Yesterday, I met a friend in London. We haven't seen each other for a while and I kept thinking that people not like me might have hugged and I wondered if she was disappointed that we didn't or get drunk and take selfies, pouting over the top of our over sized Margarita glasses. I hope she wasn't and enjoyed what we did as much as I did.
Standing in the cold drizzle queueing at the TKTS office she asked me what I wanted to see. I was only prepared to say what I hadn't seen and what I knew about the shows that were available.
"Big Fish. That sounds interesting. What's that?" she asked.
"It's new. It should be good, funny and sad. It's a great film."
She hadn't seen the film but we settled on that one and went to Barrafina for lunch.
Barrafina is a Spanish Tapas bar in Covent Garden. It has smart red bar stools, a shiny counter, waiters with proper Spanish accents that mean that they spit a little as they talk. You watch your meal being prepared and the vegetables and fish are on display.
It was delicious and your glass keeping filling with free fizzy water, which is my idea of a good time out, although I wasn't sure about being watched by the fish. Then a big red prawn thing jumped. It was like a scene from the little mermaid. We could almost hear the chef singing about poissons while Sebastian hid under a cabbage leaf.
As we ate we talked and I ended up telling my friend all about the elephant. I didn't mean to. Just as I refuse to give him space on the blog I wasn't going to take him to meet my friend. However, just a few questions and I described him in full technicolour detail but as though he was sitting on someone else's blog and I was just watching him. I refused to give any of his histrionic emotions houseroom. My friend apologised. "It's fine. I can talk about him now," I said going on to explain how he was effecting everyone else. I also talked about my Dad's last few days and grief. I can't think it was the best fun she's ever had.
We had to run across Green Park so we didn't miss the start of the show. It was at The Other Palace Theatre in Victoria, which is quite like the Mercury in Colchester and we had front row seats, which give you a bit of a crick in the neck and make you fear that a giant might land in your lap. It was different from the film but not too much. It was still about the death of a parent.
At the interval my friend looked worried.
"This probably wasn't the best thing for you to come and see, under the circumstances," she said.
I laughed.
You've got to laugh.
I think you know you are doing okay if you can laugh.
Big Fish would make anyone laugh. It had some wonderful comic performances and a brilliant joke or two.
"They've crossed a Hippopotomus, Elephant and Rhino."
"What do they call it?"
"Hell if I know. (Helephino)"
Maybe the elephant is actually a Helephino.
A musical can't convey the weirdness as well as a film does but it does a pretty good job. The songs, however, bring so much more emotion into it. Most of the theatre was sobbing or at least dabbing an eye. My friend thought that it could have sent me over the edge but being a cold fish it just made my cold a little worse.
When I got home the Long Suffering Husband asked me all about it.
"It was really good," I told him, "It had some famous actors in it. I think the man who played the Dad was someone and the the circus man was Gene Wilder."
"Gene Wilder?" the LSH asked, "He died."
"No. He didn't die. It was the other one who died."
The LSH explained that he meant Gene Wilder had died in real life. He said that he'd been one of the victims of the great 2016 celebrity cull. I didn't believe him, so he looked up who was in the musical.
Kelsey Grammer was the Dad and the person I thought was Gene Wilder was someone called Forbes Masson, who someone should discover as a comedy genius (if they haven't already)
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| Not Gene Wilder |
If it had been Gene Wilder then they could have called it Big Cold Fish.
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