I'm Blathering Now...

I’ve read Dan Brown’s thriller regarding Catholic conspiracy and murderous Opus Dei monks, I’ve watched Ron Howard’s film adaptation, and now here I am watching Luke Sheppard’s theatre adaptation. You would be forgiven for thinking I am a mega-fan of Dan Brown, but you’d be wrong – much like the Harry Potter books, I only read the Dan Brown novels because I didn’t want to miss out on what everyone else was raving about. I was intrigued to see how all the complex plot twists and turns would be negotiated on the stage, (plus Danny John-Jules, best known for Red Dwarf, was due to tread the Theatr Clwyd boards!) The curator of the Louvre Museum in Paris, Jacques Sauniere, has been brutally murdered. At the side of his body are a series of baffling codes, and more importantly, a message to the police to find the symbologist Prof. Robert Langdon. Nigel Harmon (Eastenders) played the role of Robert Langdon, the professor and symbolist, and Hannah Rose Caton played his fellow fugitive and po

1951, and a chance encounter in a Californian hotel leads to more than just a passionate one-night stand. George and Doris are two happily married people…the problem is, they’re not married to each other. This chance encounter is the start of something, and as the title of the play makes clear, the couple agree to meet up once a year, in the same place, for a no-strings-attached fun and frivolous fling. And so begins a love affair that will continue for 25 years.  The opening scene perfectly conveys the awkward embarrassment of George, a New Jersey accountant, and Doris, a bored housewife, as they wake up and realisation dawns on them that they have committed adultery three times in one night. George can’t even get Doris’s name right! You can’t help but laugh and squirm in your seat as George and Doris, played by Kieran Buckeridge and Sarah Kempton realise they have thrown their marriage vows into the wind for a night of drunken debauchery. Or have they? They don’t feel guilty, and vow

It’s not that often that I opt to read teenage fiction, but when this gorgeous book cover dropped in my inbox, I couldn’t resist giving this short but engaging book a chance. The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea  (Due for publication 22nd February 2022 by Feiwel & Friends) is a magical feminist retelling of the classic Korean legend of Shim Cheong, the Devoted Daughter: The myth states that Shim Cheong’s mother died when she was born, and her father was blind and unable to work. One day her father was crossing a bridge when he fell into a river, a passing monk saw the man drowning and jumped into the river and saved him. The monk told the blind man that if he offered Buddha three hundred seoks of rice, he would regain his eyesight. The blind man could not afford to buy so much rice, but when he told his daughter, she knew what she had to do. She had heard that some sailors would pay good money for a girl as an offering to the Sea-God. Rather than tell her father the truth, she t