Storytelling: Fairytales for Grown-Ups

Tonight, I headed to what, sure enough, was the last show before autumn for the Crick Crack Club. This was a Fairytales for Grown-Ups double bill at Soho Theatre - one of the performers was Ben Haggarty, always worth seeing. Now, my cold has mainly evaporated - I say "mainly".. it certainly behaved itself yesterday. However, I started with a coughing fit in work this evening that left me in serious doubt about the wisdom of going tonight. Still, it did stop - eventually - and I invested in a packet of fruit pastilles, and set off with some trepidation. I'd had some trouble finding the booking confirmation, considering I turn out to have booked this on the 15th of February!

You know, I met a chap yesterday that predicted a month's rain today - and he might have been right. It lashed all day - mercifully, by the time I headed out, it had more or less stopped - temporarily. Still, the rain was replaced by a stiff breeze, and with me not feeling 100%, I was relieved when the bus came. Predictably, I was early to the theatre, and ended up queueing in the lobby - my cough behaved itself, what with the judicious application of fruit pastilles, even after the long stair climb, and I bravely took a seat front and centre, as usual. Oh, and BTW - they have a small concession outside the upstairs theatre now, with wine and snacks!

Going to storytelling two days in a row - from different companies - really allows me to compare them. And what I have to say is that the essential difference.. is that Crick Crack has a much superior class of performer. Don't get me wrong, The Embers Collective has a lot going for it, and as I say, a couple of its members have performed with Crick Crack as well. But Crick Crack has been around a lot longer, I daresay - and its members have so much more experience, overall. It's just that you can expect more from their performances.

The performances we got tonight - from Sarah Liisa Wilkinson (who is actually in The Embers Collective) before the break, and Ben Haggarty after (who also mc'ed) - were very different, but each utterly mesmerising. There are storytellers - and a lot of them in this club - who are so compelling that it matters not a damn what they're telling you. They could be reading the phone book, they'd still hold an audience in thrall. Sarah Liisa with her deceptively friendly style - whose story held some awful horrors - lived and breathed every line of it, and brought us back with her, so that we all lived it together. Ben, on the other hand, gave us a fully theatrical show, all the monsters re-enacted to make us gasp. I have to say, for the last show before summer, it was a helluva curtain call! Oh, I'll miss them till autumn.. 

And so back, all the way home in the rain, on the same bus, which will probably prove a popular one for me. Tomorrow, back with Up in the Cheap Seats, to the King's Head, for what should be another manic show. Vulvarine - ahem - is a sort of superhero story. With a female superhero, natch. We're meeting in The Bull, down the road, beforehand for food.

And on Wednesday, back with London Literary Walks. He had to change his original plan - seems the pub we were to meet in is closed for refitting, and with no good alternatives, he had to come up with another walk at the last minute. So now, we're doing a Walk by a Canal. Hope the rain dies off a bit for that..