Gig #13: Anna Meredith @ Queen Elizabeth Hall

Bonkers composer Anna Meredith announced an orchestral arrangement of her rather excellent Varmint's album. I love her live shows as the musicality is stunning and she gets a great sound out of her little band. The idea of her working with an orchestra would be stupid to turn down.

Opening as usual with the rather excellent Nautilus, I have to admit to having not been as blown away by the track as much as when I first heard it in Margate a few years ago, but it sounded great with the full orchestra. However as the set went on there were elements of piccolo and flute weaving around the familar tracks, cymbals and more glockenspiel and just a full range of sound that turned the tracks from great to absolutely epic. At one point there was a track played which seemed to have only been created to test how loud the orchestra could get. If Anna was ever commissioned to produce a THX or Dolby Atmos sound card, it would have sounded like that.

For the encore we had a track that featured children's musical instruments blending with the orchestral sounds before breaking into a chorus of Jennifer Rush's "Power of Love". The usual absurd twist you get from an Anna show.

She mentioned that the show is going to be taken to Edinburgh in August. I'm already planning my next trip up there now.

Event: Somnai

Somnai is an immersive theatrical experience that has been running in London for a couple of months. Initial reviews were negative with reports of technical failures in the equipment and the overall experience being disjointed. We'd bought our tickets ages ago so as we got nearer the date we were hoping the initial teething issues would be resolved.

The premise is that you're visiting a medical laboratory to improve the value of your sleep and to understand your dreams. Donning a wristband, fitbit, robe and sleep socks you start the tests before meeting a guide who takes you through the majority of the experience and tells you the story about a child and their shadow which underpins the experience.

Through the process you go through a number of visual shows using a combination of projections and a lot of virtual reality and there are some very well themed rooms too as the experiment takes a slightly darker turn.

Overall I really enjoyed the experience, the VR worked really well for me, and none of the group encountered the technical issues that led to bad reviews at the start of the run. Another visual effect also worked really well for me too, if a bit trippy (we commented that the visual people must have taken a lot of LSD to be inspired for this). Be aware that if you're wearing glasses the headsets can press a bit but the people setting them up were very efficient and quick at making the adjustments.

Our guide was great, weaving our responses to some of her questions into the experience. It's always nice when you're called out by name during the experience and encouraged to do well through the challenges. 

The experience is pretty linear but features one section where a number of the group are separated from the rest and undergo a slightly difference experience. Within the journey to reunite there's a decision that needs to be made that gives an alternative route through the experience, and a reason to revisit.

At the end you complete the process before having the opportunity to enjoy some drinks in a nicely themed bar that changes appearance and menu every 30 minutes. The cocktails and tech displayed here, some of which is done through an app on your phone, were a nice way to end the visit.

I noted two areas where things could be improved. Firstly the arriving into the centre could be done better. We found ourselves inadvertently stumbling into the bar at the end of experience and the wrong side of the cloak room before being told we should just have waited in the lobby, yet there was no indication to do that. Secondly one of the later rooms implies there's a challenge to find a key, but we seemed to leave the room without finding it. For those of us who like exploratory elements in our immersive theatre experiences, this was a bit of a disappointment to not get the satisfaction of completing a task.

In summary we enjoyed the event and would like to go back, if only to see what lies beyond the other door. Once again, this isn't Punch Drunk, that's going to be too hard to better, but it is high up the leaderboard of interactive theatre experiences in London.

Event: Shit Faced Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice

photo from britishtheatre.com

Shit Faced Shakespeare is a rather brilliant idea where a Shakespeare play is shrunk to about an hour and a random member of the cast starts drinking 4 hours before the show starts. The rest of the cast then get to improvise around that inebriated character.

The current run is Merchant of Venice and it was a blast. Each show will be different so I don't need to go into detail about what you'll see; it's a certainty that you'll get something different. 

It was a great night out and we're already planning a return visit and with them changing to Romeo and Juliet in the Summer I think this is going to become a regular thing.

Film #52: Avengers Infinity War

The film of the Summer brings to an end phase 3 of the Marvel Universe.

Universal bad ass Thanos and his impressive henchmen come to earth in search of the 6 Infinity Stones, 5 of which we've seen in earlier films. If he gets them he wields unlimited power and he wants to use it to remove 50% of the universe so the other 50% have a better chance of survival. Can the Avengers stop him?

No.

and that's what makes this film so good, it doesn't have a happy ending, at least not in this phase. It sets us up nicely for phase 4. The film is over 2 hours long but packed full of action sequences and funny dialogue. I was entertained the whole way through.

Roll on phase 4.

Sightseeing: Marrakesh