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Sleight of hand: The Fabulist @charingcrossthr

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Billed as a musical comedy, The Fabulist is actually a rare chance to see Giovanni Paisiello’s rarely performed light opera, The Imaginary Astrologers , translated and updated to Mussolini’s Italy. With sublime music, fine singing and a bit of additional silliness thrown in for good measure, it’s a welcome addition to the choices available on the West End. It’s currently playing at Charing Cross Theatre . In this update, the action moved to Italy in 1929. A magician (or, as he prefers to be called, Fabulist), Julian is on the run from both the fascists and the Catholic Church. On the run, he stumbles on a film shoot and dazzles the screenwriter Clarice with his charm while her sister tries to complete a series of mildly subversive historical films. What will win in a battle of ideas between science and magic, the church and the Fabulist? It’s an evening of light operatic comedy, so there are no prizes for guessing.  Experts in clerical fascism and fascist mysticism may find some of the
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Theatre: The Year Of Magical Thinking

Saturday night I finally caught up with The Year of Magical Thinking which has been playing since April at the National Theatre. Featuring Vanessa Redgrave on a chair, it tells the story of American author Joan Didion and how over a year she lost both her husband and her daughter and the process she went through in dealing with it (or more to the point not dealing with it). The play is based on her book however it exapnds the story to include the loss of her daughter as well. There is such a frank honesty to this story that even with the subject matter you can't help but be drawn into it. Perhaps it is the way it constantly asks the audience to reflect on this story as it will happen to all of us: the details will be different but the end result is the same. It was certainly was a novel way of reminding us all about our own mortality and how dealing with it is part of life. Perhaps the subject matter (people die), the fact that it was the bank holiday weekend and people may not
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