Doing A Matinee

Just a typical Saturday really.

Parkrunning at Poolsbrook Country Park near Chesterfield, the first time we’ve been there, following by a quick look at some wedding or other on TV and then in the afternoon we're at the Theatre Royal.

Yes, in the afternoon and what’s more it’s a musical. I find it bizarre but these things are apparently popular and we couldn’t get any weekend evening tickets. So here we are doing a matinee.

I am pleased to discover that ‘Jersey Boys’ isn’t just another musical, it is actually a biography of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons which doesn’t skimp on detail. This means it’s a little slow to begin with as we go through their lean early years when they were called the Four Lovers and couldn’t buy success but I admire the show for doing that. It appears it wasn’t until they met a 15-year-old called Bob Gaudio, who could write decent songs, that they started to get success.

Even then they tried to throw it all away by dabbling with gangsters, debt, women (naturally) and eventually prison. So this isn’t your run of the mill cheesy musical and I liked the story at least. There were a few songs too. Songs that even I, despite not being a fan, recognised.

The effect is lessened a bit by us being way up in the Gods, which means we can’t see the screen they have where archive footage was shown and we also can’t see the facial expressions of the actors which those down the front seem to be responding to.

I think I was probably the only person who spent most of the night wondering if they actually had a real band there or whether it was all on tape bar a drummer who seemed almost always on stage. There was and they are wheeled out right at the end to play a solo piece and to take some of the plaudits but... most of audience had already started to leave by then, leaving the band to do a solo to everyone’s backs. Which I thought was rather rude.

In the evening we tour the local pubs with the dogs. Well two of them. First the Wollaton, with a few decent ales, and then the Wheelhouse, with Abbot back on.

(Saturday 19^th May)