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The Green, Green Grass of Home: Mr Jones An Aberfan Story - Finborough Theatre

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A life of hope and promise, interrupted, lies at the heart of Mr Jones: an Aberfan Story. The play follows two young people in Aberfan before and after the disaster that killed 144 people, including 116 children. It’s an emotional coming-of-age tale of intersecting lives, family, love, and the shock of tragedy. With two vivid performances and strong characterisations, you feel immersed in 1960s Welsh small-town life. It’s now running at the Finborough Theatre , after performances at the Edinburgh Festival and across Wales.  The Aberfan disaster is well known in the UK but perhaps less so elsewhere. The facts of the tragedy are confined to the programme notes rather than in the piece. On 21 October 1966, the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip on a mountain above Aberfan engulfed a local school, killing many. The play avoids the causes and negligence, instead focusing on those working and building lives in the town.  Writer-performer Liam Holmes plays Stephen Jones, a...
News: Hitting home...

Mild hysteria erupted this week over reports that a craze that started in the dreadful bowels of all things evil - South London - now is spreading nation wide. It is called Happy Slapping and involves teenagers ganging up on an individual and hitting them, while taking photos of the victim with their mobile phones, before running off into the sunset, to post the pictures on the internet. It's supposed to be a new form of techno-bullying, but Does 'happy slapping' exist?. Well if it does, it is bound to spread to every mild-manered unsuspecting town in the near future...

Billy Elliotopened this week at the Victoria Palace to amazing reviews and some declaring it one of the best shows ever...

And finally, Kath and Kim premiered on BBC2 Thursday night. For those in the know (and with Sky), it has been broadcast for the past year here but now it is on free-to-air television it is getting a much broader audience. I suspect it will do well here, and it made the pick of the day in many newspaper TV reviews. I keep telling people that it is exactly how Australians live - although Melbournians wear darker colours usually - and aren't so much into shoulder pads anymore...

Potato, potato; pasta, pasta; plaque, plaque
Speaking of accents, noice and unewsual... I have found...
You don't say:
I'm having Paahsta for lunch
You say:
I'm having Passta for lunch
But I still say paaahsta. In fact, now I say paaaaaaaaaaaaahsta because it gets such a reaction... My colleagues make allowances for foreigners though...


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