Stand up and be counted

So, of all the things I didn't expect to be doing in Brussels, going to an English-language stand-up comedy show with a group of Greeks and Slovenes has to come fairly high up the list...

We saw two comedians:

Kevin Bridges is a relatively new name on the circuit. He's from Glasgow, and some of my companions had a certain amount of trouble understanding him. He was pretty good, but some parts of the act felt a bit flat to me.

Adam Hills is much better known and better established as a comedian - he's been going since 1989, and has been on Never Mind the Buzzcocks and Mock the Week. I thought he was really excellent, but I'm glad we weren't sitting near the front, because he really picked on some people in the audience. If you search for his name on YouTube you'll find quite a few videos from his stand-up act - strangely, in some of them he seems a lot flatter and less engaging than he was last night, so maybe he wasn't just being nice when he said he'd really enjoyed the evening.

After the show, we went for a drink at the Crystal Lounge (warning, website plays music automatically, which I find a bit irritating), which is in a very posh hotel in the Avenue Louise area. It's an amazing space, with an absolutely beautiful terrace, and it serves some great cocktails, including one which comes in a round glass with a lightbulb in it so that it glows blue. It's bloody expensive, but definitely worth a visit.

Alphabetical Order

The other night I went to see Michael Frayn's early (1975) play Alphabetical Order at the Hampstead Theatre. I'd never heard of it before, though I know and like some of Frayn's other stuff, so I didn't really know what to expect, and I enjoyed it very much.

It's based in the cuttings library of a provincial newspaper, which dates it straight away, because I would imagine such archives are kept digitally these days - and there are also a few political references that place it in the 1970s - but it didn't actually feel dated in terms of the theme, the characters and so on.

I thought the set was effective, particularly the transformation during the interval from chaotic mess to organised sterility. The acting was very good - Imogen Stubbs was the only one of the actors I already knew, and she was great, but I particularly liked Jonathan Guy Lewis as John (and it turns out that I have seen him before, because he was in Soldier, Soldier, which I used to watch religiously, but I don't remember him at all).

I guess the theme of the play is the tension between order and freedom. I got the impression that Frayn is rather coming down on the side of freedom - efficient, organising Lesley is the least sympathetic character, seeming to ride roughshod over the lives and feelings of the others - but he does show that it's not quite as simple as that. Lesley recognises that her organisation is 'compulsion', and the chaos of the first half is not entirely positive - they rather seem to be stuck in a rut. Maybe that's just my instinct for tidiness biasing me, though!

I'd never been to the Hampstead Theatre before, and I was impressed. The current theatre was only built in 2003, and it's very well designed, both in the theatre itself and in the other areas, with a lovely outside area at the back. It's a small space, and we felt very close to the action, but it didn't seem cramped at all. And the staff were very friendly when we arrived with precisely 1 minute to spare, having missed the train from Richmond.