Gutted – Fringe Theatre review

Gutted – Fringe Theatre review

Gutted

Gutted is a black comedy that is set in a fish factory in 1980’s Dublin written by Sharon Byrne and directed by Chris White. It explores the lives of three strong women who are friends through working in the same dead end job. Yet all have dreams of something bigger and better than what their lives are at the moment.

The stage is sparsely set with nothing but a plain white backdrop with strip lighting, standing lamps and ceiling lights. However, the lights are cleverly linked and used as extra characters throughout and this is incredibly well presented. The story is told in interlinking comic monologue from the three women Deidre ( Niamh Finlay), Delores ( Sarah Hosford) and Breda (Eleanor Byrne) covering just one particular night of their lives.

It is Irish storytelling at its best with comedy concealing a powerful undertone of hurt and heartache that is hinted at throughout. It’s raw and relatable and immediately transported me back to my teenage years with the girls singing excerpts of some songs of the time. Notably Tainted Love (oh the memories!) and yet tainted love can totally sum up the underlying theme of the play.

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What happens when your ‘children’ become grown ups.

What happens when your ‘children’ become grown ups

 

This is the card I got for my youngest son this week at he turned 19! We bought the card as joke which he loved. But as I keep looking at it the reality has hit home. It’s got me thinking about what happens when your children become grown ups.

My eldest son is 21 and is still away at uni. My youngest decided against the uni route. He is working part time to enable him to do as much solo travel as possible before deciding what he wants to do.

I’m extremely proud of how both my boys have grown and support them fully in choosing their own paths to walk down.

However, for me as a mum it’s bittersweet. I literally have ‘grown ups’ now instead of children, and with that comes a level of enforced mum redundancy as they branch out and need us less. I have much more time for ME and whatever that entails and this year I have really struggled with that if I’m honest. It got me thinking about what happens when your children become grown ups.

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At Last at Lion and Unicorn Theatre

At Last at Lion and Unicorn Theatre – Review

I’ve had a lot of firsts for me this year on the blog and now I can add Fringe Theatre to that list.

When someone says Fringe Theatre what do you think?

I literally had no clue what to expect when I was invited along with another theatre lover to see the play At Last at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre in the Kentish Town area of London, to see this production by Proforca Theatre Company, written by James Lewis and Alexander Knott and directed by David Brady.

At Last

 

The pub itself looks as though it has been quite newly refurbished and was inviting and welcoming inside. The theatre is upstairs and reminded me of my son’s blacked out school drama theatre, so think small and intimate and as a guesstimate there was about 45 of us there last night (give or take a few). So it was a sold out performance.

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London Escaped Vampire Slayer Review

London Escaped Vampire Slayer Review

First of all I want to make it clear that this was my very first time in an escape room ever. So this review is based solely on that one experience rather than a comparison to other escape rooms of other styles. I was lucky enough to be asked to go along to London Escaped Vampire Slayer to review.

London Escaped have a couple of different rooms to experience such as the Da Vinci and The Prisoner. I went with a lovely group of escape room veterans via Love London Pop Ups to give their new Vampire Slayer game a try.

As someone who hasn’t been to an escape room before I was literally going in blind with absolutely no clue of what to expect. I knew there would be clues and puzzles to work out and obviously you are under a time pressure to ‘escape’. We were a group of 7 people and for this game they advise between 2-8 people. But it can accommodate up to 10 people if necessary and it lasts for 60 minutes. We were there for a 4pm start and at that point in the reception area it wasn’t busy. It was great opportunity for a novice like me to get a sneak peek into some of the other rooms.

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Buck Buck Games – The Hunt for the Smoking Caterpillar

Buck Buck Games The Hunt for the Smoking Caterpillar

I was recently invited to attend a new immersive theatre game. The Hunt for the Smoking Caterpillar, by Buck Buck Games, held in their residency at The Owl and the Hitchhiker pub on Holloway Road, London.

I’ve never really attended anything immersive theatre, or escape room related before. I literally had no idea what I was walking into. The Buck Buck Games website describe it as ‘ Our event games and characters combine escape rooms, immersive theatre and murder mystery with fun fuelled challenges’.

So I thought I would take my husband along for unique evening out.

The pub itself is a complete hidden treasure in itself and it’s quirkiness is apparent as soon as you walk in. It has hairdryers all hanging from the ceiling above the bar. There’s a table tennis table around the back of the bar and there were a group of people playing card games at one of the tables. We even spotted couple playing monopoly. Not your typical pub in any sense.

They have a great menu. Our plan was to eat before we played but unfortunately the traffic was not on our side that evening and we didn’t have enough time. But it  included an extensive vegan selection. Although we didn’t get the chance to eat, the food that was coming out of the kitchen looked very good.

Anyway, on to the games. As we arrived and got a drink we could see more groups turning up and congregating at the bottom of the stairs were the games were advertised.

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Chernobyl – TV Mini Series Review

Have you heard of this new mini series on Sky/ Not TV called Chernobyl and have you watched it yet?

 

I’m generally a binge watcher when it comes to a TV series although it can be quite hard to avoid spoilers occasionally. With this I didn’t really worry about the spoiler side of things as it’s more of a retelling of real life event from 1986. I was turning 16 when this happened and I can remember it being reported on the news on a daily basis for a very long time.

This series has only 5 episodes and covers in depth what happened from those who were closely involved with dealing with the disaster at the time. It has the highest rating on IMDb in a very short space of time, so that really has to tell you something about the quality of this series.

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Our weekend celebrating in Dublin

In April this year my eldest son turned 21 and it was also our 25th wedding anniversary. Instead of having a big family party for both ( which my son would have hated, and my husband would have hated) we decided to do a shared celebration with just us four. I’m not being funny but with the amount you spend on a party ( with food, drink and decorations etc) we have always been the type to put the money to a better use ( for us anyway) to go somewhere and have an experience instead. The amount of effort involved with food alone would put me under pressure illness wise and by the time I would have done all the organising for it I would probably be too exhausted to actually enjoy it! Anyway, we decided before Christmas that  a weekend in Dublin was our plan and so we all had something to look forward to.

I’ve been to Dublin many years ago with a group of friends and had a great time, but as I’m from Belfast myself it’s always been a place I wanted to take my boys and we agreed we would wait until they were old enough to drink legally! So we decided we would combine the celebrations and take ourselves away for a long weekend there as a family. We were actually looking forward to going away with our boys who are now 21 and 18 years old, it’s a whole other experience when they are this age. Less arguing, less faffing, less stress, more fun, more easy going and well, more enjoyable!

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Things I’ve learned after 25 years on our silver wedding anniversary

Things I’ve learned after 25 years on our silver wedding anniversary

This week the 23rd April 2019 marked our silver wedding anniversary. 25 years of marriage and still here to tell the tale of what I’ve learned during that time.

I know its totally cliched but I really do not know where the time has gone. I mean 25 years sounds a long time and we have done lots in that time. But it does feel as though it has shot past us in the blink of an eye.

Silver wedding anniversay
This is us taken recently on our trip to Dublin

 

So how did we celebrate and mark this momentous occasion. Well our eldest also turned 21 recently, so we decided a little while ago that we would combine the 2 occasions and have a family trip away in Dublin. Somewhere we all have wanted to visit but I really wanted the boys to be of legal drinking age before we went. That way we could all participate in all the typical touristy things.

We chose to do this instead of having parties. As we have rarely been able to afford to take the boys on holidays while they were growing up, we thought this would be money well spent as an experience rather than a party.

Therefore, the actual day of our silver wedding anniversary was a quiet, chilled affair. My youngest was at school all day and then went to work and my eldest was revising for his impending exams for uni. So we knew we had the day to ourselves.

So what did we do? We booked into the Flashback cinema to see The Wizard of Oz on the big screen! Its one of our all time favourite classic films. I bet you wasn’t expecting that little bundle of excitement.

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After Life ( Netflix TV series) – review

Ok so I would like to get it out there first that in truth I’ve never been a huge Ricky Gervais fan (which stems from seeing a clip of one of his stand up shows where he takes the piss about M.E ……….no, I’m not just a bit bloody tired!) anyway, I wanted to be honest and say that up front now.

My son however is a MASSIVE fan of him and watches (and re watches) both The Office and Extras some of which I love……..favourites being the Sir Ian McKellan and the Ross Kemp ( super army soldiers) episodes. I even a few years ago managed to get BBC audience tickets for a recording of him doing the David Brent song to be used in a show, so you know that shows a mothers love doesn’t it? On said outing my son lost his wallet and had to back into the studio to look for it, everyone else had gone and because we had been delayed leaving we were lucky enough to see Ricky Gervais come down the corridor past us………………………we didn’t stop and ask for a picture but did the casual look and nod instead………..honestly I think my son would have died of embarrassment had I asked for a pic but looking back I really should have for his benefit at the time.

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Film and TV reviews

This is something I have pondered about for a while now. My teen and I have always enjoyed going to the cinema and will talk non stop all the way home about whatever film we have just watched. My son has always been into his films and TV series from a young age, now at age18 he has developed into a great critic looking at actors, directors and how the film was shot, along with what he thought worked and didn’t. Its one of the things we really have in common and quite often he will ask to go with me rather than his mates as he knows I watch with a similar keen eye. I would love to start a blog/ Youtube channel or podcast with him as we have some great discussions after watching something either in the cinema, on Netflix or Now Tv………………..but to no avail……….he wont do it!

So, I have decided to do my own reviews on this little corner of the internet and hope they help someone along the way. They will not all be the latest releases from the cinema (although some will) but will also include binge worthy Tv series and those films released onto streaming services too. The aim is to help people find something to watch next, especially with so much on offer from so many streaming services it can sometimes be difficult to chose. I see people on Twitter a lot asking for recommendations of what to watch next and hopefully my reviews will point someone in the right direction along the way.

My son has always been one to watch on his Ipad as he can pop his headphones on and bring it around the house with him ( especially when he goes into cooking mode in the kitchen!). I actually get a lot of recommendations from him of decent films to watch, he has great taste and generally won’t be what you would expect from his age group. From about the age of 14 films such as Schindler’s List and Shawshank Redemption have been in his top 5. Even at the age of about 9 or 10 he would speed watch the likes of Jaws in about 10 minutes literally fast forwarding (think DVD’s) to the gruesome bits! His DVD and Blueray collection has the likes of American Psycho, Birdman and Saving Private Ryan, so not your typical collection for his age group.

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