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Prayers and thoughts: The Inseparables @Finboroughtheatre

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The Inseparables brings Simone de Beauvoir’s posthumously published novel to life. It traces a lifelong friendship between Sylve and Andrée, two unconventional girls who grew up in a stifling world where being a woman meant getting married or entering a convent. With a quick pace and engaging performances from the two leads, it is a journey back into the 20th century that captures two unconventional women trapped in a conventional world that will have you reflecting on how much or little things have moved on in the last century. It’s currently playing at the Finborough Theatre .  We’re introduced to Sylve praying for her country, France, to be saved from the war and indoctrinated into the world of faith and obedience. But too smart for all that, her life was full of detached guilt and boredom. But when she meets Andrée, a new arrival at her school, she is struck by how different she is from everyone else. She was burned in a fire and had a passion for life that nobody else she knew...
Art isn't easy: Caravaggio

I had pre-booked tickets to see at the National Gallery Caravaggio: The Final Years, which everyone has been raving about, and it was worth it. Some amazing pieces of the artists work made in his final years together in the same location was quite impressive. Those that recommended the exhibition to me I suspect were devotees of the Derek Jarman film from the eighties which certainly focused on the homoerotic nature of his works (and the artists impulses in that direction)... The exhibition suggests his life was a little more complex than a raving queen who got into fights and killed a man, but it all made for interesting context when looking at the art.

Actually amongst the hoards of people at the exhibition there were quite a few friends of Dorothy lurking amongst the darkened rooms and I thought it was if the curators were trying to add some of the seediness of the life the artist led to the exhibition. In fact the darkness was to bring out the artwork - which in some cases was damaged or in poor condition - but that didn't stop that strange feeling that one was being followed from room to room. Just as well there were only six rooms.

Afterwards I quickly ducked into the main gallery to look at Seurat's Bathers at Asnières. The Van Gough collection on the opposite wall is always more popular, but I just like this one. And unlike Caravaggio, there is all that colour and light...

Overheard at the Caravaggio Exhibit

Foreign tourist #1:Zha zzzha zhaa zha Caravaggio.... gay.
Foreign tourist #2:Ahh nozha zha zha zha Caravaggio... bisexual!

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