laurabrough.bsky.social

As you like it at the RSC is fun and features an entire hill and no trees whatsoever. I’m guessing the Forest of Arden got cleared or something. It’s a really impressive hill, but I was expecting at least one tree!

Much respect to the Playbox theatre in Warwick who are proving to the world that it is possible to do an absolutely stonking production of Marlowe’s Massacre at Paris while noting in their programme that the RSC (just down the road) has never put it on in their main house

This needs to be a thing

It took me a while to get into the rhythm of the John Akromfah at the Walker but once I did it was well worth it. It’s also air conditioned so a good place to spend the afternoon!

Liverpool Phil knocked it out of the park with Rusalka. The entire cast is brilliant!

Malory Towers is really well done - audience mostly Small People and parents/teachers though a sizeable minority of fifty somethings and older on a nostalgia trip. A good time was had by all.

Side note that the Everyman theatre is in its “dropping stuff from the ceiling” era and guys, you can have too much of a good thing. Should have stopped after the first dead Margaret Thatcher!

Attachment is easily the best thing I have seen at the Everyman for a while, certainly this year and possibly this decade! Kudos to Paislie Reid, who gives an astonishing performance and totally deserved her standing ovation.

Have seen the baby aardvark at Chester Zoo! Sooooooo cute and grows up to eat ants, what’s not to like!?

Very much loved Arturo Ui at the RSC. Mark Gatiss is literally frighteningly good!

Cartoon by Mike Luckovich @mluckovich.bsky.social

The assassination of Margaret Thatcher is a not entirely happy marriage of on stage hyper realism (chopping vegetables etc) and a full workout for pretty much any theatrical effect the Everyman stage is capable of. Full marks for effort but only 3 stars for the final result.

The Gondoliers at Chester Storyhouse was very well done and certainly very full but it’s worrying that most of the audience looked way older than me! Do people not appreciate Gilbert and Sullivan any more?

🧵Congress 202-224-3121 Find your Senators www.senate.gov Find your Rep www.house.gov "I'm [NAME] from [PLACE, ZIP]. I'm calling to urge the Senator/Rep to contact Adm. Correll & remind him that he has the same legal obligation as any soldier to refuse an illegal order from this Commander in Chief."

Messy church: given a craft to do involving wool. Check supplies I’ve been given - mostly wool plus one roll of knicker elastic. I cannot imagine why the church had a stock of knicker elastic - I have been there 20 years and I don’t remember ever doing a knicker elastic based craft!

The Constant Wife at the Playhouse is very funny - I liked it a lot. It is a long time since I saw a good drawing room comedy at the Playhouse

Liverpool there are shedloads of cheapish seats left for Dear England and it’s a really good play!

Loving Dear England at the Empire despite the fact that I know sod all about football!

Respect to the mum reading The Hobbit out loud to her kids on the train today. She was doing voices and everything!

I don’t really know what I expect in posting this, but maybe some people see it and can learn from it. I’ll call it “lessons from an unwilling immigration attorney.” 1/

Loved the Turner always contemporary exhibition at the Walker - some very interesting connections made across artists. Sadly my favourite Simone Martini painting has not yet made it back into the main collection.

rare to see an american politician speak in these terms and it rocks

Annual church panto trip - this year Sleeping Beauty. Fun with a couple of good jokes and a script that ensured the prince had met the princess and got consent before he had to kiss her to wake her!

Loved the Forsyte saga at the RSC but honestly imagine it’s a completely different thing if you don’t see Pt 1 before Pt 2.

Oh I am loving the Forsyte saga at the RSC - it’s really well done. They’ve left us on another ‘cue Eastenders drum beats’ for tomorrow (NB they are way too classy to actually play Eastenders drum beats)

Forsyte saga has just left us on a proper Eastenders drum beat #intervalskeet

Loved Young Frankenstein at the Playhouse. Excellent performances and genuine laughs (btw make sure you stay to watch the credits which are hilarious).

Church on form. Went in to go to a funeral, came out with a packet of short date raspberries because we had a donation and the freezers couldn’t fit everything.

Cousin’s cat is being very brave with all of us in the house and has even tried out my lap (briefly). Possibly we will get a Christmas where he isn’t stressed out of his very tiny ginger mind or holding a grudge!

Some of the congregation got me chocolate dinosaurs for my birthday! I love my church!

The thing is, you can't make trans and intersex people nonexistent, you can only make them suffer.

Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it!

One of my smaller Sunday School boys made me a loom band bracelet. It has made my day!

RIP Brian Patten. Presumably it now IS celestial music!

One of my Sunday School children said his favourite things about church were ‘food and Laura’. On the one hand, not what I was going for, on the other, stupidly proud of myself!

I always find something to love at the John Moores painting prize and today was no different - so lucky to live near it! Thanks to the Walker Art Gallery for a lovely evening 😀

@gralefrit.bsky.social You have to see these! A friend of mine has been collating a series of images entitled "Things my students have written turned into Philomena Cunk quotes" and they're just glorious.

Fringe reviews: Darren McGarvey Trauma Industrial Complex. Thoughtful exploration of how fitting trauma into a standard narrative structure is probably not telling the whole truth and may not be remotely helpful.

Fringe reviews: Red like fruit. Cleverly constructed play about the difference between what gets said and whether or how it gets heard. Liked it a lot.

Fringe reviews: Faustine. It’s got the Faust story. It’s got synthesisers. It’s got really really really clunky rhymes. I mean REALLY clunky. Sigh.

Fringe reviews: Amazons. Engaging one woman show exploring the history of the Amazon through her personal history as someone of indigenous descent.

Fringe reviews: Count Dykula. Not as fun as Lesbian Space Crime.

Fringe reviews: Ways of knowing. Yikes this is weird. The bit that works best is an evocation of caving done in the dark lit by the two performers’ head torches.

Fringe reviews: The cyclops. A play about male relationships that occasionally starts quoting the story of Odysseus and the cyclops. I wasn’t entirely sure why - I suspect the link got lost somewhere in the drafting process.

Fringe reviews: Timonopoly. Timon of Athens done by one actor using a monopoly game theme and a shedload of audience participation with sweets. Much to my surprise it worked very well indeed.

Fringe reviews: Scotlandsfest Wanton women running amok - fab author talk about witch trials in Scotland and why they often weren’t for actual witchcraft

Frisky’s reshuffle. Improv show in which Ms Frisky triumphantly proves that she can sing literally anything no matter how bizarre. Like a Virgin as a John Lewis Christmas ad, Candle in the Wind as a rave anthem etc

Fringe reviews: City of Ladies. Builds on Christine de Pisan to flag up some great women of history. Fairly eclectic in its choices, not a Great Work of Art but entertaining and yay for the medieval history name checks.