Laughing Through Tears: "Doctor Scroggy's War" at the Globe

Another visit to the Globe Theatre in Southwark??  Yes 2014 has been the year when I lost my fear of that auditorium having seen three fine performances there: TITUS ANDRONICUS, ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA and JULIUS CAESAR.  Oh and EILEEN ATKINS AS ELLEN TERRY in the new Wanamaker Playhouse!  Now here we were again, only this time it was to see a new play: DOCTOR SCROGGY'S WAR by Howard Brenton.  If it fell slightly short then that's to be understood when put against the Bard.

Brenton's play is part of the First World War Centenary and it was certainly odd to see a 'modern' piece on the familiar Globe stage - old habits die hard though so at the end of the play we had all the cast on stage for a merry jig.  That didn't quite sit well with what had gone before but that's the Globe for you.

It was also odd to see the side seats of the Globe noticeably sparser than for the Shakespeares - I am guessing that was a combination of the unknown quality of the play as well as the rainy weather that day.

Brenton's play is based on the remarkable Dr. Howard Gillies who during WWI pioneered plastic surgery techniques on the maimed and disfigured British soldiers returning from the Front.  What made his approach so unique was his insistence on the atmosphere within his hospital in Sidcup being upbeat and positive - in the play Gillies tells an astonished wounded soldier "We don't do glum here" - and the play has him dressing up as a zany Scottish doctor called Dr Scroggy, visiting the patients after hours with supplies of alcohol.

The trouble I had with the play was that I had read Pat Barker's TOBY'S ROOM earlier this year and, as good as much of the play was, it felt like a front-curtain skit compared to the epic drama of Barker's work.  Although Barker concentrated on the role of Henry Tonks, the former head of the Slade School of Art, who worked alongside Gillies by doing exhaustively-detailed drawings of the shattered faces and bodies of the soldiers, her book still touched on the gallows humour that ran through the patients.

In Brenton's play, we follow Jack Twigg, a young working-class lad who becomes an officer on his first tour of duty in France but when badly wounded during the battle of Loos, he is returned to England and Gillies' wards at Sidcup.  Here his initial depression and sniping anger slowly changes as he begins to reap the rewards of Gillies' approach.  We follow his confrontations with his shocked parents, his high-society girlfriend and even Queen Mary.

In another echo of Pat Barker's work - only this time her REGENERATION trilogy - we also witness the dichotomy of Twigg and several of his fellow patients who, once returned to an acceptable level of facial recovery, wish to return to active service in France.  Gillies and Twigg's girlfriend Penelope, who has left her nursing job to become an anti-war protester with Sylvia Pankhurst, cannot accept that he would want to return but for Jack it is not a case of wanting to but needing to.

  

John Dove's production was swift and well-balanced between the humour and the more serious debates about soldiers in wartime, patriotism etc. and he elicited very good lead performances from James Garnon as the ebullient Dr. Gillies and Will Featherstone as the idealistic Jack Twigg.

In a strong supporting cast, mostly drawn from the JULIUS CAESAR company, there were very good performances from Patrick Driver and Katy Stephens as the naive and loving Mr & Mrs Twigg, Catherine Bailey as the liberated Penelope, Sam Cox and Paul Rider made a fine double act as the feuding Sir Douglas Haig and Sir John French (and interesting to see them played for once not as the villains of the piece) and William Mannering as Corporal Fergal O'Halloran, an Irish soldier who yearns to return to Ireland and the struggle for independence.

Despite it feeling like a re-tread of Barker's better works, I still found a lot to enjoy in Howard Brenton's play and this production of it and it certainly made the case that the story of the wounded soldier and his place in the country he is fighting for is as relevant now as it was 100 years ago.

Julius Caesar: Cowards die many times...

Another previously unseen-on-stage Shakespeare play, another night at the Globe.  Yes, after finally getting to see TITUS ANDRONICUS earlier this year, we took advantage of the Globe's Roman season to see JULIUS CAESAR, which I had only ever seen in the 1953 film with Marlon Brando and James Mason.

Having now visited the Globe theatre more this year alone than any other year, I am getting used to the modus operandi of the theatre, always crowded foyer, the slightly insistent older volunteer ushers and that every play ends with a jig... even with half the characters dead at the end!

For this production we booked for the first level, looking over heads of the groundlings onto the stage.  Sounds perfect?  Of course not, not when you are stuck with a sulk of teenage girls who wanted to be anywhere but there and sighed and shuffled and whispered and looked at each other's watches and mooched about until even the most unflappable of Globe ushers was having a long muttered conversation with them.  Oh for them to have been dispatched as thoroughly as Caesar.

Despite this serious annoyance, I was gripped by Dominic Dromgoole's fast-paced and lucid production and now I understand how this play - like so many in Shakespeare's canon - has been reinterpreted and staged in countries and at times of political instability because within the play there are remarkable political insights, analysis and sly satire - how disheartening that political chicanery and spin have been around *that* long!

In a play of shifting loyalties between characters and audience alike, Julius Caesar is blithely ignorant to the ferment quietly brewing around him.  His friend Brutus is approached by Cassius and, playing on Brutus' strong republican beliefs, recruits him into an anti-Caesar conspiracy by citing the ruler's increasing domination of Rome.

Dismissing the warnings of his wife Calpurnia and a soothsayer, Caesar goes to the Forum and is waylaid by the conspirators who seize their moment and assassinate him.  Feeling justified in their actions they do not attempt to flee and even allow Caesar's friend Mark Antony to speak an oration over the dead leader on the Forum steps.  Blasé about his friendship with Caesar, Antony drops his mask and is consumed with angry grief when left alone.

In the play's most famous scene, Brutus addresses the crowd from the Forum steps, explaining rationally the conspirators' reasons for the killing which has the crowd denouncing Caesar and all he stood for.  Antony speaks next and in a dissembling, cunning speech he turns the fickle crowd against
the conspirators by pointing out how Caesar refused being Emperor three times and brought prosperity to Rome.  He shows them Caesar's will which has left money to every Roman citizen and in a coup-de-theatre uncovers Caesar's body for the crowd to inspect.  The crowd are by now whipped up into a murderous frenzy and they start a hunt against the conspirators.

How interesting to see this during the Party Conference season!  Antony's speech would fit in to any of them and is probably a basis for most of them.  What struck me as particularly modern is Shakespeare's use of repetition for Antony's speech, he raises each reason for Caesar to be revered then quotes what Brutus has just said "and yet Brutus is an honourable man".  He works through his rhetorical questions and lets his audience come to their own decision about Brutus' duplicity.

As in CORIOLANUS, Shakespeare has no time for the Roman rabble with their herd mentality, ignorance and savage partisanship.  Well that certainly hasn't changed, you only have to listen to an X FACTOR audience.

 

As I said it certainly helps that Dominic Dromgoole has directed such a fast-moving and lucid production, my only quibble being that the doubling and sometimes tripling of the cast makes it sometimes a bit confusing to keep up with who's who, particularly at the end when the battle scenes between Antony and the conspirators come and go so swiftly.

There were good unshowy performances from a hardworking cast.  George Irving was well-cast as Caesar, his avuncular air hiding his wariness at those he suspected of being against him while Anthony Howell was good as Cassius, the chief conspirator against Caesar.  He was well-partnered by Tom McKay as Brutus, the good man who does wrong thinking he is doing right.  His scenes with Howell were particularly enjoyable, particularly in the scene where Brutus and Cassius argue over the rights and wrongs of their actions before going into battle.  The two actors were so similar in look and style that it was like watching two sides of the same coin.

Luke Thompson was a fine Antony suggesting the many shades of his character - the easy-going, sporty, favourite of Caesar, his dissembling nature and finally the avenging warrior.  As I have said, his playing of Antony's funeral oration was excellent.

Katy Stephens was an impassioned Calpurnia, Christopher Logan gave Casca's speech about Caesar refusing the title of Emperor the right air of sneering disdain, William Mannering was very good in his several roles and I also liked Joe Jameson as the chilly Octavius, his wary relationship with Mark Antony already sowing the seeds of mistrust which Shakespeare further seven years later in ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.  I also liked the look of Jonathan Fensom's Elizabethan costumes.

With one more visit booked for the Globe this year, I think my wariness of that venue can be said to be exorcised - now if only we can do something about those school parties...

Dvd/150: SABOTAGE (Alfred Hitchcock, 1936)

Hitchcock followed up SECRET AGENT with... an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's THE SECRET AGENT renamed SABOTAGE!

London 1930s: Verloc, the German manager of a cinema, is an undercover saboteur with an anarchist cell.  Their leader is unhappy with attempts to disrupt the city so witholds payment until Verloc delivers a proper strike: bombing Piccadilly Circus underground.

Verloc's unhappy American wife Sylvia and her younger, clumsy brother Stevie are befriended by Ted Spencer from the neighbouring shop, unaware that he is a detective undercover observing the under-suspicion Verloc.

 

Velroc discovers Ted's identity the night before the attack so, to escape suspicion, gives Stevie the bomb to leave in Piccadilly which leads to the famously tense sequence as Stevie is delayed on his journey and is killed when the bomb explodes on a bus.

 

Hitchcock's taut direction elicits nervy performances from Sylvia Sidney and Oscar Homolka and a characterful supporting cast. 

Shelf or charity shop?  It's ticking away on my shelf...

 

The dark march toward whatever it is we're approaching...

A few weeks back I had my second NT Live experience, and oddly enough, neither have been National Theatre productions.  Go figure.

Another not-too-odd thing is that both times the production had been in a small venue with a big star in the lead: Tom Hiddlestone in CORIOLANUS at the Donmar and now Gillian Anderson in A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE at the Young Vic.

What is a guy to do?  Stand on the street queuing for possibly non-existent returns - or sit in a comfy seat watching it with a bag of popcorn?  Well yes I know it should be queuing but I am SO aged Constant Reader.  So it was with a guilty heart that we went to the Curzon Victoria to have a gander at the Young Vic's acclaimed revival of STREETCAR, the fastest-selling show in it's history.

First off, let me say that for a newly-built cinema, it would appear that the last thing they want you to do at the Curzon Victoria is see a film there with more space given over to the design of the foyer and bar areas - bizarrely though, at the play's interval the bar staff could not cope.  Odd that eh?

My jury is still out on the whole "live theatre in cinemas" thing, it's like having a shower while standing outside the curtain - you can hear it, you can experience what's going on but you are not immersed.

Especially when the production you are seeing has a site specific design as this one does.  Australian director Benedict Andrews, has for no real purpose that I can see, updated Tennessee Williams' magnificent play to "modern dress" and has it play on Magda Willi's white frame set which slowly rotates during the course of the play.  I am sure it makes sense sitting in the Young Vic, making you feel you are circling the action, but it really makes no sense when you are relying on static cameras to convey the action to you - time and again, a key moment was ruined by the actor being suddenly obscured by a post, doorknob or a door-frame.

The lighting was also bright white light, giving the impression of the characters being seen almost under laboratory conditions.  My main complaint with Andrews' approach was rather than bringing anything revelatory to the text it just underlined, highlighted and rang a handbell over anything and everything obvious.  Williams' poetry was subsumed by the "look-at-me, look-at-me" obviousness.  It ties with Trevor Nunn's misjudged National Theatre production as the worst I have seen of one of my favourite plays.

As with every stage STREETCAR I have seen, the actor playing Stanley just didn't cut it.  Paul Herzberg in 1984, Iain Glen in 2002 and Elliot Cowan in 2009 have all failed to make anything of the role.  I really don't know what the problem is, it never seems to be a problem for the actor playing Mitch or the actresses playing Blanche or Stella.  Are they all trying so hard not to be Brando that it leaves them with nowhere to go?

Ben Foster certainly brought a different attitude to the role - short and pugnacious - but his performance seemed to slide off Williams' character like sweat.  Andrews' vision of the character seemed to have him take his trousers off a lot which wasn't too upsetting for the viewer but there really didn't seem to be any other idea from him of his vision for the character.

 

I liked Corey Johnson as Mitch.  It's a wonderful role and he made the most of the buffonish comedy it allows but also the desperation that hides behind most of the character's actions.  It's a shame that he seemed to underplay Mitch's confrontation with Blanche.  He was easily out-acted in the scene by Gillian Anderson and it's a scene that needs to be equally balanced and here it didn't have the punch that Rob Ashford's production did at the Donmar - see my review of that one here.

I also liked Vanessa Kirby as Stella, the younger but more grounded DuBois sister.  She had an easy naturalism and you really felt her confusion at being torn between her sister and her husband.  Along with all the others, sadly she had to act in Victoria Behr's deliberately ugly costumes.

 

However the real reason for going to see this was to experience Gillian Anderson as Blanche DuBois and, despite all that I disliked about the production, she was worth it.  They really didn't need all that white light as she BLAZED through the play.

She seized every nuance of Williams' text and although she might not be my favourite Blanche DuBois she gave a performance of unrelenting power.  Funny, tragic, grating, touching, haunted and ultimately haunting, it was an astonishingly brave performance that will live in the memory for a long time.

  

 

Every so often one of her line readings would break through the screen - and Andrews' bloody obvious trops - and Williams' wonderful poetic imagery would make me gasp.  Her performance was the only thing that made me wish I had seen this production actually in the audtorium to really feel the power.

 

O has let it be known that he never wants to see another Tennessee Williams revival so Constant Reader, keep your diaries clear.

There Is Power In A Union

Every so often a film is made in the UK which takes you so unawares, so by surprise, that it refreshes your interest not just in British film but in the medium itself.

I booked to see a preview screening at the National Film Theatre of the new British film PRIDE directed by Matthew Warchus, I thought I would have a punt on it as it starred a number of actors that I like but as I took my seat I also suspected that it would probably be the sort of film whose poster would boast "This Year's Full Monty" and that it was "heartwarming".  In short I expected something that would easily fit all that is required of the average Sunday evening television series: lovable working class scallywags, strong but silent wives, comic character parts, brass bands playing every 5 seconds and a happy ending guaranteed.

The remarkable thing is that all those elements are there but when the film reaches it's emotional climax it is genuinely moving as it has been reached in such an honest and restrained way by director Warchus, writer Stephen Beresford and a remarkable cast.

What made the film so special is that finally here is a film that makes me think "Yes that's my history, that's the 1980s that I lived through".  The film has conjured up that time of covert Government pressure on anyone who didn't fit with their world - now doesn't that sound familiar?  Here is a film that could not be more timely. 

The film is worth it's weight in gold for many reasons but primarily for shining a spotlight on Mark Ashton who spearheaded the LGSM group.  When we staggered out of the screening, Owen wondered aloud how so little is known about Ashton, a genuine gay hero.  I guessed that it's a case of history is written by the victors - not only were the Miners beaten but ultimately so was the gay activism that Mark Ashton and his comrades stood for.  As he is pointedly told at the Gay Pride march that ends the film, "It's all about celebration now".

So Gay Pride becomes a glorified excuse for crap pop acts to peddle their product to the pink pound and activism can be ended as we now have taken over Old Compton Street.  Hurrah, we have created our own ghetto.

Stephen Beresford's excellent script introduces us into Ashton's world through a fictional character.  1984: Joe is a closeted gay student who escapes his suburban prison to come to London for the Gay Pride march where he meets the Out-and-Proud friends Mark, Mike, Gethin, Jonathan, Steph and Jeff.  He stays with them into the night at the Gay's The Word bookshop where Mark proposes that they form a new action group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners.

At first incredulous, the group is formed when Mark points out that the miners have the same enemies that they face: the government, the police and the media.  Soon they are raising large amounts of money but with nowhere to distribute it as their overtures are met with a refusal to accept their help.  A Welsh mining town is randomly picked and eventually they meet with Dai, a leader of the Strike committee in the Dulais valley who comes to London and accepts their passion to help.

A visit to Dai's village shows the group the depth of the struggle and both the activists and the miners find they have more than the perceived enemies to fight.  Behind all of this, the gay friends are having to deal with the growing shadow of AIDS.

Of course we all know the outcome of the strike but the coda to it was wonderful and as end titles told stories of the characters beyond the film's timeline it is impossible not to be uplifted, saddened and empowered.

Matthew Warchus guides the film with the touch of a master - only once, just before the end, does the pace seem unsteady - but otherwise he keeps a wonderful balance between the comedy and the drama while also finding small telling moments within the bigger picture - there is a wonderful cameo from Russell Tovey which is all the more telling for what is left unsaid.  Also memorable is a quiet scene between Imelda Staunton and Bill Nighy where an absolutely killer punchline is not allowed to puncture the feeling of friendship, sadness, dependence and community.

Stephen Beresford's script also deserves kudos for giving the quite large group of characters little moments to shine and for giving them all the dignity they deserve - even the villains of the piece.

Warchus and Beresford are also gifted with a cast that give the feeling of a real ensemble with no one pulling focus despite the opportunities to do so.

Ben Schnetzer - unknown to me before this - has a naturalness on camera and is charismatic as Mark Ashton, driven to support the miners against all the trepidations of his comrades.  I loved Joseph Gilgun as Mike, Mark's close friend who is equally as driven to help but is more steady than his excitable friend.

Warchus seems to allow all his actors to find their own rhythms which pays dividends with Dominic West as Jonathan, the older member of the group, which starts off as the cynical seen-it-all participant but which through the course of the film, slowly becomes a rounded and multi-layered performance.  Andrew Scott as Gethin also gives a performance of subtlety and gentle strength.  His tiny scene of Gethin visiting his mother while he is in Wales is all the more emotional for being so restrained.

George MacKay has a gauche charm as Joe (aka Bromley by his new family) and I really liked the delightful performances of Faye Marsay as spiky Stephe as well as Karina Fernandez as Stella, itching to start her own breakaway group of Lesbians Against Pit Closures.

Wonderful performances by Imelda Staunton, Bill Nighy and Paddy Considine give the film a solid foundation.  As the members of the Dulais Strike Committee who are most welcoming to the LGSM they each give impassioned performances representing aspects of a quiet, hardworking community victimised by the powers that be.

Paddy Considine gives a performance of subtlety and warmth as Dai, the head of the Strike Committee, who can see beyond prejudice to accept the help the gay community are offering.  Imelda Staunton is delightful as Hefina, the rigid moral backbone of the community who welcomes the activists into the village and, in possibly the film's best performance, Bill Nighy is excellent as the committee treasurer Cliff.  A taciturn man made anonymous by his own secrets, it's a joy to watch him be re-born through his association with the gays from London.  All Nighy's usual shtick is swept away as he gives a performance of lonely grace.

Jessica Gunning is excellent as Sian James, a young married housewife whose life is transformed by her experiences during the strike and through her relationship with the gay activists.  I also enjoyed Lisa Palfrey's performance of the bigoted Margaret who does all she can to wreck the association of the miners and the LGSM.

It would be easy enough to play the 'villain' but Palfrey keeps you intrigued in her character throughout. There is also excellent work from Monica Dolan as Joe's mother, as tightly controlled as her suburban decor.

Tat Radcliffe's cinematography and Simon Bowles' wonderful production design makes the 1980s real again and there is an invaluable contribution by Christopher Nightingale with a moving and eloquent score.  Nick Angel's music supervision also contributes to the excellent sonic recreation of 30 years ago.

We were lucky at the NFT for the film to be followed by a Q&A with producer David Livingstone as well as Schnetzer (and what a shock to discover he's American!), Marsay and Scott who were all insightful into working on the film and what they have gained personally from being involved in telling the story.

The following Sunday there was another preview screening at the Brixton Ritzy which we went to again as we were so excited by the film.  Far from being ready for all the film's power, again we were emotional wrecks at the end of it and I stayed for the length of the closing credits to recover - not that I succeeded as the credits roll over "To A Friend", The Communards' contemporary tribute to Mark Ashton.

I cannot urge you enough to rush to see PRIDE, it will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will make you think, it will make you proud.

Dvd/150: THE HOLLOW CROWN: RICHARD II (Rupert Goold, 2012)

This trilogy of films based on four Shakespeare history plays, commissioned by the BBC for the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, are excellent examples of intelligent, gripping stage-to-screen adaptations.

All three are cast to perfection: Ben Whishaw is marvellous as Richard, fey, capricious and remote, who, like Lear, initiates his own downfall by banishing his cousin Bolingbroke to six years abroad then appropriates his cousin's fortune and lands when Bolingbroke's father John of Gaunt dies.

Rory Kinnear is fine as the conflicted usurper Bolingbroke, their scenes together have an electric quality especially in the riveting abdication scene.

Excellent support comes from Patrick Stewart as John of Gaunt as well as David Suchet, Lindsay Duncan and David Morrissey among others.

Goold, whose adaptation with Ben Power has a fast-paced clarity, directs in a fluid style which leaves no symbolism unchecked and has a slight over-reliance on slow-motion detailing.

Shelf or charity shop?  I'faith my lord, shelf.

Kate Bush... 35 years later

One of my big 'claim-to fame's was that I saw Kate Bush live at the London Palladium during her only tour.  To be honest I don't remember that much about it - what I remember the most is that I was up in the Upper Circle and it's steepness gave me the feeling of being a mountain goat.  I also remember vaguely liking it but also being aware that it's reliance on mime trops played up the worst in the young Kate - that slightly tragic air of preciousness, the feeling of a 6th form girl being allowed the afternoon off lessons to prepare something artistic for the last day of term.

Since then I have bought her cds, some I have kept and loved, some I have dispensed with.  Around the turn of the naughties, I fell in with a particularly manic clutch of Bush fans and their constant whining about when will she release an album quite turned me off her so I didn't really pay any attention to her 'comeback' ARIEL.  Needless to say, when ARIEL was released, these fans started on about "when do you think she will release her next album".  After passing through them, I was ready to be interested in her again when she released her hypnotic album 50 WORDS FOR SNOW.

The shock of the announced residency at Hammersmith Odeon (as it always will be) gave way to the anxiety of could tickets be booked.  Of course they could thanks to Owen's super-fast clicky finger!  Then the long wait to the actual night of the show BEFORE THE DAWN...  which finally came last Friday.

Thanks to the stage being extended, our tickets went from being 8 rows from the stage to 4!!  Taking our seats after the very polite but vaguely irritating scrum at one of the merchandise stands and seeing how close we were to the stage was when the excitement kicked in.  We also started to ask a burning question... how would she actually get on stage? Walk on? Fly on? Bounce up through a trapdoor?

The answer came soon enough... when the onstage musicians launched into LILY and from stage left on came Kate, shuffling on in rhythm to the music and leading her onstage singers behind her - and it was, you know, it was Kate Bush. I'd know that face anywhere - and I would know her voice anywhere too.  The news that she was not singing anything from the first four albums suggested a diminishing in vocal range but she sounded great, her head and chest voice were superb and had real power.  Her fuller figure might have compromised her dancing but vocally she was excellent.

If she had just played the first section I would have been happy as that segment with Kate, band and the backing singers gave us - finally live on stage - HOUNDS OF LOVE and RUNNING UP THAT HILL.  To see her sing those was worth the price of the ticket alone.

After RUNNING UP THAT HILL it seemed natural to lead into KING OF THE MOUNTAIN but as that song built in clamorous intensity, certain elements of the stage set began to shift, the band's risers retreated to the back of the stage - and two onstage cannons shot a ton of small parchments into the auditorium on which were written the lines of Tennyson which inspired her song cycle THE NINTH WAVE.

Utilising all the Hammersmith stage - and auditorium - we were given a visual interpretation of that collection of songs starting with footage of Kate floating in the ocean wearing her life jacket for DREAM OF SHEEP which led into a full theatrical show with billowing material as the sea, the singers as sea rescuers and bone-headed fishmen fighting for possession of the hapless shipwreck survivor and an impressive lighting gantry/rescue helicopter that hovered over the audience, it's searchlight sweeping across the auditorium culminating in an onstage buoy for the woman to be rescued - or was she?

It was all fabulously imaginative and all achieved with a remarkable simplicity, wonderful but for one clunking mis-step.  Step forward 16 year old Albert McIntosh, billed as 'creative advisor' for the show, wannabe actor/singer... oh and the son of a certain K. Bush.  He popped up in an interminable scene between the lost woman's husband and son leading up to an appearance on the cramped box set of a ghostly Kate singing WATCHING YOU WITHOUT ME.  It was Amateur Hour in Dixie writ large and it stopped the momentum of the piece dead.

 

After an interval that found a good percentage of the audience on their hands and knees at the front of the stalls scooping up handfuls of Tennyson verse - we had ours that had landed on us tucked safely away - it was time for the second half, ARIEL'S song cycle A SKY OF HONEY.  Now Constant Reader, you will remember that I was very off Kate at the time of that album's release so I had no expectations, I just sat back and watched the spectacle.  

I was not as engaged as I was for THE NINTH WAVE - a combination of unfamiliarity with the material, a noticeable lack of choons (apart from what appeared to be Kate's version of LA ISLA BONITA) and the return appearance of son Bertie, this time in a larger role as a painter.  Dear God, he even had a solo.  Yeesh I don't think even Barbra Streisand allows Jason Gould that!  But it ended with a deliriously insane climax of Kate taunting her guitarist - everyone by now had bird skull masks on - and eventually, after an initial blackout, she seemed to fly.  

 

The show however ended finally with Kate alone at the piano singing the haunting AMONG ANGELS from her last album and the last song was a massive, rousing-sing-a-long version of CLOUDBUSTING.  And then, her thank you's barely heard over the huge loving ovation she was receiving, she was gone with a smile and a wave.

It was only after the lights came up that I realised that the odd feeling I was experiencing was due to the fact that while she had been onstage I had been smiling the whole time.  It was such a joyous experience to see her, seeming so happy and contented to be sharing her work finally with her enraptured fans that it was impossible not to surrender to her.

It was magical, uplifting, disturbing, haunting, touching - and maybe a little puzzling.

It was Kate Bush.