The London Irish Centre was live on Facebook with storytelling this morning, 11am BST. I did manage to wake in time, tuned in. Now, when I'm asked about storytelling, people think it's kids' stuff, and I have to correct them - unfortunately, this was actually kids' stuff. Decent enough, but I signed out after the first story. No, if I'm after storytelling, the Crick Crack Club has gone online - and I must get around to listening to them!
This weekend, otherwise, is all about Up in the Cheap Seats. This afternoon, I saw a remake of Beauty and the Beast with them, broadcast by Chichester Festival Theatre. Logged on a little early, which I find wise - you never know what'll go wrong, and it gives me a chance to troubleshoot tech for the talk afterwards.
Well gee, my first thought was - is today going to be all about kids?! This production, you see, follows the lead of The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, in taking the perspective of kids evacuated from London during the Blitz to a large, rambling, scary house in the country. The actual story is then told to them by other kids staying there.
Hmm. You know, I don't think that one person from our group managed to keep their attention on it the whole time! I did find it charming, overall - although, not being familiar with either the animated film or the live-action, I only had the original story for comparison. So, talking animals were a new one on me, which I guess came from one or more of the versions I haven't seen. Hey-ho, I can adapt.. I liked the production in general, including the exoskeleton that the beast wore, which could be removed easily at the end. The songs were pretty, and I've always liked the story. Ultimately though, as one person observed, she was glad we didn't pay to see this..! A bit forgettable.
Afterwards, we switched from Jitsi, favoured by this group in general, to Zoom - but as the morning's storytelling had been on Zoom as well, and gave problems, I switched to my phone again. Relatively problem-free, after I figured out everything I had to configure to get it to work on my phone. And we had a great old natter! Nearly an hour talking to each other, and little enough said about what we'd just seen - no, I was delighted, instead, when Normal People was brought up, and I could gossip about that a bit. Anyway, it was great to chat to people for the first time in ages!
Tomorrow, we're on YouTube, watching a production of Hairspray, with Jennifer Hudson and Ariana Grande. Part of Andrew Lloyd Webber's channel, The Shows Must Go On.
And on Monday (or thereabouts), London Literary Walks gives the results to the final (sigh) round of their quiz..
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