I'm Blathering Now...

📅 Sat 12 th June – Fri 25th June Running time 2hrs 10 mins (inc interval)   Betrayal. “I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” – E.M.Forster Moscow, February 1987, two of the greatest 20 th Century novelists Graham Greene and the Soviet spy Kim Philby are reunited. Philby had been Greene’s supervisor and friend at MI6 30 years earlier, but at the time of the meeting Philby had long been exposed as a communist double agent and was living in Moscow with his final wife, Rufa – a Russian memoirist. I had seen several advertisements on social media for The Original Theatre Company’s online recording of the production, and I was on the verge of buying a ticket when I spotted that the play was touring and coming to Theatr Clwyd. Whilst online plays have been a salvation throughout the pandemic, there is nothing to beat the feeling of sitting in a theatre watching a

📅 Sat 12 th June – Fri 25th June Running time 1hr 15 mins   Jim’s life is going nowhere. He spends his days topping pizzas with pepperoni. He thinks he has found the answer to his problems whilst watching the film “I Hired a Contract Killer.”All he has to do is get someone to kill him. What on earth could go wrong with that? This is my second post-Covid show at Theatr Clwyd and on first sight the stage is an assault on the eyeballs, all acid green, bubble gum pink and sunshine yellow. But don’t let the Crayola crayon set fool you, Welsh writer Alan Harris has delivered a darkly comic play with a poignant message running through it. The tale is a three-hander, focusing on Jim, excellently played by the haunting Rhodri Meilir (Hidden/My family) who, following the death of his mother, has been suffering from the mental health condition, depersonalisation disorder.  As part of a Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) pilot scheme, Jim has been selected to work on the production

Apparently, I’ve been languishing. Organisational psychologist Adam Grant, PhD, wrote in a recent article in the New York Times, that languishing is "a sense of stagnation and emptiness." Whilst in this state, you may not see the point of things; simple pleasures lose all meaning, you lack any sense of purpose, basically you are feeling a bit "meh." I can attest to that. A global pandemic sort of does that to you. What’s the point of booking a holiday when you know the chances of it being cancelled are so high? Last year I ended up taking my summer holiday in December. Why organise meeting friends when the border between England and Wales keeps opening and closing with more regularity than Tower Bridge? My second “home” at Theatr Clwyd was closed, along with theatres up and down the UK, so there was nothing to get excited about – let alone blog about. Happily, things are now starting to change, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Blindness – Theatr Cl