Last night I had the plea­sure of seeing Phil Elv­rum live for the third time in Lon­don, this time at The Dome near Ken­tish Town, with High Pla­ces and Parenthe­ti­cal Girls supporting.

I loved the High Pla­ces set; their music is inc­re­dibly invi­go­ra­ting and refreshing, with a strange sort of aggres­sion and tri­ba­lism when pla­yed live — suf­fice to say I bought their self tit­led 12″ at the close. Parenthe­ti­cal Girls were not really my sort of thing, some stand out tracks, an inte­res­ting voca­list and ins­tru­ment rota­tion made it worthwhile though.

Phil’s set was, as usual, mes­me­ri­zing and won­der­ful, des­pite his obvious exhaus­tion from traveling.

Down­loads

Just for good mea­sure, here are two down­loads of the com­plete per­for­man­ces the last time I saw him live — recor­ded with per­mis­sion by Sonny (via MEPS); first at The Lumi­naire and the next day at the Lon­don School of Eco­no­mics library. Yesterday’s show didn’t top these, but to be honest that’s pretty hard ’cause they were awe­some; there was even sin­ga­longs and peo­ple sat cross leg­ged around him on the stage; it was all very inti­mate and beautiful.

Mount Eerie — Live at the Lumi­naire, May 23rd 2006 (my high­light from this one is track 28, Voice In Headphones).

Mount Eerie — Live at the LSE library, May 24th 2006

Media from The Dome

Living in St Albans I’ve recently taken the oppor­tu­nity to see as much thea­tre as pos­si­ble, and now I have a cou­ple of spare minu­tes bet­ween all the shows, holi­day and tra­ve­ling, I’ll write a bit about them all.

Les Mise­ra­bles

I’ve long been a great hater of musi­cals that sing every. sin­gle. word. ♫ I’m going to get the milk ♫, that sort of thing. By that logic I should abso­lu­tely des­pise Les Mis’, lis­te­ning to the songs briefly befo­rehand cer­tainly sug­ges­ted I would. Our seats were upper circle front row, I’d bought them with my sis­ter for my mum’s birth­day; we had a good view and I sat back unsure what to expect, ‘Look Down and see’.

Ahead of me the sto­ries of Val­jean, Fan­tine, Javert, Cosette, Epo­nine et al unfol­ded; the repea­ting musi­cal theme resoun­ded deep and a phe­no­me­nal per­for­mance by Drew Sarich colou­red me impres­sed, with ‘On My Own’ hear­tren­dingly sung by Epo­nine (Cas­sie Comp­ton) fully engros­sing me, for the first time, within a musi­cal love story. This was and still is the best musi­cal per­for­mance I have seen and until that point I had very little faith in the genre as a whole.

I left wan­ting more.

Mar­gue­rite

I had already seen Miss Sai­gon, although I do believe it wasn’t one of the best per­for­man­ces, I didn’t overly enjoy it. It pro­bably deser­ves a second chance with my now rene­wed inte­rest. Mar­gue­rite was a new musi­cal with songs by Michel Legrand (see Umbre­llas of Cher­bourg!) and the hook, lyrics by Alain Bou­blil and Claude-Michel Schonberg.

The show, music and per­for­man­ces were all bit­terly disap­poin­ting; the lea­ding sin­ging male came across as an over zea­lous ste­reoty­pi­cal stage fella for which we did not emote. It was all a little lac­klus­ter, and no doubt others agreed — lea­ding to the shows pre­ma­ture end in Sep­tem­ber. Luc­kily an overly chirpy and enter­tai­ning train con­duc­tor kept us happy on the way home; if only they were all as happy as him.

Fat Pig

Jo, Sam and I saw Fat Pig in its first English incar­na­tion at the Tra­fal­gar stu­dios with Kris Marshall and Robert Webb. The comedy has a sim­ple pre­mise; some guy begins dating a fat girl and must face his work collea­gues and their taunts — the ‘obses­sed with looks’ ex-date and the crude and woma­ni­zing buddy.

Big Spoi­lers now. The first half revol­ves around Tom and Helen, the libra­rian, mee­ting, laughs a plenty and smi­les all around — an hila­rious comedy as billed. With the second half comes the to and fro of a rela­tionship, the ups and downs and ine­vi­ta­ble ques­tions about the future which revolve around Helen mee­ting Tom’s work mates; the comedy sof­tens you up and keeps you con­tent in the happy ending realm of posi­tive mes­sage story­te­lling — before a long and quiet con­ver­sa­tion on the beach punches you in the gut, rips out your heart and splat­ters it on the wall, brin­ging you straight back to rea­lity and ending the show in dark­ness. Abso­lu­tely brilliant.

I hear­tily recom­mend this, though can­not vouch for the new lineup or venue.

39 Steps

Another comedy, we got tic­kets cheap for this one in the stalls, and thought why not. None of us had actually seen the movie, so we didn’t know quite what to expect, espe­cially with only four cast mem­bers pla­ying the role of many. It tur­ned out to be a slaps­tick affair with very cle­ver prop jokes, cos­tume chan­ges and role switching; a good laugh and another recom­men­ded night out.

Ave­nue Q

Sam and I saw this one on our wee­kend to the Hox­ton Hotel,

Middle of the middle in the stalls we watched the well prai­sed Ave­nue Q as the Gary Cole­man refe­ren­ces whis­ked over our heads and the ‘grab your dick and dou­ble click‘ line resoun­ded. Though we enjo­yed it, the abun­dant acc­laim meant it did not meet our high expectations.

This adult pup­pet comedy, although making us laugh, really didn’t grab us as we had thought and hoped it might. A tad disap­poin­ting, it might have been the unders­tu­dies but pro­bably just all the hype surroun­ding it.

Rain Man

Another per­for­mance caught on the Hox­ton wee­kend, lucky enough to get tic­kets on the day,

Neither of us had seen the Dus­tin Hoff­man movie, we went in without any expec­ta­tions and without grounds for com­pa­ri­son. We left abso­lu­tely stun­ned — wow; the play was bri­lliant with God­ley and Hart­nett supre­mely lea­ving us on ten­der hooks. This was the first straight up play we’d seen together and no doubt we’ll be back for more of the same.

It is very much a love story, a comedy and a drama. I must remem­ber to now watch the movie (adding to my Love­Film list). I’m not sure how we would have reac­ted to it had we seen the movie. To no sur­prise, a large pro­por­tion of the audience were female. I do agree that Hart­nett is a stud, even in The Black Dah­lia with its ste­llar cast, which I caught last night, a poor attempt at a film noir.

Zorro

Zorro is the most recent of musi­cals I have seen after Sam grab­bed four tic­kets for £40; this ope­ned ear­lier in the year and Matt Rawle plays the lead and once again I had no expec­ta­tions or even a clue as to the story. The show is none too serious (des­pite the bri­lliant ‘Man behind the Mask’ num­ber) and comes accom­pa­nied with fla­menco gypsy dan­cing, heel stom­ping, sword fights, fire and The Gypsy Kings (see Bam­bo­leo); ‘a fun filled romp’ some tabloid review might say and it cer­tainly was. With a dance and clap encore I left with dan­cing feet com­ple­tely satis­fied with my night out, bar the Gypsy King tracks that loo­ped around my cra­nium for the remain­der of the night.

If you want some plain old fun in Lon­don, I recom­mend Zorro the musical!