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The Green, Green Grass of Home: Mr Jones An Aberfan Story - Finborough Theatre

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A life of hope and promise, interrupted, lies at the heart of Mr Jones: an Aberfan Story. The play follows two young people in Aberfan before and after the disaster that killed 144 people, including 116 children. It’s an emotional coming-of-age tale of intersecting lives, family, love, and the shock of tragedy. With two vivid performances and strong characterisations, you feel immersed in 1960s Welsh small-town life. It’s now running at the Finborough Theatre , after performances at the Edinburgh Festival and across Wales.  The Aberfan disaster is well known in the UK but perhaps less so elsewhere. The facts of the tragedy are confined to the programme notes rather than in the piece. On 21 October 1966, the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip on a mountain above Aberfan engulfed a local school, killing many. The play avoids the causes and negligence, instead focusing on those working and building lives in the town.  Writer-performer Liam Holmes plays Stephen Jones, a...

Concert: Carmen Jones


Source: Carmen Jones publicity artwork http://southbankcentre.co.uk

I had been warned that Carmen Jones was a bit of a dated show. It is afterall a "modern" 1943 reworking of Bizet's opera Carmen into a musical. Given that piece of advice (and that I was still probably jet lagged) I figured the cheap seats at Royal Festival Hall would suffice to see this new production of the show. If it were a bit dull then I figured I could always have a sleep (especially during the overlong first half). Of course I forgot that the cheap seats means that you are surrounded by cheap people. In this instance it was cheap people with body odour problems, weak bladders, and noisy crisp packets. For the first half I was detracted by the cheap people around me who felt that the people's palace meant it was their living room. I was half expecting belching and farting since there was every other noise... Well that's where socialist idealism gets you in the twenty-first century...

By the second half I had moved myself to one of the empty seats closer to the stage and closer to where Fliss and Chris were sitting. They didn't want to have any part of my theatre economics so booked separately. The move it was a noticeable improvement on everything but the acoustics... While the London Philharmonic sounded fantastic, it was a bit hard to hear the dialogue and the singing and I suspect that wasn't the fault of the performers... I also had to contend with a largish glass of white wine to consume which for a lightweight such as me guaranteed that I was going to have a good time no matter what in the second half...

Anyway it turns out Carmen Jones isn't that bad of a show. This fully staged concert version with a great cast had a lot going for it (when you could hear it) and was visually pleasing from time to time as well (which is not always the case with concert productions). At times you get the feeling that Oscar Hammerstein II had more fun conceiving this Carmen than you actually get from watching it, but modern translations of operas abound nowadays. And I certainly can appreciate the fact that "dats our man, the man with the wallop, hotter than a firecracker" is a great line to be sung by a chorus...

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