbit they won’t love this. But for me…I enjoyed it a lot. It’s not my favourite film..but another adventure of my favourite dwarves.

Finally...where does a major keep his armies...up his sleevies of course!

Merry Christmas!