One of the cast of Mammoth takes a seat in the audience at one point and declares "This is the worst play I've ever seen."   It's by no means one of the worst I've seen but it's certainly one of the oddest.

At the start Jessica explains that she's made a mess of bringing up her son (not that he's a mess, she is) and that with a webcam in operation for his benefit (which husband pops off stage to sort out now and then) they are going to perform a play in which they set off to the woods as a family with her mother playing her son and accompanied by her therapy dog, to get lost.  This she sees in some way to be a re-enactment of their actual life as a family.

So far so odd.  The dog runs off after a rabbit early on and returns later covered in mud but minus his doctor's coat (he is I think her psychiatrist) to demand sausages from the husband who is not lost thanks to his mobile phone and GPS and has popped home to get a tent, a barbecue and some sausages.  In the meantime mother has wet herself in her role as son, goes off and comes back drunk dressed as The Phantom (a cultural reference that escaped me but which I have looked up since).  Jessica in the interim has a panic attack and demands help from the technical crew, demands that they lower the lights and play some music but not, definitely not some particular thing which I think may have been by Mammoth Life  (another escaped cultural reference) but that gets played anyway and Jessica rolls about on the floor a lot till husband returns.

So it goes on until husband, who has been taking Jessica back in time (a bit of psychotherapy) while she, mum and dog frolicked in the tent, collapses the tent.  Jessica emerges with a tail.  The dog is starkers again by this point and embraces Jessica.

A member of the theatre staff tells them their time is up and that's pretty much that.  It may have been a nod to the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (another post hoc cultural discovery for me) or it may not have been.  I certainly didn't come out with a clue as to what it was about but it was fun.

Circa: Wunderkammer is much more straightforward.  Acrobats standing on one another's shoulders, doing amazing stunts on a vertical pole, whirling hula hoops from every limb, cartwheeling and tumbling all over the place.  They have however a disconcerting need to take lots of clothes off.  Do I really want to see a man strip down to a posing pouch in the course of a trapeze routine?

The SNJO remained fully clothed throughout their excellent concert at The Queen's Hall, though Brian Kellock freed himself from his bow tie at one point no doubt having worked up a bit of a sweat at the piano.  The concert was called In The Spirit of Duke and there is a CD for those who missed it.

My personal favourite was the duet between Tommy Smith and Brian Kellock played as the band's first encore.  It was warm and melodic and drew lovely, soft, melancholic tones from the tenor saxophone.  Here it is on piano alone played by the Duke himself.