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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...

Theatre: A Moon For The Misbegotten

In keeping with an intensive week of theatre (since Si was in town), we caught a preview of Eugene O'Neill's A Moon For the Misbegotten at the Old Vic. It is the opening play for Kevin Spacey's 2006/07 season. Spacey has received a lot of flak in the press for his artistic direction over the last two years at the Old Vic, but this play is going to knock everyone's socks off. Everything about the production was fantastic.

Of course O'Neill has written a great story. You are drawn into their story around the relationship between the father and daughter still living on a run down farm, and their landlord and friend(?) who may sell the farm to them, or he may sell to a neighbour who is offering more… From there the story unfolds…

Eve Best in the central role gave an incredibly engaging performance. Spacey and Colm Meaney were also fabulous. The play was so full of life and the performances were so enjoyable that the audience members who hadn't passed out from the heat gave the cast a standing ovation at the end.  At this point I would advise to potential theatre-goers to the Old Vic to avoid alcohol until after a play as the theatre has no air conditioning and gets incredibly warm. In the circle where I sat, people were leaving (or rather staggering out) because of it.

Still they missed a great play. It is in previews until next week but I suspect it will become the must see play this autumn. Spacey was also in the news this week selling the most expensive tickets to the play in an auction for Bill Clinton's charity. At £130,000 for four tickets, that must set a new West End record…

After the play Si and I were both in agreement about it. I thought was probably a good antidote to Daddy Cool, the other show he saw that day. Daddy Cool is a musical set to the music of Bony M and if that isn't bad enough, features some dull star from Eastenders. The show also includes an enormous parrot which hangs in the dome of the theatre. Si didn't stick around for the second act so he couldn't tell me what it did, but in the first act it just was in the ceiling, and very visible to everyone. What a parrot is doing in a jukebox show set in multicultural London is anybody's guess I suppose. It opens on Thursday this week… Maybe the papers will explain it then…

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