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Into London today to go and see Frozen the Musical - five adults and two kids, at a price that could buy you a pretty decent laptop, even though we were pretty far back in the theatre. It was a packed Sunday matinee too - I am in the wrong game. Instead of doing puppet shows in my attic, I should be writing world class children's films with incredible songs that can then be put on stage. So I'll do that now. Looks pretty easy.
It's not a cheap production, of course, though it wasn't quite as extravagant as I thought it might be. There were some cool (geddit?) effects and a sizeable and talented cast, but basically it's just a licence to print money (unless a deadly pandemic hits). And that's not a bad thing- it's great to see theatre thriving and to have a show that gives a young audience it's first taste of what's possible through live performance. But as always, it feels wrong that the ludicrously high ticket price excludes so many people.
All in all this show was not aimed at me and I was a bit tired. We'd left a little bit late and then there had been a mad dash to the theatre and so I was ready to snooze, but didn't quite manage it. I thought back to the cinema visits we'd had when Phoebe was a baby, in which I'd pretty much always drift off to sleep for thirty minutes or so. It was rather wonderful, weirdly. It's one of my happy memories of being a new dad. Missing films but getting some bonus rest. We're never quite that tired now, but it's been seven years of never quite having had enough sleep. It feels OK to sleep through the price of a cinema ticket, but not a theatre one.
The kids were pretty well behaved and enjoyed themselves. Though at the end, as the music blared and the audience cheered, Ernie stood with his hands on his face and a look of horror on his face. It was all to loud for him. He looked like something out of an Edvard Munch painting crossed with Home Alone.
We drove home and attempted to go to Wagamamas for a treat, but it turns out that 5pm on a Sunday is the time that people in Stevenage go crazy for dinner and the queue was too long and the nearby restaurants similarly packed, so we drove to Hitchin and had a slightly posher meal in an almost deserted restaurant. The kids were charming (until the end where the sugar from the pudding combined with tiredness turned them into tiny drunks) and we played games and laughed together. Phoebe kept spoiling one of the games, and Ernie thought it was hilarious, even on his own go. That kind of laughter is better entertainment than anything that Disney or the world's greatest comedian can create. My family all laughing together without a care in the world, as a madman in another country threatened the world with nuclear bombs. But that was forgotten. Just shared laughter. Even the waiter was getting in on it - and also seemed very keen to play I-Spy with us.
If you ignored World War Three (and the fact that we're only pretending that the virus is over), life seems to be getting back to normal. My in-laws were pretty much the only people in the theatre of 1000+ who steadfastly wore their masks throughout. Whether foolhardy or not, it's quite a feeling to be able to do normal stuff again.
