Red Barn

 
In the vain hope that anyone reading this blog is in the L.A. area:
GO SEE THIS SHOW!

The Independent Shakespeare Company usually does (obviously) Shakespeare, but they decided to branch out and make a period murder mystery tragicomic musical ... as you do.  Unsurprisingly, they bring just as much talent, charm, expertise, and pure entertainment to this as they do to their annual summer Shakespeare festival in Griffith Park.

Sample songs: Red Barn and Love

Details on the historical story on which it is very faithfully based can be found on Wikipedia.

Les Miserables – For Once, Not the Musical

Radio 4 Extra* has just recently finished a run of their epic radio play of Les Miserables, and as I've been very busy at work lately I actually managed to listen to the whole thing.  It's the closest I've yet come to reading the book (shame, I know) and it was very exciting, particularly the part where I got introduced to a character who is entirely glossed over in the musical, to everyone's loss.

First, the usual suspects, Marius and Eponine:


            


. . and then my new favourite, Combeferre! Completely aside from his being just a really great character (and played by one of my favourite radio actors, no less) what I especially love about Combeferre is the fact that, on the most important day of his life, he has a cold. How brilliantly mundane! No one ever thinks of that, but it makes him and his experience so much more real. He spends a good deal of time rhapsodizing on tomatoes and how it is impossible to find good ones in Paris, which led to this variant on the drawing. 

*which I will think of as BBC7 until I die