Concert: Taim Sahel

Tonight - sick of the same, well-meaning diet of wellbeing, good wishes to the NHS, and speculation about when lockdown would be over, finally - I checked out Meetup again. First thing to catch my eye was an event by Up in the Cheap Seats (UITCS), who were watching an archive recording by Curve Theatre - What the Butler Saw.

I was pre-warned that the recording isn't the best - the view is from the back of the auditorium, which is ok, but it does mean that you pick up all the audience noise. And the dialogue from the stage is so inaudible that they provide subtitles. But that would all have been fine - if not for the content itself! To be fair, I'd been pre-warned about that too, but thought I'd give it a shot. It wasn't long before I decided that it was far too puerile and offensive (dated both in terms of what was classed as being funny, and what was classed as being acceptable) to spend my time on. Very glad I didn't pay for it.

So, that left me free to check out the World Music Meetup. Eleanor, from TunedIn.London, is now apparently the organiser - and they'd organised a concert, livestreamed on YouTube this evening, by a Syrian artist, Taim Sahel, performing to an empty room at Sands Film Studios. So, here's your chance to see the theatre at Sands Films! Music starts at about 9 minutes in - and it's truly lovely. Such a contrast to what I started out watching! Highly recommended - I'm delighted to see them take part in the online offerings.

On Saturday, London Social Detours (LSD) has a quiz - in the afternoon, so I've signed up. She's requiring us to write down all our answers - dunno whether she's considered that she'll only be able to read them backwards! However, I'll also try to catch this week's offering from The Shows Must Go On!, where Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals are streamed for free for 48 hours - this week, it's Love Never Dies, a sequel to Phantom of the Opera. As advertised by UITCS.

On Sunday, as usual, I'm following UITCS' lead in watching Hampstead Theatre's weekly offering, which this week is the currently topical Tiger Country, set in the NHS.

On Monday, London Literary Walks has scheduled a continuation of the music quiz that was running.. a mistake on the organiser's part, he accidentally made the next bit a separate event! Glad he's still running it - when I saw the first event had ended, I was afraid he'd stopped, and I do enjoy them!

On the 2nd, behold, LSD has my attention again - they're doing an online murder mystery, where everyone chooses a character and (optionally) dresses up. Small fee. Cool! We get scripts, it seems.. And I've been chosen to be Sierra Tango, police constable! Seems it's been booking heavily, and that was all that was left. Fine by me.

On the 3rd, back with Hampstead Theatre for The Arrest of Ai Weiwei. UITCS is, of course, seeing it that evening.

Now, the 8th is a bank holiday - so I'll need something to do that day as well. And I'm thinking I'll follow UITCS' lead from earlier in the week, and have a look at a livestreamed Showstopper! show, filmed in the Lyric a month ago without an audience (!), now available on Facebook..