Since I last posted I haven't done anything quite as exciting as the walk I described then.  With a Covid 19 jag in prospect (mine is due on Wednesday) I've been keeping an even lower profile than before, thinking it would be more than annoying to catch it now.  The weather has helped.  It's been largely inclement so there has been little temptation to go out.  I shop infrequently and early.  That's a habit I'd like to keep going when life returns to normal but will it ever return to normal.

Fortunately entertainment and diversion has continued to be present in abundance and I've collaborated ever so minorly in Claire's latest theatrical enterprise by prompting at some rehearsals.  Roulette presents on-line dating encounters and it promises to be a fascinating show in which the sequence of events is determined by audience votes.

More conventional shows that I saw in January were:

Sunset Boulevard from The Curve in Leicester.  This was a beautifully presented Covid safe version of the Lloyd Weber musical, itself based on the Billy Wilder 1950 film, that the company had staged a year or two ago.  Billed as a concert performance this production was fully costumed and while basically performed in the round it took full advantage of The Curve's auditorium to expand the action outward from the central stage.

Swingin' the Dream from the RSC.  This was more truly a concert performance, and was what's more billed as a work in progress.  The original show of this name was a 1939 Broadway jazz infused version of A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Despite the strength of the cast and the music it folded after only 13 performances and almost no traces of it persist.  What the RSC, in collaboration with the Young Vic and New York's Theatre for a New Audience, are doing is putting together the fragments that we do have.  It was fun and I hope they get further.  The Guardian has an interesting article about it and an even more interesting photo of Loius Armstrong as Bottom surrounded by the fairies. 

L'École des femmes from the Odéon Théâtre de l'Europe. A modern dress #Metoo version of Molière's comedy about an older man raising a young girl to be an innocent and free from guile marital partner for him when she's just the right age.  Of course a young man crosses her path and the best laid and all that.  It's still available on vimeo with subtitles and worth the watch.  I first saw this play at the Avignon Theatre Festival in 1981 with Pierre Arditi playing the old man. I'd gone there with the theatre going group from Paris that I was member of.  They arranged group tickets for shows, fixed transport and hotel etc.  I think it was probably only for a long weekend but it was a great excursion.  I don't remember much about the production.  It took place in the courtyard of the Palais des Papes and involved a trapdoor.  That's all I remember. Pathetic.  Since then I think I've only seen Liz Lochead's version, Educating Agnes.  What I remember about that production was that it was not wonderful.  I don't think I've seen Kemp's version, Let Wives Tak Tent though I'd like to.  Molière seems to work well in Scots.

Dalloway from Dyad Productions.  A film of their Fringe production it's a one woman adaptation of Virginia Woolf's 1925 novel.  I thought it was excellent and I'm not a great fan of one person shows but Rebecca Vaughan portrayed the characters both male and female extremely well.  Subtle changes in the way she held herself and well controlled changes of voice brought the disparate protagonists to life.  I also enjoyed the text.  I haven't read the novel and I don't suppose I ever will even if I bring into action my retirement at 80 plan that envisages me doing nothing but read thereafter.  It's still available, click here.

I watched a handful of zoomy shows from the vast selection at Online@theSpace.  They entertained but haven't stuck in my memory in more than a fragmentary way.  What's new there I hear you say.

The National Library of Scotland have brought their talks online like so many organisations and I attended a couple but found them unexceptional, nuff said.

Claire organised an online Burns Supper which was great fun.  There was no actual supper.  I nibbled some bread and cheese and imbibed a fair swallie of usquebah.  We had a Scottish themed quiz.  I came last equal.  Siobhan sang a song.  I recited/read the Address to the Haggis and Tam o' Shanter.  

More Burns came in the shape of a book by John Cairney that Fiona sent me.  It's an account of the years he spent doing a show or rather shows as Burns around the world from it's beginning at the Traverse in 1965.  I devoured the book.  I enjoyed all his stories and was more than a little tickled at his account of meeting Brian Aherne in Geneva for it is to my mother's admiration of him that I owe my name.