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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: Rock and Roll

Finally caught Tom Stoppard's play Rock 'N' Roll before it closes at the end of this month. It has been playing since last summer and has caught the imagination of the critics and the punters. The background of the story is the velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia, and the links a family in Cambridge have to the country. The central message is that there is no freedom without creative freedom and that's something that I could agree with. There is a wonderful scene where an old British communist after the collapse of the old regimes in 1990 smashes a plate. Was it all just a waste of time? Or do the new democracies appreciate what they have more than those in the west? Who can say but plenty of food for thought...

The original cast have moved on but even with the second cast headed by Dominic West (who is terrific) kept the pace going, even when it was a bit on the long side. I get the impression that even though the play finishes its run in February, it's going to be around for some time...

Walking out of the theatre afterwards, there were plenty of people wondering what it was all about they had seen, not to mention where they were when they first heard the many music clips peppered throughout the production...

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Opera and full frontal nudity: Rigoletto

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Fantasies: Afterglow @Swkplay

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Play ball: Damn Yankees @LandorTheatre

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