HE NEVER LOVED ME. NOT EVEN FOR A MOMENT.
It’s weird when you see what you think was your own private pain, your own personal grief, felt so long ago, written on stage as an experience universal enough to have every woman in the room nodding and gasping. Meanwhile, the men – the fucking men – laugh inappropriately in all the wrong places. They’re laughing at her. Her desperation, her neediness. By extension, they’re laughing at me.
Read MoreHow do you simulate someone else’s dreams? That’s the struggle at the heart of Somnai – an experience that blends virtual reality and immersive theatre to try to give participants a sense of lucid dreaming. The problem was that at no point did I have unexpected sex with a minor celebrity my waking mind had previously shown no interest in (which happens in a surprising number of my actual dreams).
Read MoreLove and longing accompanies beer and boogie on the boardwalk as Emma Burnell and her sister visit the most American place in New York.
It is against my innate sense of romance to go to the seaside and not fall in love. Not ‘kiss me quick and grope me furtively under the Waltzer’ love. But ‘flirty giggles, flipped hair, batted eyelashes and a deep, soulful longing for someone who, in an hour, will be just another stranger again’ love. That’s what the seaside is for – you can’t have all the fun of the fair without the emotional rollercoaster.
Read MoreThe battle to replace Iain McNicol as the Labour party general secretary is getting heated. There have been some pretty furious exchanges between supporters of Momentum chair Jon Lansman and Unite's Jennie Formby.
Those on the inside of each organisation will tell you that this is about deep, important divisions over how democracy within the party should be played out. Lansman's supporters say this is about party democracy versus union-backed central control, while those backing Formby say it’s about defending Labour’s historic link with the unions.
The team behind Keep Calm and Carry On(look forward to a future run renamed For King and Country) have done it again.
Another WW2 Drama, this once again puts participants through their paces, cracking codes and making life and death decisions as part of the Special Operations Executive – spies, codebreakers and generally surreptitious actors on the side of the British in the war.
Read MorePoor Rosie Duffield has had to put up with me drunkenly explaining how much her win in Canterbury meant to me more than once over the months she’s been their MP. It was where I voted for the first time in 1997. While Labour won big that night, we didn’t quite sweep Canterbury along with the nation. She’s always listened and responded with perfect charm and I don’t think I’m the only person so have articulated how important her victory felt last June.
Read MoreHow we run local communities, what services are provided and by whom, are deeply political questions. The philosophical traditions of the two main parties in Britain differ greatly on state involvement at every level: national, local and international.
Read MoreI really wasn’t expecting much from this play. The fact the press release promoted it as “bitcoin-funded” had me worried it was going to be a buzzword-heavy, all-too-trendy play, heavy on zeitgeist and light on almost anything else. I could not have been more wrong.
This play is a one-hour, one-man tour-de-force.
Read MoreThe message that “something must be done” is one of the most prevalent of modern politics. Although designed to reflect the resolve of politicians and those who influence them (from constituents to campaigners) on the issues that face them, the need to show urgency often leads politicians to take action without fully examining the consequences, or to reach for easy solutions to tough problems when actually only a long, hard, and politically unrewarding grind will do.
Read MoreAs expected, the Momentum slate swept the board again at Labour's NEC elections. This means they now hold all nine constituency positions as well as controlling other internal bodies such as the Conference Arrangements Committee. It all sounds incredibly boring, largely because, for the most part, it is.
You have to be a truly dedicated political activist to care much about internal elections. Even party members don't very much, which is why turnout (other than for leadership contests) is always so low. You will probably hear a lot from the losing factions about turnout numbers, but then you always do. Whoever happens to be the losing faction at that time will always make that argument. When they start winning again they'll do naff-all to change it.
Read MoreI often struggle with dramatic depictions of salespeople. This is because I was one once. I know the tricks of the trade, had the gift of the gab, knew the art of the deal. And as a result, I know that a lot of what is written when we depict salespeople in dramas they are not realistic. It’s an artistic rendering of the grubbiness of commerce and the self-aggrandisement of the kind of people who would genuinely describe themselves as having the ‘gift of the gab’, often imbued with the kind of snobbery that values the art and the artist above all else.
Read MoreOver the years I’ve done a lot of immersive theatre. As a frustrated actress it fulfils many of those lifelong ambitions to be a part of the drama. I’ve been romanced, shocked, scared and mystified all in the name of theatre.
I’ve never been to an immersive production that brings the audience into the drama quite as much as Keep Calm and Carry On. From the moment I was elected Leader of the Opposition and Deputy Prime Minister in the wartime coalition government, I knew this was going to be the drama for me.
Read MoreTo understand why the Tories are incapable of solving the housing crisis, you have to understand that its roots come from Tory dogma older than most of the unfortunate ‘generation rent’. It is a creed they refuse to resist, and a doctrine that blinds them to the increasingly perilous consequences.
It is exemplified by ‘right to buy’, one of Margaret Thatcher’s most politically potent and significant policies. Incredibly popular at the time, it is probably responsible for some measure of the older generation’s electoral loyalty to the Tories. But the electoral bribe it represented was time limited – unlike its consequences.
Read MoreOnce again politics is going through a crisis of its own making. The scandals around sexual abuse and harassment have been a ticking time bomb for years. Women in all parties will tell you they've been raising this alarm for some time. They were largely ignored as an inconvenience. So of course, the parties were then caught on the hop when the scandal exploded.
So far, so Westminster. It is a reactive place and however much politicians like to talk about the future, they actually spend most of their time reacting to the recent past. All too often this means responses are put together too quickly and are not always as well thought through as they could be. The implications aren't fully considered. Too often the responses to crises such as this contain the seeds of future problems.
Read MoreWhile Jo Platt is off buying us both a much-needed coffee from the Portcullis House café, her new boss Angela Rayner walks by, stopping for a quick chat. “She’s a bloody superstar,” says the Shadow Secretary of State for Education “she’s keeping us in line”.
It’s unusual to become a PPS (one rung down from a junior shadow minister) so soon after being elected. But it’s quite clear from the passion that Platt shows when discussion education at every level as well as the mutual respect between her and Rayner (who she describes warmly as “an absolute force” and working with her as “the perfect opportunity”) that she’s hit the Parliamentary estate running.
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