Sunday, 18 September 2016

Seen and heard: August 2016

Gershwin Gala, The John Wilson Orchestra Prom – every John Wilson Orchestra concert is a treat, and this one, featuring the songs of George and Ira Gershwin, especially so: not only blisteringly wonderful performances of the film versions – now the definitive versions – of familiar songs but an introduction to many less famous numbers also, such as The Babbitt and The Bromide mercilessly making fun of the poverty of man-to-man conversation.

Woburn Safari Park – a return visit with both our grandchildren, highlights including rhinos sauntering by our car at near-touching distance, swan boats on the lake, and a zebra crossing :) (I must be the millionth person to make that joke, which come to think of it I first heard in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin.)

Ana Moura – a wonderful fado singer, to whom we were referred by my wife’s elder son, to whom he in turn had been referred by Spotify.

Shardlight – sad, atmospheric, dystopian adventure game from Dave Gilbert and Wadjet Eye. The protagonist is an engineer in a post-apocalyptic society, in which an aristocratic elite (dressed in ancien regime frippery) hoard the vaccine for the deadly green lung disease while the majority of the population live in poverty, the dominant religion being the cult of the death-bringing Reaper, whose arrival is prefigured by the appearance of ravens. A good yarn, but the endings – there are three alternatives – are understandably unconvincing, especially the “best” one.

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