Back To Shore

The post below were the first words I ever wrote about that “funny, little, yellow show”. Long before they moved to the Fortune Theatre with it’s fancy yellow curtain! Long before they came up with the logo they’ve been using for so long now. I think – and now just claim – my friends and I must have been among the first 300 people ever to have seen a full – two acts in a proper theatre – performance of this.

Being a “Mincefluencer” before anyone came up with that term!

Two different theatres and four years later they moved to the West End. Got their run extended and extended. Won a bloody Olivier Award! And now they’ve got a transfer the Broadway! OH MY GOD.

Father’s never been prouder

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That was my tweet, right after the show

Just saw #OperationMincemeat at @newdiorama. OMG, so amazing and so much fun to watch. More detailed praise later, when I’m fed, showered and back in WiFi range. Stellar cast, fantastic score (@FelixHagan really went all out). Brilliant stage design too. Absolutely recommend

— Susanne D (@dennasus) 18. Mai 2019

Many, many hours later, here are finally my thoughts (and praise) for “Operation Mincemeat”, the first musical written, composed and performed by Spitlip. I blame the Eurovision Song Contest for the delay and the fact, that I spent a lot of time last night (and today) on Spitlips’s Soundcloud and Youtube to listen to the available songs over and over again. I also researched some of the events and persons the whole story was about. And then to complicate my schedule, early this morning Frank Turner announced he’ll bring Lost Evenings IV to Berlin next year. So of course I had to discuss plans with my friends and find suitable and affordable rooms and… ARGH! Lost Evenings 2020 in Berlin! This is so incredibly cool!

But now… Spitlip and “Operation Mincemeat”. The musical is based on a true story of, well… “Operation Mincemeat” and while they might have taken some artistic liberty in regards to the characters and their relationships with each other, the fact remains, that this absolutely insane sounding deception operation actually did happen in 1943 and it did contribute to the Allied victory in WWII.

I should maybe say, that I usually don’t write elaborated reviews of any kind of entertainment. The one or other Frank Turner ging notwithstanding. So, this here is an audience fan account of the experience. I would never have heard of this project nor gone to see it, if one of my favourite artists – Felix Hagan – wasn’t involved and hadn’t been talking about it for a while. I’m a big fan of the ‘musical-flavoured’ big, powerful, glamorous tunes he’s been writing for Felix Hagan & the Family. And with the music for this epic 2 hour long musical he and his fellow writers have gone all out. It has everything from sea-shanty to heartbreaking love song, from feminist powerful Spice Girly pop and a power ballad full of self-doubt (and don’t I know that feeling, so this one absolutely hit home) to the big showtune celebrating extravagance in life in spite or more exact because of the ongoing war. The music overall was amazing and so were the lyrics. I was impressed by the wit and emotions and the pace of it all. But of course they didn’t just sing and dance, there was a story to tell and scenes to act out and the script was the right mix of hilarity and introspection, of coming-of-age story and social commentary. And often, oh so very funny.

For this musical the three acting members of Spitlip – Natasha Hodgson, Zoe Roberts and David Cumming – were joined by two more actors: Rory Furey-King and Jak Malone and all five people on stage were absolutely brilliant: all with great voices and such a wide range of acting skills. Because even though they each played one main character, they also portrayed many more throughout this whole story, whenever someone other than the five main characters needed to make an appearance. It was an impressive whirlwind, which was helped along by the outstanding set and costume design from Helen Coyston. The way in which the simple stage changed from one set to another and equally the actors switched roles from pathologist to night club singer to taciturn Scottish submariner and back again in mere seconds was absolutely fascinating to watch.

I have to admit it took me a few moments to really get accustomed to the switched gender roles in this play, where two of the main male characters – Montagu and Bevan – were played by women and one of the female main characters – Hester – played by a man. Yes, that sounds weird at first, but after the first few scenes I didn’t notice it anymore, especially once the whole cast convincingly started playing so many more characters of either gender. And it’s called acting for a reason, right?

I don’t really want to single out any members of this cast, because they were all so good. But, I just feel that I need to give two special shout-outs and I hope the remaining three forgive me. I really, really enjoyed Tash’s performance in this. I might be biased, because of course I know and love her from “Felix Hagan & the Family”, where she can’t always show what kind of great voice she has; being a ‘background’ *g* singer and all. The second shout-out needs to go to Jak Malone, for his absolute tear-jerking performance in the “love letter” scene. Yeah, I did sniffle a bit and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Such a great act. And also… so wonderful, moving lyrics. Maybe I should also give an small shout-out to ‘Nancy’ for making all those wonderful little notes 🙂

Summed up: I absolutely enjoyed this afternoon and while I’m pretty biased, because… Felix! and Tash!… I left the theatre under the impression that the rest of the audience enjoyed it just as much. I’m so happy for this new and small musical troupe that it seems to be going well. Fingers crossed! I’m also happy that we got the chance to tell them all in person after the show, because they’ve pulled off something amazing here and they all seemed genuinely humbled to hear how much we had enjoyed it. So I was glad I told them.

And if any of you find yourself in London in the next couple of weeks, you should definitely  check them out! They’ll be at the New Diorama until Mid-June. Long enough time even to plan a trip to London from somewhere else in the country I’d say 🙂

Some of the books I’ve read I’ve already sold on; some were e-books and all in all I just couldn’t be bothered to keep them in a collection for an end-of-the-month photo. Here is one of my shelves instead.

Reading-wise September was a mixed bag. I read a lot in the first half, while I was on vacation. Then almost nothing for the following week and a half, because I was busy with work and knackered from it. My opinion on all the books I’ve read are also a mixed bag. Some I loved, some I didn’t care much for in the end and there were a bunch of short stories from “The Chronicles of St. Mary’s” series, which officially count as “books”, but I won’t list or review here, because they were about 40-50 pages each. The mini plots of those also kind of melded together once read in quick succession (between the big books in the series).

Once again, not chronologically, but in order of favourite to least

Alone With You in the Ether, Olivie Blake, 2020
This was a fascinating – slightly different, more serious – romance between two very special people. I loved the writing here. It felt different and refreshing and less like following the trodden path of phrases and words and plots used by many others before. If that makes sense. I clearly lack the vocabulary to explain it any better.

My Mechanical Romance, Alexene Farol Follmuth, 2022
That was a really sweet story about young love. A bit of the enemy to lover trope, but that’s fine by me. I adored Bel and could well relate to her kind of scattered/messy character. Teo was a bit too good to be true and I’d have liked a bit more of a resolution about his own struggles by the end of school year. But all in all I just adored those two. I also very much enjoyed the “girl power” vibe of this story. It was realistic, without being too much. I still don’t understand anything about robots though.

The Chronicles of St Mary’s (Book 6-8), Jodi Taylor, 2019
06: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
It was about time to get back to St. Mary’s. I admit I didn’t recall the details of what had happened in the previous book, which shows that I shouldn’t leave too much time between reading them. I liked Max’s new challenges as training officer and I was glad that they didn’t jump up and down the timeline as much as they did in previous stories. The whole Hoyles sub-plot didn’t really interest me all that much and it felt a bit like a filler to set up bigger plotlines / new ? adversaries for the following books, which was fine by me. All in all as always a entertaining read and I’m looking forward to more.

07: Lies, Damned Lies, and History
I mostly enjoyed this one. It seems to move the various plots (Max & Leon’s private lives, fight vs old enemies, future of St. Mary’s) forward in a good way and wasn’t too much all over the place (e.g. timeline). Unfortunately the bit at the end of the book about the following books in the series spoiled me quite a bit, which means I need to keep reading asap.

08: And the Rest is History
That was quite the ride. Heartbreaking for quite a long stretch. I sort of knew (had hoped) that those assumed dead wouldn’t/couldn’t be, but I still cried a few times. I thought the way they handled the Matthew plot was quite neat and grudgingly admit that it might be a good idea. As I’m not a native English reader, the focus on so much of one year of English history turned a bit boring in the end, but that’s ok.

What’s Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service, Mary McCormack, Melissa Fitzgerald, 2024
I’m a hardcore “The West Wing” fan so of course I enjoyed this book immensely. It was so wonderful to get a behind the scene insight and also learn that the cast and crew really enjoyed working together and still are friends. It was heartwarming to read. The structure of the book felt a bit jumbled sometimes, but that’s my only complaint.

A Novel Love Story, Ashley Poston, 2024
I enjoyed previous novels from this author, but I was a bit sceptic when I read the idea of this one. And I have to admit that I didn’t really loose that. I don’t know what other solution I had hoped to read for the phantastic idea of ending up in a fictional village. I might have been more satisfied if there actually had been some kind of magic involved? I don’t know. I loved the slow-burn romance and Anders backstory was kind of heartbreaking and I liked the HEA and all. But still… something was off with this story for me. There also were WAY too many characters for me to keep track off, but that might have been due to my busy mind.

Songs in Ursa Major, Emma Brodie, 2021
I was afraid this one would be too much like “Daisy Jones & The Six”, which it wasn’t and I appreciated that. All in all I have mixed feelings about this story. I loved the independence of the Quinn family, I loved that Jane didn’t back down and I thought the insight into the 60/70s music industry was quite interesting. I also liked the variety of supporting characters. I wanted to root for Jane and Jesse, but Jesse made that difficult. The secret Jane and her family kept caught me by surprise to be honest and in a way it invalidated earlier parts of the story for me and thus by the end I lost a bit of interest in it all.

Only This Beautiful Moment, Abdi Nazemian, 2023
Another story, which didn’t fulfil the high hopes I had set in it, I’m afraid. To me the plot felt too far fetched, the characters and their motivations too vague and the writing felt bland. I’m sorry I don’t have anything more positive to say about this.

This was originally posted on my previous (now defunct) blog in August 2019.

Around the release of Frank’s new album, two wonderful fans – Sarah and Valerie – had the idea to honour the idea, the songs and the man behind it all, with a fan-project: find many more interesting, important, inspirational womxn or non-cis persons from history and share those stories. All essays can be found on the project’s website

Tales from Wo-Fan’s Land 

and you should definitely check them out, they are amazing. I contributed with an essay about Astrid Lindgren. I can’t really say what made me think of her, but it was such an interesting biography to delve into, so I thought I’d share what I wrote here as well and some of my German readers might learn something new about her too. There were so many more interesting details, but there also was a word limit for the essays 🙂

Astrid Lindgren (1907 – 2002)

Most people who have heard of ‘Pippi Longstocking’ – a red-haired, freckled, fiercely independent and anti-authoritarian girl – might also be familiar with the name of her creator: the children’s book author Astrid Lindgren. As long as I can remember I thought of Astrid Lindgren as a kind and gentle looking, elderly lady. I never really wondered what her life – which spanned almost the complete 20th century – might have been like until I recently read Jens Andersen’s biography „Astrid Lindgren – The Woman Behind Pippi Longstocking“. From which I learned that from an early age on Astrid had been a spirited, headstrong, fiercely independent woman. I learned that in the 1920s she became a young, unwed mother. During WWII she worked for the Swedish Secret Service. And in 1976 her satirical story „Pomperipossa in Monismania” brought down the long reigning Swedish government. For most of her long life Astrid Lindgren had been a female force to be reckoned with.

Astrid was born in November 1907 in the small town of Vimmerby in Southern Sweden.With 16 she started a small revolution, when – inspired by Margueritte’s revolutionary novel „La Garçonne“ – she was the first girl in town to cut her hair and to experiment with wearing men’s clothes. Already in school Astrid had shown a talent for writing and in 1924 she started as trainee with the local newspaper. She was on her way to a promising journalistic career when she got pregnant by her 50 year old, married boss Reinhold Blomberg in March 1926. To avoid harming Blomberg’s ongoing divorce case and to leave the small town gossip behind Astrid on her own accord moved to Stockholm to attend secretary school. When the divorce proceedings kept stalling, 19 year old Astrid had no other choice than to give birth abroad in Copenhagen (Denmark), which at that time was the only place she could do so anonymously. As long as her own future was uncertain she had to leave her son Lasse with a foster family in Copenhagen. By the time Blomberg’s divorce was finally settled Astrid had decided to end the relationship, because as she later in life stated „I knew what I wanted and didn’t want. I had wanted the child, but not the child’s father.“ For the next few years Astrid struggled to make ends meet as a young, single, working woman in Stockholm while also trying to save enough money to keep visiting her son in Copenhagen several times a year. Only after she married Sture Lindgren in 1931 she could finally bring Lasse back home with her, but the theme of abandonment and isolation can be found in many of the children’s stories she wrote throughout her career.

Astrid was a mostly stay-at-home mum until 1940, when she started working at the Swedish Secret Service. She couldn’t go into details about her „dirty job“ – as she called it – in the mail censorship department, but still included some information she gained in her diaries. Those were published under the title „A World Gone Mad“ for the first time in 2016 and are a fascinating account about the horrors of war as they could be experienced in neutral Sweden. It was around that time when Astrid started telling her daughter Karin (born in 1934) the story of Pippi Longstocking. In November 1945 the first Pippi Longstocking book was published and it was an instant success. Astrid quickly became one of the most successful Swedish authors, publishing several books and plays in quick succession and maintaining a strong media presence for decades. By the end of her career she had written 34 original books, which were translated in over 100 languages, had sold over 165 million copies and she was considered one of the most successful children book authors of all times.

Even in her late 60s, she kept writing children’s books, but then also became more outspoken about social or political issues. Due to some weird Swedish tax laws Astrid in 1976 incurred a marginal tax rate of 102% (!). She reacted by publishing the satirical story “Pomperipossa in Monismania” on the day of an important economics debate in parliament. The ensuing public uproar led to the Social-Democrats losing a crucial amount of votes in the general election later that year and thus ending their government after more than 40 years in power.

In 1978 Astrid Lindgren was awarded the German’s Booksellers Peace Price, where she held a wildly acclaimed speech – „Never Violence“ – condemning corporal punishment and any kind of oppressive method in child rearing. With this speech she once again influenced the public debate in her home country and in 1979 Sweden was the first state worldwide to prohibit any kind of violence towards children. Up until the 1990s, she kept making her voice heard for children, the environment and many more issues dear to her heart.

Astrid Lindgren died on 28th of January 2002. Her funeral on Women’s Day (8th March) was attended by the Royal Family, Government Officials and had hundred of thousands of people lining the Stockholm streets for her final journey and even more people watching on TV to say goodbye to the beloved author and one of the fiercest Swedish opinion-makers in the 20th century.

Sources:

„Astrid Lindgren – The Woman Behind Pippi Longstocking“ (Jens Andersen, published in English in 2018)
“A World Gone Mad – The Wartime Diaries of Astrid Lindgren“ (published in English in 2016) 
Astrid Lindgren Company Website