Wicked

I had a very nice Christmas and New Year, even if it has become a distant memory already now that I'm back at work. I apologise for not having managed to blog at all during that period, but I was too busy having my Mum flap at me about one thing or another and stuffing my face with food I didn't pay for.

Anyway, amongst the many Christmas gifts I got from Chris' Mum, I was very pleased to find two tickets to see the musical Wicked. I read the book ages ago, and occasionally say things like "yes we really must go to the theatre more often", so she actually did quite well to get us that as a present. She didn't do so well in picking Monday 4 January, our first day back at work, as the evening to book it for, but she's a bit dotty like that.

"You're not back at work then are you?", she said when we unwrapped them.

Er yes, of course we are. Everyone is! But her brain works in its own special little way sometimes.

It didn't matter too much really, as the show was at 7.30pm, and the theatre is right next to Victoria station, so it was perfectly possible to get up to London in time to see it. It did turn out to be hideously tiring though, running for a train at 5.30pm through freezing weather, and then sitting on it thinking "I bet my bed is all warm and cosy right now. I wonder what's on the telly?"

But anyway, the show was AMAZING. It was easily as good as I had hoped it would be, with a very talented cast and excellent sets and lighting and things. Our seats were right near the back, so when I saw the seating plan I thought we wouldn't be able to see very much, but the Apollo is quite a small theatre really so the view was fine.

I was surprised how different the story is compared to the book, particularly the second half of the show, but it didn't really matter. I think they'd changed it largely to make it more accessible to people who have only seen the Wizard of Oz film, and because there's simply too much in the book for a stage show.

Alexia Khadime was great as Elphaba, and has a spectacular voice. The Glinda character had almost as big a part, which I hadn't realised, and she was also really good and provided quite a bit of the humour. I think we had the standby Sarah Earnshaw rather than the main billed actress. I really liked her anyway, she was really funny.

It did make me want to go and see more shows, particularly Priscilla Queen of the Desert which is on at the moment (could I be any gayer?), but I don't think I'd go on a week night again. Standing in freezing Victoria at 10.30pm really wasn't very fun, and I had to drag myself out of bed this morning.

I don't think I'll blog very much more about Christmas and New Year, but in summary:

- I had a better than average Christmas, everyone seemed to get on, and I got very good presents.

- My Mum didn't come to our Boxing Day meal with my Horrible Grandad, but that was better really because it made it less stressy for me.

- And for New Year we went to The Jam in Brighton, to a club night organised by Dynamite Sal, which was BRILLIANT. I got trashed and felt dreadful the next day, but was at least conscious at midnight this year.

Oh yes, and my parents are still subject to their weird voodoo gypsy curse where everything goes wrong for them. Notably over the Christmas period, they enjoyed:

- a Christmas meal booking with me where the restaurant turned out not to be open for another hour after our booked time, and had no record of their booking, so we ended up in a Wetherspoons in Wanstead eating burgers.

- water coming in round one of their bedroom windows and running down the wall.

- a thermostat that broke at 10pm on a Saturday night and proceeded to try to freeze them to death during the subsequent Sunday when no one was available to come and fix it.

What fun! So of course I had to hear about all that in detail. They really shouldn't have built their house on that Indian burial ground.