I went to see Sweet Charity, the musical, at the New Wolsey Theatre. W saw it last week and loved it so I had high hopes but a couple of people (who are not keen on musicals) had been dismissive. The lead was played by Katie Birtill, who was new to me but has real star-quality. She grabbed my attention whenever she was on stage as the eternally ( Read more... )

New Wolsey Young Associates have been touring their short play for months but we had yet to see it because of sundry diary clashes. Tonight it was being staged at the New Wolsey Studio as part of the Pulse Festival 2015. Four members of the young company worked with Rob Salmon (Associate Director of the New Wolsey Theatre) and three of their ( Read more... )

Tonight I attended a performance of World Factory at the New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich. Or I participated in a running of it because this is not a show but a participatory experience. It is a moderated game of Fighting Fantasy set in the real world to explore the dynamics of running a clothing manufacturer in China. Wrapped around this are some ( Read more... )

This may be the least enjoyable game that I have played on the Nintendo DS. I thought that I would enjoy driving a big rig between cities, choosing the loads and then finding the optimal destinations to maximise sales revenues. The idea of a driving simulation with an economic element is very appealing but this implementation fails on every level. ( Read more... )

Craig's Bond continues to be the brutal maverick that I had always found in the books and Judi Dench's M echoes the codependency that Fleming trailed in the For Your Eyes Only short story. Both performances are magnificent in this competent sequel exploring Bond's search for vengeance against the organisation that forced his lover Vesper to betray ( Read more... )

George Gently is a BBC TV police procedural set in 1964 Northumberland with Martin Shaw playing Alan Hunter's ex-Scotland Yard Chief Superintendent. Hunter wrote almost fifty Gently novels in the last half of the twentieth century. Indeed, he wrote nothing else. A first two-hour show was broadcast last year adapting Hunter's eighth novel Gently Go ( Read more... )

Read this wonderful panning of the Masala Zone restaurant in Camden and understand why I feel the need to link to it and to reiterate that it refers to the Masala Zone in Camden.

Kissing Cousins are a comedy country music trio who first performed at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2007. They came to Ipswich as part of the Pulse Fringe Festival on the evening of Sunday, 1st June 2008. Their show is as much a play as it is a concert. Directed by Flick Ferdinando, the three performers wrote the songs. Caroline Carter is the notional ( Read more... )

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The first issue of The DFC arrived yesterday. It is a full colour UK weekly comic available only by subscription. The feel of the comic is a comfortable mix of Francophone comic books and Scottish gag comics: imagine A Suivre meets The Beano. I was sympathetic to the venture as soon as I learnt of it but my affection was assured when I found a ( Read more... )