Miss Saigon

A few weeks ago I fulfilled something of a long standing musical ambition and got to see Miss Saigon in the West End.  It was a special treat for Mum’s birthday, and Steve, Lottie and myself joined Mum and Dad for a Saturday matinee performance in early November.

Since I was little I have loved the music of Miss Saigon.  We used to listen to the soundtrack on the long drives to the South of France for summer holidays (along with Les Mis’ and as much of the 1981 BBC Radio 4 radio series of The Lord of the Rings as mum could stand), and I have all the sheet music for the piano, frequently pounding out “Sun and Moon” on the ivories until Steve begs me to plug my headphones in (electric piano before you ask) so he (and the neighbours) don’t have to listen anymore.   I have the soundtrack on my IPod and can often be heard singing along at full, off key volume in the kitchen whilst cooking a Sunday roast.

I have never been able to see it performed though as it was sadly cancelled in London in 1999.  Imagine my excitement then when, around this time last year, I first saw the news articles that it would be re-opening in 2014, and my excitement levels rose when Mum suggested getting tickets for us all to see it for her birthday instead of our usual Christmas Eve tradition of going to the theatre (something I will miss this year).

In the weeks building up, my excitement levels rose.  Finally the Saturday arrived.  Steve picked me up from rehearsal at 11am and we floored it to my parents’ house, picked them and my sister up and drove up to London to park near China Town (where I had my first and last experience of Cha Siu Bao – the Chinese sweet bun filled with pork meat.  I felt really queasy afterwards and never want to taste one again).

Once inside Dreamland, we talked about what we were most looking forward to and what we had read from the reviews.  We knew some of the staging had been altered but that the iconic helicopter scene should still be largely the same.  

The lights dimmed, the music started and the show got underway. 

10 minutes later my Mum was ready to walk out.

By the interval I was struggling to remain positive.  By the end we all agreed that it’s not something we would go back and see.

I’m trying to be objective here, but we were so disappointed with this show.  I think the main problem of Miss Saigon is that it is dated – theatre has moved on significantly in the 15 years it has been off stage, with new effects, new ideas and new technology, and Miss Saigon just hasn’t been able to keep up.  The helicopter – once jaw droppingly impressive, is now mildly remarkable, the set is still complex, but I’ve seen sets more elaborate.  The choreography is neat enough, but I’ve seen choreography that is tighter and slicker.  Other companies are doing ground breaking work in theatre at the moment- just look at The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, 39 Steps, Urine Town and Wicked, and there is nothing new about Miss Saigon – they did it all 15 years ago, and it does not have the iconic status of Les Mis’ or Phantom to be able to still get away with doing it all the same.  Even Starlight Express had to revamp itself, its score and its story at least twice during its run!

It was the excess of gratuitous nudity that did not sit well with my Mum.  Mum and I are not prudes, and we both know perfectly well that Miss Saigon is partially set in a brothel, but there was in my mind at least absolutely no need for the simulated sex on stage during “The Heat Is On” and “Movie In My Mind” (especially with no warnings on any of the programme or booking information, and with huge numbers of children in the audience.  All around the auditorium parents were covering their children’s eyes).  In the American Dream sequence, Gigi appears wearing a pair of flesh coloured knickers, nipple tassels and a fur coat.  It adds nothing to the sequence and just looked utterly demeaning.  The video montage of post-war babies also felt like a search for a cheap emotive reaction, as though the creatives do not have the faith in either the music or their performers to be able to generate those emotions in the audience themselves.

Differing sensibilities aside, there were silly mistakes throughout – one of the dancer’s microphones wasn’t switched on so her line just fell silent.  The actor playing John had his voice crack whilst singing Bui Doi.  A curtain fell off a rail in the slums and during “The Morning of the Dragon” the dancers weren’t always marching on the same foot.  These are silly, sloppy mistakes that you don’t expect to see in productions where you are paying up to £70 a ticket.

Having said that, I could have lived with all the above.  Sure, it would and did annoy me, but my absolutely biggest bug bear with the production was the lighting.  It was god awful – I left with a headache because I was straining so hard to see what was going on in all the scenes set in the dim streets and interiors of Vietnam.  No one had their faces lit properly and in crowded scenes this made it very difficult when trying to see who was singing and what was going on.   It also meant that a lot of the background filler action was lost.  I muttered darkly to Steve for some time following the show about the need for the lighting director to be strung up.

It wasn’t all negative.  Jon Jon Briones, the actor who played The Engineer, was stupendous, simply magnificent and he stole the show all on his own.  Eva Noblezada (Kim) and Alistair Brammer (Chris) were independently both solid performances, with Noblezada particularly impressive during any scene where she had to have an emotional breakdown (happened a lot), but the chemistry between the two characters was lacking.

We all left the Prince Edward Theatre feeling rather deflated and also rather confused – reviews on Miss Saigon (both in the press and from friends who have seen it) have all been glowing, so why was our experience so negative?  Was it just a bad night, the sum of a lot of small problems, or are we just incredibly picky?  I genuinely do not know what the answer is, but I know it’s going to be a while before I play that soundtrack again.  For me, it's a victim of its own legend and maybe it is harsh to judge it by that standard. 

Afterwards we went back to Mum and Dad’s and ordered one of the best takeaway curries I have ever had – I ate far more than I should have and couldn’t stop stealing Mum’s naga curry sauce.  At least the day ended on a high!

I really want to know what other people think of the show if you have seen it or have friends or family who have seen it!  Pop your thoughts below...

If you like (or hate!) what you have read, please do let me know in the comments below or slap me with a cheeky follow, or say Hi to me on my facebook group or twitter!

Ping Pong Dim Sum

I was debating whether or not to put this post up.  You see, I met some old friends for lunch in London last weekend, arrived a little early so took my standard shots of the exterior.  Then the girls arrived, I got completely overexcited as I hadn't seen them for 18 months and I completely forgot about taking any more pictures.

Without photo's of the food, drink and arty interior shots I thought that there would be no point in putting this post up.  I know that I like to read posts that are photo heavy to help me visualise but then I reconsidered.  I didn't get any photos cos I was too busy having fun with the girls.  Surely that is what this blog is about?  Capturing my life and acting as a diary for years to come.

So I will stick what photo's I do have in and after that you will need to use your imagination!

Kate and Jo are my two oldest friends.  I've known Jo since I was 4 years old and Kate since I was 8 and latched onto her when she joined our primary school, demanding that she 'be my best friend' in the playground.  Poor girl hasn't managed to shake me off since!

Jo, Me, Kate

As a trio we were inseparable at school.  We went on holidays together, our families all knew each other and these two know far more about me than I think I am strictly speaking comfortable with.  We studied together, played together, got into trouble together and went through all the normal trials and tribulations of growing up together.   They have seen me at my best and at my absolute, rock bottom worst.  We've argued and fought and it has never affected our friendship.

At 16 Kate and I went to a different sixth form from Jo but we were all still friends.  University happened, we scattered in different directions but still caught up with each other, visited each others Uni's and made sure we spent time with each other in the holidays.  Kate and I even worked together at the same kids Summer Camp!

These days we live in different areas of the country.  Kate is in St Albans, Jo is in Keston and I'm in Canterbury.  We have different lives, different careers and two of us are married with the third engaged.  However stick us back in the same room as each other, no matter how much time has passed and you cannot get a word in edgeways.  These two are always going to be a hugely special part of my life - I'm not sure there is a single memory from my childhood which doesn't feature them in some way!

I'd not seen the girls for 18 months.  Life has a funny way of doing that sometimes.  We were supposed to catch up in January but snow meant that we didn't want to risk travelling to London and getting stranded as there was no guarantee the trains would be running.  Turns out that September was the next available date for all three of us!

We set the date (3 months in advance it has to be said) and chose the venue.  I can't get decent dim sum in Canterbury so requested we go somewhere that served it.  Kate works in Soho and recommended Ping Pong, so that was that!

Dim Sum is basically Chinese tapas - lots of small portions, some steamed, some griddled and some fried. 

I must say as Dim Sum goes this place was excellent and really good value for money.  We went a la carte and shared our orders and it came to a whopping £13 a head, with us leaving feeling really full.  I can highly recommend the fresh lemonade with passion fruit puree.  The puree comes in a shot glass and you tip it in yourself.  Kate didn't see the lemonade and was convinced that the shot glass represented my entire drink.

alessandrabrian.files.wordpress.com

I have borrowed the food and drink photos from the blog Allesandrabrian.com (with her permission of course!) which is a great lifestyle blog about a Californian girl in London.  She ate an almost identical menu to us when she visited so I have pinched some of her shots to show you the food!  Thank you Allesandra - I am really grateful!  You should check out her blog, I highly recommend it and, from our chats together, she is also a lovely girl.

The menu took a bit of getting used to as you could order from one of the sets, the Sunday All You Could Eat Special (that was a lot of food which was a bit daunting for us) or go a la carte.  You selected what you wanted, ticked it off the paper menu and handed it to your waiter.  Less than 5 minutes later your dishes start to arrive and they keep on coming!  We had vegetable spring rolls with chilli dipping sauce and duck spring rolls with plum dipping sauce (duck were my favourite and the plum sauce it came with was beautifully sticky).  On Kate's recommendation, we ordered these crispy prawn balls with a soy and chilli dip (which are messy but full of flavour).  Grabbing them with your chop sticks is a challenge all on its own as they have a tendency to crumble as your apply pressure but the first mouthful is worth the perseverance

Image borrowed from alessandrabrian.files.wordpress.com

We had roast pork puffs (which I remember as being good but a little forgettable as I cannot for the life of me remember what they looked like or tasted like other than the fact they came in puff pastry) and a vegetable sticky rice that came wrapped in a lotus leaf and was opened to reveal a sweet and savory bundle of rice with piles of seasonal vegetables inside.  Ours came in triangles rather than the rectangles shown below - clearly the Ping Pong staff are aficionado's at the art of origami lotus leaf parcels!

We had also ordered chilli pork tenderloin served on a lettuce leaf and with a chilli dressing which was really tasty and spicy chicken and cashew nut dumplings (absolutely wonderful and my favourite dish of the afternoon) which came served in the steam box on top of the rice parcels.  I have to say, none of the chilli was to my mind hot in the slightest but I know that my tolerance is higher than a lot of people's so it's not really surprising.  I would have liked a little extra heat though!

I'm pretty sure that there was some more that I just can't remember.  All the food was delicious and the perfect set up to share and catch up with old friends.  We couldn't manage dessert as we were just too full.

Instead we settled up and headed around the corner to the nearest Starbucks.  The weather was still warm enough for us to sit outside and gossip, catching up with each others lives and dramas.  I'm so lucky to have two girls like these in my life, even if I don't get to see them all that often these days. 

Pizza, Tarts and Opium Dens

There have been a lot of 30th birthday parties recently and I had the pleasure of going up to London on Saturday for another one.  Lol is one of my oldest friends.  We went to Uni together, she was one of my bridesmaids and I don't get to see her and the other girls nearly as often as I would like to.  None of us really know why, life just seems to happen and before you know it 2 years have passed and you haven't had a hug from each other!

22 of us started off at Pizza East in Shoreditch where Lol had booked a huge table with tiny little pivoting stool chairs.  You use your ab muscles to stabilise yourself, thereby justifying the huge meal you are about to indulge in.  At least that was my excuse!

I was feeling a little delicate from the night before so kick started with one of the best Bloody Mary's I have ever had.  It was warm and sharp and peppery but not overpowering.  I'm drooling just thinking about it!

While we sipped on our drinks Lol got cracking on her cards and pressies

Then the food appeared.  We had gone for a taster sharing menu and dish after dish came flooding out of the kitchen. 

Parma ham, salami, various cheeses and rosemary bread with a light salt crust still warm from the oven.

Huge slabs of freshly baked bread dripping with garlic butter just waiting to be ripped.

 Lamb meatballs in a rich tomato sauce and crispy paprika calamari with caper aioli

 Pizza after pizza all with different toppings served with some seriously good salads

 We needed a breather for some photos before dessert showed up!

Out came the birthday cake.  Actually it was birthday salted caramel chocolate tart.  It was possibly the single most divine thing I have ever tasted.  This was making it onto my last meal list it was that good.

 Also on the dessert menu were hot cinnamon sugar doughnut balls with Amedei dipping chocolate

And roasted peaches with amaretto biscotti crumbled over the top sitting in a puddle of marscapone.

Stuffed we jumped into cabs and made our way to Hackney where Lol had booked the top room at Pub on the Park.  Lol is a hip little media chick-let and this is a hip little media hangout in London Fields (I felt so countryfied downstairs!) which took shabby chic to a whole different level.

More shabby than chic to be honest but it was a luxury to have somewhere we could just take over, nip downstairs for some drinks and listen to Lol's iPod on the ancient ghetto blaster.

Our room was a bit mysterious - you had to go through a door that said 'staff only', up a creaking winding wooden staircase, down a corridor and entered in the words of Lols' mum "our very own Opium den".

I loved the pop art posters lining the stairs and corridors.

Lol is off to New York now for the rest of her birthday.  It had better not be another 2 years before I see her!

By the way, the very pretty girl in the bottom picture but one?  That's Rohini.  You should check out her blog here.  Trust me - it's awesome.